The Gate of Peace

Abstract

The contemporary bone of contention between Jews and Muslims and the poisonous stem that constantly inflames their relationship is the Arab-Israeli conflict.¹ At the root of this historical dispute are the conflicting claims of Jews and Arabs to possession of a territory east of the Mediterranean, which the Jewish people regard as’ Ēretz Yisraēl, or the Land of Israel, and the Arab people call Filasṭīn, or Palestine. This land became a distinct geographical, historical, and political entity for the first time when the Israelites settled there about 3,000 years ago. Later, during the eleventh and tenth centuries BCE, they founded a kingdom with Jerusalem as the site of the First Temple and King Solomon’s capital. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Jewish state and the Second Temple and most of its Jewish inhabitants were killed or exiled.