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148-492: While affirming the PLO's commitment to fight Israel , the Fatah -sponsored Ten Point Program authorized the PLO to "establish [an] independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated", which was regarded by many Palestinians as a possible first step towards a two-state proposal. At the same PNC session, the ultimate goal of the PLO

296-522: A 2001 election ; he carried out his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and spearheaded the construction of the West Bank barrier , ending the intifada. Between 2000 and 2008, 1,063 Israelis, 5,517 Palestinians and 64 foreign citizens were killed. In 2006, a Hezbollah artillery assault on Israel's northern border communities and a cross-border abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated

444-465: A unicameral parliament elected by proportional representation , the Knesset , which determines the makeup of the government headed by the prime minister and elects the figurehead president . Israel is the only country to have a revived official language, Hebrew . Its culture comprises Jewish and Jewish diaspora elements alongside Arab influences. Israel has one of the largest economies in

592-637: A Gaza traffic jam. A curfew forbidding Gaza residents from leaving their homes was imposed for three days, during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha . In two incidents on 1 and 6 October 1987, the IDF ambushed and killed seven Gaza men, reportedly affiliated with Islamic Jihad , who had escaped from prison in May. Some days later, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Intisar al-'Attar, was shot in the back while in her schoolyard in Deir al-Balah by

740-620: A Jewish " national home " in Palestine. Weizmann's interpretation of the declaration was that negotiations on the future of the country were to happen directly between Britain and the Jews, excluding Arabs. Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine deteriorated dramatically in the following years. In 1918 the Jewish Legion , primarily Zionist volunteers, assisted in the British conquest of Palestine . In 1920

888-804: A Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, broke out in 1987, with waves of uncoordinated demonstrations and violence in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Over the following six years, the intifada became more organized and included economic and cultural measures aimed at disrupting the Israeli occupation. Over 1,000 people were killed. During the 1991 Gulf War , the PLO supported Saddam Hussein and Iraqi missile attacks against Israel . Despite public outrage, Israel heeded American calls to refrain from hitting back. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister following an election in which his party called for compromise with Israel's neighbours. The following year, Shimon Peres on behalf of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas for

1036-510: A converted army camp, known popularly as Ansar 11 , outside Gaza City. A policy of deportation was introduced to intimidate activists in January 1987. Violence simmered as a schoolboy from Khan Yunis was shot dead by Israeli soldiers pursuing him in a Jeep. Over the summer the IDF's Lieutenant Ron Tal, who was responsible for guarding detainees at Ansar 11, was shot dead at point-blank range while stuck in

1184-616: A de facto independent emirate in the Galilee. Ottoman attempts to subdue the sheikh failed. After Zahir's death the Ottomans regained control of the area. In 1799, governor Jazzar Pasha repelled an assault on Acre by Napoleon 's troops, prompting the French to abandon the Syrian campaign. In 1834, a revolt by Palestinian Arab peasants against Egyptian conscription and taxation policies under Muhammad Ali

1332-538: A growing militancy in Palestinian society. During the 1980s a number of mainstream Israeli politicians referred to policies of transferring the Palestinian population out of the territories, leading to Palestinian fears that Israel planned to evict them. Public statements calling for transfer of the Palestinian population were made by Deputy Defense Minister Michael Dekel , Cabinet Minister Mordechai Tzipori and government Minister Yosef Shapira among others. Describing

1480-818: A massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. The Israeli government responded with an assassination campaign against the organizers of the massacre, a bombing and a raid on the PLO headquarters in Lebanon . On 6 October 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, opening the Yom Kippur War . The war ended on 25 October with Israel repelling Egyptian and Syrian forces but suffering great losses. An internal inquiry exonerated

1628-537: A movement that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, thus offering a solution to the Jewish question of the European states. Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies, in tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than as

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1776-568: A part of Coele-Syria . Over the ensuing centuries, the Hellenization of the region led to cultural tensions that came to a head during the reign of Antiochus IV , giving rise to the Maccabean Revolt of 167 BCE. The civil unrest weakened Seleucid rule, and in the late 2nd century the semi-autonomous Hasmonean Kingdom of Judea arose, eventually attaining full independence and expanding into neighboring regions. The Roman Republic invaded

1924-637: A proclamation allowing the exiled Judean population to return to Judah. The construction of the Second Temple was completed c.  520 BCE . The Achaemenids ruled the region as the province of Yehud Medinata . In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the region as part of his campaign against the Achaemenid Empire . After his death, the area was controlled by the Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires as

2072-652: A regional power, with a capital at Samaria ; during the Omride dynasty , it controlled Samaria , Galilee , the upper Jordan Valley , the plain of Sharon and large parts of Transjordan . The Kingdom of Israel was conquered around 720 BCE by the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Kingdom of Judah, under Davidic rule with its capital in Jerusalem , later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then

2220-517: A response to pogroms or economic insecurity. The Second Aliyah (1904–1914) began after the Kishinev pogrom ; some 40,000 Jews settled in Palestine, although nearly half left eventually. Both the first and second waves of migrants were mainly Orthodox Jews . The Second Aliyah included Zionist socialist groups who established the kibbutz movement based on the idea of establishing a separate Jewish economy based exclusively on Jewish labor. Those of

2368-662: A secret alliance with the UK and France and overran the Sinai Peninsula in the Suez Crisis but was pressured to withdraw by the UN in return for guarantees of Israeli shipping rights. The war resulted in significant reduction of Israeli border infiltration. In the early 1960s, Israel captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial . Eichmann remains

2516-535: A series of coordinated attacks on Israel, leading to the start of the Israel–Hamas war . On that day, approximately 1,300 Israelis, predominantly civilians, were killed in communities near the Gaza Strip border and during a music festival . Over 200 hostages were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. After clearing militants from its territory, Israel launched one of the most destructive bombing campaigns in modern history and invaded Gaza on 27 October with

2664-585: A settler in the Gaza Strip, who claimed the girl had been throwing stones. The Arab summit in Amman in November 1987 focused on the Iran–Iraq War , and the Palestinian issue was shunted to the sidelines for the first time in years. Israel's drive into the occupied territories had occasioned spontaneous acts of resistance, but the administration was confident that Palestinian resistance was exhausted. The assessment that

2812-505: A soldier in October 1988, and the detonation of two roadside bombs, which had no impact. Leaflets publicizing the intifada aims demanded the complete withdrawal of Israel from the territories it had occupied in 1967: the lifting of curfews and checkpoints; it appealed to Palestinians to join in civic resistance, while asking them not to employ arms, since military resistance would only invite devastating retaliation from Israel; it also called for

