Around 4000 BC, the Canaanites, a Semitic people from the inner Arabian peninsula, settled in the land which became known as Canaan and later, Palestine. The Jebusites, one of the Canaanite peoples, built a settlement that they called Urusalim (Jerusalem), meaning ‘the city of peace’.

The Egyptian Pharaohs occupied part of Canaan in 3200 BC, building fortresses to protect their trade routes, but the country kept its independence. Around 2000 BC, another Semitic people, Abraham's Hebrews, passed through Palestine on their way south. Seven centuries later, twelve Hebrew tribes returned from Egypt, following Moses. There was fierce fighting over possession of

the land. The Bible records that ‘The sons of Judah were unable to exterminate the Jebusites that dwell in Jerusalem’ (Joshua 15, 63).

Four centuries later, Isaac's son David managed to defeat the Jebusites and unite the Jewish nation. After the death of his son Solomon the Hebrews split into two states, Israel and Judah. These later fell into the hands of the Assyrians, in 721 BC, and Chaldeans, in 587 BC. It was in 587 that Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and took the Jews into captivity in Babylon.

In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, but the territory returned to the Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies soon after his death. The country was subdued by the Seleucids from Syria before a rebellion, headed by Judas Maccabeus, restored the Jewish state in 67 BC.

In 63 BC, the Roman Empire seized Jerusalem, placing the city under its domination. Maccabeans, Zealots and other Jewish tribes resisted the invaders but were fiercely subdued. Solomon's temple was demolished around 70 AD, and the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem around 135 AD.

The Romans gave Palestine its present name, and Roman domination was followed by that of the Byzantine Empire (the Roman Empire in the East), which lasted until 611 when the province was invaded by the Persians. The Arabs, a Semitic people from the inner peninsula, conquered Palestine in 634, and, according to legend, it was in Jerusalem that the prophet Muhammad rose to the heavens. As a result, the city became a holy place for all three monotheistic religions.

The Islamic faith and the Arabic language united all the Semitic peoples except for the Jews. With short intervals of partial domination by the Christian Crusaders and the Mongols in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, Palestine had Arab rulers for almost 1,000 years and Islamic governments for 15 centuries.

In 1516, Jerusalem was conquered by the Ottoman Empire which maintained power until the end of World War I. During this conflict, the British promised Shereef Hussein the independence of the Arab lands in exchange for his cooperation in the struggle against the Turks. At the same time, in 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour promised the Zionist Movement the establishment of a ‘Jewish National Homeland’ in Palestine.

Britain had no power at all over the area, either de facto or de jure, but it soon obtained this right by defeating the Turks, with the help of Arab allies, with a League of Nations mandate in 1922. Massive immigration raised the Jewish population of Palestine from 50,000 at the beginning of the century to 300,000 prior to World War II (see Israel).

The Palestinians staged a general strike in April 1936 in protest against this immigration, which they saw as a threat to their rights. The British put forward a plan for the partition of Palestine into three states: Jewish in the north, Arab in the south, and a third section under British administration in the Jerusalem-Jaffa (Tel Aviv) corridor. The Arabs rejected the plan and rebellion broke out, lasting until 1939, when London gave up the idea and set limits to immigration.

Once World War II was over, Britain handed the problem over to the newly-established United Nations.

When the UN General Assembly approved a new partition plan (1947) 749,000 Arabs and 9,250 Jews lived in the territory where the Arab State would be set up, while 497,000 Arabs and 498,000 Jews lived in the part which was to become the Jewish state.

To drive the Palestinians from their land, a detachment of the Irgun organization commanded by Menachem Begin raided the village of Deir Yasin on April 9 1948, killing 254 civilians. 10,000 terrified Palestinians left the country.

On May 14 1948, Israel unilaterally proclaimed itself an independent country. Neighboring Arab armies immediately attacked, but were unable to prevent the consolidation of the Jewish State. On the contrary, the latter emerged from the 1949 war with a land area larger than that proposed by the United Nations.

