History · Palestine

Palestine: A Contested Land

A small, much-conquered land at the junction of Africa and Asia — an Ottoman province, a British mandate, the site of two national movements claiming the same territory, and, since 1967, of an occupation and a stalled search for two states

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

An early colour photograph of the stone Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's city wall, with market stalls, donkeys and people in robes and fezzes on the open ground in front
The Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem in a colour print made between 1890 and 1905, with a market under an awning, donkeys and townspeople in front of the city wall. (Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain)

Naming the place

"Palestine" has referred to different things in different periods: a Roman provincial name, an Ottoman region without fixed borders, the territory of the British Mandate from 1920 to 1948, and today the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, where the State of Palestine is recognised by around 145 UN member states and holds UN observer status. About five million Palestinians live in these territories and several million more in Israel, in neighbouring countries — many as registered refugees — and further abroad. This is one of the most disputed histories in the world; where interpretations differ sharply, this article attributes them rather than choosing between them.

A short history

  1. antiquity

    Many rulers

    Canaanite, Israelite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman.

  2. 638 CE

    Arab conquest

    The region becomes majority Arabic-speaking and, over time, majority Muslim.

  3. 1516–1917

    Ottoman rule

    Governed from Istanbul as part of Greater Syria.

  4. 1917

    The Balfour Declaration

    Britain backs "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.

  5. 1920–1948

    The British Mandate

    Jewish immigration rises; Arab and Jewish nationalism collide; revolt in 1936–39.

  6. 1947

    UN partition plan

    Resolution 181 proposes an Arab and a Jewish state; Arab states and leaders reject it.

  7. 1948

    War and the Nakba

    Israel is established; around 700,000 Palestinians flee or are expelled.

  8. 1967

    The Six-Day War

    Israel occupies the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai and the Golan.

  9. 1987, 2000

    The intifadas

    Palestinian uprisings against the occupation.

  10. 1993–1995

    The Oslo Accords

    Mutual recognition; a Palestinian Authority with limited self-rule.

  11. 2007

    The split

    Hamas takes Gaza; the Palestinian Authority holds parts of the West Bank.

Ottoman province to British mandate

For four centuries Palestine was an Ottoman territory, overwhelmingly Arab and mostly Muslim, with substantial Christian and smaller Jewish communities and a holy significance for all three faiths. From the 1880s, Zionism — a movement for Jewish national self-determination, responding to European antisemitism — promoted Jewish immigration and land purchase. In 1917 Britain, at war with the Ottomans, issued the Balfour Declaration favouring "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine while stating that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities". Britain took the territory as a League of Nations mandate in 1920.

A tinted 1839 lithograph of travellers with camels on a track leading to the white town of Nablus, with two minarets, set in a valley between two steep hills
Entrance to Nablus, drawn by David Roberts in 1839. Travellers with camels approach the town and its minarets, which lie in a valley between two hills. (David Roberts, Cleveland Museum of Art / Wikimedia Commons)

Mandate, partition, war

Under the Mandate the Jewish population rose from about a tenth of the total in 1918 to nearly a third by 1947, sharply increased by refugees from Nazi Europe. Arab opposition to immigration and land loss erupted in riots and, in 1936–39, in a major revolt that Britain suppressed. Unable to reconcile the two communities, Britain handed the problem to the United Nations, whose 1947 partition plan (Resolution 181) proposed separate Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem under international administration. Jewish leaders accepted it; Arab leaders and the surrounding states rejected it as unjust to the majority population. Civil war followed, and on 14 May 1948 Israel declared independence. Armies of neighbouring Arab states intervened.

A long column of Palestinian refugees, many carrying bundles, walking along a road in 1948
Palestinian refugees in 1948. During the war around 700,000 Palestinians left or were expelled from the area that became Israel — the event Palestinians call the Nakba ('catastrophe'). Israel's account emphasises Arab flight amid war and the rejection of partition; both are debated by historians. (Fred Csasznik / Wikimedia Commons)

1967 and the occupation

The 1949 armistices left the West Bank under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control; no Palestinian state was created. In the June 1967 war Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai and the Golan Heights. It later annexed East Jerusalem and began building settlements in the occupied territories — held by most of the international community and the International Court of Justice to be illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, a view Israel disputes. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, founded in 1964 and led from 1969 by Yasser Arafat, became the recognised representative of the Palestinian national movement, operating from Jordan, then Lebanon, then Tunisia, and using both guerrilla and diplomatic methods.

Intifadas and Oslo

A largely grassroots uprising, the First Intifada, broke out in the occupied territories in 1987; the Islamist movement Hamas was founded the same year. Secret negotiations produced the Oslo Accords of 1993–95: the PLO and Israel recognised each other, and a Palestinian Authority was set up with limited self-government over parts of the West Bank and Gaza, envisaged as a five-year step towards a final settlement. That settlement was never reached. The Camp David summit of 2000 collapsed, each side blaming the other, and the Second Intifada — far more violent, with suicide bombings and large-scale Israeli military operations — ran from 2000 to around 2005.

A high concrete wall topped with a watchtower running through a Palestinian urban area in the West Bank
Part of the barrier Israel began building in the West Bank in 2002. Israel describes it as a security measure against attacks; Palestinians and the International Court of Justice (in a 2004 advisory opinion) object that much of its route runs inside the West Bank and cuts off communities and land. (Justin McIntosh / Wikimedia Commons)

Division and war

Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from inside Gaza in 2005. Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, and after fighting with Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, took full control of Gaza in 2007, leaving the Palestinian Authority governing parts of the West Bank. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza. Several rounds of war followed between Israel and Hamas (2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021). On 7 October 2023 Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures; Israel's subsequent offensive in Gaza killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and caused mass displacement and destruction. The war has drawn genocide allegations against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which Israel rejects as baseless. Palestinian statehood recognition has meanwhile continued to spread among UN members.

What Palestine carries

At the centre of this history are two peoples with deep attachments to the same small territory, and a series of proposed divisions of it — 1937, 1947, Oslo, later summits — none of which has held. The core disputes are consistent across a century: borders, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, security, and the fate of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants. A negotiated two-state outcome remains the stated goal of most of the international community; on the ground, it is further away than it was at Oslo.

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