2960-570: A statement of position. It was strongly backed by Iraq . While the involved factions continued to advocate a hard-line policy towards Israel, most of them eventually rejoined the PLO, for example in 1977, when the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front was announced. But tensions remained, and the Rejectionist Front or similar initiatives were revived virtually every time Arafat made a conciliatory gesture towards Israel. The most serious rift

3108-611: A threat to Syria, as they opposed Syrian strategy. As a result, the Rejectionist Front itself became split between the PFLP and various smaller groups which sided with the LNM and Fatah, and as-Saiqa and the PFLP-General Command which sided with Syria. Throughout the late 1970s and then the 1980s the Lebanese wars decimated the ranks of some of the pro-Syrian groups, especially those who supported

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3256-412: A total of 12 months. Hebron University was closed by the army from January 1988 to June 1991. Round-the-clock curfews were imposed over 1600 times in just the first year. Communities were cut off from supplies of water, electricity and fuel. At any one time, 25,000 Palestinians would be confined to their homes. Trees were uprooted on Palestinians farms, and agricultural produce blocked from being sold. In

3404-630: A year of fighting, a ceasefire was declared and temporary borders, known as the Green Line , were established. Jordan annexed what became known as the West Bank , including East Jerusalem , and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip . Over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Zionist militias and the Israeli military —what would become known in Arabic as the nakba ('catastrophe'). The events also led to

3552-619: Is bordered by Lebanon and Syria to the north, the West Bank and Jordan to the east, the Gaza Strip and Egypt to the southwest, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The country also has a small coastline on the Red Sea at its southernmost point, and part of the Dead Sea lies along its eastern border. Israel's proclaimed capital is in Jerusalem , while Tel Aviv is the country's largest urban area and economic center . Israel

3700-501: Is debate about the earliest existence of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and their extent and power. While it is unclear if there was a United Kingdom of Israel , historians and archaeologists agree that the northern Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and the Kingdom of Judah by ca. 850 BCE. The Kingdom of Israel was the more prosperous of the two and soon developed into

3848-605: Is known as the Nakba , with those remaining becoming the new state's main minority. Over the following decades, Israel's population increased greatly as the country received an influx of Jews who emigrated, fled or were expelled from the Muslim world . Following the 1967 Six-Day War Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Egyptian Sinai Peninsula and Syrian Golan Heights . Israel established and continues to expand settlements across

3996-720: Is located in a region known to Jews as the Land of Israel , synonymous with the Palestine region , the Holy Land , and Canaan . In antiquity, it was home to the Canaanite civilization followed by the kingdoms of Israel and Judah . Situated at a continental crossroad , the region experienced demographic changes under the rule of various empires from the Romans to the Ottomans . European antisemitism in

4144-509: The jizya tax. Non-Muslim Ottoman subjects faced geographic and lifestyle restrictions, though these were not always enforced. The millet system organized non-Muslims into autonomous communities on the basis of religion. The concept of the "return" remained a symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasized that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: "Jews did not relate to

4292-549: The 1990 Temple Mount killings at Al-Aqsa . This led the Palestinians to adopt more lethal tactics, with three Israeli civilians and one IDF soldier stabbed in Jerusalem and Gaza two weeks later. Incidents of stabbing persisted. The Israeli state apparatus carried out contradictory and conflicting policies that were seen to have injured Israel's own interests, such as the closing of educational establishments (putting more youths onto

4440-625: The Arab League agreed to support the intifada financially at the 1988 Arab League summit . The Arab League reaffirmed its financial support in the 1989 summit. Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin 's response was: "We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel." When time in prison did not stop the activists, Israel crushed the boycott by imposing heavy fines and seizing and disposing of equipment, furnishings, and goods from local stores, factories and homes. On 8 October 1990, 22 Palestinians were killed by Israeli police during

4588-523: The First Intifada (1987–91), as well as the Persian Gulf War (1991). In 1991, Palestinian Popular Struggle Front was allowed to rejoin the PLO after accepting United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and the concept of negotiations with Israel . The Abu Nidal Organization faded continuously into the shadows after 1991, as-Saiqa never grew out of its comfortable niche in the arms of Assad,

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4736-544: The Four Holy Cities —Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron , and Safed —and in 1697, Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid led a group of 1,500 Jews to Jerusalem. A 1660 Druze revolt against the Ottomans destroyed Safed and Tiberias . In the second half of the 18th century, Eastern European Jews who were opponents of Hasidism , known as the Perushim , settled in Palestine. In the late 18th century, local Arab Sheikh Zahir al-Umar created

4884-491: The Gaza Strip and the West Bank , an economic boycott consisting of refusal to work in Israeli settlements on Israeli products, refusal to pay taxes, and refusal to drive Palestinian cars with Israeli licenses. Israel deployed some 80,000 soldiers in response. Israeli countermeasures, which initially included the use of live rounds frequently in cases of riots, were criticized by Human Rights Watch as disproportionate, in addition to Israel's excessive use of lethal force. In

5032-843: The Gaza Strip in the ongoing Israel–Hamas war . Observers, including the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices and United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese , have cited statements by senior Israeli officials that may indicate an " intent to destroy " (in whole or in part) Gaza's population, a necessary condition for the legal threshold of genocide to be met. A majority of mostly US-based Middle East scholars believe Israel's actions in Gaza were intended to make it uninhabitable for Palestinians, and 75% of them say Israel's actions in Gaza constitute either genocide or "major war crimes akin to genocide". On 29 December 2023, South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel at

5180-618: The International Court of Justice pursuant to the Genocide Convention , First Intifada Lists The First Intifada ( Arabic : الانتفاضة الأولى , romanized :  al-Intifāḍa al-’Ūlā , lit.   'The First Uprising'), also known as the First Palestinian Intifada , was a sustained series of protests, acts of civil disobedience and riots carried out by Palestinians in

5328-655: The Iran–Iraq War , the Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's sole nuclear reactor, then under construction, in order to impede the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Following a series of PLO attacks in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon to destroy the PLO bases. In the first six days, Israel destroyed the military forces of the PLO in Lebanon and decisively defeated the Syrians. An Israeli government inquiry (the Kahan Commission ) held Begin and several Israeli generals indirectly responsible for

