I read this entry carefully. I've never yet encountered a "just the facts, ma'am" explanation of this topic, and the World Book Encyclopedia seemed more likely than most sources to give me one.

I've been looking for years. I remember asking my parents, during elementary school, "why do Israel and Palestine hate each other so much?" My parents gave one another the "how about you explain this one" look before my dad said "that's a very complicated topic."

Post-World Book, I still lack a definitive answer to my childhood question. But I feel reasonably more confident in making a couple other statements.

First: The Arab-Israeli conflict (broadly) is perhaps humanity's quintessential example of the statement "You cannot reason someone out of a position he did not reason himself into." No one in this situation can be reasoned out of it because no one reasoned themselves into it - and no one has for centuries.

Second: The Arab-Israeli conflict is our fault.

By "our" I mean the United States, but I also mean "colonial western European countries." (I say "our" because, as a descendant of Norman nobility, I absolutely did have ancestors who went on various Crusades.) The current Israeli-Palestine situation, and tensions in the region more generally, are the direct result of US/UK/French lying, colonization, and intermeddling. We may not be wholly responsible for this mess, but we certainly set it in motion. At least I understand a bit better now why the US is so intertwined with the fate of Israel.

That's all I have. Those aren't answers, merely observations subject to change with additional data.

The problem is that "data" is hard to come by. Everyone's take on this situation is driven by emotion. Everyone's. I can scratch any random person and get them to argue passionately at me about the whole thing, but getting them to separate actual facts from things that feel like facts? Hardly.

Which kinda makes me feel like I didn't learn anything at all.