Israel and Palestine, 1881 to today — The Restricted Section

Volume I · 1881 to today

Begins: 1881
Events: 350, on 177 cards
Reviewed through: Oct 14, 2026
Next: Israel votes, Oct 27, 2026

Chronological View

1. Before 1881
  
  Background. Both peoples trace their ties to this land through these centuries, and this page takes no side on them. The history it follows starts at the solid line below.
2. c. 1200–586 BCE
  
  Israelite kingdoms in the hills
  
  Israelite kingdoms grow up in the hill country of Canaan, with Jerusalem the capital of Judah. The Hebrew Bible makes this land central to Jewish faith and memory.
  
  Britannica, “Palestine: The Iron Age” · Britannica, “Canaan” · BBC timeline, “Ancient times”
3. 586 BCE
  
  Babylon destroys the First Temple
  
  Babylon conquers Judah, destroys the Temple in Jerusalem and exiles many of its people. Under Persian rule some return and build a Second Temple.
  
  Britannica, “Babylonian Exile” · Britannica, “Temple of Jerusalem”
4. 70 and 135 CE
  
  Rome crushes two Jewish revolts
  
  Rome destroys the Second Temple in 70 and crushes a last revolt in 135. It bars Jews from Jerusalem and renames the province Syria Palaestina, the root of the name Palestine. Jewish life goes on in Galilee and in a widening diaspora.
  
  Britannica, “Palestine: Roman Palestine” · Britannica, “Bar Kokhba Revolt” · Britannica, “Jewish Diaspora” · BBC timeline, “Ancient times”
5. 636–691 CE
  
  Arab Muslim rule begins
  
  Arab Muslim armies take the land from the Byzantine Empire, and the Dome of the Rock rises on the site of the old Temple. Over the centuries most people come to speak Arabic, and most become Muslim.
  
  Britannica, “Dome of the Rock” · Britannica, “Al-Aqsa Mosque” · Britannica, “Temple Mount” · BBC timeline, “Ancient times”
6. 1099–1291
  
  The Crusades
  
  European Crusaders take Jerusalem in 1099, killing many of its Muslims and Jews. Saladin retakes the city in 1187, and the last Crusader stronghold falls in 1291.
  
  Britannica, “Palestine: The Crusades” · Britannica, “Saladin”
7. 1516–1517
  
  Four centuries of Ottoman rule
  
  The Ottoman Empire conquers the land and rules it for 400 years as part of its Syrian provinces. Suleiman the Magnificent builds the walls that still surround Jerusalem’s Old City.
  
  Britannica, “Ottoman Empire” · Britannica, “Jerusalem: History”
8. 1831–1880
  
  A changing Ottoman province
  
  Egyptian rule, Ottoman reforms and a new land law change the country. Arab towns grow, and a small, mostly religious Jewish community lives in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias.
  
  The Ottoman Land Law of 1858 had land registered as private property. It made the leading families richer, and much farmland came to belong to owners who didn’t live on it, which mattered a great deal once Zionist groups began buying land and the families who farmed it lost it.
  
  Britannica, “Ibrahim Pasha” · Britannica, “Palestine: Ottoman rule”
1881

Where this history starts

Most people in Ottoman Palestine are Arabs, Muslim and Christian, and about 25,000 are Jews. That year, pogroms in the Russian Empire set off a great Jewish emigration.

Mobs attacked Jewish communities across the Russian Empire after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Most of the Jews who left went to the United States. A few thousand, members of new groups called the Lovers of Zion, set out to farm the land of their ancestors.

Estimates of the population then are rough. Most researchers put the Jews of Palestine in 1880 at 23,000 to 26,000, most of them religious Jews in the four holy cities. By 1914, in Britannica’s figures, about 690,000 people lived in the land: 535,000 Muslims, 70,000 Christians, most of them Arab, and 85,000 Jews.

Where a history of this conflict starts is itself argued over, and the notes at the foot of the page say why this one starts here.

Britannica, “pogrom” · Britannica, “Zionism” · Posen Library, “The Jews of Ottoman Palestine” · Britannica, “Palestine: Ottoman rule”

Left column What Palestinians did

Palestinians

The Arabs of Palestine, Muslim and Christian, and the groups that act for them

In 1881 they are most of the people of the land, under Ottoman rule. Until 1948 the cards on this side are the acts of their notables, congresses and parties, and of armed bands, first under the Ottomans and then under the British.

From the 1960s they are the acts of the PLO and its factions, and from 1994 of the Palestinian Authority it set up. From 1987 they are also the acts of Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad above all.

A card names who acted. It never means every Palestinian.

Right column What the Zionist movement, then Israel, did

The Zionist movement

From May 14, 1948, the State of Israel

Zionism is the movement for a Jewish national home, and then a Jewish state, in the land Jews call the Land of Israel. Until May 1948 the cards on this side are the acts of the Zionist Organization and its Jewish Agency, of the Jewish community they built in Palestine, and of its armed groups, the Haganah, the Irgun and Lehi.

From May 14, 1948 they are the acts of the State of Israel, its governments, army and police, and of Israeli settlers and their groups.

A card names who acted. It never means every Israeli, or every Jew.
1881 to 1947 Two movements, one land

Under the Ottomans

1881 to 1914. Jewish nationalism takes shape in Europe, and its first settlers arrive in a land ruled from Istanbul.
1882

The first Zionist settlers arrive

Groups of young Jews from the Russian Empire come to farm in Ottoman Palestine, and found Rishon LeZion, Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pinna.

Zionists call it the First Aliyah, from the Hebrew for “going up.” It brought about 25,000 Jews by 1903, by most historians’ estimates, joining an older, mostly religious Jewish community about as large.

The farming colonies struggled until Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a French banker, began paying for them in 1883. The Ottoman government tried from 1882 to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases, but its rules were loosely enforced.

Britannica, “aliyah” · Britannica, “Zionism” · Britannica, “Palestine: Ottoman rule”
1886–1891

First disputes over land, first protests

Arab villagers clash with settlers at Petah Tikva over land and grazing. In 1891, notables in Jerusalem petition the Ottoman government to stop Jewish immigration and land sales.

Much of the land the settlers bought belonged to owners who lived elsewhere, and a sale often meant that the tenant farmers who worked it lost it. Quarrels over grazing, boundaries and crops followed, and so did the first organized Arab opposition to Zionism.

UN, “Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem,” Part I · Britannica, “Palestine: Ottoman rule”

1908–1914 An Arab press warns against Zionism. After the Young Turk revolution of 1908 loosens censorship, newspapers like al-Karmil in Haifa and Filastin in Jaffa campaign against land sales to Zionists, and Palestinian deputies raise it in the Ottoman parliament.

Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”
1896–1897

Herzl and the First Zionist Congress

Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist, publishes The Jewish State. A year later a congress he calls in Basel resolves to seek a legally secured home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Herzl had reported from Paris on the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely convicted of treason, and on the crowds who cheered his downfall. He concluded that Jews would be safe only in a state of their own.

The Basel congress of August 1897 founded the Zionist Organization to work toward that home, with Herzl as its president.

Britannica, “Basel Program” · Britannica, “Theodor Herzl” · Britannica, “The Jewish State” · Britannica, “Zionist Congress” · BBC timeline, “First Zionist Congress”

Dec 1901 The Jewish National Fund is founded. The Zionist Organization sets up a fund to buy land in Palestine for Jewish settlement.