More than half of Palestine's inhabitants had abandoned their homes: most of them lived as refugees on the West Bank, a territory which had been annexed by the Hashemite kingdom of Transjordan, and in the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian administration.

In the eyes of the United Nations and therefore of international law, the Palestinians were not a people but simply refugees, a ‘problem’ to be solved.

Political decisions about the Palestinian cause were left entirely in the hands of the Arab governments, who even had the right to appoint the Palestinian representative to the Arab League. At the 1964 Arab summit, Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, asked the League to take on the task of forging a united Palestinian organization.

In Jerusalem, on May 27, the Palestine National Council met for the first time. There were 422 participants, including personalities, business leaders, representatives of the refugee camps, the trade-union organizations, and the young people's and women's groups; they founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Palestinian groups already operating secretly, such as Al Fatah, were wary of this Arab-promoted organization as they distrusted its emphasis on using diplomatic channels for its struggle. They were convinced that their land could only be recovered by military force.

On January 1 1965, the first armed operation took place in Israel. The attacks intensified during the following months, until the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967, when Israel occupied all of Jerusalem, Syria's Golan Heights, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The defeat of the regular Arab armies strengthened the conviction that guerrilla warfare was the only path.

In March 1968, during a battle in the village of Al-Karameh, Palestinians forced the Israelis to withdraw. The event passed into folk history as the first victory of the Palestinian force.

With their prestige thus restored, the various armed groups joined the PLO and obtained the support of the Arab governments. In February 1969, Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the organization.

The growing political and military strength of the Palestinians was seen as a threat by King Hussein of Jordan, who had acted as their representative and spokesman. Tension mounted between the King and the Palestinians eventually reaching explosive proportions. In September 1970, after much bloody fighting, the PLO was expelled from Jordan to set up its headquarters in Beirut.

This new exile reduced the possibility of armed attacks on targets inside Israel, and new radical groups such as ‘Black September’ directed their efforts towards Israeli institutions and businesses in Europe and other parts of the world. Palestinians, until then regarded by world opinion purely as refugees, quickly came to be identified by some as terrorists.

PLO leaders promptly realized the need to change their tactics and, without abandoning armed struggle, launched a large-scale diplomatic offensive, starting to devote much of their energy to consolidating Palestinian unity and identity. The Algiers Conference of Non-Aligned Countries (1973) identified the Palestine problem, and not Arab-Israeli rivalry, as the key to the conflict in the Middle East for the first time.

In 1974, an Arab League summit conference recognized the PLO as ‘the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’. In October of the same year the PLO was granted observer status in the UN General Assembly, which recognized the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and independence, and condemned Zionism as ‘a form of racism’.

The PLO program aimed to set up ‘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, the PLO has gradually come to accept the ‘temporary solution’ of setting up an

independent Palestinian state ‘in any part of the territory that might be liberated by force of arms, or from which Israel may withdraw’.

In 1980, the Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed a peace accord at Camp David, with US mediation. Shortly afterwards, Begin began officially to annex the Arab part of Jerusalem, proclaiming it the ‘sole and indivisible capital’ of Israel. Jewish settlements on the West Bank multiplied, using Palestinian lands and increasing tension in the occupied territories. Successive United Nations votes against these measures, or for any action against Israel, were stripped of any practical value by the US using its veto in the Security Council.

In July 1982, in an attempted ‘final settlement’ of the Palestine issue, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon. The intention, as it later became clear, was to destroy the PLO’s military structure, capture the greatest possible number of its leaders and combatants, annex

the southern part of Lebanon and set up a puppet government in Beirut. Surrounded in Beirut, the Palestinian forces only agreed to withdraw after receiving guarantees of protection for civilians under a French-Italian-North American international peace-keeping force.

The massacres that took place at the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila by the Southern Lebanese Army under orders from Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, showed the ineffectiveness of international protection, but the PLO managed to transform what seemed a final defeat into a political and diplomatic victory. The headquarters of the organization were moved to Tunis and Yasser Arafat toured Europe receiving the honors due a head of state in various countries, most notably in the Vatican.

