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More than 100 years ago, on November 2, 1917, the then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a letter addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish community.
The letter is short, just 67 words, but its content sets off a conflict that continues a century later. It committed the British government to "establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people" and to "facilitating the achievement of this object". The letter is known as the Balfour Declaration .
In essence: a European power promised Rothschild a state in which the local inhabitants, the Palestinians, made up more than 90% of the population.
The Balfour Declaration signed by then British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour and addressed to Rothschild. Source: Times of Israel
Former British Prime Minister Theresa May described the Balfour Declaration as "one of the most important letters in history". Meanwhile, the British government recently said that "creating a homeland for the Jewish people in the land with which they have such strong historical and religious ties is the right and moral thing to do, especially against the backdrop of centuries of persecution."
After the end of World War I, Britain was given a mandate to rule Palestine from 1923, which lasted until 1948. During this period, the British facilitated mass Jewish immigration, many of the new residents fleeing Nazism in Europe. Palestinians begin protests and strikes, alarmed by the changing demographics of their country and the British confiscation of their lands to hand over to Jewish settlers.
The Arab Revolt
Tensions escalated in the Arab Revolt, which lasted from 1936 to 1939. In April 1936, the newly formed Arab National Committee called on Palestinians to go on a general strike, withhold tax payments, and boycott Jewish products in protest against British colonialism and increasing Jewish immigration .
The six-month strike was brutally suppressed by the British, who began mass arrests and demolished Palestinian homes as punishment, a practice Israel continues to use against Palestinians today.
The second phase of the rebellion began in late 1937 and was led by the Palestinian peasant resistance movement against British forces and colonialism.
By the second half of 1939, Britain had assembled 30,000 troops in Palestine. Villages were bombed from the air, curfews were imposed, homes were demolished, and administrative arrests and killings were widespread.
The British cooperated with the Jewish settler community and formed armed groups and a British-led "counter-insurgency force" of Jewish fighters called Special Night Squads.
Within the Yishuv (Hebrew - settlement) - the community of settlers before the declaration of the state of Israel, weapons were secretly imported and weapons factories were established to expand the "Haganah" - the Jewish paramilitary formation that later became the core of the Israeli army.
During these three years of rebellion, 5,000 Palestinians were killed, 15,000 to 20,000 were injured, and 5,600 were imprisoned.
The UN plan to partition Palestine
By 1947, the Jewish population had grown to 33% of all the inhabitants of Palestine, but owned only 6% of the land.
The United Nations passes Resolution 181, which calls for the partition of Palestine into two: an Arab and a Jewish state.
Palestinians reject the plan because it allocates more than half - about 56 percent - of Palestine to the Jewish state, including most of the fertile Mediterranean coastal region.
At the time, Palestinians owned 94% of historic Palestine and made up 67% of its population.
The Nakba of 1948 or the ethnic cleansing of Palestine
Even before the British Mandate expired on May 14, 1948, settler paramilitaries were already beginning a military operation to destroy Palestinian towns and villages in order to expand the borders of the future state to be born.
In April 1948, more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children were killed in the village of Deir Yassin on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
This set the tone for the rest of the operation, and from 1947 to 1949, more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed in what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe" in Arabic.
An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed.
Settlers conquer 78% of historic Palestine. The remaining 22% is the territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
An estimated 750,000 Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes.
Today, their descendants live as 6 million refugees in 58 camps in Palestine and in neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.
On May 15, 1948, Israel announced its creation.
The next day, the first Arab-Israeli war began and the fighting ended in January 1949 after a cease-fire between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
In December 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The years after the Nakba
At least 150,000 Palestinians remain in the newly created state of Israel and live under strict control for almost 20 years before being granted Israeli citizenship.
Egypt took over the Gaza Strip, and in 1950 Jordan took over administrative control over the West Bank.
In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established, and a year later the Fatah political party was established.
Naxa or the Six Day War
On June 5, 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historic Palestine, including the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab armies.
For some Palestinians, this leads to a second forced displacement, or Naqsa, which means "failure" in Arabic.