Jewish Virtual Library, “Jewish National Fund (JNF)”
Mar 1, 1899

A Jerusalem notable writes to Herzl

Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, a former mayor of Jerusalem, writes that Zionism is just in principle but that Palestine already has a people, and asks that it be left in peace.

Khalidi wrote in French to the chief rabbi of France, knowing the letter would be passed to Herzl. It ends, in Rashid Khalidi’s translation, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Herzl answered that Jewish settlement would bring the country’s Arabs prosperity.

Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian historian and Yusuf Diya’s descendant, opens his history of the conflict with the exchange.

Rashid Khalidi, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine,” excerpt
1904–1914

The Second Aliyah: kibbutzim and Tel Aviv

Another wave of Jewish immigrants, many of them socialists like David Ben-Gurion, found Tel Aviv beside Jaffa and the first kibbutz, at Degania.

Its leaders built much of what the state would later grow from: farming collectives, Hebrew-speaking schools, labor parties and an armed guard, Hashomer. Many insisted on “Hebrew labor,” hiring only Jews, to build a Jewish working class of their own, which kept Arab workers out of the jobs the new settlements created.

Britannica counts 19 Zionist colonies in 1900 and 47 in 1918, though most Jews in Palestine still lived in towns.

Britannica, “Tel Aviv-Yafo” · Britannica, “David Ben-Gurion” · Britannica, “kibbutz” · Britannica, “Palestine: Ottoman rule”
The war and the promises

1914 to 1920. Fighting the Ottomans, Britain makes promises to the Arabs, to France and to the Zionists that it cannot keep all at once.
Jul 1915 – Mar 1916 Disputed

Britain’s promise to the Arabs

In letters to Sharif Hussein of Mecca, Britain’s high commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon, promises to back Arab independence after the war if the Arabs rise against the Ottomans.

The letters left some areas out of the promise. Whether Palestine was one of them has been argued ever since. Britain later said it was. Arab leaders said it was not, and that Britain had promised them independence there. A joint British and Arab committee that studied the letters in 1939 found their wording unclear.

The McMahon letters, UNISPAL · Britannica, “Husayn-McMahon correspondence” · BBC timeline, “Shifting sands”

Nov 1914 – 1917 The Ottoman Empire goes to war. The Ottomans join Germany in the First World War. War, famine and locusts hit Palestine, and in 1917 the Ottoman governor expels thousands of Jews with foreign passports and empties Jaffa and Tel Aviv.

Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”

Jun 1916 Hussein’s revolt against the Ottomans. Sharif Hussein and his sons, among them Faisal, lead an Arab uprising against Ottoman rule with British money, guns and advisers.

Britannica, “Faisal I”
May 16, 1916

Britain and France divide the region

In a secret deal, Britain and France agree how to split the Ottoman Arab lands between them. Most of Palestine is to be put under an international administration.

The agreement is named for its negotiators, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot. Russia’s new Bolshevik government made it public in late 1917, and Arab leaders took it as a betrayal of what had been promised to Hussein.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement · Britannica, “Sykes-Picot Agreement” · BBC timeline, “Shifting sands”
Nov 2, 1917

The Balfour Declaration

Britain declares that it views “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” so long as nothing harms the rights of “existing non-Jewish communities.”

Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary, wrote it as a letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of British Jews. Jews were then less than a tenth of Palestine’s people. The declaration does not name the Arab majority, which it calls the “existing non-Jewish communities,” and it speaks of their civil and religious rights, not their political ones.

Zionists celebrate it as the first time a great power backed their aim. Palestinians mark its anniversary as the start of their dispossession.

The Balfour Declaration · Britannica, “Balfour Declaration” · BBC timeline, “Shifting sands”

Dec 9–11, 1917 Britain takes Jerusalem. British forces under General Allenby capture Jerusalem, and Allenby enters the Old City on foot. Four centuries of Ottoman rule end with the armistice of October 1918.

Britannica, “Jerusalem: Modern Jerusalem”
Jan–Feb 1919

The first Palestinian Arab congress

Delegates from Muslim-Christian associations meet in Jerusalem, reject the Balfour Declaration and ask for Palestine to be part of an independent Syria.

Congresses like it, and the Arab Executive they elected, led Palestinian Arab politics through the 1920s. Again and again they asked Britain for an elected government and an end to Jewish immigration.

Fanack, “Historic Palestine” · Jewish Virtual Library, “The Palestine Arab Congress” · Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”

Jan 3, 1919 The Faisal-Weizmann agreement. Emir Faisal and the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann sign an agreement welcoming Jewish immigration to Palestine, which Faisal makes conditional on Arab independence. The condition is never met, and the agreement dies.

The Faisal-Weizmann agreement, UNISPAL · Britannica, “Chaim Weizmann”

Aug 28, 1919 An American commission warns against the Zionist program. President Wilson’s King-Crane Commission reports that Palestine’s Arab majority opposes Zionism and recommends limiting it. The report is shelved until 1922.

Britannica, “King-Crane Commission”
Apr 4–7, 1920

The Nebi Musa riots

During a Muslim festival in Jerusalem, crowds attack Jews in the Old City. Several people are killed and scores hurt, and Jewish leaders soon form the Haganah to defend Jewish communities.

Britain’s military government had not stopped the riots, and Jewish leaders decided they could not rely on it. The Haganah, Hebrew for “defense,” became the main Jewish armed force until 1948. See Haganah, Irgun and Lehi.

Britannica, “Haganah” · BBC timeline, “Arab discontent” · Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”

May 1–7, 1921 The Jaffa riots. Riots that begin in Jaffa spread to Petah Tikva and other Jewish towns, and nearly 100 people are killed, Jews and Arabs. A British inquiry blames Arab fear of Zionist immigration.

BBC timeline, “Arab discontent” · Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”

May 1921 Britain makes Amin al-Husseini mufti of Jerusalem. The British high commissioner names Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a young nationalist from a leading Jerusalem family, to the city’s top Muslim post. He becomes the most powerful Palestinian Arab leader of the British years.

Britannica, “Amin al-Husseini”
The Mandate’s first decade

1921 to 1929. Britain rules Palestine under a League of Nations mandate that promises a Jewish national home and the rights of everyone else.
Jul 24, 1922

The League of Nations approves the Mandate

The League gives Britain formal rule over Palestine and binds it to carry out the Balfour Declaration, to “facilitate Jewish immigration,” and to protect the rights of everyone else.

The Mandate took effect in September 1923. It named a “Jewish agency” to advise Britain on building the national home, a role the Zionist Organization took on. Palestinian Arab leaders, who were most of the population, rejected the Mandate itself, and with it Britain’s offers of a legislative council in which Jewish immigration would go on.

Under it, the Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv, built its own assembly, labor union, schools and health service.

The Palestine Mandate · Britannica, “Palestine mandate” · Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”

Apr 25, 1920 Britain is given Palestine. The Allied powers meeting at San Remo give Britain a mandate over Palestine and write the Balfour Declaration into it. A civilian government under Herbert Samuel takes over in July.