The PLO quietly initiated talks with Israeli leaders receptive to a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. With the invasion of Lebanon, small but active peace groups emerged in Israel, demanding the initiation of a dialogue with the PLO. Palestinian radicals questioned these overtures, breaking with Yasser Arafats policies. This division of the PLO put its factions at odds with each other, sometimes causing violent confrontations.

In 1987, after several years of internal difficulties, the Palestine National Council met in Algiers with representatives from all Palestinian organizations, except those groups that favored direct action, and the internal structure of the PLO was rebuilt.

The official answer to the Arab protests was to increase the repression. But unlike what had happened on other occasions, this time the military intervention only managed to increase the number of women, elderly people and children taking part in the demonstrations. The more civilian casualties there were, the greater the hatred grew and the more demonstrations, strikes, and closures occurred. Funerals transformed into acts of open political defiance. This marked the beginning of the intifada or rebellion.


During the first few months of 1988 many Palestinians with Israeli citizenship participated in the strikes called by the so-called ‘United Leadership of the Popular Uprising in the Occupied Territories’. This was the first instance of their joint political expression with Palestinians of the occupied territories.

In July 1988, King Hussein of Jordan announced that all economic and political links were being broken with the inhabitants of the West Bank. From that moment on, the PLO assumed sole responsibility for the territory's people.

At a meeting in Algeria on November 15 1988, the Palestine National Council proclaimed an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories, citing Jerusalem as its capital. It also approved UN resolutions 181 and 242, which in effect meant accepting Israel's right to exist. Within the next 10 days, 54 countries around the world recognized the new state.

Arafat, elected president, was received in Geneva by the UN General Assembly, which had called a special session in order to hear him. The Palestinian leader repudiated terrorism, accepted the existence of Israel and asked that international forces be sent to the occupied territories. As a result of his speech, US president Ronald Reagan decided to initiate talks with the PLO.

When tensions began between Iraq and Kuwait in the second half of 1990, Arafat tried unsuccessfully to start negotiations between the countries. After the invasion, the Palestinian position seemed to strengthen when a parallel could be drawn between Kuwait and Palestine: if Iraq could be forced to submit to UN resolutions, then so could Israel.

When the war broke out, it was clear that the Palestine people were pro-Iraqi. This support deprived the PLO of the financial support of the rich Gulf emirates, who opposed the Iraqi regime.

In September 1991, in the closing session of the Palestine National Council, Yasser Arafat was confirmed as President of Palestine and of the PLO. The body accepted the resignation of Abu Abbas, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front. Abbas had been given a life sentence in absentia by an Italian tribunal, for the hijacking of the Achille Lauro liner in 1985.

Between October 30 and November 4 1991, the first Peace Conference for the Middle East was held in Madrid, with support from the US and the former USSR. The Arab delegations unanimously demanded that the negotiations should be based on resolutions 242 and 338 of the UN Security Council. These resolutions forbade the acquisition of territories by force and recommended the granting of territories in exchange for peace agreements.

The Conference for the Middle East continued in Washington in December. No progress was made as far as the Palestinian issue was concerned, as Israel reaffirmed the validity of its own interpretations of the UN resolutions. At the end of the Conference, the Israeli delegation left satisfied because UN resolution 3379, defining Zionism as a form of racism, had been eliminated.

Following the Israeli elections of June 1992, the Labor leader and new prime minister Yitzak Rabin froze the settlement of new colonies in the Gaza strip and on the West Bank. However, it was difficult to restart negotiations that had been interrupted by the expulsion of 415 Palestinians from the Hamas group to Lebanon.

Secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel, with the active participation of Norwegian diplomats, resulted in mutual recognition in September 1993. The Declaration of Principles on the autonomy of the occupied territories granted limited autonomy to Palestinians in the Gaza strip and the city of Jericho in the West Bank. This autonomy was to be extended to the rest of the West Bank and, five years later, a definite status was to be negotiated for the occupied territories and the part of Jerusalem occupied by Israel since 1967.