5476-533: The Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It was motivated by collective Palestinian frustration over Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as it approached a twenty-year mark, having begun in the wake of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War . The uprising lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference of 1991 , though some date its conclusion to 1993,

5624-573: The Israeli–Palestinian conflict after the interim Oslo Accords have not succeeded, and the country has engaged in several wars and clashes with Palestinian militant groups . Israel's practices in its occupation of the Palestinian territories have drawn sustained international criticism—along with accusations that it has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people—from human rights organizations and United Nations officials. The country's Basic Laws establish

5772-582: The Labor Party . Later that year, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat made a trip to Israel and spoke before the Knesset in what was the first recognition of Israel by an Arab head of state. Sadat and Begin signed the Camp David Accords (1978) and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty (1979). In return, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and agreed to enter negotiations over autonomy for Palestinians in

5920-758: The Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BCE), large parts of Canaan formed vassal states of the New Kingdom of Egypt . As a result of the Late Bronze Age collapse , Canaan fell into chaos, and Egyptian control over the region collapsed. A people named Israel appear for the first time in the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription which dates to about 1200 BCE. Ancestors of the Israelites are thought to have included ancient Semitic-speaking peoples native to this area. Modern archaeological accounts suggest that

6068-713: The League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine under terms which included the Balfour Declaration with its promise to the Jews and with similar provisions regarding the Arab Palestinians. The population of the area was predominantly Arab and Muslim, with Jews accounting for about 11% and Arab Christians about 9.5% of the population. The Third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyahs (1924–1929) brought an additional 100,000 Jews to Palestine. The rise of Nazism , and

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6216-401: The Negev held approximately one out of every 50 West Bank and Gazan males older than 16 years. Gerald Kaufman remarked: "[F]riends of Israel as well as foes have been shocked and saddened by that country's response to the disturbances." In an article in the London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt asserted that IDF soldiers were given truncheons and encouraged to break

6364-423: The Neo-Babylonian Empire . It is estimated that the region's population was around 400,000 in the Iron Age II . In 587/6 BCE, following a revolt in Judah , King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple , dissolved the kingdom and exiled much of the Judean elite to Babylon . After capturing Babylon in 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great , founder of the Achaemenid Empire , issued

6512-403: The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Ben-Ami describes the PLO as uncompromising and reliant on international terrorism, which he says exacerbated Palestinian grievances. The Israeli Labor Party 's Yitzhak Rabin , then Defense Minister , added deportations in August 1985 to Israel's "Iron Fist" policy of cracking down on Palestinian nationalism. This, which led to 50 deportations in

6660-471: The Royal Navy and the refugees placed in detention camps in Atlit and Cyprus . On 22 July 1946, Irgun bombed the British administrative headquarters for Palestine, killing 91. The attack was a response to Operation Agatha (a series of raids, including one on the Jewish Agency , by the British) and was the deadliest directed at the British during the Mandate era. The Jewish insurgency continued throughout 1946 and 1947 despite concerted efforts by

6808-469: The Sabra and Shatila massacre and held Defense Minister Ariel Sharon as bearing "personal responsibility". Sharon was forced to resign. In 1985, Israel responded to a Palestinian terrorist attack in Cyprus by bombing the PLO headquarters in Tunisia. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in 1986 but maintained a borderland buffer zone in southern Lebanon until 2000, from where Israeli forces engaged in conflict with Hezbollah . The First Intifada ,

6956-456: The Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and the short-lived Jewish revolt against Heraclius in 614 CE, the Byzantine Empire reconsolidated control of the area in 628. In 634–641 CE, the Rashidun Caliphate conquered the Levant . Over the next six centuries, control of the region transferred between the Umayyad , Abbasid , Fatimid caliphates, and subsequently the Seljuk and Ayyubid dynasties. The population drastically decreased during

7104-557: The Ubeidiya prehistoric site . The Skhul and Qafzeh hominins , dating back 120,000 years, are some of the earliest traces of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa. The Natufian culture , which may have been linked to Proto-Afroasiatic language , emerged by the 10th millennium BCE, followed by the Ghassulian culture by around 4,500 BCE. Early references to "Canaanites" and " Canaan " appear in Near Eastern and Egyptian texts ( c. 2000 BCE); these populations were structured as politically independent city-states . During

7252-418: The West Bank , Jerusalem , Sinai Peninsula , and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt in the Six-Day War in 1967, frustration grew among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories . Israel opened its labor market to Palestinians in the newly occupied territories, who were recruited mainly to do unskilled or semi-skilled labor jobs Israelis did not want. By the time of the Intifada, over 40 percent of

7400-413: The destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and a sizable portion of the population being killed or displaced. A second uprising known as the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) initially allowed the Jews to form an independent state, but the Romans brutally crushed the rebellion, devastating and depopulating Judea's countryside. Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony ( Aelia Capitolina ), and

7548-400: The illegally occupied territories , contrary to international law, and has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in moves largely unrecognized internationally. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War , Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt —returning the Sinai in 1982—and Jordan . In the 2020s, it normalized relations with more Arab countries. However, efforts to resolve

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7696-419: The occupied West Bank , increasing friction with the Palestinians there. The 1980 Jerusalem Law was believed by some to reaffirm Israel's 1967 annexation of Jerusalem by government decree and reignited international controversy over the status of the city . No Israeli legislation has defined the territory of Israel, and no act specifically included East Jerusalem therein. In 1981 Israel effectively annexed

7844-435: The 2010s, increasing regional cooperation between Israel and Arab League countries have been established, culminating in the signing of the Abraham Accords . The Israeli security situation shifted from the traditional Arab–Israeli conflict towards the Iran–Israel proxy conflict and direct confrontation with Iran during the Syrian civil war . On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups from Gaza, led by Hamas, launched

7992-467: The ALF did the same under the sponsorship of Saddam Hussein , the DFLP divided in two on the question of the Oslo Accords (1993), while the PFLP began an ambivalent participation in the peace process that never resulted in complete rejection or acceptance. Today, the Rejectionist Front as a whole is overshadowed by the hard-line Islamist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad , and the Popular Resistance Committees , as well as hard-line affiliates of

8140-448: The Arab states that backed them and even to the USSR. In 1975 the Lebanese Civil War broke out. Far bloodier than its 1950s prelude, it featured most PLO factions on the side of the Lebanese National Movement , specially with the mainly Sunni al-Murabitun . The right-wing Lebanese Front had long seen the PLO as a threat to their supremacy in Lebanon's volatile sectarian balance. The Lebanese National Movement and PLO were seen too as

