The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the world’s longest-running and most difficult disputes. Although today’s war is shaped by events of recent decades, its roots stretch back more than a century. At the centre of the conflict lies a fundamental question: how did two peoples come to develop competing national claims to the same territory?Before the creation of Israel, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Its population was predominantly Arab, including Muslims and Christians, alongside longstanding Jewish communities. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Arab and Jewish political identities increasingly developed into modern nationalist movements, with each community developing its own aspirations for political self-determination.
For European Jews, the growth of antisemitism and persecution helped fuel the rise of Zionism. The movement sought to establish a national home for the Jewish people. Theodor Herzl became one of its most prominent political figures, and the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel in 1897, helped organize the movement. Palestine became central to Zionist aspirations because of its deep historical and religious significance to the Jewish people.
Britain became deeply involved during and after the First World War. In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, supporting the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people” while stating that the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities should not be prejudiced. The declaration was later incorporated into the British Mandate for Palestine, established after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat.
During the British Mandate, Jewish immigration increased, particularly as European persecution intensified in the 1930s. Jewish institutions and settlements expanded, while Palestinian Arabs increasingly opposed immigration and the prospect of a Jewish-majority state. Violence between the communities grew, alongside conflict between Palestinian nationalists, Zionist organizations and British authorities.
Britain eventually concluded that it could no longer find a workable solution and referred the issue to the United Nations in 1947.The Holocaust dramatically strengthened international support for finding a secure homeland for Jewish survivors and refugees. The UN subsequently proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime. Resolution 181 was approved in November 1947.
Jewish leadership accepted the plan, while Palestinian Arab leaders and surrounding Arab states rejected it, arguing that the division was unjust and denied the Arab majority its right to self-determination.Violence intensified after the partition vote. Britain ended its Mandate, and Israel declared independence in May 1948.
Neighbouring Arab states entered the war, beginning the first Arab-Israeli war. When fighting ended, Israel controlled more territory than had been allocated to it under the UN proposal, while Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt administered Gaza.
The 1949 armistice agreements established the lines that became known as the Green Line.For Palestinians, the 1948 war is remembered as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees through flight and expulsions during the conflict. The refugee issue, including competing claims concerning the right of return, remains one of the conflict’s most sensitive questions.Gaza, meanwhile, came under Egyptian administration and was not incorporated into Israel.
The situation changed dramatically in 1967, when Israel fought Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War and captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as other territories. The war transformed the conflict by placing the remaining Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation.
UN Security Council Resolution 242 subsequently called for principles including Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict and a settlement of the refugee question.These events established many of the historical disputes that continue to shape the conflict today: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood, Israeli security and competing claims to the same land.