Path to Peace Runs Through a History of Tumult

(CNN) – As they struggle to find a way for their people to coexist, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are not only dealing with the bitterness of recent violence but with a lengthy history of conflict.

The protracted dispute goes back long before the 1947 Balfour Declaration and the U.N. partition of Palestine set the stage for Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion to declare Israel a state on May 14, 1948. The region – bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the north by Lebanon and on the south by the Sinai Peninsula – has been the scene of bitter struggles for millennia.

The status of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Ground zero in the dispute is a hill in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. That precious piece of real estate is believed to contain the ruins of Judaism's holiest temple, on top of which stands the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest site. The terms of the U.N. partition of 1947 call for Jerusalem to be an international city shared between a Jewish and Palestinian state. But Israel annexed West Jerusalem after its war of independence and East Jerusalem – which includes the Dome of the Rock – in 1967. East Jerusalem is primarily populated by Arabs and West Jerusalem by Jewish residents.

In 1988, Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and ­–Gaza and told the United Nations that the PLO renounced terrorism. He said the PLO supported the right of all parties to live in peace – Israel included.

In 1993 Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo peace accords that established a framework for an agreement aimed at bringing peace to the region. The accords called for the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the West Bank, and the creation of the Palestinian Authority as the Palestinian governing body in the occupied territories. Rabin and Arafat were rewarded for their efforts by being named co-winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

The peace process became mired in violence that escalated in September 2000, following a visit by Israeli Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon to the hotly disputed Jerusalem site known as the Temple Mount to Jews and as Haram al-Sharif, or Nobel Sanctuary, by Muslims.

Sharon, who went on to unseat Ehud Barak in the 2001 election for Israeli prime minister, has admonished Arafat to reign in Palestinian rock-throwing youths and suicide bombers. Arafat has responded that he cannot control random acts of violence by militant factions and has accused Sharon of escalating the violence.

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