The Globe and Mail

T.E. Lawrence, the adventurer immortalized as "Lawrence of Arabia" for leading an army of desert warriors, is seen in this undated file photo. Much of the promise for Arab independence came through France and Britain, a message delivered by Mr. Lawrence.

1914 – First World War begins

Britain and France went to war with Germany and its ally, Turkey. The Turkish (Ottoman) Empire included much of the Middle East, and the Allies saw value in encouraging rebellion among Turkey’s Arab subjects. The promise – at least as the courted Arab leaders saw it – was that Britain and France would support Arab independence after the war. Much of the promise of independence was delivered by British adventurer T.E. Lawrence, the famous “Lawrence of Arabia.” Also, acting on behalf of the British government, Sir Henry McMahon promised Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, Arab control over land previously held by the Turks.

But under the terms of the secret France-Britain-Russia document known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement of April-May, 1916, Arab independence was to be realized on only a tiny part of Middle East land. The real import of the document was to divide the region between the French and the British.

Israeli postage stamp commemorating Arthur Balfour and the Balfour Declaration of 1917.— www.jupiterimages.com/Hemera Technologies

Nov. 2, 1917 – Britain supports creation of Jewish national homeland

On this date, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a short note to Lord Rothschild, a leader of England’s Jewish community. Writing that 68-word note, which came to be known as the “Balfour Declaration,” was tantamount to creating the embryo from which the state of Israel would grow – though its gestation period was to be more than 30 years. Balfour said Britain supported the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. It was a signal event for the Jews of Europe. Arabs, however, believed London had made different promises about the future of Palestine.

A general view of the one hundredth meeting of the League of Nations Council on January 27, 1938. The League authorized the British Mandate in 1922, giving Britain control over portions of the Middle East including Palestine.—World Wide Photo

1922 – Britain assumes control of large portions of the Middle East

The British Mandate, authorized by the League of Nations, gave Britain control over portions of the Middle East, including Palestine. Arabs made up 92 per cent of the population and owned 98 per cent of the land, hardly a situation that was going to help Zionism. There began a period of intense Jewish immigration.

The Hebrew language was revived between 1922 and 1939 as new urban areas were settled. Here, a modern day teacher helps an Ultra Orthodox student learn Hebrew letters as part of a religious studies class in Jerusalem.-Reuters— Reuters

1922 to 1939 – Continued Zionist immigration increases Arab-Jewish tensions

Jews began to build the footings of the modern Israel, reviving the Hebrew language, cultivating land and settling new urban areas. Arabs today scoff at the boast of Israelis that Jews came to a barren and inhospitable land and “made the desert bloom.” They point to ancient vineyards and olive groves that were thriving for centuries before the Jewish immigration of the 20th century.

In the years before the Second World War, there had been a series of attempts to resolve the issues of who would live on the contested land of Palestine. By the late 1930s, Britain had toyed with and rejected the idea of dividing the area into two states. It then proposed surrendering the mandate in a way that would leave Palestinians in a majority and limit future Jewish immigration, but also protect the rights of the Jewish minority there. None of its proposals left Britain any closer to resolving its dilemma.

A picture taken July 22, 1946 shows the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the British Headquarters, damaged after a bombing attack against the British government by members of Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group headed by Menachem Begin. Many attacks by Zionist groups occured as a response to the British policy of restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine.-AFP— AFP

1945 – Postwar Jewish immigration to Palestine increases

The Jews who survived the Holocaust took their fight for a homeland to a new level. Although official postwar British policy was to continue limiting Jewish immigration, about 200,000 Jews went to Palestine. There were acts of Jewish terrorism against the British, as well as Jewish-Palestinian fighting. In 1946, Jewish militants blew up part of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which was being used as a headquarters for the British military. That event pushed Britain toward abandoning the question of what to do with Palestine.

This 29 November 1947 photo taken in Tel Aviv shows residents celebrating the UN deicision to create a Jewish state by dividing Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations' General Assembly voted resolution 181 on the division of Palestine in two states, one Jewish and one Arab. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations' General Assembly voted resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine in two states, one Jewish and one Arab. Jerusalem was to remain under international control.— AFP

1947 – Britain passes Palestine question to the United Nations

The UN proposed dividing Palestine into two states: Jews would control about 53 per cent of the land area, Palestinians about 46 per cent. The city of Jerusalem would be placed under international supervision, a proposal aimed at giving Jews, Muslims and Christians equal access. Jews accepted the plan: Arabs rejected it. By the end of the year, there was intense Jewish-Palestinian fighting.

