The Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been an ongoing conflict from the late 11th century to present day. The conflict started with the Crusades. The Crusades were a series of military conflicts that much of Christian Europe waged on the Muslims to take back the Holy Lands, Jerusalem, which was the birhplace of Jesus Christ. The origins of the Crusades lie in the development inWestern Europe during the Middle Ages. In
1063, Pope Alexander II had given his blessing to the Iberian Christians in their wars against the Muslims. Pope Alexander II offered indulgence to those who were killed in battle. A soldier in the Crusades would resite a solemn vow, receive a cross from the hands of the pope or of his legates, and was then considered a "soldier of the Church".
The cause of the First Crusade, which took place from 1095 to 1099, was Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. When the First Crusade was preached in 1095, the
Christian princes of Northern Iberia had beenfighting their way out of the mountains of
Galicia and Asturias, the Basque Country, and Navarre, for about a hundred years.
Crusader armies managed to defeat two substantial Turkish forces at Dorylaen and at
Antioch. The Crusaders were finally able to journey to Jerusalem, but with only a fraction of their original forces. The fall of Moorish Toledo, a Muslim kingdom, to the
Kingdom of Leon, a Christian kingdom, in 1085 was a major victory. An effect of the
First Crusade were mass executions of the Jews that accompanied the movement of the Crusader mobs through Europe. Another effect occured in 1099 during the Seige of Jerusalem where the Crusader army took Jerusalem by assult and massacred the population. Also, as a result of the First Crusade, several small Crusader states were created, and when put together, they formed the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

After the First Crusade, there was a second less successful wave of Crusaders.
This is known as the Crusade of 1101. The Second Crusade occured from 1147-1149.
After a time of relative peace between the Christians and the Muslims that existed in the Holy Lands, Muslims conquered the town of Edessa. A new crusade was called by
Bernard of Clairvaux. French and South German armies, under the Kings Louis VII and
Conrad III, marched to Jerusalem in 1147 but failed to win any major victories. It launched a failed pre-emptive seige of Damascus, an independent city that would fall into the hands of Nur ad-Din, the main enemy of the Crusaders. On the opposite side of the Mediterranean Sea, the Second Crusade gained great success as a group of
Northern European Crusaders stopped in Portugal allied with Portuguese ans won
Lisbon from the Muslims in 1147. In 1150, both kings of France and Germany had returned to their countries without any results about the Holy Land. St. Bernard of
Clairvaux who had encouraged the Second Crusade in his preachings, was upset with the amount of violence that had been musdirected upon the Jewish poulation of the
Rhineland.

After the unsuccessful Second Crusade, a Third Crusade(also known as 'King's
Crusade') emerged between the time of 1187 to 1192. In 1187, Saladin, the Sultan of
Egypt, won Jerusalem after the Battle of Hattin. Pope Gregory VIII called for a crusade, which was led by some of Europe's most important people: Philip II of France,
Richard I of England (also known as Richard the Lionheart) and, Frederick I, Holy
Roman Emperor, Frederick I drowned on the way to the Holy Land in Cilicia in 1190, leaving behind an unstable alliance between the English and the French. Before
Richard I reached the Holy Land, he captured the island of Cyprus from Byzantines in
1191. Cyprus served as a base for Crusaders for centuries to come. Philip left the Holy
Land in 1191, after the Crusaders had won Acre from the Muslims. Then, the
Crusaders defeated the Muslims near Arsuf, recaptured the city of Jaffa, and were headed to Jerusalem. However, Richard did not think that he could not hold down the
Jerusalem once they had captured the Holy Land. In the end of the Third Crusade, the majority of Crusaders would return home to Europe and left Jerusalem uncaptured.
Richard the Lionheart soon left the following year having made a truce with Saladin, the
Sultan of Egypt. On Richard's journey home, his ship was destoryed, and he ended up in Austria where his enemy Duke Leopold captured him. Duke Leopold sent Richard I to
Henry VI, who held King Richard for ransom. Richard died imprisoned and never returned to the Holy Land. The Fourth Crusade occured between 1200 to 1204. It was brought about by
Pope Innocent III in 1202 with the intention of invading the Holy Land through Egypt.
Since the Crusaders lacked the funds to pay for the soldiers they borrowed from the
Venetians, Doge Enrico Dandolo enlisted the Crusaders t restore order in the
Christian city of Zara (Zadar). After a series of misunderstandings and outbursts of violence, the Crusaders sacked the city of Constantinople in 1204. This event is often known as the final breaking point of the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox
Church and (Western) Roman Catholic Church. During the Fourth Crusade, nothing was done to capture the Holy Land of Jerusalem.

The Fifth Crusade occured through 1217 to 1221. The Church attemted another crusade, so the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) formed a plan for the recovery of the Holy Land. During the first part, crusading forces from Hungary and Austria joined forces with the king of Jerusalem and the prince of Antioch to take back Jerusalem. A nighttime surprise attack by the ruler of Egypt, the powerful Sultan Al-Kamil, resulted in a great number of crusaders losses and led to the eventual surrennder of the army.
Al-Kamil agreed to an eight-year peace agreement with Europe. The Fifth Crusade was also known as the 'Children's Crusade'. The 'Children's Crusade' is a series of possibly fictious or misunderstood events that took place in 1212. The story is that a gathering of children of France and Germany ventured to the Holy Land. Stephen, the leader of the French army, led 30,000 children. Nicholas, the leader of the German army, led 7,000 children. None of the children from both armies reached the Holy Land; the children were either sold into slavery, returned home, died in shipwrecks crossing the Mediterranean Sea, settled along the route of Jerusalem, or died of hunger during their journey.