Before WW1 almost all the land we now call the "Middle East" was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire existed in a relatively big and powerful state since the fall of Constantinople in the year 1453. During WW1 the Ottoman empire sided with the Axis powers and the Axis powers lost WW1. The Ottoman Empire dissolved and what is left of it is what we today call Turkey. Vast tracts of land fell into the control of the British.

The Ottomans ruled with a very "hands off" approach to local governance. People in different parts of the empire could rule themselves how they wanted, practice their own religion, etc, all they had to do was provide soldiers for the military and pay taxes. When the British took this land they were very "hands on". They tried to force these new "countries" to fall in line under one all powerful local government. Places like Iraq didn't exist before the end of WW1, don't you think its weird that there are Sunni, Shiites and Kurds all in one nation and they all absolutely hate one another? The Ottomans would allow them to rule themselves as three or more little quasi-nations, the British would not, which has led to almost all the partisan infighting in that region, the British at that time were culturally insensitive fools, the perils of colonialism.

Now, onto Israel. So, Britain has just gotten all this land from the Ottomans, including the historical "home" of the Jews. The Jews at this point did not have their own nation, and Zionist lobbyists in Britain pushed for the creation of a Jewish home state. This was called the Balfour Declaration in 1917. This led to the Mandate of Palestine in 1923. This was a quasi-official document that formed basis of the later Israeli state. During the time from 1910-1929 many Jews came into the newly outlined Jewish state, but it wasn't called Israel at this point in time. Once the Nazis came to power a quarter million Jews flooded into the area, causing the Arab population there to riot, the British put down this riot with violence, killing over 5,000 arabs. This led to massive conflict, there were already Arabs living in Palestine, but many Jews were trying to get in, to get away from the Nazis. The British put strict immigration controls on Jews. After the fall of Nazism the UN declared that the Mandate of Palestine be replaced by the permanent introduction of an Arab state, a Jewish state and the shared city of Jerusalem, this happened in 1947.

Here is where it gets really messy. Up to this point all the hatred was thrown at the British, but they left after the UN made its resolution. So now you have a two state system of Arabs and Jews trying to share the same land, but the Arabs weren't going to let their land be taken so easily. Between December 1947 and may 1948 a civil war broke out between the Jews and the Arabs, with the Jews winning the civil war and taking control of the whole country and naming it Israel on 14 May 1948. The next day the armies of four neighboring Arab nations, Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq attacked the new state of Israel. The Israeli defense force fought incredibly well, and the four nations were not coordinated, they all were rushing after their own objectives, and the defending Jews were able to beat the armies back and take even MORE land from these four nations. After two more wars in which the neighbors of Israel attacked them, once in 1967 and once in 1973 we come to the current geographical borders of Israel, enlarged through their resounding victories in both wars.

So, what is happening today? The people who call themselves the Palestinians are ruled by a quasi-government that wants to take back all the land from Jewish people and give it all to Arabs, like how it was before the British took the land away. The Jews don't want to do that, because that would mean the destruction of their nation, a nation they fought for and won. Throughout modern history the Jewish government has attempted to give a very generous state to the Arabs. Yes, it isn't the WHOLE of Israel, but they have attempted to give what are called the "pre-67" borders to the Arabs, the Arabs would get the Gaza strip, the West Bank and more in those deals, but the government of the Palestinians have time and again refused anything less than the complete destruction of the Jewish state. The government of Palestine continues to wage a war against the Jewish government in an attempt to undermine them. The current prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, has taken a very aggressive approach to the Palestinians. It seems that he feels that if they can't win them over by being nice, they just won't play nice anymore.

I don't know how to make it neutral really. It isn't Israel's fault that they were thrown into existence and then forced to fight for their independence from day one. It isn't their fault that the government of Palestine continues to act like a terrorist organization, not being in the slightest reasonable, truly not settling for anything short of the dissolution of Israel. Yes, the Palestinian people are suffering, but Israel only strikes when they are struck, and they take quite a beating before they strike back. If the government of Palestine would just take one of the very reasonable deals on the table for their own sovereign nation, almost all the issues surrounding the Israel/Palestine problem would go away. Is it fair in the grand scheme of things that the British took the Arab's land away in 1912? No, it isn't, and some would argue that the Palestinians are fighting for THEIR land, but too many blame the suffering of the Palestinian people on Israel when almost all that suffering is simply backlash from the policies and guerrilla war being waged by the Palestinian government.