8288-413: The British military and Palestine Police Force to suppress it. British efforts to mediate with Jewish and Arab representatives also failed as the Jews were unwilling to accept any solution that did not involve a Jewish state and suggested a partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, while the Arabs were adamant that a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was unacceptable and that the only solution

8436-417: The British would evacuate. As Arab militias and gangs attacked Jewish areas, they were faced mainly by the Haganah as well as the smaller Irgun and Lehi. In April 1948, the Haganah moved onto the offensive. On 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion , the head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel". The following day,

8584-410: The City of Jerusalem [...] the last to be under an International Trusteeship System". Meanwhile, the Jewish insurgency continued and peaked in July 1947, with a series of widespread guerrilla raids culminating in the Sergeants affair , in which the Irgun took two British sergeants hostage as attempted leverage against the planned execution of three Irgun operatives. After the executions were carried out,

8732-400: The First Intifada is generally dated to a truck incident involving several Palestinian fatalities at the Erez Crossing in December 1987, Mazin Qumsiyeh argues, against Donald Neff , that it began with multiple youth demonstrations earlier in the preceding month. Some sources consider that the perceived IDF failure in late November 1987 to stop a Palestinian guerrilla operation, the Night of

8880-463: The Front brought "together" factions that had no common goal. This can be seen by the example of as-Saiqa , a movement that forms the branch of the pro-Syrian Ba'ath Party in the Palestinian territories , and the Arab Liberation Front , similar however used by the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath Party . The alliance did nothing to improve cooperation between member factions, and internecine bloodshed continued. The Front also failed in its goal of weakening Arafat;

9028-523: The Gaza Strip alone from 1988 to 1993, some 60,706 Palestinians suffered injuries from shootings, beatings or tear gas. In the first five weeks alone, 35 Palestinians were killed and some 1,200 wounded. Some regarded the Israeli response as encouraging more Palestinians into participating. B'Tselem calculated 179 Israelis killed, while official Israeli statistics place the total at 200 over the same period. 3,100 Israelis, 1,700 of them soldiers, and 1,400 civilians suffered injuries. By 1990 Ktzi'ot Prison in

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9176-500: The Gliders , in which six Israeli soldiers were killed, helped catalyze local Palestinians to rebel. Mass demonstrations had occurred a year earlier when, after two Gaza students at Birzeit University had been shot by Israeli soldiers on campus on 4 December 1986, the Israelis responded with harsh punitive measures, involving summary arrest, detention, and systematic beatings of handcuffed Palestinian youths, ex-prisoners and activists, some 250 of whom were detained in four cells inside

9324-433: The Golan Heights from Syria. Jerusalem's boundaries were enlarged, incorporating East Jerusalem. The 1949 Green Line became the administrative boundary between Israel and the occupied territories . Following the 1967 war and the " Three Nos " resolution of the Arab League, Israel faced attacks from the Egyptians in the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967–1970 War of Attrition , and from Palestinian groups targeting Israelis in

9472-402: The Golan Heights. The international community largely rejected these moves, with the UN Security Council declaring both the Jerusalem Law and the Golan Heights Law null and void. Several waves of Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel since the 1980s, while between 1990 and 1994, immigration from the post-Soviet states increased Israel's population by twelve percent. On 7 June 1981, during

9620-585: The Holocaust. During the 1950s, Israel was frequently attacked by Palestinian fedayeen , nearly always against civilians, mainly from the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip, leading to several Israeli reprisal operations . In 1956, the UK and France aimed at regaining control of the Suez Canal , which Egypt had nationalized. The continued blockade of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, together with increasing fedayeen attacks against Israel's southern population and recent Arab threatening statements, prompted Israel to attack Egypt. Israel joined

9768-433: The IDF, also gasoline bombs, at military vehicles. The soldiers started shooting in response, killing 17 year-old Hatem Al-Sesi and wounding 16 others. On 9 December, several popular and professional Palestinian leaders held a press conference in West Jerusalem with the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights in response to the deterioration of the situation. While they convened, reports came in that demonstrations at

9916-451: The Intifada's UNLU , and more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 soldiers were injured. Intra-Palestinian violence was also a prominent feature of the Intifada, with widespread executions of an estimated 822 Palestinians killed as alleged Israeli collaborators (1988–April 1994). At the time Israel reportedly obtained information from some 18,000 Palestinians who had been compromised, although fewer than half had any proven contact with

10064-413: The Irgun killed the two British soldiers, hanged their bodies from trees, and left a booby trap at the scene which injured a British soldier. The incident caused widespread outrage in the UK. In September 1947, the British cabinet decided to evacuate Palestine as the Mandate was no longer tenable. On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (II) . The plan attached to the resolution

10212-403: The Israeli authorities. The ensuing Second Intifada took place from September 2000 to 2005. According to Mubarak Awad , a Palestinian American clinical psychologist, the Intifada was a protest against Israeli repression including "beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial". After Israel's capture of

10360-464: The Israelis in southern Lebanon, or in recruiting a local infrastructure in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. In addition, most of these groups became extremely dependent on the Syrian government financially and for military supplies. It may be that the PFLP and DFLP's neutrality in the War of the Camps saved them from the mediocre fate that led to the irrelevancy held by the PFLP-General Command to this day. The Front also showed obvious divisions in respect to

10508-537: The Israelites and their culture branched out of the Canaanite peoples through the development of a distinct monolatristic —and later monotheistic —religion centered on Yahweh . They spoke an archaic form of Hebrew , known as Biblical Hebrew . Around the same time, the Philistines settled on the southern coastal plain . Most modern scholars agree that the Exodus narrative in the Torah and Old Testament did not take place as depicted; however, some elements of these traditions do have historical roots . There

10656-777: The Jabalya camp were underway and that a 17-year-old Palestinian had been shot to death by Israeli soldiers (after, as the IDF claimed, a group of Palestinians threw gasoline bombs at an IDF vehicle). He would later become known as the first martyr of the intifada. Protests rapidly spread into the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Youths took control of neighbourhoods, closed off camps with barricades of garbage, stone and burning tires , meeting soldiers who endeavoured to break through with petrol bombs. Palestinian shopkeepers closed their businesses, and labourers refused to turn up to their work in Israel. Israel defined these activities as 'riots', and justified

