Israel & Palestine

For centuries, the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan belonged to larger empires. In the decades before the First World War it formed part of the Ottoman Empire, divided among several administrative districts rather than governed as a sovereign country called Palestine. Most inhabitants were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians. Jewish communities also lived in cities including Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias, alongside newer Jewish arrivals. The population was religiously and socially diverse, and identities such as Ottoman, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and local could overlap.

Modern political Zionism emerged in late nineteenth-century Europe. Its supporters argued that Jews were not only a religious community but a people entitled to national self-determination, and that a Jewish homeland offered protection from entrenched antisemitism and recurring violence. At the same time, Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine were developing political identities shaped by local loyalties, Ottoman reform, Arab cultural revival and opposition to growing external control. A distinct Palestinian national consciousness did not appear on one day, but it was visible before the British Mandate.

During the First World War, Britain made several commitments about the Ottoman Middle East to different audiences. Their wording and compatibility remain debated, but together they created expectations that could not easily be reconciled. In the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain supported “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” while stating that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of the country’s existing non-Jewish communities.

Under the British Mandate, Jewish immigration, land purchase and institution-building expanded. The Jewish community, known as the Yishuv, developed elected bodies, schools, trade unions, health services and defence organisations that increasingly resembled the foundations of a state. Palestinian Arabs remained the majority and repeatedly demanded representative government and limits on immigration and land transfer. Britain resisted creating a legislature that would allow majority rule, partly because it would probably block the Zionist project Britain had promised to support.

Palestinian opposition erupted into a general strike and then an armed revolt against British rule and Zionist immigration. Rebels attacked British forces, Jewish communities and Palestinians accused of collaboration. Britain answered with a major counterinsurgency campaign.

Nazi Germany and its allies murdered six million European Jews. The Holocaust did not begin the conflict in Palestine, but it transformed Jewish and international understanding of the danger of statelessness and the urgency of refuge.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended a Jewish state, an Arab state and an international regime for Jerusalem. Mainstream Zionist leaders accepted the plan as a basis for statehood. Palestinian Arab leaders and neighbouring Arab governments rejected it.

War began between Palestinian Arab and Jewish forces after the partition vote, months before neighbouring Arab armies entered. Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948. Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon intervened after the British Mandate ended. Israel survived, defeated the Arab armies and expanded beyond the UN’s proposed borders. No Palestinian Arab state emerged. Israel remembers national survival and independence. Palestinians remember the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe.

The 1949 agreements stopped the first Arab-Israeli war but did not settle borders, refugees or mutual recognition. Palestinians were divided among Israel, Jordanian-controlled West Bank and Egyptian-administered Gaza, while hundreds of thousands lived as refugees across the region.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in 1964. It initially operated under strong Arab-state influence, but Palestinian guerrilla organisations, especially Fatah, soon became more powerful within it.

In six days, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria and captured the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights. Israel’s territory under military control became more than three times larger.

Israel established military rule over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It annexed East Jerusalem in measures not recognised internationally and began building civilian settlements in occupied territory.

Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli forces in the occupied Sinai and Golan Heights in October 1973. The war shattered Israel’s sense of military invulnerability and eventually opened a diplomatic route between Egypt and Israel.

The First Intifada began in Gaza in December 1987 and spread across the occupied territories. It involved demonstrations, strikes, tax resistance, boycotts, neighbourhood committees, stone-throwing and attacks on Israelis. Israeli forces responded with arrests, curfews, deportations, live fire and other force.

Israel and the PLO formally recognised each other. The Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority and divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C under different degrees of Palestinian and Israeli control.

In November 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish Israeli extremist opposed to Oslo. Palestinian armed groups carried out suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli civilians. Israeli settlement construction and the settler population continued to grow.

After years of failed negotiations and rising frustration, Ariel Sharon’s visit to the contested holy site known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount helped trigger protests in September 2000. Israeli forces used lethal force; the uprising rapidly escalated.

In 2005, Israel removed its settlements and permanent ground forces from inside Gaza. In 2006, Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. After escalating conflict with Fatah, Hamas seized de facto control of Gaza in 2007.

After Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel imposed a land, sea and air blockade, and Egypt tightly restricted its crossing. Israel said the restrictions were necessary to prevent weapons reaching Hamas. The blockade also constrained civilian movement, trade, construction, medical travel and the wider economy.

The Hamas-led attack did not emerge from calm, although nothing that preceded it excused attacks on civilians. The years before 7 October saw no meaningful peace process, continued settlement expansion, deep Palestinian political division and recurring violence in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Hamas and other armed groups broke through the Gaza perimeter and attacked southern Israel. They assaulted civilian communities, military bases, roads and the Nova music festival. About 1,200 people were killed, according to revised Israeli figures, and 251 people were taken hostage.

A US-brokered ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025. The remaining 20 living Israeli hostages were released, Palestinian prisoners were freed, and Israeli forces withdrew to an agreed line inside Gaza. Full-scale warfare receded, but the agreement left the hardest political questions unsettled.

Because every proposed route has collided with unresolved rights, incompatible security demands, unequal power and leaders who either could not or would not make an enforceable agreement.