NewsTracker Answers for week of May 23, 2011

Q: President Obama said the borders that existed before the 1967 Israeli-Arab war should be the starting point for talks to settle the conflict there. Israeli leaders rejected the position. Where is Israel?

Circle the area on this map


Q: A new Palestinian state would exist on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territory Israel has occupied since 1967. The West Bank was part of which nation before the 1967 war?

A. Lebanon

B. Syria

C. Jordan

D. Egypt


C. In the 1947 UN resolution that created Israel, the West Bank was supposed to be part of an Arab Palestinian state. Arabs opposed the partition, and Jordan captured the West Bank in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.


Q: What issue stands in the way of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians?

A. Israeli settlements

B. Palestinian refugees

C. Control of Jerusalem

D. All of the above


D. About 400,000 Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank. There are about 4.6 million Palestinian refugees who claim a right to return to Israel. Both Israelis and Palestinians want Jerusalem as their capital.


Q: Ancient conquerors forced many Jews to flee what is now Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. Most of the Jews who later returned were fleeing persecution in . . .

A. Asia

B. Europe

C. Africa

D. North America


B. At times, European Jews were expelled from England and Spain, attacked by Crusaders, driven out by pogroms and murdered in the Holocaust. For hundreds of years, Muslim countries were far more welcoming to Jews than Christian countries.


Q: Which nation first supported the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine?

A. Britain

B. France

C. Russia

D. United States


A. Britain's foreign secretary said in 1917 that his nation backed "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Britain controlled Palestine until 1947 when the UN voted to divide the land between Arabs and Jews.