10804-638: The Levant was fairly cosmopolitan, with religious freedoms for Christians, Muslims, and Jews . In 1561 the Ottoman sultan invited Sephardi Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition to settle in and rebuild the city of Tiberias . Under the Ottoman Empire's millet system , Christians and Jews were considered dhimmi (meaning "protected") under Ottoman law in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of

10952-577: The Middle East and among the highest GDP per capita and standards of living in Asia . One of the most technologically advanced and developed countries in the world, it spends proportionally more on research and development than any other and is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons . Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the entire region was known as Palestine . Upon establishment in 1948 ,

11100-743: The PLFP and Fatah such as the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades , respectively. Most of the organizations that once belonged to the Front today only have dozens of members. This is a list of organizations who participated in the Rejectionist Front in 1976: Israel Israel , officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia . It

11248-522: The PLO Chairman remained securely at the helm of the organization and consolidated a massive war arsenal and order of battle in southern Lebanon in order to harass the Israelis. The Ten-Point Program increased Arafat's worth on the diplomatic front as more western states became willing to speak with his representatives. The members of the Front, contrastingly, isolated themselves as extremists and subservient to

11396-634: The PLO signed the Oslo Accords , which gave the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) the right to govern parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The PLO also recognized Israel's right to exist and pledged an end to terrorism. In 1994, the Israel–Jordan peace treaty was signed, making Jordan the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel. Arab public support for the Accords

11544-510: The Palestinian workforce worked in Israel daily. Additionally, Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, high birthrates in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the limited allocation of land for new building and agriculture created conditions marked by growing population density and rising unemployment, even for those with university degrees. At the time of the Intifada, only one in eight college-educated Palestinians could find degree-related work. This

11692-616: The Second Aliyah who became leaders of the Yishuv in the coming decades believed that the Jewish settler economy should not depend on Arab labor. This would be a dominant source of antagonism with the Arab population, with the new Yishuv's nationalist ideology overpowering its socialist one. Though the immigrants of the Second Aliyah largely sought to create communal Jewish agricultural settlements, Tel Aviv

11840-578: The Sinai Peninsula since 1957, and blocked Israel's access to the Red Sea. Other Arab states mobilized their forces. Israel reiterated that these actions were a casus belli and launched a pre-emptive strike ( Operation Focus ) against Egypt in June. Jordan, Syria and Iraq attacked Israel. In the Six-Day War , Israel captured and occupied the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and

11988-619: The Syrians in the War of the Camps . During that war, where the Front was joined by dissidents from within Fatah ( Fatah al-Intifada ) led by Col. Said al-Muragha , many of them assaulted refugee camps leading to civilian casualties and accusations that they were turncoats concerned only with serving Assad's goals. The PFLP-GC, for example, which was commanded by the professional guerrilla Ahmed Jibril , wasted much of its efforts on fighting Arafat instead of attacking

12136-729: The US again put a veto on a resolution. On 7 November, the US vetoed a third draft resolution, condemning alleged Israeli violations of human rights On 14 October 1990, Israel openly declared that it would not abide Security Council Resolution 672 because it did not pay attention to attacks on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall . Israel refused to receive a delegation of the Secretary-General, which would investigate Israeli violence. The following Resolution 673 made little impression and Israel kept on obstructing UN investigations. The Intifada

12284-580: The United Nations (UN) proposed partitioning the land between them. The State of Israel declared its establishment on 14 May 1948. The armies of neighboring Arab states invaded the area of the former Mandate the next day, beginning the First Arab–Israeli War . Subsequent armistice agreements established Israeli control over 77 percent of the former Mandate territory. The majority of Palestinian Arabs were either expelled or fled in what

12432-583: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 11 March 1978, a PLO guerilla raid from Lebanon led to the Coastal Road massacre . Israel responded by launching an invasion of southern Lebanon to destroy PLO bases. Most PLO fighters withdrew, but Israel was able to secure southern Lebanon until a UN force and the Lebanese army could take over. The PLO soon resumed its insurgency against Israel, and Israel carried out numerous retaliatory attacks. Meanwhile, Begin's government provided incentives for Israelis to settle in

12580-508: The adult male Palestinian Arab population was killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled. The British introduced restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine with the White Paper of 1939 . With countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust , a clandestine movement known as Aliyah Bet was organized to bring Jews to Palestine. By the end of World War II , 31% of

12728-456: The armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been Mandatory Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War ; contingents from Yemen , Morocco , Saudi Arabia , and Sudan joined the war. The purpose of the invasion was to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state and to "sweep them [Jews] into the sea". The Arab League stated the invasion was to restore order and prevent further bloodshed. After

12876-560: The basis that the partition plan privileged European interests over those of the Palestinians, and indicated that they would reject any other plan of partition. On 1 December 1947, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed a three-day strike, and riots broke out in Jerusalem . The situation spiraled into a civil war . Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948, at which point

13024-410: The beginning of the Intifada, the majority killed during demonstrations and riots. Since initially a high proportion of those killed were civilians and youths, Yitzhak Rabin adopted a fallback policy of 'might, power and beatings'. Israel used mass arrests of Palestinians, engaged in collective punishments like closing down West Bank universities for most years of the intifada, and West Bank schools for

13172-530: The bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that "23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the Intifada", one third of whom were children under the age of ten years. Israel adopted a policy of arresting key representatives of Palestinian institutions. After lawyers in Gaza went on strike to protest their inability to visit their detained clients, Israel detained

13320-407: The causes of the Intifada, Benny Morris refers to the "all-pervading element of humiliation", caused by the protracted occupation which he says was "always a brutal and mortifying experience for the occupied" and was "founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation." While the catalyst for

13468-462: The church and the authorities. Many Jews had emigrated to flourishing diaspora communities, while locally there was both Christian immigration and local conversion. By the middle of the 5th century, there was a Christian majority. Towards the end of the 5th century, Samaritan revolts erupted, continuing until the late 6th century and resulting in a large decrease in the Samaritan population. After

13616-429: The country formally adopted the name State of Israel ( Hebrew : מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל , Medīnat Yisrā'el [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel] ; Arabic : دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل , Dawlat Isrāʼīl , [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl] ) after other proposed names including Land of Israel ( Eretz Israel ), Ever (from ancestor Eber ), Zion , and Judea , were considered but rejected. The name Israel

13764-615: The crusaders before Muslim rule was fully restored by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt in 1291. In 1516, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and ruled it as part of Ottoman Syria . Two violent incidents took place against Jews, the 1517 Safed attacks and the 1517 Hebron attacks , after the Turkish Ottomans ousted the Mamluks during the Ottoman–Mamluk War . Under the Ottoman Empire,

