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Occupations of Palestine have been known to occur for as long as the people of the Middle East have kept written records.
Conquest of the region of Palestine has occurred several times throughout history, making it one of the most violently disputed regions on Earth. As of 2004, conflict continues in the area.
See:
This article discusses historical episodes of military control of this Middle Eastern region, which sometimes has been said to include Jordan, as wall as parts of Lebanon and Syria. In the past two decades, discusson of this area has focussed on the modern state of Israel, along with the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The entire region was occupied several times throughout history, and it remains one of the most violently disputed regions. For the current Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, see Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the Bible
The earliest extant records of the area, going back over three thousand years ago, derive from the Bible when it was originally called the Land of Canaan. It was inhabited by a number of ancient tribes, such as the Jebusites, Amorites, and the Hivites each battling the other.
According to the Bible, the land was promised to the Children of Israel, the descendants of the Biblical Patriarch, Abraham. When they returned there following their Exodus from ancient Egypt, they battled with the native inhabitants; their primary opponents were the ancient Philistines who were based in ancient Gaza. Eventually the ancient Kingdom of Israel (which later split between the northern Kingdom of Israel) and a southern Kingdom of Judah were established which lasted until the advent of Roman times.
The Book of Genesis and Book of Joshua provide a scriptural view of God helping the ancient Hebrew tribes to gain dominion over this region. Jewish and most Christian sects accept these books as evidence of divine approval for the Jewish conquest of ancient Palestine. Other religious traditions dispute this interpretation.
Assyria, Babylonia, Persia
The first occupation of the land by a major world power occurred when the Assyrians expanded from their cities near the Tigris river and eventually invaded, occupied and destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8th century (BC) expelling and exiling what was to become known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Babylonia then conquered the area and occupied the Kingdom of Judah. It destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem around 586 BC, and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon sent most of the Judeans into the Babylonian captivity.
Persia then rose to world power and one of its kings, Cyrus allowed the Judeans, also called the Jews to rebuild the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
Rome and Greece
Under the leadership of Alexander the Great, Ancient Greece defeated Persia and entered into Judea. Under Alexander peace reigned, but after his death the Syrian-Greek Seleucids invaded the land and were defeated by the Judean Hasmoneans, the Maccabees.
With the rise of Rome the Roman Empire expanded to encompass the entire Mediterranean Basin. Eventually they institued harsh rule provoking the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome. The history of Rome's destruction of Jerusalem and their bloody occupation and has been preserved by the historian Josephus. It was also the time of Jesus and the subsequent birth of Christianity from Judaism.
After crushing Bar Kokhba's revolt in 135, Emperor Hadrian wiped the name Provincia Judaea off the map and renamed the land Provincia Syria Palaestina, a Greek name derived from the Hebrew word "Philistine" (פלשת) and renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina." [1] (http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php).
Byzantines, Sassanians, Muslims, Crusaders
It was the Byzantine Empire (Roman Eastern Empire) that then continued to dominate the land that the Romans had now re-named Provincia Syria Palaestina which by then had become a neglected and arid land after centuries of strife. The Christian Byzantines fostered a line of spiritual leaders over Jerusalem that has continued until the present, see the List of Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Jerusalem as an example of this outlook.
During a protracted conflict with the Byzantine Empire, the Sassanian Empire under Khosrau II briefly wrested control of the region from the Byzantines. An invasion of Mesopotamia by Byzantine Emperor Heraclius forced the Sassanians to withdraw.
After the death of Muhammad, the Muslims invaded and occupied Syria Palaestina along with Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen establishing various Caliphs and dynasties. It is not clear what these various Arab rulers called Palestine, but it is known that they considered Jerusalem to be a holy city and called it Al-Quds meaning "Holy Place" as they viewed themselves as descendants of Ishmael son of Abraham by Hagar the Egyptian. Due to the split in Islam between Sunni Islam and Shi'a Islam, each has had rival historic claims to the holy places of Jerusalem.
