- Arabic:
- Filasṭīn
- Hebrew:
- Palestina
When the Palestinians saw no improvement in effective support of their aspirations from other countries and no likely favorable change coming from the Israelis, they engaged, throughout 1987, in small-scale demonstrations, riots, and occasional violence directed against Israelis. The Israeli authorities responded with university closings, arrests, and deportations. Large-scale riots and demonstrations broke out in the Gaza Strip in early December and continued for more than five years thereafter. This uprising, which became known as the intifada (Arabic: “shaking off”), inspired a new era in Palestinian mass mobilization. Masked young demonstrators turned to throwing stones at Israeli troops, and the soldiers responded by shooting and arresting them. Women, and women’s organizations, were prominent. The persistent disturbances, initially spontaneous, before long came under the leadership of the Unified National Command of the Uprising, which had links to the PLO. The PLO soon incorporated the Unified Command, but not before the local leaders had pushed Arafat to abandon formally his commitment to armed struggle and to accept Israel and the notion of a two-state solution to the conflict.
One group, Hamas—an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement—challenged the authority of the secular nationalist movement, especially inside Gaza, and sought to take over the leadership of the intifada. Hamas was an underground offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had built up a network of religious, educational, and charitable institutions in the occupied territories, in addition to establishing an armed wing known as the Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades (named for the nationalist leader killed by the British in 1935). Hamas rejected any accommodation with Israel.
Tactics and tolls
The tactics of the intifada were highly sophisticated. Union-organized strikes, commercial boycotts and closures, and demonstrations were carried out in one part of the territories, and then, after Israel had reestablished its local power there, they were transferred to a previously quiescent area. Palestinian refugee camps provided major centers for the resistance, but Palestinian Arabs living in more affluent circumstances also participated, and some Palestinian citizens of Israel showed their sympathy with the goals of the uprising. During its first year more than 300 Palestinians were killed, more than 11,500 wounded (nearly two-thirds of whom were under 15 years of age), and many more arrested. Israel closed universities and schools, destroyed houses, and imposed curfews—yet it was unable to quell the uprising. By mid-1990 the International Red Cross estimated that more than 800 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli security forces, more than 200 of whom were under the age of 16. Some 16,000 Palestinians were in prison. By contrast, fewer than 50 Israelis had been killed. Some hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territories, accused of being collaborators with Israel, were killed by their compatriots. Political paralysis gripped Israel.
PLO declaration of independence
Arafat sought to establish himself as the only leader who could unite and speak for the Palestinians, and in mid-1988 he took the diplomatic initiative. At the 19th session of the PNC, held near Algiers on November 12–15, 1988, he succeeded in having the council issue a declaration of independence for a state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat proclaimed the state (without defining its borders) on November 15. Within days more than 25 countries (including the Soviet Union and Egypt but excluding the United States and Israel) had extended recognition to the government-in-exile.
The final weeks of 1988 opened a new chapter in Palestinian-Israeli relations. In December Arafat announced that the PNC recognized Israel as a state in the region and condemned and rejected terrorism in all its forms—including state terrorism, the PLO’s term for Israel’s actions. He addressed a special meeting of the UN General Assembly convened at Geneva and proposed an international peace conference under UN auspices. He publicly accepted UN Resolutions 242 and 338, thereby recognizing, at least implicitly, the State of Israel. Despite their ambiguities, UN Resolution 242 (1967), which encapsulated the principle of land for peace, and Resolution 338 (1973), which called for direct negotiations, were regarded by both parties as the starting points for negotiations. Although Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir stated that he was still not prepared to negotiate with the PLO, the U.S. government announced that it would open dialogue with the PLO.
The move toward self-rule
The Oslo Accords
The approaching end of the Cold War left the Palestinians diplomatically isolated, as did PLO support for Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait in August 1990 but was defeated by a U.S.-led alliance in the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). Funds from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Persian Gulf states dried up. The Palestinian community in Kuwait, which had consisted of about 400,000 people, was reduced to a few thousand. Economic hardship was compounded by the fact that, during the continuing conflict along the Lebanese border and in the occupied territories, Israel imposed severe travel restrictions on Palestinian day laborers. The overall result was loss of jobs, loss of morale, and loss of support for the PLO leadership in Tunis.
However, prospects for a settlement of the outstanding issues between the Palestinians and Israel became significantly altered by several factors: the convening of an international peace conference between Israeli and Arab delegates (including Palestinians from the occupied territories as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation) at Madrid in October 1991, sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union (after December 1991, Russia); the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December; and the replacement, in the Israeli general elections of June 1992, of Shamir and the Likud-bloc government with a Labor Party government that was committed to implementing Palestinian autonomy within a year.