13912-568: The deputy head of its association without trial for six months. Dr. Zakariya al-Agha, the head of the Gaza Medical Association, was likewise arrested and held for a similar period of detention, as were several women active in Women's Work Committees. During Ramadan, many camps in Gaza were placed under curfew for weeks, impeding residents from buying food, and Al-Shati , Jabalya and Burayj were subjected to saturation bombing by tear gas. During

14060-486: The destruction of most of Palestine's Arab culture , identity , and national aspirations . Some 156,000 Arabs remained and became Arab citizens of Israel . By United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 , Israel was admitted as a member of the UN on 11 May 1949. In the early years of the state, the Labor Zionist movement led by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion dominated Israeli politics . Immigration to Israel during

14208-570: The entirety of the Gaza Strip and over 90% of the West Bank with Jerusalem as a shared capital. Each side blamed the other for the failure of the talks. In late 2000, after a controversial visit by Sharon to the Temple Mount , the Second Intifada began. Palestinian suicide bombings were a recurrent feature. Some commentators contend that the intifada was pre-planned by Arafat after the collapse of peace talks. Sharon became prime minister in

14356-524: The establishment of the Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, abandoning the standard rhetorical calls, still current at the time, for the "liberation" of all of Palestine. On 16 April 1988, a leader of the PLO, Khalil al-Wazir, nom de guerre Abu Jihad or 'Father of the Struggle' , was assassinated in Tunis by an Israeli commando squad. Israel claimed he was the 'remote-control "main organizer" of

14504-413: The first 13 months, 332 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed. Images of soldiers beating adolescents with clubs then led to the adoption of firing semi-lethal plastic bullets. During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed at least 1,087 Palestinians, of which 240 were children. Among Israelis, 100 civilians and 60 Israeli soldiers were killed, often by militants outside the control of

14652-492: The first year of the Intifada, the total number of casualties in the camps from such bombing totalled 16. Between 1988 and 1992, intra-Palestinian violence claimed the lives of nearly 1,000. By June 1990, according to Benny Morris , "[T]he Intifada seemed to have lost direction. A symptom of the PLO's frustration was the great increase in the killing of suspected collaborators." Roughly 18,000 Palestinians, compromised by Israeli intelligence, are said to have given information to

14800-514: The first year over 1,000 Palestinians had their homes either demolished or blocked up. Settlers also engaged in private attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian refusals to pay taxes were met with confiscations of property and licenses, new car taxes, and heavy fines for any family whose members had been identified as stone-throwers. In the first year in the Gaza Strip alone, 142 Palestinians were killed, while no Israelis died. 77 were shot dead, and 37 died from tear-gas inhalation. 17 died from beatings at

14948-420: The following 4 years, was accompanied by economic integration and increasing Israeli settlements , such that the Jewish settler population in the West Bank alone nearly doubled from 35,000 in 1984 to 64,000 in 1988, reaching 130,000 by the mid-nineties. Referring to the developments, Israeli minister of Economics and Finance, Gad Ya'acobi , stated that "a creeping process of de facto annexation" contributed to

15096-513: The following several centuries, dropping from an estimated 1 million during Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period , and there was a steady process of Arabization and Islamization . The end of the 11th century brought the Crusades , papally -sanctioned incursions of Christian crusaders intent on wresting Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control and establishing crusader states . The Ayyubids pushed back

15244-436: The government of responsibility for failures before and during the war, but public anger forced Prime Minister Golda Meir to resign. In July 1976, an airliner was hijacked in flight from Israel to France by Palestinian guerrillas; Israeli commandos rescued 102 of 106 Israeli hostages . The 1977 Knesset elections marked a major turning point in Israeli political history as Menachem Begin 's Likud party took control from

15392-475: The hand of Israeli police or soldiers. During the whole six-year intifada, the Israeli army killed from 1,087 to 1,204 (or 1,284) Palestinians, 241/332 being children. Tens of thousands were arrested (some sources said 57,000; others said 120,000), 481 were deported while 2,532 had their houses razed to the ground. Between December 1987 and June 1991, 120,000 were injured, 15,000 arrested and 1,882 homes demolished. One journalistic calculation reports that in

15540-560: The important Israeli tourist industry, was notably negative. The success of the Intifada gave Arafat and his followers the confidence they needed to moderate their political programme: At the meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers in mid-November 1988, Arafat won a majority for the historic decision to recognise Israel's legitimacy; to accept all the relevant UN resolutions going back to 29 November 1947; and to adopt

15688-518: The increasing persecution of Jews in 1930s Europe led to the Fifth Aliyah , with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This was a major cause of the Arab revolt of 1936–39 , which was suppressed by British security forces and Zionist militias. Several hundred British security personnel and Jews were killed; 5,032 Arabs were killed, 14,760 were wounded, and 12,622 were detained. An estimated ten percent of

15836-459: The intifada was predominantly led by community councils led by Hanan Ashrawi , Faisal Husseini and Haidar Abdel-Shafi , that promoted independent networks for education (underground schools as the regular schools were closed by the military in reprisal), medical care, and food aid. The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) gained credibility where the Palestinian society complied with

15984-496: The issued communiques. There was a collective commitment to abstain from lethal violence, a notable departure from past practice, which, according to Shalev arose from a calculation that recourse to arms would lead to an Israeli bloodbath and undermine the support they had in Israeli liberal quarters. The PLO and its chairman Yassir Arafat had also decided on an unarmed strategy, in the expectation that negotiations at that time would lead to an agreement with Israel. Pearlman attributes

16132-485: The late 1940s and early 1950s was aided by the Israeli Immigration Department and the non-government sponsored Mossad LeAliyah Bet ( lit. "Institute for Immigration B "). The latter engaged in clandestine operations in countries, particularly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the lives of Jews were in danger and exit was difficult. Mossad LeAliyah Bet was disbanded in 1953. The immigration

16280-469: The late 19th century galvanized Zionism , which sought a Jewish homeland in Palestine and gained British support . After World War I , Britain occupied the region and established Mandatory Palestine in 1920. Increased Jewish immigration in the leadup to the Holocaust and British colonial policy led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Arabs , which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after

