"What really happened"

The Terrorism Awareness Project has a slide show explaining succinctly what the war between Israel and its neighbors is really about. If you don't want to sit through a slide show, you can see all the slides in static sequence at Doug Ross' site.

Update: I should point out, though, that while the slides' account of events are not wrong, neither are they complete. They sort of gloss over the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 (though Israel is gone from Gaza now) and the enormous complications on all sides resulting. I scare-quoted "occupation" because there is dispute among scholars of international law whether Israel's presence in Gaza/West Bank since 1967 constitutes actual occupation as traditionally defined. The crux of the matter is that if Israel occupied these territories as a foreign invader, then by long-standing law and custom, Israel is legally an occupying power with all that it entails, which is a lot.

Israel says that neither the West Bank nor Gaza were ever political entities on their own, which is definitely true for Gaza. Regarding the West Bank, Israel claims with justification that Jordan had abandoned territorial claim to the Bank before Israel conquered it, and that the Bank was therefore stateless territory. These facts, Israel insists, negate Israel as an occupier and therefore Israel does not have the responsibilities or constraints of an occupying power.

Like everything else in the Middle East, it is not simple. So while the slides linked above may be fair, they are not exactly "balanced" because they basically omit the major issue between the Palestinians and Israel today, which is the presence, "occupation" or not, of Israeli troops in parts of the West Bank and the building of Jewish towns there. No matter where you come down on those issues, it is undeniable that they are determinant at this time.