Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Arab-Israeli conflict began in earnest. As the years passed and the conflict intensified, it gradually moved from a large-scale Arab-Israeli issue to the more personal Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The issue that divides both parties is above all a territorial issue based on secular beliefs. Zionists believe that God made a pact with the Jewish people to return them to the Land of Canaan or the biblical Promised Land (Christian Zionists share sympathies with the Jews, based on common backgrounds). Yet in the Quran, as stated by the prophet Muhammad, the lands of Jerusalem are said to be the holiest of all the Arab lands. Three movements would develop in response to these deep divisions. The Zionist movement, the Arabist movement and the Palestinian movement. The Zionist movement, as outlined by Theodore Hertzl in his pamphlet The Jewish State, is concerned with the creation and subsequent preservation of the Jewish State. The Arabist movement seeks to shed light on a shared cultural heritage among Arab nations and to consolidate each nation into a collective whole. Palestinian nationalism, which emerged from Arabism, is concerned with regaining the sovereignty of their historic homeland which they believe was taken from them by Western powers and given to the Jews. All three of these nations owe their creation and continued existence to each other. And while each part has its profound differences, it shares common parameters and goals that will be outlined in this article. The word Zion means harmonized community or utopia, and is a reference to the biblical land of Israel as outlined in the Jewish Torah books. Exodus and Genesis. The age-old belief held by... middle of paper......ents remains perpetually entwined in a play of cause and effect. Zionism sought the solution to years of persecution of the Jews and finally found that solution in their biblical homeland, Israel, expelled from this territory the Palestinians, who had been brought together by Arabism, assumed the role of those in the diaspora and sought a solution return to the homeland they believe is there. Although they would never admit it, each of these movements has more in common than they think. They rotate around each other like the earth around its axis, perpetually pedaling into each other, holding the same grievances, the same causes, and the same animosities they have had for thousands of years. The Arab-Israeli conflict when put on paper is a series of parallel lines with occasional intersections, but never a unified theme and always an incomplete picture.