16428-457: The latter were often re-designated for the former, so Jews newly arrived from Arab lands generally ended up staying longer in transit camps. During this period, food, clothes and furniture were rationed in what became known as the austerity period . The need to solve the crisis led Ben-Gurion to sign a reparations agreement with West Germany that triggered mass protests by Jews angered at the idea that Israel could accept monetary compensation for

16576-764: The month-long Second Lebanon War . In 2007 the Israeli Air Force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Syria. In 2008, a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel collapsed, resulting in the three-week Gaza War . In what Israel described as a response to over a hundred Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli cities, Israel began an operation in the Gaza Strip in 2012, lasting eight days. Israel started another operation in Gaza following an escalation of rocket attacks by Hamas in July 2014. In May 2021 another round of fighting took place in Gaza and Israel, lasting eleven days. By

16724-412: The non-violent character of the uprising to the movement's internal organization and its capillary outreach to neighborhood committees that ensured that lethal revenge would not be the response even in the face of Israeli state repression. Hamas and Islamic Jihad cooperated with the leadership at the outset, and throughout the first year of the uprising conducted no armed attacks, except for the stabbing of

16872-485: The occupied territories, globally, and in Israel. Most important among the Palestinian and Arab groups was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964, which initially committed itself to "armed struggle as the only way to liberate the homeland". In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Palestinian groups launched attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, including

17020-403: The one hand, and Syria and Lebanon on the other. Arab nationalists led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to recognize Israel and called for its destruction. By 1966 Israeli-Arab relations had deteriorated to the point of battles taking place between Israeli and Arab forces. In May 1967, Egypt massed its army near the border with Israel, expelled UN peacekeepers stationed in

17168-557: The only person executed in Israel by conviction in an Israeli civilian court. In 1963, Israel was engaged in a diplomatic standoff with the United States in relation to the Israeli nuclear programme . Since 1964 Arab countries, concerned over Israeli plans to divert waters of the Jordan River into the coastal plain , had been trying to divert the headwaters to deprive Israel of water resources, provoking tensions between Israel on

17316-539: The other side. Collaborators were threatened with death or ostracism unless they desisted, and if their collaboration with the Occupying Power continued, were executed by special troops such as the "Black Panthers" and "Red Eagles". An estimated 771 (according to Associated Press ) to 942 (according to the IDF) Palestinians were executed on suspicion of collaboration during the span of the Intifada. The Intifada

17464-414: The outbreak. Equally unprecedented was the extent of mass participation in these disturbances: tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children. The Israeli security forces used the full panoply of crowd control measures to try and quell the disturbances: cudgels, nightsticks, tear gas , water cannons, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. But the disturbances only gathered momentum. Soon there

17612-680: The patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible , was given the name after he successfully wrestled with the Angel of the Lord . The earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt (dated to the late 13th century BCE). Early hominin presence in the Levant , where Israel is located, dates back at least 1.5 million years based on

17760-417: The population of Palestine was Jewish. The UK found itself facing a Jewish insurgency over immigration restrictions and continued conflict with the Arab community over limit levels. The Haganah joined Irgun and Lehi in an armed struggle against British rule. The Haganah attempted to bring tens of thousands of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors to Palestine by ship. Most of the ships were intercepted by

17908-486: The principle of a two-state solution . Jordan severed its residual administrative and financial ties to the West Bank in the face of sweeping popular support for the PLO . The failure of the "Iron Fist" policy, Israel's deteriorating international image, Jordan cutting legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, and the U.S.'s recognition of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people forced Rabin to seek an end to

18056-570: The province of Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina . Jews were expelled from the districts surrounding Jerusalem. Nevertheless, there was a continuous small Jewish presence, and Galilee became its religious center. Early Christianity displaced Roman paganism in the 4th century CE, with Constantine embracing and promoting the Christian religion and Theodosius I making it the state religion . A series of laws were passed that discriminated against Jews and Judaism, and Jews were persecuted by both

18204-619: The region in 63 BCE, first taking control of Syria , and then intervening in the Hasmonean civil war . The struggle between pro-Roman and pro- Parthian factions in Judea led to the installation of Herod the Great as a dynastic vassal of Rome . In 6 CE, the area was annexed as the Roman province of Judaea ; tensions with Roman rule led to a series of Jewish–Roman wars , resulting in widespread destruction. The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE) resulted in

18352-440: The repression as necessary to restore 'law and order'. Within days the occupied territories were engulfed in a wave of demonstrations and commercial strikes on an unprecedented scale. Specific elements of the occupation were targeted for attack: military vehicles, Israeli buses and Israeli banks. None of the dozen Israeli settlements were attacked and there were no Israeli fatalities from stone-throwing at cars at this early period of

18500-419: The revolt', and perhaps believed that his death would break the back of the intifada. During the mass demonstrations and mourning in Gaza that followed, two of the main mosques of Gaza were raided by the IDF and worshippers were beaten and tear-gassed. In total between 11 and 15 Palestinians were killed during the demonstrations and riots in Gaza and West Bank that followed al-Wazir's death. In June of that year,

18648-608: The stated objectives of destroying Hamas and freeing hostages. The fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, it has been the deadliest for Palestinians in the entire Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the most significant military engagement in the region since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israel is accused of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people by experts, governments, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organisations during its invasion of

18796-605: The streets) and issuing the Shin Bet list of collaborators. Suicide bombings by Palestinian militants started on 16 April 1993 with the Mehola Junction bombing , carried at the end of the Intifada. The large number of Palestinian casualties provoked international condemnation. In subsequent resolutions, including 607 and 608 , the Security Council demanded Israel cease deportations of Palestinians. In November 1988, Israel

18944-586: The territory was divided between Britain and France under the mandate system , and the British-administered area (including modern Israel) was named Mandatory Palestine . Arab opposition to British rule and Jewish immigration led to the 1920 Palestine riots and the formation of a Jewish militia known as the Haganah as an outgrowth of Hashomer, from which the Irgun and Lehi paramilitaries later split. In 1922,

19092-495: The unrest would collapse proved to be mistaken. On 8 December 1987, an Israeli truck crashed into a row of cars containing Palestinians returning from working in Israel, at the Erez checkpoint . Four Palestinians, three of them residents of the Jabalya refugee camp, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, were killed and seven others seriously injured. The traffic incident

19240-690: The vision of the Return in a more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming ." The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism. The Jewish population of Palestine from the Ottoman rule to the beginning of the Zionist movement, known as the Old Yishuv , comprised a minority and fluctuated in size. During the 16th century, Jewish communities struck roots in