The Crusades by the Christian European lands brought a fervor to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims. During the First Crusade Jerusalem was taken and many of its Jews and Muslims were killed. (Along the way thousands of Ashkenazi Jews were killed even though they were living in Europe at the time). A Christian Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was established in the 12th century which lasted for about two hundred years. Some current monarchs still lay claim, albeit silently, to this "kingdom", see Kings of Jerusalem.
Mamluks and Ottomans
The Islamic Mamluks of Egypt took control of the land after the defeat of the Crusaders. The Mamluk ruling class, descended from former slaves of foreign origin, built a powerful dynasty. They co-operated with the rising Ottoman Empire but by 1517 Sultan Selim I took the land of ancient Israel and Judea from the Mamluks (1250–1517). The Ottomans had a benevolent attitude towards the Jews, having welcomed thousands of Jewish refugees who had been expelled from Spain by Ferdinand II in 1492. The Sultan was so taken with Jerusalem and its plight that he ordered that a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall be built around the entire city. This wall still stands and can be seen today. See Suleiman the Magnificent.
The Ottoman Turks ruled Palestine for almost exactly four hundred years until their defeat and expulsion at the hands of the British in 1917.
France, Great Britain, Versailles, League of Nations
Napoleon of France briefly waged war against the remaining Mamluks and Turkey (allied then with Great Britain). His forces conquered and occupied cities in Palestine, but they were finally defeated and driven out by 1801.
World War I saw Turkey on the side of the losing Germans as a result of which Palestine was captured by Great Britain's army (now allied with France) led by General Allenby in a series of battles. (See the battles of the Third Battle of Gaza and Battle of Beersheba). Allenby famously dismounted from his horse when he entered captured Jerusalem as a mark of respect for the Holy City. He was greeted by all the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic leaders of the city with great honor.
At the subsequent 1919 Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles, Turkey lost its Middle East empire. The British had in the interim made two agreements. In the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence there was an undertaking to form an Arab state in exchange for the Great Arab Revolt and in the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to "favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Prior to the conference Emir Faisal, son of the king of part of modern Saudi Arabia, but Syria at the time, had agreed in the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement to support the immigration of Jews into Palestine as part of a larger Arab state. When the conference did not produce that Arab state, Faisal called instead for Palestine to become part of his Arab Syrian kingdom.
McMahon's promises are seen by Arab nationalists as a pledge of immediate Arab independence, an undertaking violated by the region's subsequent partition into British and French League of Nations mandates under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916 (undermining the work of Lawrence of Arabia) and which became the real conerstone of the geopolitics structuring the entire region.
There is a question over the issue of whether Palestine was not excluded from the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence agreement, and it is claimed that Palestine was part of the agreement. However, McMahon later claimed it was excluded from the discussions. Britain later promised to favour the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. Certainly, to Chaim Weizmann and the World Zionist Organization of which he was president, the goal was the establishment of a completely independent Jewish state in Palestine, as it was the historic "Jewish homeland", to be attained as soon as possible.
In 1920 the new League of Nations established the British Mandate of Palestine, which identified two territories of different administration, one to the west of the Jordan River, the other to the east. Article 25 specified that the eastern area did not have to be subject to all parts of the Mandate, notably the provisions regarding a Jewish homeland. This was used by the British as one rationale to establish an Arab state, thereby at least partially fulfilling the undertakings in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence. On 11 April 1921 the British passed administration of the eastern region to the Hashemite Arab dynasty from the Hejaz in Saudi Arabia as the kingdom of Transjordan and on 15 May 1923 recognized it as a state. The western area was populated by a competing and growing Jewish and Arab population that came to resent and fight each other for the same land. In 1936 the British Peel Commission advised that the western part of Palestine be divided between Arabs and Jews.
