If you had to list some of the most divisive and controversial issues, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict would certainly be among them. This divisive issue has been an ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine since 1948. It all began after a UN proposal recommended to split the region, which was initially considered as Mandatory Palestinian territory, once controlled by Great Britain. Violence among Palestinians and Israelis almost immediately broke out. In 1948, the Arab-Israeli War broke out with more than 20,000 people dead.

Israel had won the war which resulted in the division of Palestine into three key sections: the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. In October of 1973 Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel, which resulted in Egypt and Israel coming to a peace treaty, called the Camp David Accords.

Almost immediately after this period, Palestinians were angered at Israeli control and thus started an uprising consisting of Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, this uprising was considered the first intifada. In the first intifada 1,962 Palestinians were killed and 277 Israelis. In 1993 the Oslo Accords temporarily mediated the conflict and set up the framework for Palestinian self-governance. In 2000 the second intifada began which was much more violent than the first, with the death toll estimated to be about 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis, which included military and civilian deaths. The violence then slowly came to a halt, until 2015 as a new wave of violence was renewed as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced that Palestinians would no longer be bound by the Oslo Accords, thus making the situation much more tense.

Currently, the Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist militant organization that has had multiple violent clashes with Israelis and refuses to recognize Israel as a legitimate nation. As for the West Bank, it is currently administered by Israel although 42% of it is under varying degrees of independent rule by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex parts of the West Bank in July once a joint Israeli-US team completes mapping the exact territory. Unfortunately, multiple experts explain the possibility of a third intifada as Palestinians are increasingly frustrated with the Israeli government's use of force against Palestinians. Furthermore, as of January 2015, UNRWA registered 5,149,742 Palestinians as refugees.

Which brings us to the current situation where the White House announced a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday. The importance of the deal stems from the fact that it is the first peace deal between Israel and an Arab country in a quarter century. The peace deal will be signed in the coming weeks and while there’s still so much left unknown about the deal, we do know that it would temporarily suspend Israel’s annexation of Palestine and keep US troops in Israel and UAE. The response to the deal by Iranians was to immediately condemn the peace deal as Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said in a heated speech Saturday that the UAE made a “huge mistake” and that it was a “betrayal of the will of the Palestinian people and the will of Muslims.” The Iranian President is referencing an agreement which explained that once there’s an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory only then can Israel and the UAE normalize relations.