Britannica, “Palestine mandate”

Jun 3, 1922 The Churchill White Paper. Britain says it never meant all of Palestine to become a Jewish national home, and that Jewish immigration will be limited to what the economy can absorb. Transjordan, east of the Jordan River, is left out of the national home.

British White Paper of June 1922 · The 1922 White Paper’s correspondence, UNISPAL

Oct 23, 1922 The first census. A British census counts about 750,000 people in Palestine, about 11% of them Jews.

BBC timeline, “Arab discontent”

1923 Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall”. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who will found the Revisionist Zionists, writes that the Arabs will not accept Zionism of their own will, and that it can only go forward behind “an iron wall” of force until they do.

Britannica, “Vladimir Jabotinsky”
Aug 23–29, 1929

The 1929 riots and the Hebron massacre

A dispute over prayer at the Western Wall turns into a week of violence. Arab rioters kill Jews across the country, and in Hebron they destroy a Jewish community centuries old.

By the BBC’s account, 133 Jews were killed by Arabs, and about 110 Arabs were killed by British police. In Hebron 67 Jews were killed. Arab families who hid Jews in their homes saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, more, and the survivors were moved to Jerusalem.

Palestinians call it the Buraq Revolt, for the Muslim name of the Wall. A British inquiry, the Shaw Commission, blamed Arab fears over immigration and land. An international commission ruled in 1930 on the rights of each faith at the Wall.

Britannica, “Western Wall” · The 1930 Western Wall commission, UNISPAL · BBC timeline, “Arab discontent” · Jewish Virtual Library, on Hebron

Oct 1930 – Feb 1931 Britain restricts immigration, then backs down. The Hope Simpson report and the Passfield White Paper propose limits on Jewish immigration and land purchases. After Zionist protest, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald reverses them in a letter in February 1931.

Encyclopedia.com, “White Papers on Palestine”
Revolt and partition plans

1930 to 1939. Jews fleeing Nazi Germany arrive by the tens of thousands, the Arabs rise against British rule, and Britain proposes for the first time to divide the land.
1933–1936

Refugees from Nazi Germany

After Hitler takes power in Germany, Jewish immigration to Palestine surges. By 1936 Jews are about a third of the population.

By 1936, in Britannica’s figures, the Jewish population had reached almost 400,000, up from about 11% of the total in 1922 to about a third. The arrivals, and the land bought for them, fed the Arab revolt that began that year.

Britannica, “aliyah” · BBC timeline, “Arab discontent” · Britannica, “Palestine: World War I and after”
1936–1939

The Arab Revolt

A six-month general strike against Jewish immigration and British rule grows into an armed rebellion. Britain crushes it with troops, executions, collective punishment and the demolition of homes.

About 5,000 Arabs, 300 to 500 Jews and more than 260 Britons were killed, in the estimates historians most often use. The Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi estimates that a tenth of the adult Arab men were killed, wounded, jailed or exiled.

The Arab Higher Committee, led by Amin al-Husseini, called the strike. Britain outlawed it in 1937 and exiled its leaders. The rebels also killed many Arabs they called collaborators. The Jewish forces grew with British help, and the Irgun set off bombs in Arab markets.

Britannica, “Arab revolt (1936–39)” · Britannica, “Palestine: The Arab Revolt” · BBC timeline, “Arab discontent”

Nov 20, 1935 Izz ad-Din al-Qassam is killed. British police kill the Syrian-born preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who had organized armed cells against the British and the Zionists. Palestinians remember him as a martyr, and Hamas later names its armed wing after him.

Matthew Hughes, “Britain’s Pacification of Palestine,” excerpt
Jul 7, 1937

The Peel Commission proposes partition

A British royal commission finds the Mandate cannot work and proposes the first partition: a small Jewish state, an Arab state joined to Transjordan, and a British zone around Jerusalem.

It also proposed moving people so that each state would have few of the other’s, which would have meant moving far more Arabs than Jews. Palestinian and Arab leaders rejected the plan and asked for one independent state. The Zionist Congress rejected its borders but agreed to negotiate on it.

The Peel Commission’s report, UNISPAL · Britannica, “Peel Commission” · Hansard, Jul 21, 1937 · BBC timeline, “Arab discontent”

Nov 1938 Partition is dropped. A second British commission, the Woodhead Commission, finds partition impractical, and the government drops it.

Britannica, “Woodhead Commission”
May 17, 1939

The 1939 White Paper

On the eve of war, Britain caps Jewish immigration at 75,000 over five years, restricts land sales to Jews and promises an independent Palestine with an Arab majority within ten years.

Zionists called it a betrayal, made as Jews were trying to escape Nazi Germany. The Arab Higher Committee rejected it too.

British White Paper of 1939 · Hansard, May 22, 1939

1939–1945 Refugee ships turned away. Britain keeps most Jewish refugees out under the White Paper’s limits. The Patria sinks in Haifa harbor in 1940 after a Haganah bomb meant to disable it, killing about 260 people, and the Struma sinks in the Black Sea in 1942 with nearly 800 aboard.

USHMM, “Struma”
The Second World War and the Holocaust

1939 to 1945. Nazi Germany murders six million Jews. Zionist leaders call for a state, and some of their armed groups turn on Britain.
1941–1945

The Holocaust

Nazi Germany and its collaborators murder about six million Jews, two out of every three in Europe. The survivors, and the need for a refuge, reshape the struggle over Palestine after the war.

USHMM, “Introduction to the Holocaust” · Britannica, “Holocaust”
Nov 28, 1941 Disputed

The mufti meets Hitler

Amin al-Husseini, the exiled Palestinian Arab leader, meets Hitler in Berlin. He spends the war in Germany broadcasting Nazi propaganda to the Arab world and recruiting Muslims for the SS.

How far he spoke for Palestinians, and what part he played in the Holocaust, are argued over. Israeli leaders have often pointed to him. Historians, Israeli ones among them, have rejected claims that he inspired the Holocaust. What is documented is that he tried to stop Jews in Nazi-occupied countries from leaving for Palestine.

USHMM, “Hajj Amin al-Husayni” · Britannica, “Amin al-Husseini”
1944–1946

Jewish armed groups turn on Britain

The Irgun under Menachem Begin declares a revolt against British rule, and Lehi assassinates Lord Moyne, Britain’s minister in Cairo. For a time the Haganah joins them in attacks on railways, bridges and bases.

Britain called the Irgun and Lehi terrorists. The Jewish Agency opposed their campaign at first. From late 1945 to the summer of 1946 its own Haganah fought alongside them, in a united Jewish resistance to British rule.

Britannica, “Stern Gang” · Britannica, “Menachem Begin”

1931 The Irgun is founded. Members who break away from the Haganah form the Irgun, which comes to follow Jabotinsky’s Revisionists and rejects the Haganah’s policy of restraint.

Britannica, “Irgun Zvai Leumi”

May 11, 1942 The Biltmore Program. Meeting in New York, Zionist leaders demand that Palestine be “established as a Jewish Commonwealth,” with no limit on immigration. It is the movement’s first open call for a state.

The Biltmore Program, UNISPAL · Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942

Jul 1947 The sergeants affair. The Irgun hangs two British sergeants it has kidnapped, in revenge for the execution of three of its members. Riots against Jews break out in several British cities.

