Portal:Palestine

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Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the southern Levant region of West Asia recognized by 145 out of 193 UN member states. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Occupied Palestinian territories, within the broader geographic and historical Palestine region. The country shares most of its borders with Israel, and it borders Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million people. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its administrative center. Gaza City was its largest city until 2023.

Situated at a continental crossroad, the region of Palestine was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement and Jewish immigration to the region, which was supported by the United Kingdom during World War I. The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. During this period, large-scale Jewish immigration allowed by the British authorities led to increased tensions and violence with the local Palestinian Arab population. By 1947, Britain handed the issue to the United Nations, which proposed a partition plan, for two independent Arab and Jewish states and an independent entity for Jerusalem, but a civil war broke out, and the plan was not implemented.

The 1948 Palestine war saw the forcible displacement of most of its predominantly Palestinian Arab population, and consequently the establishment of Israel, in what Palestinians call the Nakba. During the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had been held by Jordan and Egypt respectively. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) declared the independence of the State of Palestine in 1988. In 1993, the PLO signed the Oslo peace accords with Israel, creating limited PLO governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through the Palestinian Authority (PA). In 2005, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in its unilateral disengagement, but the territory is still considered to be under military occupation and was put under blockade by Israel. In 2007, internal divisions between Palestinian political factions led to a takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas. Since then, the West Bank has been governed in part by the PA, led by Fatah, while the Gaza Strip has remained under the control of Hamas. Israel has constructed large settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967, where currently more than 670,000 Israeli settlers live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.

Currently, the biggest challenges to the country include the Israeli occupation, a blockade, restrictions on movement, Israeli settlements and settler violence, as well as an overall poor security situation. The questions of Palestine's borders, the legal and diplomatic status of Jerusalem, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees remain unsolved. Despite these challenges, the country maintains an emerging economy and sees frequent tourism. Arabic is the official language of the country. The majority of Palestinians practice Islam while Christianity also has a presence. Palestine is also a member of several international organizations, including the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It has been a non-member observer state of the United Nations since 2012. (Full article...)

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Palestinian fedayeen (from the Arabic fidā'ī, plural fidā'iyūn, فدائيون) refers to militants or guerrillas of a nationalist orientation from among the Palestinian people. Most Palestinians consider the fedayeen to be "freedom fighters", while the Israeli government describes them as "terrorists". Considered symbols of the Palestinian national movement, the Palestinian fedayeen drew inspiration from guerrilla movements in Vietnam, China, Algeria and Latin America. The ideology of the Palestinian fedayeen was mainly left-wing nationalist, socialist or communist, and their proclaimed purpose was to defeat Zionism, "liberate Palestine" and establish it as "a secular, democratic, nonsectarian state". Emerging from among the Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their villages as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, in the mid 1950s the fedayeen began mounting cross-border operations into Israel from Syria, Egypt and Jordan. The earliest infiltrations were often to access the lands agricultural products they had lost as a result of the war, or to attack Israeli military, and sometimes civilian targets. Israel undertook retaliatory actions targeting the fedayeen that also often targeted the citizens of their host countries, which in turn provoked more attacks. Fedayeen actions were cited by Israel as one of the reasons for its launching of the Sinai Campaign of 1956, the 1967 War, and the 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon. Palestinian fedayeen groups were united under the umbrella the Palestine Liberation Organization after the defeat of the Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War, though each group retained its own leader and independent armed forces.

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Credit: Photo: American Colony; Restoration: L. Broer/J. Wartenberg

A view of Jerusalem in the early 20th century. The earliest verified reference to the city is in the Amarna letters, which date to the 14th century BCE. Over its long history, it has been controlled by Israelites, Judaeans, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Mamluks, Turks, and the British before being split between Israel and Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967, and the city remains a core issue in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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Did you know...

...that the Hebron glass (pictured) industry goes back to at least the thirteenth century?
...that the day after the death of six IDF soldiers in the Battle of the Beaufort, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was still under the impression that it was won without casualties?
...that the Bedouin villagers of al-Sayyid developed their own form of sign language in response to the high rate of deafness amongst their tribe?

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Yasser Arafat was one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation, one who gave his entire life to the cause of the Palestinian people.

— Nelson Mandela

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WikiProjects

You are invited to participate in WikiProject Palestine, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about Palestine.

Parent projects: Asia • Countering systemic bias • Western Asia • Arab World • Countries •

Main project: WikiProject Palestine

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Middle Eastern military history

Related projects: Geography • Egypt • Iraq • Israel • Jordan • Lebanon • Islam • Syria

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Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007. In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms.

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