However, to both Arabs and Jews, Palestine was seen as being occupied by the British. The Jews in particular organized the Irgun and Lehi to fight the British and the Haganah and Palmach to fight the Arabs. In retaliation, some Arabs expressed their rage against the Jewish population in incidents such as the Jerusalem pogrom of April, 1920, the Riots in Palestine of May, 1921; the 1929 Hebron massacre; and the 1936 Great Uprising (with incitement by the militant Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni). By the time order was restored in March of 1939, more than 3,000 Arabs, 2,000 Jews, and 600 Britons had been killed.
United Nations, Partition of Palestine, Israel
The United Nations was created after World War II and in order to bring the British occupation of Palestine to an end, issued the 1947 UN Partition Plan seeking a "two-state solution" by creating both a new Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arab states rejected the United Nations and Great Britain's plan. Under duress, the British finally pulled out and the new State of Israel was created with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948.
This was followed by immediate war and the invasion of Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, Transjordanian, Saudi Arabian and Yemenite troops beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The Arabs were defeated and the 1949 Armistice Agreements brought a cease-fire.
Palestinians, Jordan, Egypt
The neighboring Arab states did not establish a Palestinian state following the 1948 war with Israel. They concentrated on the fate of Palestinian refugees. Relief work was overseen by such bodies as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, with little financial aid from independent oil-rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. In their view, Israel was now occupying Palestinian (Arab) land that they felt the UN and the British had no right to give away. They absolutely refused to recognize Israel and enacted boycotts against it. Thus, hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees fled from the former war zone in Palestine to neighboring Arab countries where they have remained in refugee camps. In the years following the war hundreds of thousands of Sephardic Jews who had lived in North Africa and the Middle East for over 2,500 years (having lived there long before the rise of Islam), fled persecution by newly-nationalistic Arab states, without material compensation, and headed for Israel. See Immigration to Israel from Arab lands.
Jordan and Egypt had also won some strategic victories on the battlefield. The Egyptian army took control of the Gaza Strip (see Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt). Similarly, Jordan's army took control of the West Bank and began the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Jordan.
King Abdullah II of Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950, in defiance of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Under Egyptian and Jordanian rule over the territories, there was no known attempt by any Palestinian (or any other) group to exercise the UN-given right to create their own state.
See Political status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Six Day War, Yom Kippur War, Oslo Peace Process
As a result of the 1967 Six Day War, the Israel Defense Force took control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula bringing them under military rule (see Israeli occupation of Palestine). The United Nation's Security Council passed Resolution 242, the "land for peace" formula, which called for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 in return for the end of all states of belligerency.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt as part of the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel. Then in 1994 came the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace, and Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 425.
Yassir Arafat, Chairman and President of the Palestine Liberation Organization entered into peace talks with the Israelis. There are proposals for a Palestinian state following the historic 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Palestinians and Israel (the "Oslo Accords") which gave the Palestinians limited self-government through the Palestinian Authority, and other detailed negotiations. An attempt was made to end the struggle at the Camp David 2000 Summit between Palestinians and Israel but no agreement was reached.
Economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli control
Per-capita GNP of the West Bank and Gaza expanded ten-fold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050 and Egypt's $600).
By 1986, 92.8% of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5% in 1967; 85% had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16% in 1967; 83.5% had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4% in 1967.
By 1986, the number of Palestinians working in Israel was 109,000, accounting for 35% of the employed population of the territories.
The mortality rates in the territories fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000. The infant mortality rate was reduced from 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000. Under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases such as polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated. During the two decades preceding the First Intifada, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102%, and the number of classes by 99%, though the population itself had grown by 28%.
Before 1967, not a single university existed in the territories. By the early 1990s, there were seven such institutions attended by some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14% of adults over age 15 (compared with 61% in Egypt, 45% in Tunisia, and 44% in Syria).
