Understand Palestinian history from Ottoman Palestine and the British Mandate, through the 1948 Nakba and Palestinian refugee crisis, to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967, settlement expansion, Gaza and the continuing struggle for Palestinian self-determination.
A starting point for readers looking for the history behind the modern Palestinian question.
At the beginning of the twentieth century Palestine was home to a predominantly Arab population, with Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities. Under British rule, decisions about Palestine's future were increasingly made by imperial powers and international institutions rather than by its Palestinian majority.
Britain announced support for the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people”. For Palestinians, the central injustice was already visible: a colonial power was making commitments over a country whose indigenous Arab population had not consented to them.
The League of Nations Mandate incorporated Britain's commitment to a Jewish national home. Large-scale Jewish immigration increased, particularly as European Jews fled persecution and later the horrors of Nazism. Palestinian opposition centred on a basic political demand: that the existing population should not lose control of its homeland through policies imposed from outside.
Palestinians mounted a major revolt against British rule, mass immigration and land dispossession. Britain suppressed the revolt heavily, leaving Palestinian political and military organisation badly weakened on the eve of the struggle that followed.
Britain referred Palestine to the United Nations. UN General Assembly Resolution 181 recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under an international regime. Palestinians rejected a plan that proposed giving a majority of the land to a Jewish state at a time when Jewish people were still a minority of the population and owned only a small proportion of the land.
For Palestinians, 1948 is not simply the year Israel was founded. It is the Nakba — the catastrophe of dispossession.
The result was not an abstract rearrangement of borders. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees, communities were emptied, and the Palestinian Arab state envisaged by the UN partition plan never came into existence.
War and expulsions transformed Palestine. By the end of the 1948 war Israel controlled substantially more territory than had been allocated to the proposed Jewish state by the UN partition plan.
More than half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled during the fighting. The United Nations later recorded roughly 726,000 Palestinian refugees by the end of 1949. Villages and urban communities were depopulated, and many refugees were prevented from returning to their homes.
The General Assembly addressed the refugee crisis in Resolution 194, calling for refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours to be permitted to do so, with compensation for those not returning and for lost or damaged property. The refugee question remains unresolved generations later.
The United Nations established UNRWA to provide relief and assistance to Palestinian refugees. What was expected to be an emergency response became a long-term institution because the political problem that created the refugees was never resolved.
In June 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The ICRC and United Nations continue to treat these areas as occupied Palestinian territory under international law.
The Six-Day War brought another large-scale Palestinian exodus. The UN history of the question of Palestine estimates that around half a million Palestinians were displaced. Israel took control of the remainder of historic Palestine that had not come under Israeli control in 1948.
Palestinians in the occupied territories have lived with military rule, arrests and detention, checkpoints, movement restrictions, land seizures, home demolitions and a permit system that can govern where people travel, build and live. The details have changed over time; the underlying imbalance of power has not.
Israeli civilian settlements have expanded throughout the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The ICRC states that this settlement policy contradicts Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Settlements, their infrastructure and associated restrictions fragment Palestinian territory and affect access to land, resources, services and neighbouring communities.
Gaza's population includes a large proportion of descendants of refugees from 1948. Years of blockade, repeated wars and restrictions on movement and goods have produced profound humanitarian consequences. The ICRC continues to regard Gaza as occupied territory because of the degree of effective control Israel exercises over key aspects of the territory.
For people who want to help Palestinians directly, established humanitarian organisations provide medical care, emergency relief, food, water and support for displaced families. The organisations below are mainstream, established charities or humanitarian bodies.
The British Red Cross supports the wider Red Cross and Red Crescent response, including humanitarian work connected with Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Visit British Red Cross →Doctors Without Borders / MSF provides independent emergency medical care and has medical teams working with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Visit MSF UK →MAP is a UK-based charity focused specifically on Palestinian health and dignity, working in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Palestinian refugee communities.
Visit MAP →The UN agency established in 1949 to support Palestine refugees provides education, healthcare, relief and emergency assistance across the region.
Visit UNRWA →This site does not collect donations. Links go directly to the organisations themselves. Before donating, check that the web address shown in your browser is the charity's official domain.
The interpretation here is openly Palestinian. The underlying dates, resolutions and legal positions can be checked against institutional sources.
Short answers to some of the questions that bring readers to this subject, with the fuller historical context above.
Before 1948, Palestine had passed from Ottoman rule to British administration under the League of Nations Mandate. Its population was predominantly Arab Palestinian, with Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities. During the Mandate, Jewish immigration grew substantially while conflict increased over land, political control and the future of the country.
Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic. Palestinians use the term for the mass displacement and dispossession that accompanied the 1947–49 war and the establishment of Israel. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees, and many depopulated Palestinian communities were destroyed or transformed.
The refugee problem created in 1948 was never politically resolved. Many Palestinians and their descendants remain registered as refugees, while the questions of return, compensation, citizenship and a final political settlement remain contested.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip during the June 1967 war. The United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross continue to regard these territories as occupied Palestinian territory under international law.
The United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross and the great majority of international legal opinion regard Israeli civilian settlements in occupied territory as contrary to international humanitarian law. Israel disputes important aspects of that legal interpretation.
Established organisations include the British Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, Medical Aid for Palestinians and UNRWA. This site links directly to their official websites and does not collect donations itself.