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The establishment of the the Jewish State of Israel in 1948 was met by a joint military offensive of Arab countries including Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon, only for Israel to reverse the situation and increase the territory it had been given by a third. During this conflict, some 500,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled or fled in panic in what has since become known as the ‘Nakba’, the Arabic word for catastrophe. The UN partition plan proved to be a terrible failure and laid the foundation for repeated conflicts in the Middle East such as the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973. The latter of these led to a global increase in the price of oil that directly contributed to a severe world recession.
The Palestinian refugee problem has still not been resolved, with some four million Palestinian refugees currently living around the world and unable to return home. Many believe that the inability to solve this thorny issue is a major factor in the increase in Islamic terrorist acts witnessed globally over the recent decades. Conflict between the Arabs and the newly founded State of Israel – which was, and still is, unwaveringly supported by the United States – has dominated international politics for much of the post-war period.