Crises Within the Arab–Israel Protracted Conflict: 1948–2014

Abstract

Among the 33 interstate protracted conflicts (PCs) that have been active during the past near-century (late 1918–2016), the Arab-Israel conflict, in which one of the principal adversaries has been, and continues to be, a nonstate actor, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), has generated 30 crises since its onset in 1948, the largest number of crises within any PC: 15 were characterized by lesser degrees of violence, 9 were cases in which violence escalated to full-scale war, and 6 manifested perceptions of the likelihood of violence before the crisis ended, which did not occur. The most noteworthy cluster, the nine crises that led to war, were scattered throughout the 69 years of the Arab-Israel PC:

• Palestine Partition/Israel Independence, 29 November 1947–20 July 1949

• Suez Nationalization Crisis-War, 26 July 1956–12 March 1957

• June-Six Day War, 17 May–11 June 1967

• War of Attrition, 8 March 1969–7 August 1970

• October-Yom Kippur War, 5 October 1973–31 May 1974

• War in Lebanon, 5 June 1982–17 May 1983

• Lebanon War II, 12 July–8 September 2006

• Gaza War I, 27 December 2008–19 January 2009

• Gaza War II, 8 July–26 August 2014