Palestine is a small region of land that has played a
prominent role in the ancient and modern history of the Middle East. The history
of Palestine has been marked by frequent political conflict and violent land
seizures because of its importance to several major world religions, and because
Palestine sits at a valuable geographic crossroads between Africa and Asia.
Today, Arab people who call this territory home are known as Palestinians, and
the people of Palestine have a strong desire to create a free and independent
state in this contested region of the world. The word Palestine derives from the
Greek word, Philistia, which dates to Ancient Greek writers' descriptions of the
region in the 12th century B.C. Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World
War I to 1948, Palestine typically referred to the geographic region located
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Arab people who call this
territory home have been known as Palestinians since the early 20th century.
Much of this land is now considered present-day Israel. Today, Palestine
theoretically includes the West Bank (a territory that sits between modern-day
Israel and Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (which borders modern-day Israel and
Egypt). However, control over this region is a complex and evolving situation.
There is no international consensus concerning the borders, and many areas
claimed by Palestinians have been occupied by Israelis for years. Scholars
believe the name “Palestine” originally comes from the word “Philistia,” which
refers to the Philistines who occupied part of the region in the 12th century
B.C. Throughout history, Palestine has been ruled by numerous groups, including
the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk
Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians and Mamelukes. From about 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman
Empire ruled much of the region. When World War I ended in 1918, the British
took control of Palestine. The League of Nations issued a British mandate for
Palestine—a document that gave Britain administrative control over the region,
and included provisions for establishing a Jewish national homeland in
Palestine—which went into effect in 1923. The Partition of Palestine In 1947,
after more than two decades of British rule, the United Nations proposed a plan
to partition Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an
independent Arab state. The city of Jerusalem, which was claimed as a capital by
both Jews and Palestinian Arabs, was to be an international territory with a
special status. Jewish leaders accepted the plan, but many Palestinian
Arabs—some of whom had been actively fighting British and Jewish interests in
the region since the 1920s—vehemently opposed it. Arab groups argued that they
represented the majority of the population in certain regions and should be
granted more territory. They began to form volunteer armies throughout
Palestine. In May 1948, less than a year after the Partition Plan for Palestine
was introduced, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared itself an
independent state, implying a willingness to implement the Partition Plan.
Almost immediately, neighboring Arab armies moved in to prevent the
establishment of the Israeli state. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War that ensued
involved Israel and five Arab nations—Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon. By
the war's end in July 1949, Israel controlled more than two-thirds of the former
British Mandate, while Jordan took control of the West Bank, Egypt and the Gaza
Strip. In the wake of the April air battle, the Soviet Union provided Egypt with
intelligence that Israel was moving troops to its northern border with Syria in
preparation for a full-scale invasion. The information was inaccurate, but it
nevertheless stirred Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to advance forces
into the Sinai Peninsula, where they expelled a United Nations peacekeeping
force that had been guarding the border with Israel for over a decade. Israel
Defense Forces then launched a preemptive aerial attack against Egypt on June 5,
1967. Both nations claimed that they were acting in self-defense in the ensuing
conflict, which ended on June 10 and also drew in Jordan and Syria, who sided
with Egypt. The Six-Day War, as it came to be called, resulted in major land
gains for Israel.