ISRAEL/PALESTINE TERRITORY: A TIMELINE


PALESTINE & ISRAEL: AN EVENT HISTORY The conflict between Israel and Palestine is often misidentified as a centuries-old religious dispute. However, the political unrest and violence between the two groups is actually rooted in events beginning in the late 1800s. And the disagreement, while generally divided along religious lines, focuses more on territory than belief.


The land in question: a 10,000 square mile area along the Mediterranean Sea.


The Jewish claim to the land: • A biblical promise: God promised Abraham and his descendants a homeland. They trace their origins to this geographic area—and should be able to claim it as their home.


• A contemporary necessity: Jews have endured centuries of oppression and persecution. Especially in the wake of the Holocaust, many Jews felt that statehood was both deserved and the best defense against further attacks against the Jewish people.


The Palestinian Arab claim to the land: • Palestinian Arabs have inhabited the contested territory for centuries. While the territory’s rule has changed hands over the years, Palestinian Arabs remained—until large numbers of Jewish immigrants began arriving in the mid-20th century—the land’s ethnic majority. As the oldest (and once largest) demographic in the region, they should be granted independent statehood.


The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a uniquely thorny—and still ongoing—chapter of history. Below, we have traced the trajectory of the conflict up to the events of If I Forget, which takes place in late 2000 and early 2001. The timeline is by no means a complete history of the region, but it is a starting point for understanding the difficult politics of the land in question.


19TH CENTURY: There is a growing sense of national identity among the Arab residents of what is today known as the Israel-Palestine region, which was then under Ottoman rule. A similar sense of national identity begins to pervade Jewish culture. However, Jewish communities aren’t concentrated in one place; the Jewish diaspora has created Jewish communities across the globe. Jews begin looking for a homeland—and settle on their place of origin. • The movement for Jewish statehood, Zionism, began in


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1882, as European Jews began to immigrate to and settle in Palestine. Over the coming decades, tens of thousands of European Jews would settle in the area.


1914-1918: World War I


1915-1916: Arabs in the Israel-Palestine region revolt against the rule of the Ottoman Empire, with the support of Britain. The revolt is successful, and Britain takes control of a large portion of the land.


1917: British Foreign Minister Lord Arthur Balfour issues the Balfour Declaration, offering British support for the establishment of a Jewish state in the region. The Declaration conflicts with an earlier promise of British support for an independent Arab state in the same area. Meanwhile, the land formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire still doesn’t belong to its inhabitants; Britain and France divide it amongst themselves.


1921: The British divide their land holdings into two parts: the area to the east of the Jordan River becomes known as the Transjordan, the area to the west becomes known as the Palestine Mandate.


1920S: The Jewish National Fund begins buying up land in the region and evicting Arab tenants. • This displacement foreshadows a pattern that will later lead to the Palestinian refugee crisis. During the Arab- Israeli war of 1948-1949, over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Today, about 5.6 million Palestinians live in Israel or Palestinian territory. Another 5.6 million live in diaspora.


1933-1945: Jewish immigration to Palestine increases during Hitler’s rise to power and World War II.


1936-1939: Arabs living in the Palestine Mandate revolt against British rule, in large part due to Britain’s support of Zionist policies. The revolt ultimately fails, but tension continues to escalate between local Arabs and newly immigrated Jews.


1939: Britain backpedals on its support for Jewish statehood and issues the MacDonald White Paper, which limits Jewish immigration and land purchases in the region and promises the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within ten years.


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