New Statesman, May 2012
Britain gives up

1945 to 1947. With the survivors of the Holocaust waiting in camps and its soldiers under attack, Britain hands the question to the new United Nations.
1945–1947

Survivors in the camps, and the US presses Britain

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors wait in camps for displaced people in Europe. President Truman urges Britain to let 100,000 of them into Palestine, and a joint British and American inquiry agrees.

USHMM, “Displaced Persons” · Truman statement, Oct 4, 1946 · Britannica, “Anglo-American Committee”

Jul 1947 The Exodus 1947. Britain stops a ship carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors and sends them back to Europe, in the end to camps in Germany. The pictures sway opinion abroad while a UN committee is touring Palestine.

USHMM, “Exodus 1947”
Jul 22, 1946

The King David Hotel bombing

The Irgun bombs the wing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel that houses Britain’s government offices, killing 91 people, British, Arab and Jewish.

The Irgun said it had phoned a warning. British officials said none reached them in time. In Parliament the next day the government called it a terrorist outrage, and after the attack the Haganah broke off its alliance with the Irgun and Lehi.

Britannica, “King David Hotel” · Hansard, Jul 23, 1946
Feb 18, 1947

Britain hands Palestine to the UN

After a last conference in London fails, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin tells Parliament that Britain will put the question of Palestine to the United Nations.

By then, in the BBC’s account, Jews were about a third of the population and owned about 6% of the land,.

Hansard, Feb 18, 1947 · BBC timeline, “UN partition plan”

Mar 22, 1945 The Arab League is founded. Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen found the Arab League in Cairo, and it takes up the Palestinian Arab cause.

The Alexandria Protocol, Oct 7, 1944 · Pact of the League of Arab States · Britannica, “Arab League”
May 15 – Aug 31, 1947

A UN committee recommends partition

A UN committee of 11 countries recommends ending the Mandate. Most of its members propose a Jewish state and an Arab state with an international Jerusalem. A minority proposes one federal state.

The Arab Higher Committee boycotted the committee. The Jewish Agency worked with it. Its majority plan became the basis of the UN vote in November.

UNSCOP report, UNISPAL · UN, “Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem,” Part I · BBC timeline, “UN partition plan”
1947 to 1967 Partition, war and two exiles

Partition and civil war

November 1947 to May 1948. The UN votes to divide the land, and its two communities go to war as Britain leaves.
Nov 29, 1947

The UN votes to split the land

The UN General Assembly backs a plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international rule. The Jewish Agency accepts it. The Arab Higher Committee and the Arab states reject it.

The vote was 33 to 13, with 10 abstaining. The plan gave the Jewish state about 56% of the land, when Jews were about a third of the population and owned about 6% of it, and the Jewish state would have had an Arab population nearly as large as its Jewish one.

Arab leaders said the UN had no right to divide a country against the will of most of its people. Zionist leaders pointed to their acceptance of a compromise that gave them less than they wanted. The plan was never carried out.

UN General Assembly resolution 181 (II) · Resolution 181 (II), UN document · Britannica, “Resolution 181” · US Office of the Historian, 1948 · BBC timeline, “UN partition plan”
Nov 30, 1947 – Apr 1948

Civil war in Palestine

The day after the vote, Arab gunmen attack Jewish buses, and fighting spreads between the two communities as Britain prepares to leave. Bombings, ambushes and reprisals kill hundreds of people a month.

Arab irregulars, joined from January 1948 by volunteers of the Arab Liberation Army, fought the Haganah, the Irgun and Lehi. At the end of December an Irgun bomb killed Arab workers waiting outside the Haifa oil refinery, and Arab workers inside then killed 39 of their Jewish co-workers. In February and March, bombs set by Arabs hit the Palestine Post, Ben Yehuda Street and the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.

Through the spring the Jewish forces took the upper hand, and in April they went on the offensive.

Britannica, “1948 Arab-Israeli War” · US Office of the Historian, 1948

Apr 8, 1948 Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini is killed at al-Qastal. The best-known Palestinian commander dies fighting for a hilltop village on the road to Jerusalem, and his forces lose heart.

Britannica, “Faisal Husseini”
Mar 10, 1948 Disputed

The Haganah adopts Plan D

The Haganah’s plan for the coming war is to secure the land of the Jewish state and the roads to it before the British leave, including by taking Arab villages and destroying those that resist.

What the plan was for is argued over. Israeli historians, Benny Morris among them, read it as a military plan that let commanders expel villagers but did not order a general expulsion. The Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, and the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, read it as a blueprint for emptying the country of its Arabs. Each side’s reading is linked here.

Walid Khalidi, “Plan Dalet” · Pappé and Morris, “Where did the Arabs go?”
Apr 9, 1948

The Deir Yassin massacre

Fighters of the Irgun and Lehi attack the Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem and kill about 100 to 110 villagers, among them women and children.

Reports at the time put the dead at 254, and word of the massacre, true and exaggerated, spread fear and sped the flight of Arabs from other villages. A study by Birzeit University in 1987 counted 107 dead. The Haganah and the Jewish Agency condemned the attack at the time.

Both sides’ accounts are linked here: the Jewish Virtual Library’s, written from the Israeli side, and that of Zochrot, an Israeli group that records the Nakba.

Britannica, “Deir Yassin” · Christian Science Monitor, Apr 6, 1998 · Jewish Virtual Library, “The Capture of Deir Yassin” · Zochrot, on Deir Yassin
Apr 13, 1948

The Hadassah convoy massacre

Arab forces ambush a convoy to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus and kill 78 Jews, most of them doctors, nurses and patients. British troops nearby do not step in for hours.

Jewish Virtual Library, “The Hadassah Convoy Massacre” · Hadassah, 2015
May 13, 1948

The Kfar Etzion massacre

The Etzion bloc of Jewish villages south of Jerusalem surrenders to Jordan’s Arab Legion and local fighters, and about 130 of its defenders and residents are killed. The survivors are taken prisoner.

Israelis rebuilt Kfar Etzion in 1967, the first settlement in the West Bank. See The first settlements.

Tablet, on Kfar Etzion
Independence and the Nakba

May 1948 to 1949. Israel declares independence and wins the war that follows. More than half the Arabs of Palestine lose their homes and are not allowed back.
May 14, 1948

Israel declares independence

Hours before the British Mandate ends, David Ben-Gurion reads Israel’s declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. The United States recognizes the new state within minutes, the Soviet Union three days later.

Israelis call the war that followed the War of Independence. Palestinians mark May 15 as Nakba Day, the day of the “catastrophe.”

Israel’s declaration of independence · US Office of the Historian, 1948 · Britannica, “Israel: Establishment of Israel” · BBC timeline, “Israel founded”
May 15, 1948

Arab armies enter

The armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, with Lebanese forces, enter the former Mandate. The war of states lasts until early 1949, broken by two UN truces.

The Arab League told the UN that its members were entering to restore order and protect the Arab population. Israel’s forces held their ground and then took much of the land the UN plan had given the Arab state. Britannica puts the dead of the war at 5,700 to 6,400 Jews and 10,000 to 15,000 Palestinian Arabs, about 1% of each population.

