50 years is insufficient. You really need to go back to 1920. Here's a summary I wrote the last time violence broke out in earnest in 2021. This is as unbiased as I can be.
Jewish revolts against Rome in AD 73 and AD 136 results in the destruction of Jerusalem and the depopulation of Israel.
Jewish people live in the diaspora throughout the Middle East, Europe and Russia
Over the centuries Jews suffer a great deal with laws preventing them from owning land, doing many kind of jobs, or living as normal residents. Are routinely persecuted, prevented from fully assimilating, and often overtly attacked in pogroms. Many of these attacks were horrifying and brutal, and often were ignored or even encouraged by local authorities.
Pogroms in the 19th century combined with the general trend toward nationalism sparks two similar movements - Bolshevism and Zionism. Both were based on radical and revolutionary zeal, both were competing for the same type of support.
Zionism's idea was to have a Jewish homeland. Supporters ranged from wanting political solutions like getting the British or Ottoman empire to cede them land, to practical solutions like moving and making a de facto state by improving the land, to outright violent uprisings. Not all Jews supported Zionism, especially in countries which were less anti-Semitic like France, Great Britain, or the US. Zionists were essentially anti-Western, anti-Christian, and in many cases overt socialists. Early Zionists viewed Arabs as their cousins, united against the Western world. Jews begin to purchase land and immigrate to Palestine.
World War I carved up the Ottoman Empire and results in a messy agreement where Britain is in charge of Palestine. Britain made conflicting agreements during WWI with local Arabs (promising them independence if they fought against the Turks) and Zionist Jews (promising them a homeland) in order to gain support in the War.
From 1920 on the British badly tried to split the difference, but lost control of the situation. Jews immigrated both legally and illegally. Arabs who lived in Palestine saw the writing on the wall and got mad that their land was being "given away" to European Jews. Nationalist movements of both Arabs and Jews form in the region. Violence breaks out on both sides. Both sides revolt against British rule. Both sides attack each other with gangs and militias. Britain tries to prevent illegal immigration by Jews (much of it driven by the Holocaust). Radical Zionists engaged in terrorism against the British government and Arabs, including assassinations, bombings of civilian targets like hotels, trains, police stations, ships, and market places, and grenade attacks on civilian groups.
During WWII it got more complicated. Britain trained some Jewish groups to defend the region against Axis powers. Some Zionist elements refused to cooperate with the British and even tried to reach out to the Nazis, saying they'd support them if they allowed Israel to be a homeland for Jews.
After WWII illegal immigration resumed and the Jewish insurgency got worse. The UN makes a partition plan that the Jews accept, but Arabs don't. Britain won't agree to enforce the plan because the Arabs don't accept it, and also just say "screw it we're out." The minute the British bail, Israel comes into existence and a war breaks out between Arabs from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt and the Israeli Zionist military factions that become the IDF - which included former terrorist organizations like Irgun and Lehi.
The IDF crushes the Arabs. Through a combination of direct military action including the massacre of civilians, expulsion by the IDF, and spontaneous panic, most of the local Arab population flees. The Jews don't let them come back after the war. Neighboring Arab countries don't let them in. Jewish military notes they're more interested in welfare handouts than fighting.
The Israeli government passes a law taking into state receivership what they call abandoned property. Palestinians who fled lose property, businesses, buildings, homes.
Everything that has happened since can be summed up as:
- Futile violence by Arabs against Israel, both from terrorist groups and outright wars
- Shockingly immoral and evil indiscriminate targeting of civilians by Palestinian terrorists
- Israel's economic, technological, and military superiority putting down all of the violence handily resulting in increased land controlled by Israel every single time
- A general disregard by Israel for UN and international agreements leading to them slowly settling additional territory, further perpetuating the displacement and continuing the cycle of violence
- Ineffectual negotiated peace agreements which have no chance to be accepted
- Run of the mill day-to-day small scale violence by Arabs against Jews, Jews against Arabs, etc
- The consolidation of Israel as a Jewish state vs a typical western democracy, which recognizes that Jews and only Jews have a right to national self-determination in Israel