(Source: Prof. Efraim Karsh, the Chairman of the Department of Mediterranean studies at King's College, University of London. Commentary Magazine, July 2002)
Intifada, Separation Barrier, Road Map
From 1987 to 1993 the First Intifada by Palestinians against Israel took place. A fierce Intifada by the Palestinians then erupted in 2000 known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada allegedly in response to a visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon (who subsequently became Israel's Prime Minister). The violence grew, particularly suicide bombings by Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command. Israeli Security Forces retaliated with invasions, targeted assasinations of Palestinian military leaders and organizers and by building a complex separation barrier between Israel, including key Israeli settlements, and the large Palestinian populations in the West Bank.
In 2002 the Road map for peace calling for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was proposed by a "quartet": The United States, European Union, Russia, and United Nations. U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on June 24, 2002 called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with the Israeli state in peace. Bush was the first U.S. President to explicitly call for such a Palestinian state.
Finally, Israel's government announced Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004 from some important areas it had occupied for which Ariel Sharon has been hotly condemned by his own right wing allies in Israel. Palestinians have continued to fight using a variety of tactics and weapons, such as the Qassam rockets, special explosive belts for more suicide bombings, called martyrdom operations by some Muslims, car bombs and smuggling tunnels to bring in additional weapons and ammunition from Egypt. In response the Israeli West Bank barrier is being built in an attempt to stifle the movements of Palestinians between areas. Areas of Israel protected by the barrier have experienced a sharp decrease in terror attacks, though it is not clear if the barrier alone is responsible for this. Yet violence against Israelis continues with a long list of massacres committed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada with simultaneous accusations against Israel of war crimes during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Current status
Many Arabs and their allies object violently to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which they characterize as an illegal occupation. The UN General Assembly and Security Council have repeatedly denounce Israel's position and activites as being in violation of various international standards.
Many Israelis and their allies view the Israel presence as benign and regard the Arab viewpoint as implying the complete denial of the State of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East. They may know of a time when Jews lived in the modern British Mandate of Palestine and recall when they were called Palestinians under Turkish and British rule. Israelis may also perceive this phrase as a hostile statement meant to paint them in a negative light and delegitimize them.
Palestinian Authority
Maps used in elementary schools under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) depict Palestine as the non-Jordanian portion of the region. Israel does not appear on these maps.
Commentators disagree about the meaning of these maps. Some regard it as a PA assertion that Israel does not exist (in a legal sense). A similar view is that the PA means by these maps to reject all of Israel's claims to territorial sovereignty, including the boundaries which several other states agree "belong" to Israel.
A starkly different view is that they indicate a view that Palestine is that portion of ancient Palestine not taken up by Jordan.
Islamic sphere
The view of much or most of the Islamic world is that Israel is occupying significant parts of Palestine (variously defined). The most commonly heard view is that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are being controlled militarily by Israel in contravention of international law; thus, it is an illegal occupation. (See the various definitions of military rule). Along with this view is usually the view that these two regions belong, not only as a matter of law, but also as a matter of moral right, to the "Palestinian people" (see Palestinians and also definitions of Palestine).
Some countries, particularly those of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, do not recognize Israel as a nation, and would like to see it destroyed, something that Israelis are acutely aware of.
Note that the term Palestinian as applied to those people entitled to the Palestinian territories is itself in dispute. But the main argument is clear enough:
- The Palestinian people ought to have their own homeland, claiming a right of return
- Israel is unlawfully occupying this homeland
- Therefore, Israel must return this homeland to the Palestinian people.
Many Israelis challenge the notion that Palestinian Arabs had any more right to this land than Palestinian Jews or any other group who lived in the region (or wanted to), since it was a territory controlled by larger imperial powers who distributed it as they saw fit. Indeed, Britain gave away most of historic Palestine to the Hashemite's of Jordan, before dividing it further between Palestinian Arabs and Jews.
The conflict therefore continues, as so far neither Israel nor the Arabs have arrived at a mutually agreeable conclusion to their bitter dispute.
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