US Office of the Historian, 1948 · Britannica, “1948 Arab-Israeli War” · BBC timeline, “Israel founded” · Arab League cable to the UN, S/745

May 28, 1948 The Old City’s Jewish Quarter falls. The Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City surrenders to the Arab Legion. Its residents are expelled and its synagogues destroyed, and Jews cannot reach the Western Wall until 1967.

Times of Israel, on the Hurva synagogue

Jun 11 – Jul 8, 1948 The first UN truce. The Security Council’s first truce holds for four weeks. Both sides use it to rearm.

UN Security Council resolution 50 (1948)
1947–1949 Disputed

Palestinians lose their homes

About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs by most counts, more than half the Arab population, flee or are driven out of the land that becomes Israel. Hundreds of villages are emptied and most later destroyed. Israel does not let them return.

Palestinians call it the Nakba, the “catastrophe.” The UN’s Conciliation Commission counted about 711,000 refugees in 1950. The Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it at about 700,000, and Palestinian estimates run from 750,000 to 900,000. Walid Khalidi’s survey counts 418 villages emptied.

Why they left is disputed, which is why this card sits in the middle. Older Israeli accounts said Arab leaders told them to go. Research in Israel’s own archives since the 1980s, Morris’s above all, found that most fled the fighting or were driven out, with expulsions in some places and no single master plan. Palestinian historians, and Israelis like Ilan Pappé, describe a planned expulsion.

Britannica, “1948 Arab-Israeli War” · Britannica, “Israel: Armistice and refugees” · BBC timeline, “Israel founded” · UN Conciliation Commission, 1950

Apr 21 – May 13, 1948 Haifa, Jaffa and other cities fall. Jewish forces take Tiberias, Haifa, Safed and Jaffa. Most of their Arab residents flee or are forced out, and by mid-May about 300,000 Palestinians have left their homes.

Walid Khalidi, “The Fall of Haifa Revisited” · Pappé and Morris, “Where did the Arabs go?”
Jul 11–14, 1948

Lydda and Ramle are emptied

Israeli forces take the towns of Lydda and Ramle and expel about 50,000 to 70,000 of their people, by historians’ estimates, many of them on a march east in the summer heat in which an unknown number die.

Britannica, “Lod” · IPS Encyclopedia, “Lydda, 9–13 July 1948”
Oct–Nov 1948 Disputed

The last offensives, and killings in the villages

Israel’s offensives in the Negev and Galilee drive out more villagers. Killings of civilians and prisoners at al-Dawayima, Safsaf, Saliha, Eilabun and other villages are later documented in Israel’s own archives.

How many were killed in each village is disputed. At al-Dawayima, near Hebron, accounts from both sides put the dead at anywhere from dozens to hundreds.

History News Network, on al-Dawayima · IPS Encyclopedia, “al-Dawayima”
Dec 11, 1948

Resolution 194 and the refugees

The UN General Assembly resolves that refugees wishing to return home and live at peace with their neighbors should be allowed to, and that those who choose not to should be paid for what they lost. Israel does not allow a return.

Palestinians base their right of return on it. Israel says the resolution is a recommendation, not a binding right, and that a mass return would end Israel as a Jewish state.

UN General Assembly resolution 194 (III) · Resolution 194 (III), UN document

Sept 17, 1948 The UN mediator is assassinated. Lehi gunmen kill Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN’s mediator, in Jerusalem, a day after he proposed a plan that included the refugees’ return.

UN mediator’s report, Sept 16, 1948 · Britannica, “Folke Bernadotte” · UN Security Council resolution 57 (1948)
Feb 24 – Jul 20, 1949

Armistice lines: the “Green Line”

Israel signs armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The lines leave Israel with more than three-quarters of the former Mandate, Jordan with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt with Gaza.

They were meant to be temporary, and they became the Green Line, the “1967 lines” of every later peace plan. Jerusalem was split by them, Israel in the west and Jordan in the east, with the Old City on Jordan’s side.

Egyptian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement · Jordanian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement · Lebanese-Israeli General Armistice Agreement · Syrian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement · BBC timeline, “Israel founded”

May 11, 1949 Israel joins the UN. The General Assembly admits Israel as a member.

UN General Assembly resolution 273 (III)

Dec 1949 – Jan 1950 Israel makes West Jerusalem its capital. Days after the UN reaffirms its plan for an international Jerusalem, the Knesset declares Jerusalem the capital and moves there.

UN General Assembly resolution 303 (IV) · US State Department, 1953
Dec 8, 1949

UNRWA is created

The UN sets up a relief agency for the Palestine refugees, which starts work in May 1950. It is meant to be temporary, and its mandate has been renewed ever since.

UNRWA runs schools, clinics and camps for refugees and their descendants in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. See Israel bans UNRWA for what happened to it in the war of 2023.

UN General Assembly resolution 302 (IV) · Britannica, “UNRWA”
Two peoples in exile

1950 to 1956. Israel takes in Jews leaving the Arab world. The Palestinians who stayed live under military rule, and those who fled live in camps in the countries around.
Mar 14 and Jul 5, 1950

Two laws: absentees’ property and return

One law gives the state control of the property of Palestinians who left their homes, including many who stayed inside Israel. Another gives every Jew the right to immigrate.

The Law of Return is at the heart of Israel’s idea of itself as a home for Jews everywhere. The Absentees’ Property Law counted anyone who had left their home after November 29, 1947 as absent, and put their land, houses and bank accounts under a state custodian. It was the main way Israel took over the refugees’ land.

Britannica, “Law of Return” · Adalah, the Absentees’ Property Law
Apr 24, 1950

Jordan annexes the West Bank

Jordan formally annexes the West Bank, East Jerusalem included, and makes its Palestinians Jordanian citizens. Few other countries ever recognize the annexation.

Britannica, “West Bank” · Britannica, “Palestine, 1948–67”

Sept 22 – Oct 1, 1948 An “All-Palestine Government” in Gaza. Under Egypt’s wing, Palestinian leaders declare a government for all of Palestine in Gaza, with Amin al-Husseini at its head. It has no real power and fades away.

Encyclopedia.com, “All-Palestine Government” · Avi Shlaim, on the All-Palestine Government
1948 to the early 1970s Disputed

Jews leave the Arab world

Facing hostility, persecution and violence, most of the Jews of Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Morocco and other Arab countries leave over two decades, about 800,000 people by most estimates. Most go to Israel.

In Israel, they and their children, called Mizrahi Jews, came to be about half of the Jewish population. How far they were expelled, pushed out or chose to leave varies from country to country and is argued over, and so is whether their losses should be weighed against the Palestinian refugees’ in any peace deal.

Britannica, “Mizrahi Jew”
1948–1966

Military rule over Israel’s Arab citizens

The roughly 150,000 Arabs who stayed inside Israel become citizens but live under military government, needing permits to travel, until December 1966.

Akevot Institute, military government file

Dec 1, 1966 Military rule over Arab citizens ends. Israel lifts the military government. Files opened decades later, published by the Israeli archive group Akevot, show how it was used to control Arab citizens.

Akevot Institute, military government file
Oct 14–15, 1953

The Qibya raid

After a grenade kills an Israeli mother and two children in Yehud, an Israeli unit under Ariel Sharon blows up 45 houses in the West Bank village of Qibya, killing 69 people, most of them women and children.

The UN Security Council condemned the raid.