A month and half after the state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv 14 May 1948, the members of Israeli Navy holding Israeli flags, celebrate 30 June 1948 in Haifa harbor the departure of the last British troops. Following WW-I, Great Britain received in 1922 Palestine as a mandate from the League of Nations.— AFP

1948 – State of Israel declared

When the British pulled out of Palestine on May 14, 1948, Zionists declared the state of Israel. It was immediately recognized by the United States and Russia and just as quickly began to fight its first war. The Palestinians now had help. The armies of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded. When the war ended, the new Israeli forces controlled more land than they would have been given under the UN partition plan, including one-half of Jerusalem.

Many Palestinians, meanwhile, were in flight. Israel says about 600,000 left, many of them ordered to do so by Arab commanders who didn’t want them to get in the way of fighting. Arabs say more than 800,000 fled, worried they would be terrorized, perhaps slaughtered, under Jewish rule. They also contend Jewish commanders ordered many away as part of their effort to rid the land of potential sympathizers for the Arab armies. With their flight, those Palestinians became one of the most problematic facts of modern history.

Some 160,000 Palestinian Arabs remained, mostly in the Galilee area, and eventually became Israeli citizens.

The creation of the Jewish state meant a massive population transfer. When the fighting stopped, Jordan annexed the West Bank and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. And all the Arab states, though they stopped fighting, maintained their official state of war against the new neighbour, Israel.

Armed Israeli soldiers lead away Egyptian prisoners of war captured in the Sinai Desert during the 1956 Sinai Campaign in November 1956. (AP)

1956 – Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal: Israel, Britain and France invade

European powers agreed to participate because they feared Nasser’s control of the Suez would destabilize the region and jeopardize their access to Middle East oil. Israel briefly occupied Gaza during the war, which was short but costly for everyone. The attack on Egypt made Israel even more of an outcast in the Middle East and contributed to the Arab animosity toward Israel.

Ahmed Jibril, head of the opposition Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, holds up a copy of the Palestinian national charter in December 1998. The charter calls for the destruction of Israel. (Reuters)

1964 – Palestine Liberation Organization formed with charter

The organization of the PLO marked the first formalizing of Palestinian national desires. Dozens of groups had previously emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, although few survived for long. The prime inspiration was the trauma of exile, suffering of families, the need to break free from the shackles of Arab host countries and the desire to hit back at Israel.

The Palestinian National Charter, written four years after the birth of the PLO, called for the destruction of Israel by military means. Terror tactics adopted by the PLO generated sympathy for Israel as a victim state in the Middle East. The political and military actions of the PLO in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon brought their own disruptiveness to the Middle East.

A file picture dated 01 June 1967 shows Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon (L) in his military fatigues in the Negev desert prior the six-day Arab Israeli war.— GPO/AFP/Getty Images

June 1967 – Six-day Arab-Israeli war

Israel’s third battle against its Arab neighbours changed the modern Middle East almost as much as the creation of the state of Israel 19 years earlier.

Israel scored huge successes and the destruction of Egypt’s air power before it could scramble off the ground. Jordan and Syria also suffered big losses in air power. The war humiliated Arab leaders, including Egypt’s Nasser, and led to some change in tactics for attacking Israel, specifically an increase in cross-border raids.

But there would be a huge price to pay for the success. Israel was now in control of vast tracts of land on which Palestinians lived. It also put on the table the issues that would later become the focus for peace talks: the Israeli-occupied lands of the Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. And it instigated the first attempt at what was to become a long history of Western-sponsored peace processes. Israel’s often harsh occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would become a source of debate among Israelis themselves.

Map compares boundaries of Palestine in 1947, left, before expiration of the British Mandate, with those of the state of Israel in 1949, centre, after the first Arab - Israeli War, and in 1967, right, after the 1967 Six Days War. Areas taken in that war by the Israelis are shaded. They include: Golan Heights, from Syria; Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt; and West Bank territories from Jordan.— AP

November, 1967 – UN Security Council passes Resolution 242

Within months of the end of the Six-Day War, the international community began the task of trying to make a real peace in the Middle East. Discussed and disputed, this UN Resolution 242 led to heated debates. Arabs and Israelis could never agree on what it meant. “Two forty two” became the mantra for a generation of Palestinians. Their interpretation of the resolution was that the UN was telling Israel to get off all the lands it won in the 1967 war.