Although progress at the Madrid peace conference was discouraging, secret meetings held in Norway from January 1993 between PLO and Israeli officials produced an understanding known as the Oslo Accords. On this basis, on September 13, 1993, the PLO and Israel signed a historic Declaration of Principles in Washington, D.C. It included mutual recognition and terms whereby governing functions in the West Bank and Gaza would be progressively handed over to a Palestinian council for an interim period of five years, during which time Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent peace treaty to settle on the final status of the territories.
The birth of the Palestinian Authority
Despite acts of violence committed by extremist groups on both sides attempting to sabotage the peace process, the Israelis completed their withdrawal from the West Bank town of Jericho and parts of the Gaza Strip in May 1994. On July 1 Arafat entered Gaza in triumph. Four days later he swore in members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Jericho, which by the end of the year had assumed control of education and culture, social welfare, health, tourism, and taxation.
Violence and irreconcilable demands by radical elements in the populations of both sides obstructed talks between the PLO and the Israeli government. Nonetheless, on September 28, 1995, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres signed an agreement in Washington providing for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and for elections of a chairman and a legislative council of the PA. The PA would gain control over six large West Bank towns (Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah, Ramallah, and Bethlehem) as well as control over most of Hebron. Israel would also gradually redeploy from some 440 villages, which would come under Palestinian rule. Security for those areas would rest with the Palestinian police, although Israeli military forces would be guaranteed freedom of movement throughout the area from which Israel redeployed. Reaffirming the commitment made in the 1993 peace accord, permanent-status negotiations were to be concluded by 1999.
In October 1995, as West Bank villages, towns, and cities were handed over to the PA, right-wing religious and extremist nationalist Israelis stepped up their rhetoric against Rabin and the peace process. On November 4, 1995, Israelis were stunned when Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. Peres, Rabin’s successor, quickly expressed his determination to continue the planned Israeli deployments.
Elections were held in PA-administered areas in January 1996, in which about three-fourths of Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza voted. Arafat secured nearly nine-tenths of the vote and assumed the presidency of the PA in February. He also remained chairman of the PLO. Fatah won 55 seats in the 88-seat legislative council. Hamas, however, did not participate in the election and continued its violent opposition to the peace process. The progress toward peace was further cast into doubt when Benjamin Netanyahu, right-wing leader of the Likud Party, was elected prime minister of Israel in May 1996. Netanyahu left office following defeat at the hands of the Labor Party led by Ehud Barak in May 1999. Although Netanyahu reached some accords with the Palestinians, his term in office was marked by increasing mistrust between the two sides.
Ian J. Bickerton Rashid Ismail KhalidiThe second intifada
Subsequent events, however, were a disappointment to all concerned, as a number of negotiating deadlines passed without an agreement. Notable among these was the May 1999 date set as a deadline for a third stage of Israeli military redeployments, an end of the interim period, and a completion of “permanent status” talks on the most contentious issues—such as the status of Jerusalem, the return of refugees, the presence of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, and the issue of Palestinian sovereignty and statehood.
Also, after a decade of negotiating, eight of those years following the signing of the Declaration of Principles, less than one-fifth of the West Bank (in 15 isolated segments) and about two-thirds of the Gaza Strip had reverted to full Palestinian control. The rest remained under Israeli military occupation (combined with PA civil administration in some areas). The number of Israelis living in West Bank settlements (that now exceeded 150) had grown by some 80,000 in that period, and more Palestinian land had been confiscated in the occupied territories for expanding settlements and for constructing bypass roads reserved solely for use by Israelis. Further, the gross domestic product per capita in Palestinian areas had actually declined in the nine years after the Madrid Peace Conference, Israel restricted the movement of Palestinians (and closed Jerusalem to West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians beginning in 1991), and accusations were widespread of corruption within the PA and of human rights abuses by its leaders. All of this made life for most residents of PA-controlled areas worse, in many respects, than it had been before the peace process.
