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The recent history of the Palestinian people, particularly from the 1940s onward, has been marked by confrontations, segregation, overcrowded living conditions and massive geographic displacements throughout the Middle East.
According to international law, Palestine is a 27,000 square-kilometre region situated west of the Jordan River, which the League of Nations gave to Great Britain to administer under "Mandate" in 1918. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, had promised the Zionist movement that a "Jewish national homeland" would be established in Palestine. But his proposal for partitioning the territory –into two separate Jewish and Arab states- was rejected by the Arabs. After the end of World War II, Great Britain turned the problem over to the newly formed United Nations (UN).
The occupation
In 1947, the UN General Assembly approved a new Partition Plan. At that time there were 749,000 Arabs and 9,250 Jews in the territory proposed for the Arab state, while 497,000 Arabs and 498,000 Jews were living in the area assigned to the future Jewish state.
To force Palestinians to leave their lands, some Zionist groups resorted to terrorism. On 9 April 1948, forces of the organization Irgun, under the command of Menahem Begin, penetrated the village of Deir Yassin, killing 254 civilians. Terror spread over the population and led to the exodus of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
On 14 May 1948, Israel unilaterally declared itself an independent nation, and came out of the war with the neighboring Arab countries with a larger territory than the one proposed by the United Nations. More than half of the Palestinian population had fled their homes. Most of them lived as refugees on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which came under Egyptian government, but also in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, while few of them went to Iraq and Egypt.
For the United Nations and, therefore, for international law, Palestinians were not a people. Instead they were seen merely as refugees, a "problem" that needed to be solved.
Any political decisions concerning the Palestinian cause were adopted by the Arab governments, at least until 1964, when the Palestine National Council, gathering for the first time in Jerusalem, founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Palestinian groups that were already operating underground, such as Al Fatah, were wary of this organization because it was backed by Arab governments and focused on diplomatic actions. These groups were convinced that the territory would only be recovered through military operations. On 1 January 1965 the first armed operation took place in Israel. Fighting intensified over the following months, leading up to the Seven Day War, which erupted in 1967. Israel forces occupied all of Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and the Palestine territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The defeat of regular Arab forces strengthened the conviction that guerrilla warfare was the only effective means for liberation. In March 1968, following the retreat of Israeli forces in the town of Al Karameh, armed groups joined the PLO, obtaining the support of the Arab governments. In February 1969, Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the Organization.
The program of the PLO called for "the establishment of a secular and independent state in the whole of the Palestinian territory, where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live in peace, enjoying the same rights and duties." This necessarily implied the end of the present state of Israel. Without giving up this ultimate goal, however, the PLO gradually came to accept the “temporary solution” of setting up an independent Palestinian state “in any part of the territory that might be liberated by armed force, or from which Israel might withdraw."
The resistance
Thirty years later, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is still a problem awaiting solution. Several peace agreements have failed since then, including the Camp David (1980), Madrid (1991) and Oslo (1993) agreements, while the number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has multiplied, more and more Palestinian lands have been taken over, and tension has increased in the occupied territories. Repeated votes against such measures at the United Nations proved totally ineffective in practice, as the US veto in the Security Council has made it impossible to this day to adopt any type of sanctions against Israel.
Isaac Rabin, the prime minister from the Labour Party and the main peace interlocutor of Arafat in the Oslo agreement, was assassinated by an Israeli fundamentalist in 1995. His assassination lead to the election of the Likud prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who interrupted the peace process and made a radical deviation in the Israeli position vis-ŕ-vis the Palestinian state.
In January 1996, Arafat was elected President of the Palestinian Authority with 87% of the votes. The tension in the region never died down, although there were some periods of relative calm, interrupted by outbreaks of violence. But towards the year 2000, the issue of Jerusalem, a holy city for both Muslims and Jews, became the greatest obstacle to negotiations, as both sides intended to establish their capital in this city. In September of that year, the second Intifada (or Palestinian uprising) was launched. A few months later, former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s victory in the Israeli elections of February 2001 was seen as yet another blow to the injured peace process.
Palestine resistance to the occupation was met with selective killing of alleged terrorists by the Israeli army, who expanded its military offensive by attacking Palestinian villages and townships. This resulted in more suicide attacks against Israeli targets.
Recent scenario
In December 2001, Sharon severed all ties with Arafat. The new Israeli strategy was based on the non-acknowledgment of the Palestine leader as a valid interlocutor, and the breakup truncated any attempts at negotiation. Arafat was pressured into creating the office of prime minister, to whom he also entrusted the appointment of a new cabinet.
In late 2002, the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations presented a new peace plan known as the ‘Road Map’, which included the establishment of a Palestine state by the year 2005. The plan was accepted by both sides, although the Israeli government raised 14 objections on the proposed text. Israel did not diminish its aggressions on the Palestinian population and proceeded to build a security fence with the aim of stopping any Palestinian extremists from attempting to enter Israel. The international community condemned the construction of this wall, but Sharon’s government went ahead with its plans.
The same condemnation –with the explicit exception of United States- received the assassination of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the radical group Hamas. The action, held on 22 March 2004 in Gaza, was the 327th extrajudicial execution of a Palestinian by Israel, including 160 “collateral victims”.
The death of historical leader Yasser Arafat on 11 November 2004 and the triumph of Hamas in January 2006 parliamentary elections, radically changed the Palestinian political scenario.
In March of the same year, Israel’s elections confirmed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – successor of seriously ill Ariel Sharon – in his post. His government has announced it will continue withdrawals of Jewish settlements from Gaza and has expressed its willingness to hold peace talks with Palestinians. However, it would act unilaterally if necessary, with the aim of establishing permanent borders for Israel by the year 2010.
Based on information by the World Guide.
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