For more than a half-century, since the United Nations partitioned the British Mandated state of Palestine to create a National Home for the Jewish People, in part of what had until World War I been a part of the Ottoman Empire, the land of Palestine has been dominated by the Zionist founders of what became Israel.
Nearly all the Arab states in 1947-48 fought the partition as an act of aggression, but were brilliantly and conclusively defeated by the improvised military defenders of the new Zionist state. By that victory, Israel seemingly established its permanent place not only in what formerly had been Palestine but within the whole of the Middle East, supported by the United States.
This position of permanence seemed guaranteed by America's support and that of the vast majority of the Western European nations. The Israelis were soon to confirm it themselves with their military triumphs over renewed Arab efforts to expel the Israeli settlers by wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973-74.