No. The Jews and Palestinians have not always been arch rivals. They have had religious differences for probably thousands of years but their recent conflict began when the Jews, fleeing discrimination and murder in Nazi Germany, wanted to establish a national homeland. The area they chose for their homeland was at the time, an Arab- and Muslim-majority territory once under the Ottoman and later the British Empire.
The Arabs resisted, believing the land was theirs. An early United Nations plan to give each group part of the land failed, and Israel and the surrounding Arab nations fought several wars over the land, one in 1948 and the other in 1967.
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