United States became Israel’s greatest ally dur-
ing this time, providing it with large amounts of
foreign aid and weaponry as well as diplomatic
backing in the UN and elsewhere.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to eliminate
Palestinian guerrilla bases and then occupied
southern Lebanon until it withdrew its forces
in 2000. Another form of conflict occurred in
1987, when Palestinian civilians living in the
West Bank and Gaza protested against the Israeli
occupation. This “uprising,” known as the First
Intifada, ended in 1993 with the signing of the
oslo accords by Yitzhak Rabin (d. 1995), the
Israeli prime minister, and Yasir Arafat, chair-
man of the PLO. Both men received the Nobel
Peace Prize for this agreement. A second upris-
ing, known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, erupted in
2000 as a consequence of defects in the Oslo
Accords, expansion of Israeli settlements on the
West Bank, and deteriorating relations between
Palestinians and Israelis. It ended with an uneasy
truce in 2006.
Although religion was not the primary cause
for these conflicts, religious politics and radical-
ism increased with the failure to find a lasting
solution for the basic issue of Palestinian state-
hood. During the First Intifada, the radical Islamic
movement hamas emerged in Gaza to challenge
both the Israelis and the PLO leadership. It sought
to liberate Palestine and establish an Islamic
government, asserting that the land was a perma-
nent Islamic bequest (waqf) that could never be
transferred to non-Muslims. Since 1987, Hamas
has achieved widespread support among the Pal-
estinians and won the 2006 Palestinian legislative
elections. Israel’s 1982 invasion and occupation of
southern Lebanon gave rise to hizbUllah, a Shii
militant organization with close ties to Iran. It
engaged in an intense but short border war with
Israel in the summer of 2006. Israel, for its part,
witnessed the rise of radical Zionist groups and
parties that wanted to expand Israeli settlements
in the West Bank and Gaza and opposed making
any territorial concessions as part of any Israeli-
Palestinian peace agreement. In 1995, a member
of one of these groups assassinated Israeli prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally
because of the latter’s signing of the Oslo Accords.
The U.S.-led “war on terror” and its occupation
of Iraq have further complicated efforts to peace-
fully resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and
increased religious radicalism and terror strikes
in the region. Christian Zionists in the United
States have also become engaged in the politics of
war and peace in the Middle East and have shown
strong support for Israel and right-wing Israeli
Zionist parties.
See also arab-israeli conFlicts; christianity
and islam; colonialism; crUsades; JUdaism and
islam; terrorism.Further reading: Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine,
634–1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992); Walter Laquer and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab
Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Con-
flict. 6th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2001); Ber-
nard Reich, A Brief History of Israel (New York: Facts
On File, 2004); Paul Wheatley, The Places Where Men
Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, 7th through the
10th Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2001), 112–126.Istanbul (Constantinople)
The present-day city of Istanbul is the largest in
tUrkey and once was the capital of both the Byz-
antine and Ottoman Empires. It straddles both
sides of the Bosporus, the narrow strait connect-
ing the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea and from
there to the Mediterranean. It separates Europe
from Asia, thus making Istanbul the only city in
the world to sit astride two continents. Its unique
position has also given the city strategic impor-
tance throughout history.
The city was founded in the seventh cen-
tury b.c.e. as Byzantium and, after falling under
Roman rule, eventually became the capital of the
Roman Empire under Constantine the Great inIstanbul 383 J