In the Middle East, specifically the region of Israel and its borders, violence has been the major means of action for attempted change. Between terrorism, rioting, and war, there's no debating that violent outbreaks have been a common occurrence. Numerous external forces have tried to quell the fighting unsuccessfully. Internal forcers have attempted the same, often through violence. Sadly, however, the raging violence in the Middle East could not have been prevented. In this paper, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will be assessed from the vantage point of a number of different theorists: Socrates, Thoreau, Fanon, and Gandhi. Their beliefs will give light to the notion that there are no alternatives to violence in the Middle East.
             The struggle between Jewish and Arab interests over the area of Israel, previously Palestine, has origins stretching back hundreds of years, though the most important events have taken place within the last century. The creation of Israel was the culmination of the Zionist movement, whose aim was a homeland for Jews scattered all over the world following the Diaspora. Previous to independence, the Jewish people had a long history of being oppressed through exile, slavery, and murder, never holding a sovereign state. After the Nazi Holocaust, pressure grew for the international recognition of a Jewish state, and in 1947 Israel came into being. Much of the history of the region since that time has been one of conflict between Israel on one side and the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors on the other. Thousands of Palestinians were displaced, and several wars (1948, 1954, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 1991) were fought involving the neighboring Arab countries. It wasn't unti!
             l the early 1990s, after years of an uprising known as the Intifada, that a peace process began with the Palestinians. The Palestinian people now live sporadically throughout Israel and confined to two ...