UN Security Council resolution 101 on Qibya

1949–1956 Infiltration and reprisals on the borders. Thousands of Palestinians cross the armistice lines, most to farm their old land or take back property, some to attack. Israel shoots infiltrators and answers attacks with raids on villages in Jordan and Egypt.

UN armistice report on Scorpions’ Pass

Mar 17, 1954 An ambush at Scorpions’ Pass. Gunmen ambush a bus in the Negev and kill 11 passengers. The UN armistice commission could not say who did it. Israel blamed infiltrators from Jordan.

UN armistice report on Scorpions’ Pass · Foreign Relations of the United States, 1954
Oct 29 – Nov 1956

The Suez War

Israel invades Sinai and Gaza in secret concert with Britain and France, who want the Suez Canal back from Egypt. American and Soviet pressure forces all three to withdraw.

Israel pulled back from Sinai and Gaza by March 1957, and UN peacekeepers took up posts along the border with Egypt.

US Office of the Historian, “The Suez Crisis, 1956” · Britannica, “Suez Crisis” · BBC On This Day, 1956

Feb 28, 1955 Israel raids Gaza. An Israeli raid on an Egyptian army post in Gaza kills 38 soldiers. Egypt answers by arming Palestinian fedayeen raiders and buying weapons from the Soviet bloc.

UN Security Council, Mar 29, 1955
Oct 29, 1956

The Kafr Qasim massacre

On the war’s first day, Israeli Border Police shoot dead 48 Arab citizens of Israel, women and children among them, as they come home from work unaware of a curfew.

Counting an unborn child, Palestinians number the dead at 49. An Israeli court convicted eight officers, and all were free within a few years. In 2014 Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, called it a terrible crime.

Jerusalem Post, 2022 · The New Arab, 2022 · Times of Israel, Oct 26, 2014
Nov 3 and 12, 1956

Killings in Khan Younis and Rafah

During Israel’s occupation of Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian men are killed in Khan Younis and Rafah. UNRWA’s director reported 275 dead in Khan Younis and 111 in Rafah.

UNRWA director’s special report, 1956
The road to 1967

1957 to 1967. A new generation of Palestinians founds its own movements, and Israel and its neighbors fight over water and borders.
May 28 – Jun 2, 1964

The PLO is founded

At a congress in East Jerusalem called by the Arab League, Palestinians found the Palestine Liberation Organization under Ahmad Shukeiri and adopt a national charter.

The PLO began as a body of the Arab states. Its charter called for the liberation of all of Palestine. After 1967 the guerrilla groups took it over.

Britannica, “Palestine Liberation Organization” · BBC timeline, “Formation of the PLO”

c. 1959 Fatah is founded. Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir and other Palestinians in Kuwait found Fatah, a movement to liberate Palestine by armed struggle, independent of the Arab governments.

Britannica, “Fatah” · BBC timeline, “Formation of the PLO”

1964–1967 The fight over the Jordan River’s water. Israel opens its National Water Carrier. Arab states start diverting the Jordan’s headwaters, Israel strikes the works in Syria, and clashes on the Syrian border grow.

CIA briefing on the Jordan’s water, Feb 1956

Jan 1, 1965 Fatah’s first raid. Fatah tries to blow up part of Israel’s water carrier, its first armed operation.

Britannica, “Fatah”
1967 to 1987 Six days, and the twenty years after

Six days

June 1967. In one short war Israel takes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, along with Sinai and the Golan Heights.
Jun 5–10, 1967

The Six-Day War

Israel strikes first at Egypt’s air force, then fights Jordan and Syria. In six days it takes Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

Israel says it struck first because Egypt had closed the Straits of Tiran to its shipping, sent away the UN’s peacekeepers and massed its army in Sinai, and that Jordan and Syria joined the war themselves. The Arab states called it aggression. The war is on the middle line because it was a war of states.

It left Israel holding all the land of the former Mandate, and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza under its rule. Britannica counts more than 11,000 Egyptian casualties, 6,000 Jordanian and 1,000 Syrian, against about 700 Israeli. Israelis remember it as deliverance from a threat to their existence, Palestinians and Arabs as a second disaster, the Naksa.

US Office of the Historian, 1967 · Britannica, “Six-Day War” · BBC On This Day, 1967 · BBC On This Day, 1967 · BBC timeline, “1967 War”

May 16 – Jun 4, 1967 The road to war. Egypt sends the UN’s peacekeepers out of Sinai and closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, which Israel had said would be a cause for war. Jordan signs a defense pact with Egypt.

US Office of the Historian, 1967

Nov 13, 1966 The Samu raid. After a mine kills three Israeli soldiers, Israel raids the West Bank village of as-Samu, then under Jordan, destroying dozens of homes and killing Jordanian soldiers. The Security Council censures Israel.

UN Security Council resolution 228 (1966)
Jun 1967

A second exile, the Naksa

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee or are pushed out of the West Bank and Gaza, many of them refugees for the second time. Palestinians call it the Naksa, “the setback.”

The UN Secretary-General’s envoy, Nils-Göran Gussing, estimated that summer that about 200,000 people had left the West Bank for the east bank of the Jordan, and that about 350,000 had fled all the lands Israel took. The BBC, citing the UN, gives 500,000. Israel razed three villages near Latrun and the Moroccan Quarter beside the Western Wall, whose people were moved out to make a plaza in front of the Wall.

UN Gussing report, 1967 · UNISPAL, Gussing mission interim report · BBC timeline, “1967 War”
Jun 27–28, 1967

Israel takes over East Jerusalem

Israel extends its law to East Jerusalem and the land around it, and makes the city far larger. The UN General Assembly calls the move invalid.

Israel calls the city united and its capital. Most of the world treats East Jerusalem as occupied.

UN General Assembly resolution 2253 · Britannica, “Jerusalem: Modern Jerusalem”

Aug 21, 1969 Arson at al-Aqsa Mosque. An Australian Christian sets fire to al-Aqsa Mosque, destroying its 12th-century pulpit. Muslim states respond by founding the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

UN Security Council resolution 271 (1969)
Sept 1, 1967

The Arab League’s “three no’s”

Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum resolve to seek Israel’s withdrawal, with “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”

The Khartoum Resolutions
Sept 1967 onward

The first settlements

Israelis rebuild Kfar Etzion, a village lost in 1948, the first civilian settlement in the West Bank. Israel’s foreign ministry’s legal adviser warns in a secret memo that settling civilians there breaks international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power to move its own civilians into land it occupies. Israel says the Convention doesn’t apply, because the West Bank was not a sovereign state’s land when it took it. The world court, in 2004 and 2024, and most countries say it does apply.

Labor governments built settlements mostly in the Jordan Valley and around Jerusalem. From the late 1970s, governments of the right built across the whole West Bank.

Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49 (ICRC)

1974 onward The settler movement Gush Emunim. Religious Zionists found Gush Emunim, the “Bloc of the Faithful,” to settle the whole of the West Bank, which they see as part of the Land of Israel promised to the Jews. They camp at Sebastia until the government lets them stay.

Times of Israel, on Sebastia · The Forward, on “The Accidental Empire”

Mar 22, 1979 The Security Council on settlements. The Council says the settlements have “no legal validity” and are a serious obstacle to peace. The US abstains.

