Decolonization Notes

Cambodia

• The Khmer Rouge did bad things for a long time.

• In 1977, soldiers from Vietnam came to Cambodia to help people fight against Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

• The Vietnamese took over the government and made things calmer, but there was still fighting and people had to leave their homes.

• In 1989, the Vietnamese soldiers left.

• In 1991, they made an agreement that allowed everyone to vote in elections, and the United Nations watched to make sure it was fair.

• Prince Sihanouk became the king, but the government was more like a democracy where people vote. Things got better with the economy.

Israelis and Palestinians

• After World War I, the Ottoman Empire broke up, and new countries were made in the Middle East and the Balkans, but they weren't very stable.

• One big problem was the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians.

Zionism

• The Zionist movement became popular in the 1890s because of something called the Dreyfus Affair.

• Theodore Herzl thought that the Dreyfus Affair showed that Jewish people couldn't fit into European society.

• In 1897, Herzl had a meeting called the First Zionist Congress where he said that Jewish people should have their own country.

Birth of Israel

• Zionists wanted to create a country in Palestine, where their ancestors used to live.

• At that time, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, and most of the people living there were Arab Muslims.

• Zionists thought that Jewish people would be safe from being treated badly if they had their own country.

• In 1917, the British government made the Balfour Declaration, saying they wanted to help create a "national home" for Jewish people in Palestine.

Balfour Declaration

• Arthur James Balfour, who was in charge of foreign affairs for Britain, promised to help create a Jewish national home in Palestine.

• He said they would make sure that the people who already lived in Palestine who weren't Jewish would still have their rights.

• He also said they would make sure that Jewish people in other countries would still have their rights.

• T.E. Lawrence, also known as "Lawrence of Arabia," had also promised some Arab people that they could have their own country.

• The British wanted Arab people to fight against the Ottoman Empire during World War I so they could win the war.

• The Arab people didn't trust the British, even though the Balfour Declaration said they would protect their rights.

• After World War I, Britain took control of the Middle East.

• Zionists started moving to Palestine from Europe and other places in the Middle East.

• The Arab people protested because they were losing their land and their way of life because of the people moving in.

• The Holocaust made people around the world feel sorry for the Jewish people who had survived, so more people started moving to Palestine.

• Britain gave the problem to the UN General Assembly.

• In 1948, the UN decided to split Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas, and the Jewish area became Israel.

Repeated Wars

• Right away, there was a war between Israel and the Palestinians, who were helped by Arab countries.

• Soldiers from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel.

• After some fighting, the Israeli army won against the Arab soldiers, and they stopped fighting for a while.

• About 400,000 Palestinians had to leave their homes and became refugees.

• In 1956, Israel, helped by France and Great Britain, attacked Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to take back the Suez Canal, which Egypt had taken over.

• Other countries protested, so the soldiers from Israel and their friends had to leave Egypt.

• In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel fought against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and won the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

• In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel fought off a surprise attack from Egypt and Syria.

Israeli-Egyptian Peace

• After 30 years of fighting, the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, helped the leaders of Israel and Egypt make a peace agreement called the Camp David Accords.

• The Camp David Accords was a peace agreement between Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

• The Palestinians and some Arab countries didn't like the peace treaty and didn't want it.

• The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat wanted the land that had been taken from them back and wanted Palestine to be its own country.

Ongoing Violence

• In the 2000s, it became even harder to make peace because the Palestinians split into two groups: Fatah (in the West Bank) and Hamas (in Gaza).

• Israel started checking people crossing the borders of the West Bank and Gaza more carefully for security reasons, which made the Palestinians angry and hurt their economy.

• There was still fighting, with Palestinians shooting bombs at Israeli towns and Israel attacking people they thought were dangerous.

• From 2000 to 2014, about 8,1668,166 people died in the fighting, including 7,0657,065 Palestinians and 1,1011,101 Israelis.

Egypt

• Egypt used to be controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

• Egypt became its own kingdom in 1922, but the British still had some power.

• In 1936, Egypt and Britain made an agreement that gave Egypt more freedom, but British soldiers could stay to protect the Suez Canal.

Nasser

• After World War II in 1945, Egypt helped start the Arab League, which grew to have 22 countries.

• In 1952, General Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muhammad Naguib kicked out the king and made Egypt a republic.

• Naguib became the first president, and Nasser became the second.

• Nasser wanted all Arab countries to be united.

• Nasser's ideas for Egypt were a mix of Islam and socialism.

  • He took land from rich people and gave it to poor people to farm together.

  • He took over important businesses, including banks that were owned by people from other countries.

• Nasser took control of the Suez Canal, which caused problems with other countries.

The Suez Crisis

• The Suez Canal was built by Egyptian workers and with money from France between 1859 and 1869. France was supposed to control it for 99 years.

• Nasser took control of the Suez Canal to stop other countries from taking advantage of Egypt.

• Britain also cared about the canal and controlled it with the French.

• In 1956, Nasser took the canal, and Israel attacked Egypt because Britain and France asked them to.

• Britain and France took over the area around the canal, saying they were making sure everyone followed the rules of a cease-fire.

• The United States and the Soviet Union didn't like what Britain and France were doing and used the United Nations to help everyone make an agreement.

• Soldiers from other countries left, and the canal became a waterway that everyone could use, but Egypt controlled