19388-501: The year the Oslo Accords were signed. The intifada began on 9 December 1987 in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli truck driver collided with parked civilian vehicles, killing four Palestinian workers, three of whom were from the refugee camp. Palestinians charged that the collision was a deliberate response for the killing of an Israeli in Gaza days earlier. Israel denied that the crash, which came at time of heightened tensions,

19536-540: Was a unified Palestine under Arab rule. In February 1947, the British referred the Palestine issue to the newly formed United Nations . On 15 May 1947, the UN General Assembly resolved that a Special Committee be created "to prepare ... a report on the question of Palestine". The Report of the Committee proposed a plan to replace the British Mandate with "an independent Arab State, an independent Jewish State, and

19684-517: Was condemned by a large majority of the UN General Assembly for its actions against the intifada. The resolution was repeated in the following years. On 17 February 1989, the UN Security Council drafted a resolution condemning Israel for disregarding Security Council resolutions, as well as for not complying with the fourth Geneva Convention . The United States, put a veto on a draft resolution which would have strongly deplored it. On 9 June,

19832-403: Was coupled with an expansion of a Palestinian university system catering to people from refugee camps, villages, and small towns, generating a new Palestinian elite from a lower social strata that was more activistic and confrontational with Israel. According to Israeli historian and diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami in his book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace , the Intifada was also a rebellion against

19980-431: Was damaged by the continuation of Israeli settlements and checkpoints , and the deterioration of economic conditions. Israeli public support for the Accords waned after Palestinian suicide attacks . In November 1995, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir , a far-right Jew who opposed the Accords. During Benjamin Netanyahu's premiership at the end of the 1990s, Israel agreed to withdraw from Hebron , though this

20128-411: Was defined as recovering the Palestinian right of return and right of self-determination "on the whole of the soil of their homeland". This prompted several of the more militant Palestinian factions to leave the PLO in protest and form the Rejectionist Front. They were mostly far-left organizations fearing a Palestinian-Israeli rapprochement. The Front was never an operative organization, but rather

20276-519: Was essentially that proposed in the report of 3 September. The Jewish Agency, the recognized representative of the Jewish community, accepted the plan, which assigned 55–56% of Mandatory Palestine to the Jews. At the time, the Jews were about a third of the population and owned around 6–7% of the land. Arabs constituted the majority and owned about 20% of the land, with the remainder held by the Mandate authorities or foreign landowners. The Arab League and Arab Higher Committee of Palestine rejected it on

20424-409: Was established as the first planned Jewish town in 1909. Jewish armed militias emerged during this period, the first being Bar-Giora in 1907. Two years later, the larger Hashomer organization was founded as its replacement. Chaim Weizmann's efforts to garner British support for the Zionist movement eventually secured the Balfour Declaration of 1917, stating Britain's support for the creation of

20572-441: Was in 1988, when the PLO recognized Israel, and most of the left-wing of the PLO again left, backed by Syria . Though the rift initially caused a popular breakthrough for the members of the Rejectionist Front, in the long run it only marginalized them and caused them to be perceived as lackeys of the Arab states. The fact that it was more of an alignment against Yasser Arafat rather than for anything in particular didn't help, as

20720-825: Was in accordance with the One Million Plan . Some immigrants held Zionist beliefs or came for the promise of a better life, while others moved to escape persecution or were expelled from their homes. An influx of Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab and Muslim countries to Israel during the first three years increased the number of Jews from 700,000 to 1,400,000. By 1958, the population had risen to two million. Between 1948 and 1970, approximately 1,150,000 Jewish refugees relocated to Israel. Some immigrants arrived as refugees and were housed in temporary camps known as ma'abarot ; by 1952, over 200,000 people were living in these tent cities. Jews of European background were often treated more favorably than Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries—housing units reserved for

20868-425: Was intentional or coordinated. The Palestinian response was characterized by protests, civil disobedience, and violence. There was graffiti , barricading , and widespread throwing of stones and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli army and its infrastructure within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These contrasted with civil efforts including general strikes, boycotts of Israeli Civil Administration institutions in

21016-406: Was never ratified or implemented, and he signed the Wye River Memorandum , giving greater control to the PNA. Ehud Barak , elected prime minister in 1999, withdrew forces from southern Lebanon and conducted negotiations with PNA Chairman Yasser Arafat and U.S. President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit . Barak offered a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state , including

21164-453: Was not initiated by any single individual or organization. Local leadership came from groups and organizations affiliated with the PLO that operated within the Occupied Territories; Fatah , the Popular Front , the Democratic Front and the Palestine Communist Party . The PLO's rivals in this activity were the Islamic organizations, Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as local leadership in cities such as Beit Sahour and Bethlehem . However,

21312-408: Was recognized as an occasion where the Palestinians acted cohesively and independently of their leadership or assistance of neighbouring Arab states. The Intifada broke the image of Jerusalem as a united Israeli city. There was unprecedented international coverage, and the Israeli response was criticized in media outlets and international fora. The impact on the Israeli services sector, including

21460-564: Was suggested by David Ben-Gurion and passed by a vote of 6–3. In the early weeks after establishment, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of the Israeli state. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively. The name Israel (Hebrew: Yīsrāʾēl ; Septuagint Ancient Greek : Ἰσραήλ , Israēl , " El (God) persists/rules", though after Hosea 12:4 often interpreted as "struggle with God") refers to

21608-486: Was suppressed; Muhammad Ali's army retreated and Ottoman rule was restored with British support in 1840. The Tanzimat reforms were implemented across the Ottoman Empire. The first wave of modern Jewish migration to Ottoman-ruled Palestine , known as the First Aliyah , began in 1881, as Jews fled pogroms in Eastern Europe. The 1882 May Laws increased economic discrimination against Jews, and restricted where they could live. In response, political Zionism took form,

21756-406: Was widespread rock-throwing , road-blocking and tire burning throughout the territories. By 12 December, six Palestinians had died and 30 had been injured in the violence. The next day, rioters threw a gasoline bomb at the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem though no one was hurt. The Israeli police and military response also led to a number of injuries and deaths. The IDF killed many Palestinians at

21904-444: Was witnessed by hundreds of Palestinian labourers returning home from work. The funerals, attended by 10,000 people from the camp that evening, quickly led to a large demonstration. Rumours swept the camp that the incident was an act of intentional retaliation for the stabbing to death of an Israeli businessman, killed while shopping in Gaza two days earlier. The next day, December 9, Palestinian teenagers threw stones and, according to

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