Israel said there was no call in the resolution for the withdrawal from “all” occupied territories and interpreted the document to mean a negotiated withdrawal from some of the occupied territories. It said the resolution implied that the Arab states must recognize Israel and agree to non-belligerency.

Spiritual leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas Sheik Ahmed Yassin, right, is escorted by an armed guard as he arrives at a rally in Gaza City Monday, June 3, 2002. Hamas said Monday it has rejected Yasser Arafat's offer to join a new Palestinian Cabinet that is expected to be announced in coming days.— Charles Dharapak/AP

1968-1970s – Islamists grow in number

In the wake of the 1967 defeat and occupation, the Muslim Brotherhood grows in size in Gaza and the West Bank, where it offers solace, health care, schools and religion. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a nearly blind quadriplegic preacher, develops a following urging greater religiosity and protests against the leftists then common. As opponents of the PLO, this movement, known as al-Mujamma, is encouraged and supported by Israel. From this group would emerge the founders of Hamas.

Yasser Arafat, chairman of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, is seen at a front line area in Jordan in this Sept. 25, 1969 file photo.-AP— AP

1969 – Yasser Arafat becomes chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization

The small, eccentric man in the checkered head scarf became one of the most recognizable faces of modern history. Until his death in 2004, he kept the Palestinian cause alive and he was able to see that in the early 1990s it was time to compromise to get a Palestinian autonomy deal and gamble that autonomy could be turned to statehood.

A gunman wears a hood over his face as he stands on the balcony of the building where a group of Palestinian gunmen held Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Village Sept. 5, 1972. The 20-hour standoff ended in a botched rescue effort at the airport. In all, 11 Israeli athletes, five of the Palestinians and a German policeman died. (Kurt Strumpf/AP)— Kurt Strumpf/AP

1970 – King Hussein drives PLO out of Jordan

The king sees Arafat and his fighters as a threat to his power. Jordan’s action disperses PLO fighters, with many of them settling in Lebanon, where they would play a central role in the beginnings of that country’s coming civil war. It also gave rise to the Palestinian faction “Black September.” Its members are held responsible for a number of terrorist acts, among them the assassination of the Jordanian prime minister in Cairo in November, 1971, and the abduction and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

Israeli soldiers take cover in their foxholes during fighting against the Egyptians October 14, 1973 in the Sinai Desert during the Yom Kippur War. (Getty Images)— Getty Images

Oct. 6, 1973 – Yom Kippur war begins

The war, launched by Egypt and Syria to try to win back territories lost to Israel in 1967, had only limited success. The real boost to the Arabs, though, was psychological. They surprised the Israelis with their attacks, caught them off guard and inflicted heavier losses than the Israeli public thought could be exacted by Arab enemies.

This file photo dated Oct. 30, 1974 shows Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (R front), flashing the peace symbol during an Arab Summit meeting, which he attended in his capacity as chairman of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), held in Rabat after Arab leaders recognized PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." (AFP)— AFP

October, 1974 – PLO recognition

Arab summit declares the PLO the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, left, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, center, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin clasp hands on the north lawn of the White House after signing the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel on March 26, 1979. (AP)— AP

1978-79 – Israel and Egypt negotiate and sign Camp David Accords

U.S. president Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to Camp David in September, 1978, when peace talks in the region were near total collapse. Sadat had grown frustrated as Israel continued its policy of settling Jews in the occupied territories. But after 12 days of meetings, they emerged with two documents. One set out the framework for Egypt-Israel peace, including Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Sinai. The other addressed the Palestinian issue and set a timetable for self-government and then autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. It was signed March 26, 1979, and was a landmark peace treaty – for the first time, an Arab country had made peace with Israel.

A gunman wearing an Egyptian army uniform fires an automatic rifle into the reviewing stand during an attack that took the life of President Anwar Sadat at a Cairo suburb on Oct. 6, 1981. Sadat was watching a military parade commemorating the Arab-Israeli war of Oct. 1973. (AP)— AP

October 1981 – Sadat is assassinated

Sadat was killed on Oct. 6, 1981, when an Egyptian assassination team shot him to death as he reviewed a military parade. The attackers were identified as Muslim fundamentalists. Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, cracked down on Islamic extremists in response.

December 21, 1987 - An Israeli soldier armed with a tear gas rifle, gas mask and a helmet makes a retreat today form jeering Palestinian demonstrators who held a peaceful march from the Nuseirat refugee camp to the El Bureij refugee camp. About 10,000 Palestinians took part in the march.— Jim Hollander/Reuters

December, 1987 – Palestinian intifada begins

Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, is founded during the first months of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising. It shares the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement established in Egypt in the 1920s.