UN Security Council resolution 446 (1979)

May 2 and Jun 2, 1980 Killings in Hebron, bombs for the mayors. Palestinian gunmen kill six Jewish yeshiva students outside Beit Hadassah in Hebron. A month later a Jewish underground cell plants car bombs that maim the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah.

New York Times, May 6, 1980 · New York Times, Jun 3, 1980

Apr 1984 A Jewish underground is caught. Israel arrests members of a settler underground behind the 1980 bombings, who were also plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock.

New York Times, May 10, 1984
Nov 22, 1967 Disputed

Resolution 242: land for peace

The UN Security Council calls for Israel to withdraw “from territories occupied in the recent conflict” and for every state in the region to live in peace within secure borders. Every later peace effort rests on it.

Whether “territories,” without “the,” means all of them is disputed. The Arab states and France read it as all. Israel and the British and American drafters said it did not have to mean all. The Palestinians appear only in a call for “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” and the PLO rejected the resolution for twenty years.

UN Security Council resolution 242 · Britannica, “Resolution 242” · BBC timeline, “1967 War”
The PLO’s war

1968 to 1973. Palestinian guerrilla groups take over the PLO and fight Israel from Jordan, while some of them hijack planes and attack Israelis abroad.
Mar 21, 1968

The battle of Karameh

An Israeli raid on Fatah’s base in the Jordanian town of Karameh meets hard resistance from Fatah and Jordan’s army. Israel loses about 30 soldiers, and Fatah claims a victory.

Israel did what it set out to do, but the battle made Fatah famous. Thousands of young Palestinians joined it, and its leader, Yasser Arafat, became chairman of the PLO in February 1969.

BBC timeline, “Formation of the PLO”
Jul 1968

The Palestinian National Charter is rewritten

The Palestine National Council declares that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine,” and that the partition of 1947 and the founding of Israel are “entirely illegal.”

The Palestinian National Charter, 1968 · Britannica, “Palestine Liberation Organization”
Sept 1970 – Jul 1971

Black September: Jordan drives out the PLO

King Hussein’s army crushes the PLO’s armed groups, which had become a state within his state. Thousands die, and the PLO moves its fighters to Lebanon.

BBC On This Day, 1970 · Britannica, “Black September”

Jul 23, 1968 – Sept 1970 Palestinian groups hijack airliners. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacks an El Al jet to Algiers, the first of a wave of hijackings. In September 1970 it seizes four planes and blows up three of them, emptied of passengers, at Dawson’s Field in Jordan.

BBC On This Day, 1970 · Britannica, “PFLP”
Sept 5–6, 1972

Murder at the Munich Olympics

Gunmen from Black September, a group linked to Fatah, take Israeli athletes hostage in the Olympic village. Eleven Israelis are killed, two at the start and nine in a failed German rescue.

Over the following years Israel hunted down and killed men it linked to the attack.

BBC On This Day, 1972 · Britannica, “Munich massacre” · BBC timeline, “Arafat’s first UN appearance”

May 30, 1972 Massacre at Lod airport. Three members of the Japanese Red Army, working with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, open fire in Israel’s main airport and kill 26 people, most of them pilgrims from Puerto Rico.

Britannica, “Japanese Red Army”

Jun 27 – Jul 4, 1976 The raid on Entebbe. Palestinian and German militants hijack an Air France jet to Uganda and hold the Israeli and Jewish passengers. Israeli commandos fly 2,500 miles and free them. Three hostages and the unit’s commander, Yoni Netanyahu, are killed.

BBC On This Day, 1976 · Britannica, “Entebbe raid”

Oct 7, 1985 The Achille Lauro hijacking. Gunmen from the Palestine Liberation Front seize an Italian cruise ship and kill a disabled American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer.

BBC On This Day, 1985 · Britannica, “Achille Lauro hijacking”
Oct 6–25, 1973

The October War, or the Yom Kippur War

Egypt and Syria attack Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. After heavy early losses Israel pushes them back, and Arab oil states cut their oil to the West.

Israelis call it the Yom Kippur War, and Arabs the October War or the Ramadan War. Thousands of soldiers died on each side. Egypt celebrates its crossing of the Suez Canal as a victory, and the war left Israel more dependent on the United States.

The Security Council’s Resolution 338 called for a ceasefire and for talks on the basis of Resolution 242.

US Office of the Historian, 1973 · Britannica, “Yom Kippur War” · BBC On This Day, 1973 · UN Security Council resolution 338 · BBC timeline, “The 1973 Yom Kippur war”

1969–1970 The War of Attrition. Egypt and Israel shell and raid each other across the Suez Canal for over a year, until a US-brokered ceasefire.

Britannica, “War of Attrition”

Jan 18 and May 31, 1974 Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy. Flying between capitals, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, brokers agreements that pull Israel’s forces back from the Suez Canal and from a strip of the Golan.

US Office of the Historian, shuttle diplomacy · Israel-Syria Separation of Forces Agreement
A seat at the UN

1974 to 1977. The PLO wins recognition as the Palestinians’ voice, while its factions attack Israeli towns, and Israel’s right wins power for the first time.
Apr 11 and May 15, 1974

Kiryat Shmona and Ma’alot

Gunmen from a PLO faction kill 18 people in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona. A month later gunmen from another faction take a school in Ma’alot hostage, and 22 of the dead are children.

The first attack was by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the second by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which demanded the release of prisoners. Israeli troops stormed the school.

BBC On This Day, 1974 · BBC timeline, “Arafat’s first UN appearance”
Oct 28 – Nov 22, 1974

The PLO is recognized as the Palestinians’ voice

The Arab League names the PLO “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Arafat addresses the UN General Assembly, which affirms Palestinian rights to self-determination and gives the PLO observer status.

Arafat told the Assembly: “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

UN General Assembly resolution 3236 (XXIX) · UN General Assembly resolution 3237 (XXIX) · BBC timeline, “Arafat’s first UN appearance” · Arafat at the UN, A/PV.2282

Jun 1974 The PLO’s “ten-point program”. The PLO agrees to set up a national authority on “any part” of Palestinian land that is liberated, a first step toward a two-state position. Israel reads it as a plan to destroy Israel in stages.

The PNC political program of June 8, 1974 · IPS Encyclopedia, overall chronology entry
Nov 10, 1975

“Zionism is a form of racism”

The UN General Assembly votes 72 to 35 that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The American ambassador says the United States “will never acquiesce” in it.

UN General Assembly resolution 3379 (XXX)

Dec 16, 1991 The UN revokes it. The General Assembly repeals the resolution, 111 to 25.

UN General Assembly resolution 46/86
Mar 30, 1976

Land Day

Arab citizens of Israel strike against the taking of land in Galilee. Israeli forces kill six protesters. Palestinians everywhere mark the day every year.

BBC, Mar 30, 2001
May 17, 1977

Begin’s Likud wins

For the first time, Labor loses power in Israel. Menachem Begin, the former Irgun commander, calls the West Bank by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria, and settlement building speeds up.

Britannica, “Israel: The decline of Labour dominance” · Britannica, “Menachem Begin” · BBC timeline, “Israel’s resurgent right wing”

Nov 1981 A “Civil Administration” for the territories. Israel sets up a Civil Administration, under its army, to run civilian affairs for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. It still runs much of Area C.