Hamas and Hizbullah on the Palestinian side, as well as settlers in the occupied territories and far-right parties on the Israeli side, opposed the agreement. In a climate of hostility, Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho anticipated for December 13 was postponed.

In May, 1994 Rabin and Arafat signed the ‘Gaza and Jericho first’ autonomy agreement, while Israeli withdrawal continued, enabling the return of several contingents of the Palestinian Liberation Army exiled in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Jordan or Algeria.

Arafat arrived in Gaza in July and took office as head of the new Palestine National Authority's Executive Council. The struggle between the PLO leader and his fundamentalist rivals became increasingly violent.

Once again, Gaza was on the brink of civil war in April 1995 when an explosion destroyed a building killing 7 people, including Kamal Kaheil, one of the leaders of the Ezzedin-El-Kassam brigades. In retaliation, suicide attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad caused the death of 7 Israeli soldiers and a US tourist, leaving 40 wounded. The Jihad's military wing said the attempt was a ‘heroic suicide operation’ and a ‘gift for the soul of the criminal massacre's martyrs’ - referring to the building explosion.

The tension continued, as did negotiations between Islamic fundamentalists and PLO leaders. Among other things, Arafat wanted Hamas to participate in the Palestinian general elections of January 1996, which would have legitimized his leadership. After negotiations, the fundamentalists decided to boycott the elections. Arafat was elected president with 87 per cent of the vote and government candidates won 66 out of the 88 seats.

Right-wing Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu's election as Israeli Prime Minister (see Israel) in May 1996 aggravated tension between the countries.

The delicate negotiations which finally brought about the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the city of Hebron gave new support to the government led by Yasser Arafat. In January 1997, the Palestinian President highlighted again that the subject of Jerusalem's status was still pending and that, together with the formation of the Palestinian state, both were the next issues of the political agenda.

The Israeli decision to build a new settlement in the Har Homa hills, within the Palestinian sector in Jerusalem, was firmly rejected by the Palestine National Authority (PNA) and Western diplomats. The work started in March 1997, and led to fierce confrontations between Palestinians and the army, stalling the peace process. At the same time, the Israeli Government announced that it was going to return only 2 per cent of the West Bank to the PNA. Israeli President Ezer Weizman met Arafat as a gesture of good will, but he could not change Netanyahu's attitude nor the violent reaction of Palestinians. Soon afterwards, the PNA decided to apply capital punishment to those citizens who sold lands or houses to Israelis.

Israeli deferrals led Arafat to propose greater US participation in the negotiations. In April 2000, Ehud Barak, Israel's new Prime Minister, accepted the suggestion, but Israel's position forced Arafat to postpone the declaration of a Palestinian State. Jerusalem, a holy city for Muslims and Jews, had become the biggest obstacle to the negotiations, since both parties wanted to install their capital in this city.

Violence broke out in September, after former Israeli Defense Minister Sharon visited a temple in Al Quds/Jerusalem, considered holy by Muslims and Jews. In the ongoing weeks, some 100 people died, mainly Palestinians. Arafat, Barak and US president Clinton, together with authorities from other countries, met in Egypt in October to try and salvage the peace process. However, the new intifada left Barak with a minority government, and he had to call new elections.

Sharon's victory in the Israeli elections of February 2001 was perceived as another blow to the weakened peace process. That month, the Secretary-General of the United Nations issued a document indicating that the economic blockade by Israel on the West Bank and Gaza Strip put Arafat's government on the verge of collapse for lack of income. The special UN envoy to the Middle East, Terje Road Larsen, warned that if other countries did not support Palestinians financially and urgently, violence would increase. According to the report, $1 billion was needed for the rest of the year.

