Path to peace runs through a history of tumult

An aerial view of Jewish settlements and fields in the northern Negev.

(CNN) -- As they struggle to find a way for their people to coexist, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are not only dealing with the bitterness of recent violence but with a lengthy history of conflict. (More on Yasser Arafat.) (More on Ariel Sharon.)

The protracted dispute goes back long before the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the U.N. partition of Palestine set the stage for Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion to declare Israel a state on May 14, 1948. (Historical maps.)

The region -- bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the north by Lebanon and on the south by the Sinai Peninsula -- has been the scene of bitter struggles for millennia. (Maps of the occupied areas.)

Both sides blame the other for the most recent intensification of violence, which flared in September 2000 after Sharon made a controversial visit to a holy site revered by Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem. (More on Sharon's visit.)

The extremely delicate issue of the fate of Jerusalem is one of the core issues confounding the talks in the long-running peace process. (More on the issue of Jerusalem.)

Negotiations have also covered the status of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the borders of a proposed Palestinian state, Jewish settlements and security measures needed to ensure the safety of both peoples. (More on the border dispute.) (More on the issue of refugees.)