In December 1967, the Marxist-Leninist People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine was established. Over the next decade, a series of attacks and hijackings by left-wing groups drew world attention to the plight of the Palestinians.
The construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip begins. A two-tier system has been established with Jewish settlers granting all the rights and privileges of Israeli citizens, while Palestinians must live under a military occupation that discriminates against them and prohibits any form of political or civil expression.
The First Intifada (1987-1993)
The first Palestinian intifada broke out in the Gaza Strip in December 1987 after four Palestinians were killed when an Israeli truck collided with two vans carrying Palestinian workers.
Protests spread quickly across the West Bank, with young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli army tanks and soldiers.
It also led to the creation of the Hamas movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which engaged in armed resistance against Israel.
The Israeli military's harsh response was driven by the "Break Their Bones" policy advocated by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It includes summary killings, closing universities, deporting activists and demolishing homes.
The intifada is being waged primarily by young people and led by the United National Leadership of the Uprising, a coalition of Palestinian political factions committed to establishing Palestinian independence.
In 1988, the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.
The intifada is characterized by popular mobilization, mass protests, civil disobedience, well-organized strikes and communal cooperatives.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, 1,070 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during the Intifada, including 237 children. More than 175,000 Palestinians have been arrested.
The intifada also prompted the international community to seek a solution to the conflict.
The Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority
The intifada ended with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the formation of the Palestinian Authority, an interim government granted limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The PLO recognizes Israel on the basis of the so-called two-state solution and effectively signed agreements that gave Israel control over 60% of the West Bank and much of the territory's land and water resources.
The Palestinian Authority is supposed to make way for the first elected Palestinian government to rule an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem, but that never happens.
Critics of the Palestinian Authority (PLO) view it as a "corrupt subcontractor of the Israeli occupation" that cooperates closely with the Israeli military in suppressing dissent and political activity against Israel.
In 1995, Israel built an electronic fence and a concrete wall around the Gaza Strip, cutting off interaction between the divided Palestinian territories.
The second intifada
The Second Intifada began on September 28, 2000, when Likud opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound with thousands of security forces stationed in and around Jerusalem's Old City.
Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces kill five Palestinians and injure 200 in two days.
The incident sparks a massive armed uprising. During the Intifada, Israel inflicted unprecedented damage on the Palestinian economy and infrastructure.
Israel is reoccupying PA-ruled areas and beginning construction of a separation wall that, along with rampant settlement construction, is destroying Palestinian livelihoods and communities.
The settlements are illegal under international law, but over the years hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved into colonies built on newly acquired Palestinian land. Space for Palestinians is shrinking as settler-only roads and infrastructure carve up the occupied West Bank.
At the time the Oslo Accords were signed, just over 110,000 Jewish settlers lived in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Today, the figure is more than 700,000 living on more than 390 square miles of land that Palestinians used to live on.
Palestinian partition and the blockade of Gaza
PLO leader Yasser Arafat died in 2004, and a year later the second intifada ended, Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were dismantled, and Israeli soldiers and 9,000 settlers left the enclave.
A year later, Palestinians voted for the first time in general elections.
Hamas wins majority. However, a months-long civil war broke out between Fatah and Hamas that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians.
Hamas is driving Fatah out of the Gaza Strip and Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority, is resuming control of parts of the West Bank.
In June 2007, Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip, accusing Hamas of terrorism.
The wars in the Gaza Strip
Israel has launched four sustained military assaults on Gaza: in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including many children , and tens of thousands of homes, schools and office buildings have been destroyed.
Reconstruction is almost impossible because the siege prevents construction materials, such as steel and cement, from reaching Gaza.
The 2008 attack involved the use of internationally banned weapons such as white phosphorus .
In 2014, over 50 days, Israel killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians and nearly 500 children.
During the offensive , dubbed Operation Protective Edge by the Israelis, some 11,000 Palestinians were injured, 20,000 homes were destroyed and half a million people were displaced.
According to UN data, from 2008 to 2020, Palestinians were killed at 5,590, and Israelis killed at 251.
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