Hamas’s covenant, or charter, published in August, 1988, calls for the “obliteration” of Israel and states that Palestinians must use jihad in their national struggle. The group opposes the PLO strategy, formulated in November, 1988, of trying to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

During the first years of the intifada, Hamas’s tactics evolved from non-violent protests to firebombs, planted bombs, and small-arms attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Boris Yeltsin makes a speech from atop a tank in front of the Russian Parliment in this August 19, 1991 file photo. Mr. Yeltsin engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union, which caused many Jews to migrate to Israel. (AP)

1989-1991 – Collapse of the Soviet Union triggers mass migration of Jews to Israel

In this period, more than 500,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union settled in Israel, increasing the population by 10 per cent. Since the 1967 war, Israel had let small numbers of its people live on occupied land. The so-called “settlements” where they established homes has become a big part of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

An estimated 417 Palestinians, expelled by Israel for their links to the radical fundamentalists HAMAS wait in near the border between Israel and the Lebanon 18 December 1992. Israeli troops fired in the air to prevent the deportees from returning to Israel as the Beirut government refuses to let them enter Lebanese territory.— Nabil Ismail/AFP/Getty Images

December, 1992 – Hamas expulsion

Responding to Hamas’s increased attacks on Israeli forces, Israel prime minister Yitzhak Rabin rounds up more than 360 Hamas leaders and about 50 Islamic Jihad members and expels them from Israel’s northern border. Lebanon refuses to allow their entry and the 413 men spend a year in tents in a no-man’s land before Mr. Rabin bows to international pressure and allows the men back. The group contained the nucleus of Hamas’s future militant leadership.

U.S. President Clinton meets with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (L) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat after the signing of the Israeli-PLO peace accord, at the White House September 13, 1993. (Reuters)— Reuters

September, 1993 – Israel, Palestinians sign Oslo self-rule accords

An outgrowth of the Madrid conference of 1991, the talks were conducted secretly in Oslo, Norway. The accords were subsequently signed at a public ceremony in Washington on Sept. 13, 1993, in the presence of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and U.S. president Bill Clinton.

Rabin, his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 as architects of the Oslo accords that laid out the parameters of a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

This file photo dated 25 February 1994 shows US-born Doctor Baruch Goldstein who 25 February 1994 sprayed automatic gunfire on worshippers praying in a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, killing 29 Muslims before being lynched.— AFP

February, 1994 – Violence increases

On Feb. 25, Baruch Goldstein, a physician and reserve officer from the Kiryat Arba settlement outside Hebron, entered the mosque at Abraham’s Tomb and murdered 29 Palestinians at prayer. The event, and its aftermath, changed the Hamas-Israel conflict dramatically.

In April, 1994, 40 days after the Hebron massacre, Hamas carried out its first suicide bombing inside Israel, at a bus stop in the town of Afula. A second suicide bombing, on a bus in Hadera, took place a week later. The era of suicide bombings had been unleashed.

President Hosni Mubarak (R) shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (L) following their press conference 21 July, 1992 at the end of Rabin's six-hour visit to Cairo.— Menahem/AFP/Getty Images

Nov. 4, 1995 – Rabin is assassinated

While leaving a peace rally, the Israeli prime minister is killed by a religious zealot law student who had strenuously opposed Yitzhak Rabin's peace initiative, particularly the signing of the Oslo Accords, because he felt that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would deny Jews their “biblical heritage which they had reclaimed by establishing settlements.”

President Clinton meets with Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat early July 25, 2000 at Camp David near Thurmont, Maryland. The Camp David Middle East peace summit collapsed on Tuesday after 15 days of intense negotiations but President Bill Clinton insisted "significant progress" had been made toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Reuters)

2000 - Camp David II summit

At the Camp David talks with U.S. president Clinton, PLO leader Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, Israel makes it clear that it is willing to accept an independent Palestinian state on most of the West Bank and Gaza, with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the proposal without putting forward counterproposals and walked away.

A seated Palestinian man looks at Israeli police officers taking positions at the Temple Mount compound, known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), in Jerusalem's Old City after the Muslim noon prayers Friday, Sept. 29, 2000. Israel riot police broke into a sacred walled compound in Jerusalem to disperse hundreds of Palestinian stone throwers. Three Palestinians were killed and at least 96 injured in the bloodiest clash in four years at the bitterly contested shrine.— AP

September, 2000 – Second intifada

A visit by Likud leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem sparks the second intifada, and the dwindling peace talks grind to a halt. Fatah’s al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade joins Hamas in launching waves of suicide bombings against Israelis. Hamas draws support from a regional alliance comprising Iran, Syria and the Shia Islamist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which all broadly oppose U.S. policy in the Middle East.

