When referring to the Middle East I often hear people say something to the effect of, "They've always been fighting over there." The implication then is that fighting is normal, and therefore somehow excusable. Moreover, almost any use of force is justified. Well, I just want to address one aspect of the conflict, and that's the basic timeline.
If we go back to the very beginning we can start with Abraham. Back there in the Old Testament he was made aware of the fact of monotheism, left an ancient Babylonian land and established the Jewish faith in roughly what is now Israel. Archeologically this is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 B.C. Skip forward about 1000 years and you have the Kingdom of Israel ruled by King David. In the meantime, there were all kinds of other groups that established dominion over the region at various times: the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Egyptians etc. Israel was conquered by the Babylonians in the 900s B.C. and most of the Jews were taken and enslaved in Babylon, although some remained. 300 years later Cyrus the Great (King of Persia) freed the Jews from Babylon. Many went to Persia and settled where they formed one of the longest standing Jewish communities in the world. Many returned at that time to the region that was Israel, and some stayed in a Persian ruled Babylon. At no time, however, did a Kingdom of Israel comparable to David's kingdom come to be established.
Fast forward to the Roman period. (Personally, I always like to picture The Life of Brian and the People's Front of Judea, not to be confused with the Judean People's Front, splitters.) This was the last time that the Jewish people held a numerical majority in the area now known as Israel. The Romans around 70 A.D. decided to spread the Jewish People throughout the Roman Empire. We don't need to get into why, it is simply the fact that they did. There were always some Jews who remained in the region, but they were now a minority.
Islam arrived on the scene in the 600's and took control of the region. A better description might be, that an overwhelming majority of the people in the region converted to Islam and were subsequently ruled by a Caliphate with a capitol in Damascus. From 650-1000 the region was ruled by Islamic governments, but many Jews and Christians remained. In Islam, they were considered "People of the Book" and they were allowed to practice their religion. (That's why there are to this day many Arabs who are Christian.) Around 1000 A.D. Christians got the idea that it was not a good idea that Muslims controlled Jerusalem, and so the crusades began. Much blood was spilled, and the crusades on the whole were a miserable failure for the Christian powers. Jerusalem was conquered and held for a while but the majority of the period 1000-1300 A.D., Jerusalem remained under Muslim control. The last crusade was around 1300 A.D.
In the 1400s a new power arrived on the scene--the Ottoman Turks. In addition to conquering the majority of the Muslim world from 1450-1550 the Ottomans also conquered Constantinople--renaming it Istanbul in 1492.(Thus the song--Istanbul not Constantinople) It was the Ottoman Turks that caused Western Europe to look for trade routes to the Far East via the West. When the Ottoman Turks rose, the Italian city-states fell and Western Europe gained predominance in Europe--Spain and later France and England. The Ottoman Turks ruled the region that is now Israel from the late 1400s until the end of WW I. So, its pretty safe to say that there was almost no fighting in the region from the late 1400's until the 20th Century. Throughout the 19th Century the Ottoman Empire was known as "The Sick Man of Europe," and many 19th Century wars between European powers were over gaining pieces of the crumbling Empire.
In the late 19th Century the concept of Zionism was born and many Jews began to emigrate to the region; which was at the time still under Ottoman control. During WWI the British managed to convince some of the Arabs to fight against the Ottomans--think Lawrence of Arabia. They thought they were fighting for self determination, but instead at Versailles the French and the British cut up the Middle East according to the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 and created a whole slew of virtual borders that would eventually become Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc. In the inter-war period Palestine was under British control and Jewish immigration to the region increased and this is when the fighting began, because the Arabs interpreted this as neo-colonialism and they resisted. Moreover, you can probably see where I'm going with this. It is pretty easy to understand why Arabs and Muslims in general see Zionism and Israel as either colonialism or even a new crusade. I have a bit of sympathy for the point of view, because frankly the idea that there is some "historic" claim for the Jewish people to rule the region that they had not ruled since 1000 B.C. or held a majority of the population from 70 A.D. until sometime around the mid-20th century is patently absurd. That being said, I do support Israel's right to exist at this point. I don't think we can go backwards, but I do understand why many Muslims and Palestinians in particular might be a bit frustrated with the lack of logic to the whole thing.