An Israeli-Palestinian summit meeting sponsored by the United States in July 2000 failed to resolve these outstanding issues and led only to an increasingly strained situation. In the aftermath of this summit, a visit to Jerusalem’s Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (the Temple Mount) in September by Likud leader Ariel Sharon—reviled by Palestinians for his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres—was the spark that set off a conflagration. The visit was followed by demonstrations near Al-Aqsa Mosque the next day, in which Israeli security forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinian demonstrators. That was the signal for a renewed uprising, which reached a level of violence unseen in the first intifada—more than 1,000 died in its first 18 months, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinian civilians—and which engulfed the still largely occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Rashid Ismail KhalidiThereafter, suicide bomb attacks by Palestinians in Israeli cities increased. Large numbers of Israelis, most of them civilians, were killed and wounded, and Israeli attacks on PA targets (most located within population centers) raised the already high casualty rate among the Palestinian populace. In the spring of 2002 Israeli troops reoccupied all the towns and cities of the West Bank, reclaiming security control from the PA and tightening restrictions on movement that had earlier been placed on Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Negotiations reached a complete impasse, and the future of the occupied territories, and of relations between Palestinians and Israelis, became increasingly uncertain. Sharon, blaming Arafat for instigating the attacks against Israel, confined Arafat to his compound in Ramallah from 2001.
In 2003 the PA established the office of prime minister in an effort to circumvent Arafat and restart the peace process with Israel. Arafat installed Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate, in the post. Abbas called for an end to the intifada, but, feeling that his efforts were thwarted by Arafat, Israel, and the United States, he soon resigned. Following Arafat’s death in 2004, Abbas was elected chairman of the PLO and president of the PA. In 2005 Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from parts of the West Bank and from all of the Gaza Strip, which then came under Palestinian control. The pullout raised hopes for new peace talks.
Rashid Ismail Khalidi The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaSplit administration of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
In the years that followed, tensions between Hamas and Fatah dominated Palestinian politics. Elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council were held in 2006, and Hamas won a surprise victory over Fatah. Hamas and Fatah eventually formed a coalition government, but violence between their forces escalated in the Gaza Strip. After a week of fighting, Hamas forces defeated Fatah forces and took control of the Gaza Strip, leading Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led government and declare a state of emergency in June 2007.
The two factions attempted to reconcile a number of times. The first reconciliation agreement was reached in 2011 but failed to bring about much change. A new deal in 2014, in which Hamas agreed to hand over administration of the Gaza Strip to the unity government of the Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, also failed to bring about a significant change. It was not until a 2017 agreement that the PA was able to take control of public institutions in the Gaza Strip, though full control was never achieved and the PA withdrew. In 2019 Hamdallah resigned and the unity government was ended.
Blockade and 2008 conflict in the Gaza Strip
Meanwhile, the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip added a new element of uncertainty to Israeli-Palestinian relations. Israel declared the Gaza Strip under Hamas a hostile entity and imposed a blockade, sealing border crossings and placing heavy restrictions on imports. Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel became commonplace, as did retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces.
Israel and Hamas agreed in June 2008 to a six-month ceasefire in negotiations brokered by Egypt. When the agreement expired in December, Hamas announced that it did not intend to extend it, and there were accusations of violations by both sides. A major conflict broke out in late December when Israel launched air strikes on Hamas targets in response to increased rocket attacks. A week after commencing the air strikes, Israel mounted a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip. The conflict ended after 22 days, with Israel and Hamas each declaring a unilateral ceasefire. Thirteen Israelis and more than 1,000 Gazans were killed in the fighting.
Palestinian Authority bid for statehood recognition
A round of direct peace talks between Israel and the PA was held in September 2010, but those talks quickly came to a halt over the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Following the failure of direct talks in 2010, Abbas shifted his efforts toward gaining international recognition for a Palestinian state. In September 2011 he submitted a request to the UN Security Council asking for the admission of an independent Palestinian state to the UN. The action—which was opposed by Israel and the United States—had become necessary, he argued, because the U.S.-mediated peace negotiations had placed too little pressure on Israel to make concessions for peace. The bid for recognition by the Security Council stalled when it became clear that the United States would veto it and that several other members would abstain from voting.
A year after the failure of the Palestinian bid for full membership in the UN, Abbas announced that he would seek the UN General Assembly’s implicit recognition of Palestinian statehood by submitting a draft resolution requesting that the status of the Palestinian mission to the UN (officially called Palestine within the UN) be upgraded from “permanent observer” to “nonmember observer state.” The designation, though falling short of full UN membership, would allow Palestinians to seek membership in international bodies such as the International Criminal Court. The resolution passed on November 29, 2012, with 138 countries in favor, 9 opposed, and 41 abstentions. The resolution also urged Israel and the Palestinians to resume stalled negotiations toward a two-state solution. Israeli officials opposed Abbas’s bid for recognition, saying that such unilateral actions by the Palestinians would hold up negotiations with Israel.
2014 Gaza conflict
The murders of three teenage yeshiva students in the West Bank in June 2014—for which Netanyahu held Hamas responsible—brought a new escalation of tension. Israeli security forces conducted a massive sweep of the West Bank while exchanging air strikes with rocket fire from militants in the Gaza Strip. On July 8, 2014, Israel launched a large-scale air offensive in the Gaza Strip that targeted militants. After more than a week of bombardment failed to halt rocket fire into Israel, an incursion by Israeli ground troops aimed to destroy underground tunnels and other elements of the militants’ infrastructure. After several weeks of fighting, Israel withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip, declaring that their mission had been fulfilled.