Fighting increased during the following months. Israel's offensive and the stalled negotiations increased resistance to the occupation. Sharon replied with the selective murder of presumed terrorists, and extended his offensive to attacking Palestinian communities and towns with helicopters and gunships. These attacks were followed by night raids on Palestinian towns, which destroyed homes, airports and hospitals. Several hundred Palestinians died in the conflict, and military operations continued with the occupation of the territories that had been under relative Palestinian control.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, on September 11 2001, Sharon believed international public opinion and Western governments could turn in his favor, and - counting on the support of the US - he increased the offensive against the Palestinian uprising. The new US President, George W Bush, needing to attract allies to his anti-terrorist campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, preferred to keep his distance and avoid confrontations with the Arab world.

Numerous suicide attacks by radical Palestinian militants marked a new stage in the conflict. The suicide bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among other Islamic groups, chose places attended by Jewish young people to cause the greatest possible harm. To strengthen security, Sharon limited the traffic of goods and people through the borders of the West Bank and Gaza strip since the beginning of the uprising. The measure affected both Palestinian workers and businesses.

In December Sharon cut all his contacts with Arafat. The new Israeli strategy no longer acknowledged the Palestinian leader as a valid negotiator, and the break in relations also put an end to negotiation efforts. In early 2002, with the arrival of a new mediator from the US, Sharon lifted the restrictions imposed on Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, regions that were under the control of Jewish forces. On January 11, Islamic Jihad announced it would step up its actions, while Israel attacked PNA targets on land, sea and air in the largest offensive since the beginning of the second intifada.

Restrictions on the movement of goods and people in Israel and the occupied territories after 18 months of uprising placed the Palestinian economy on the verge of collapse. The continued closure of border checkpoints caused irreparable harm. Unemployment tripled, affecting almost 30 per cent of Palestinian labor. In spite of the relatively good financial performance of the PNA, the Government collected taxes that amounted to only one fifth of those collected in previous years. Donations from the Arab League and the European Union had increased in 2001, but not enough. The PNA had a budget deficit of $430 million and the estimated GDP in Gaza and the West Bank had fallen 12 per cent for the first quarter of 2002.

A summit of Arab countries was held in Beirut in March, to which Arafat could not attend because Sharon kept him cornered in his Ramallah bunker for more than a month. A group of 40 pacifists, 11 of them from the West, defied the Israeli army's siege and formed a ‘human shield’ to protect the Palestinian leader from a potential Israeli attack.

In spite of its initial chaos, the summit ended with the approval of a peace plan which included an historic decision. The signatory countries committed themselves to acknowledge the existence of the state of Israel, as long as it withdrew to its pre-1967 borders and allowed the return of three million Palestinian refugees, as well as the creation of a Palestinian state with a sector of Jerusalem as its capital. Israel called the proposal ‘unacceptable’.

In April, Al Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, People's Front and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, agreed for the first time a common fight plan ‘to confront any Israeli attack‘. Most of the 82 suicide bombers in Israel and the Jewish settlements since the beginning of the intifada were militants from those extremist organizations.

That month, Jenin refugee camp was the scene of bloody bombings from Israel, causing the death of hundreds of Palestinians. Terje Larsen, the UN envoy, called what happened in Jenin a ‘morally repugnant humanitarian disaster’, so Sharon declared him persona non grata. The Jenin camp was reduced to rubble. After the raids on this and other communities under the relative control of the PNA, Israel detained some 5,000 Palestinians.

After almost 40 days of siege, on May 10, 126 Palestinians who had taken refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, left the temple one by one. The first to leave - 13 men considered terrorists by Israel - were flown to Cyprus on a British plane, where they would remain until the European Union decided their final destination in several countries. Another 26 Palestinians, accused by Israel of minor offenses, were sent to the Gaza strip, while the rest were freed.

In mid-May Arafat declared that ‘it was time for change’, asserting he had made mistakes as a leader. In June 2002, Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat announced that presidential, parliamentary, and municipal elections would be held in January 2003. Erekat implied that the US position (falling in line with Sharon in saying they would not negotiate with Arafat) in Bush’s speech was not a factor in the decision. ‘Are we saying this in response to President Bush? We are saying this in response to Palestinian needs. We're saying this because we have been working on this reform for months‘, he said.

Israeli incursions continued in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.