The question of who took the land "first" is complex, as both peoples have ancient roots, but modern statehood saw significant shifts. Biblical Israel existed over 3,000 years ago. However, the modern State of Israel was established in 1948, leading to the displacement of Palestinians (the Nakba) and control over most of the land, followed by further occupation in 1967.
Taking stock. By more than 1,000 years, “Israel” predates “Palestine.” The land then became home primarily to an Arab population, again for more than a millennium. Both Jews and Arabs thus have a legitimate claim to the land. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen myriad wrongs and brutalities on both sides.
Why did Israel take over Palestine in the first place?
The conflict has its origins in the rise of Zionism in the late 19th century in Europe, a movement which aimed to establish a Jewish state through the colonization of Palestine, synchronously with the first arrival of Jewish settlers to Ottoman Palestine in 1882.
Israel is the world's only Jewish state, located just east of the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinians, the Arab population that hails from the land Israel now controls, refer to the territory as Palestine, and want to establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land.
In an effort to win the support of Jewish communities in both Allied countries like the United States, and enemy countries like Austria Hungary, the UK foreign secretary signed the Balfour Declaration. Vowing to set up a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Under the leadership of Theodor Herzl, the organization considered areas in East Africa and Argentina as sites for the Jewish national home. However, it finally decided on Palestine, claiming it as a national home on the basis of ancient Jewish links with the holy land.
The total land area of all of Palestine west of the Jordan River under the British Mandate was some 26 million dunams. The remaining five-sevenths of the cultivable land was owned by Arabs or was administered by the British and previously by the Ottomans as state or dead lands.
Though its occupation is illegal, Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: historic rights stemming from the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, both internal and external; and the area's symbolic value for Jews.
In fact, historically, there was never an independent country named Palestine. There was for a time a Roman province named Palestine, when the Romans bestowed that name in the second century A.D. on an area that was previously called Judea, and which had been sovereign for a time.
In May of that year, according to Nathan Thrall, Israel had offered Palestinians 66% of the West Bank, with 17% annexed to Israel, and a further 17% not annexed but under Israeli control, and no compensating swap of Israeli territory.
The military defeats of the Jews in Judaea in 70 CE and again in 135 CE, with large numbers of Jewish captives from Judea sold into slavery and an increase in voluntary Jewish emigration from Judea as a result of the wars, meant a drop in Palestine's Jewish population was balanced by a rise in diaspora numbers.
Palestinians primarily want an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of their own independent state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem as its capital, but views vary, with some favoring a one-state solution for equal rights or the return of all historic Palestine, all while seeking self-determination, justice, and an end to the blockade and settlements. The two-state solution (an independent Palestine alongside Israel) is a common goal, though support fluctuates, with many desiring full liberation and an end to the occupation as the core objective.
Who started the original conflict between Israel and Palestine?
Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and armed forces.
From a purely historical perspective, “Israel” predates “Palestine” by more than a millennium. But, with the Jewish people then dispersed from their homeland, “Palestine” became home to a substantial Arab population, again for more than a millennium.
This country received the name of Palestine, from the Philistines, who dwelt on the sea coast: it was called Judea, from Judah: and is termed the Holy Land, being the country where Jesus Christ was born, preached his holy doctrines, confirmed them by miracles, and laid down his life for mankind.
Israel occupied much of Palestine in 1948 following the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of the State of Israel, a conflict that escalated from a civil war after the UN's 1947 Partition Plan and led to the Arab-Israeli War as neighboring Arab states invaded, with Zionist forces conquering about 78% of the territory, displacing over 700,000 Palestinians (the Nakba), and establishing borders with Egypt controlling Gaza and Jordan taking the West Bank.
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.
Historically part of the Palestine region, the area was controlled since the 16th century by the Ottoman Empire; in 1906, the Ottomans and the British Empire set the region's international border with Egypt.
The region of Palestine, also known as historic Palestine or land of Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It generally encompasses the area inhabited by the modern states of Israel and Palestine, though over history it has also been used to refer to an area both smaller and larger.
In the 1930s, most of the land was bought from landowners. Of the land that the Jews bought, 52.6% were bought from non-Palestinian landowners, 24.6% from Palestinian landowners, 13.4% from government, churches, and foreign companies, and only 9.4% from fellaheen (farmers).
The Jewish people have a very ancient history in the land known both as Palestine and the Land of Israel. The Jewish claim to indigeneity is based on a three-thousand-year-old continuous history and the status of the land since ancient times as the focus of Jewish life and yearning.
The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs.
King David purchased Mount Moriah for 50 shekels of silver. King Solomon built the holy Temple in Jerusalem, known as the First Temple. The Babylonians conquered Israel about 2600 years ago (586 BCE) and destroyed the First Temple. Most of the Jewish population was exiled to Babylon, but some Jews remained.
The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees to the region.