Some fighting continued until a ceasefire agreement was reached in late August. In exchange for the cessation of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, Israel agreed to loosen restrictions on goods entering the Gaza Strip, expand the fishing zone off the coast, and reduce the size of the security buffer it enforced in areas adjacent to the Israeli border. Even though more than 2,100 Palestinians died in the 50-day offensive and the Gaza Strip witnessed widespread destruction, leaders of Hamas declared victory for its ability to withstand Israeli attacks and leverage concessions.
Political and financial uncertainty
In 2017 U.S. Pres. Donald Trump began touting that his administration was devising an “ultimate deal” peace initiative for the Israelis and the Palestinians. The initial optimism with which the Palestinian Authority received Trump and his promised initiative was soon snuffed out by the decision of the United States to move its embassy in Israel to the contested city of Jerusalem in 2018. The United States also began to cut funding to the PA and to aid programs for Palestinians and ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington, D.C. The peace plan, released in two parts in 2019 and 2020, included predetermined solutions that proposed significant development in the Palestinian territories but favored Israel on the most contentious issues. No negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis took place during Trump’s presidency.
Meanwhile, tensions flared along the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip in 2018. A series of protests, in which demonstrators attempted to cross the border into Israel and sent incendiary kites and balloons into Israel, were met with a violent response by Israel. At the peak, on May 14, Israeli soldiers opened fire on protesters attempting to cross the border, killing about 60 people and wounding some 2,700 others. The violence continued to escalate, leading to Israeli air strikes and Hamas rocket fire into Israel.
Both the PA and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip witnessed unrest in early 2019 as a result of political developments in 2018. In the West Bank the PA attempted to implement a social security program. Because of uncertainties in the PA’s long-term stability and finances, many Palestinians worried that they would pay into the program but never see that money again. The unpopularity of the program led to several protests, culminating in a workers’ strike across the West Bank on January 15, 2019. Meanwhile, attempts at reunifying the administration of the Gaza Strip with the PA fell apart in 2018, leading the PA to cut funding to, and impose sanctions on, the Gaza Strip. Aid from Qatar alleviated some of the financial pressure on Gazans, but the aid was itself offset by new taxes on goods imposed by Hamas. Protests broke out in the Gaza Strip in March 2019 and were met with a brutal response by Hamas.
In late February the PA rejected taxes collected by Israel on its behalf. The rejection was in protest of Israel’s decision to withhold a portion of those funds proportional to the welfare stipend that the PA paid each month to families of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel or killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a fund which Israel said encouraged violence. After months of severe fiscal strain, the PA began accepting the reduced revenue in late August, but it did not reduce its stipend payments.
Meanwhile, as 2019 progressed, Gazans saw some relief as Israel eased its blockade as it sought to negotiate a long-term understanding with Hamas that would reduce violence. The Egypt-mediated negotiations continued into 2020.
The inauguration of a new U.S. president in 2021 brought hope of a rapprochement between the PA and the United States. Indeed, the United States began restoring aid to the PA and vowed to reopen the PLO office in Washington, D.C. Abbas announced plans to hold parliamentary elections in May and presidential elections in July, which many observers believed were intended to shore up the legitimacy of the Abbas-led government while signaling resolve to renew the peace process. In late April, however, Abbas postponed the elections indefinitely amid concerns that Israel would prevent voting in East Jerusalem—a reason cited for the cancellation of elections in the past.
April also saw renewed tensions in Jerusalem. While Israeli police restricted Palestinians’ access to the Old City for Ramadan tarāwīḥ prayers, both Palestinians and Jews fell victim to street violence. Tensions came to a head in May as the Israeli Supreme Court was set to deliver a ruling on evicting dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The ruling was delayed amid heightened tensions, but clashes near Al-Aqsa Mosque led to hundreds of injuries. For the first time since 2014, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets into Jerusalem in response, prompting retaliation from Israeli forces and a conflict that lasted 11 days.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas led a land, sea, and air assault on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, making it the deadliest day for Israel since its independence, and more than 240 others were taken hostage. In response, Israel’s leaders launched the Israel-Hamas War, initially by conducting air strikes in the Gaza Strip and later through a ground invasion. By October 2024 more than 41,000 Gazans had been killed and two-thirds of the buildings in the Gaza Strip had been damaged or destroyed.
