The Middle East has been in constant turmoil since before I was born and has pretty much been since the end of World War II, however the powder keg was set after World War I .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire held control over much of the Middle East. The Empire was in decline before the war and had recently lost much of its European territory in the First Balkan War and its Libyan territories in the Italo-Turkish War. However, at the end of the war the empire was divided between the Entente powers and the new Turkish state. The problem is that the British promised that the Arabs would gain independence if they decided to fight for the British, which they did in various battles (Yanbu, Mecca, Medina) and ended up getting only a fraction of the lands that had been promises. A part of the land of this Palestine was promised not only to the Arabs, but also to the Jews. The British ended up establishing the British Mandate of Palestine, and under it the Jewish population grew by 320,000. The Jews then purchased the land from the Arabs and evicted the people who lived and worked there, only fanning the flames of ethnic tension as both groups believed the lands were theirs and leading to a revolt against the British by the Arabs in 1936, which was repressed by British forces and Jewish militias and led to a restriction of Jewish immigrants to the mandate. Although this was the only conflict between Arabs and Jews before the end of World War II, it was a major event that foreshadowed how the 20th century would unfold. During World War II relations between Arabs and Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine had normalized. However, after the war hundreds of thousands of Jews were left homeless as their property was stripped by the Nazis. Left with nothing, they sought asylum in Britain, and those who were accepted were settled in the British Mandate of Palestine. This reopened wounds between Arabs and Jews that had only recently healed. Fearing conflict, the British gave the mandate to the newly formed United Nations and created several Arab states together with France. In 1947 the UN made a proposal for 2 separate states but the Palestinian Arabs did not take it very kindly and with the support of the new Arab states; Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have launched an attempted invasion of Israel. The fighting lasted just under 10 months and against all odds Israel managed to defeat the Arab forces. To prevent Israel from annexing all Palestinian lands, Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, however Israel annexed much of the territory. In the same way that Canada gained its independence at Vimy Ridge, Israel won its independence in the First Arab-Israeli War, but this was not the last conflict between Israel and the Arab states. For 9 years after the first Arab-Israeli war the Middle East was relatively peaceful, the most that happened were minor skirmishes on the Jordanian-Israeli border and the seizure of power in Egypt by General Gamal Abdel Nasser with his military junta . However a powder keg was set with Gamal Abdel Nasser who was elected president and nationalized the Suez Canal which was controlled by a joint Franco-British company, at this point, the British and French empires were eclipsed by the 2 emerging superpowers of the United States and L 'Soviet Union. So, in one last attempt to stay.