A Palestinian man celebrates in the rubble of demolished houses in the former Jewish settlement of Netzarim, early Monday, Sept. 12, 2005. Thousands of triumphant Palestinians poured into abandoned Jewish settlements early Monday, setting empty synagogues on fire and shooting in the air, as the last Israeli soldier left the Gaza Strip, completing Israel's pullout after 38 years of occupation.— Kevin Frayer/AP

September, 2005 – Israel withdraws from Gaza

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon oversees a troop pullout from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation but Israel still controls its border crossings. Jewish settlers from many communities in Gaza are evacuated. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says the withdrawal shows that Israel is willing to make significant concessions for peace.

Hamas supporters celebrate the movement's victory in the Legislative elections in the West Bank city of Ramallah 26 January 2006. The radical Islamic movement triggered a political earthquake today with a sweeping victory in the Palestinian election over the ruling Fatah party, a result that has raised widespread alarm about the prospects for Middle East peace.— Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images

2006 – Hamas wins Palestinian legislative elections

Hamas defeats the Fatah movement, which dominates the PLO. The Palestinian Authority's backers – the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations (known as the quartet) – demand that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel. It refuses.

Hamas militant are seen on the roof top of the Palestinian Intelligence Security compound in Gaza City, 14 June 2007. The main Fatah headquarters in the Gaza Strip fell to fighters of Islamist Hamas as the Palestinian president mulled firing the teetering coalition cabinet uniting the rivals. Hamas gunmen broke through into the compound in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood and hoisted the green flag of their movement on the roof after an hours-long battle that left at least two dead, witnesses said.— Mahmud Hamas/AFP/Getty Images

June, 2007 – Hamas takes complete control of the Gaza Strip

Hamas conducts a brief civil war with security forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas accuses Abbas of conspiring against it. Abbas describes what happened as a coup, leaving him with only the West Bank to govern. Hamas then deepens its control of the Gaza Strip, building its own bureaucracy and security forces.

Israel closes all Gaza crossings and maintains a naval blockage, allowing only relief supplies to enter Gaza.

A pall of smoke rises after an explosion from an Israeli missile strike on the Hamas controlled Islamic University in Gaza City, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008. Israel's overwhelming air campaign against the Gaza Strip inched closer to the territory's Hamas rulers as the assault entered its third day Monday, as missiles struck a house next to the Hamas premier's home and destroyed symbols of the Islamic movement's power.— Hatem Moussa/AP

December, 2008-January, 2009 – Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

In response to hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza on southern Israeli communities, Israel wages a 22-day conflict against the Hamas authorities in Gaza. Some 1,300 Gazans (military and civilian) are killed, thousands are wounded and many official buildings as well as some small industries and some residential areas are levelled. Thirteen Israelis are killed in the conflict.

A man holding an Egyptian flag runs through the streets of Cairo. Anti-government protestors were calling for Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down. (Ron Haviv/VII)

Feb. 11, 2011 - Mubarak’s regime falls in Egypt

After 18 days of revolt in Tahrir Square, citizens of the largest country in the Arab world succeed in pressing for democratic change. The country’s military leaders order Hosni Mubarak to step down as president and schedule elections. The process inspires others in the region for the first time since Nasser. However, the Arab spring turns into bloody stalemate in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain as others try to depose their autocratic rulers.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal (R) shakes hands and speaks with President Mahmoud Abbas (L) during their meeting in Cairo May 4, 2011. Abbas said on Wednesday Palestinians were turning a "black page" on division at a ceremony in Egypt to heal a four-year rift between his Fatah movement and Islamist group Hamas.— Handout/Reuters

May 3, 2011 – Palestinian factions sign unity accord

A surprise unity deal is struck between the mainstream Fatah faction of Palestinian president Abbas and its rival, the Islamist Hamas movement. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal makes it clear he accepts the goal of a state of Palestine based on 1967 borders, but refuses to recognize Israel. Hamas’s charter calls for reclaiming all the land of the former British mandate, including Israel.

In the Cairo agreement, Hamas and Fatah agree to the creation of a new, technocratic government that will hold elections within a year. The deal draws a cool response from Washington and denunciations from Israel, which says it cannot talk with Hamas while that group remains officially committed to the country’s destruction.