Masader, on the Civil Administration
Peace with Egypt

1977 to 1981. Egypt’s president goes to Jerusalem, and Egypt becomes the first Arab state to make peace with Israel. The talks promise the Palestinians self-rule that never comes.
Nov 19–20, 1977

Sadat goes to Jerusalem

Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, flies to Israel and speaks to the Knesset, the first Arab leader to visit Israel.

BBC On This Day, 1977 · Britannica, “Anwar Sadat” · BBC timeline, “Israel’s resurgent right wing”
Mar 11, 1978

The Coastal Road massacre

Fatah gunmen come ashore by boat and hijack a bus on Israel’s coastal highway. Thirty-eight Israeli civilians are killed, 13 of them children.

Israel Ministry of Defense archive

Mar 14–15, 1978 Israel invades south Lebanon. Days later, Israel invades south Lebanon to push the PLO back. The UN sends peacekeepers, UNIFIL, who are still there.

UN Security Council resolution 425

Apr 12, 1984 The Bus 300 affair. Two Palestinians who hijacked an Israeli bus are captured alive and then killed by agents of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. Its chiefs try to cover it up, and the scandal forces out the service’s head in 1986.

JTA archive on the Bus 300 affair · GlobalSecurity.org, “Israel Security Agency”
Sept 17, 1978

The Camp David Accords

Jimmy Carter, Sadat and Begin agree at Camp David on a framework for peace between Egypt and Israel, and a second for Palestinian “autonomy” in the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO and the Arab states reject the second.

The Camp David Accords · US Office of the Historian, Camp David · Britannica, “Camp David Accords” · BBC timeline, “Camp David Accords”
Mar 26, 1979

Egypt and Israel sign a peace treaty

Israel agrees to return all of Sinai, done by 1982, and Egypt becomes the first Arab state to recognize Israel. The Arab League suspends Egypt for ten years.

The talks on Palestinian autonomy that the treaty promised went nowhere.

Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty · BBC On This Day, 1979 · BBC timeline, “Camp David Accords”

Jun 13, 1980 Europe’s Venice Declaration. The countries of the European Community say the Palestinians have a right to self-determination and the PLO must be part of any talks.

The Venice Declaration, UNISPAL

1985–1987 Jordan’s attempts at a deal. An accord between Arafat and King Hussein collapses in 1986, and a secret agreement between Hussein and Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, signed in London in 1987, is blocked by Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir.

Christian Science Monitor, Feb 22, 1985 · The London Agreement, Apr 11, 1987
Jul 30, 1980

Israel’s Jerusalem Law

The Knesset declares “Jerusalem, complete and united,” the capital of Israel. The UN Security Council calls the law null and void and asks countries to move their embassies out of the city. They do.

UN Security Council resolution 478 (1980)

Dec 14, 1981 Israel annexes the Golan Heights. Israel extends its law to the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967. The Security Council calls it “null and void.”

UN Security Council resolution 497 · Britannica, “Golan Heights”
Lebanon

1982 to 1985. Israel invades Lebanon to destroy the PLO there, and drives it out to Tunisia.
Jun 6, 1982

Israel invades Lebanon to destroy the PLO

After an attempt on the life of Israel’s ambassador in London by the Abu Nidal group, a rival of the PLO, Israel invades Lebanon and besieges West Beirut for ten weeks. The PLO’s fighters leave for Tunisia and other countries in August.

Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians, and Israel stayed in south Lebanon for 18 years.

US Office of the Historian, Lebanon · Britannica, “Israel: War in Lebanon” · BBC timeline, “Israel invades Lebanon”

Apr 13, 1975 Lebanon’s civil war begins. Fighting between Christian militias and the PLO with its Lebanese allies starts a 15-year civil war, with massacres on both sides: of Christians at Damour and of Palestinians at the Tel al-Zaatar camp, both in 1976.

Britannica, “Lebanese Civil War”

1983 A revolt inside Fatah. Fatah officers backed by Syria rebel against Arafat, and his loyalists are driven out of their last bases in Lebanon.

IPS Encyclopedia, on Fatah

Jun 1985 Israel pulls back to a “security zone”. Israel withdraws to a strip of south Lebanon, which it holds with a Lebanese militia until 2000.

UN report on UNIFIL, S/17557 · CIA, on the security zone, 1986

May 20, 1985 1,150 prisoners for three soldiers. Israel frees 1,150 prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers held by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Al Jazeera, Oct 18, 2011

Oct 1, 1985 Israel bombs the PLO in Tunis. After PLO gunmen kill three Israelis on a yacht in Cyprus, Israeli jets bomb the PLO’s headquarters in Tunisia. The Security Council condemns the raid.

UN Security Council resolution 573 (1985)
Sept 16–18, 1982

Massacre at Sabra and Shatila

Lebanese Christian militiamen, let into two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut by the Israeli army, kill hundreds of civilians over two days. Counts run from about 460 to more than 3,000.

The killers were the Phalangists, allies of Israel, avenging the murder of their leader, Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s president-elect. An Israeli commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, found Israel indirectly responsible and the defense minister, Ariel Sharon, personally responsible for not preventing it. Sharon left the defense ministry. The UN General Assembly called the massacre “an act of genocide.”

BBC On This Day, 1983 · UN General Assembly resolution 37/123 · BBC timeline, “Israel invades Lebanon” · BBC On This Day, 1982 · BBC, Sept 14, 2002 · Al Jazeera, Sept 16, 2022
1987 to 2005 Two uprisings and a peace process

The first intifada

1987 to 1991. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rise against Israeli rule, and the PLO moves toward accepting a state beside Israel.
Dec 9, 1987

The first intifada begins

After an Israeli army truck crashes into cars at Jabalia in Gaza, killing four Palestinians, protests spread across Gaza and the West Bank. For six years Palestinians strike, boycott and throw stones, and Israel answers with mass arrests, curfews and live fire.

Intifada is Arabic for “shaking off.” It was led on the ground by a Unified National Leadership of local activists, tied to the PLO in Tunis, and by the new Islamist movement, Hamas.

By the count of B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, Israeli forces and civilians killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the uprising’s six years, and Palestinians killed 160 Israelis, 100 of them civilians. Palestinians also killed hundreds of Palestinians they accused of working with Israel.

Britannica, “intifada” · Britannica, “Palestine: The first intifada” · BBC timeline, “Palestinian intifada” · B’Tselem, “Fatalities in the first Intifada” · Human Rights Watch, 1990

Apr 16, 1988 Abu Jihad is killed in Tunis. Israeli commandos kill Khalil al-Wazir, the PLO’s military chief and an organizer of the uprising, at his home in Tunis. Israel confirmed its role only in 2012.

Britannica, “Abu Jihad”

Oct 8, 1990 Killings at the Haram al-Sharif. Israeli police open fire during clashes on the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, after Palestinians throw stones down at Jewish worshippers below, and about 20 Palestinians are killed. An Israeli inquiry said the police acted in self-defense but were badly prepared. The UN Security Council condemned Israel.

UN Security Council resolution 672 (1990)
Dec 1987 – Aug 1988

Hamas is founded

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, form Hamas. Its 1988 charter calls for an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine and draws on antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The charter calls the land an Islamic trust that no one may give up, and it cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery. Hamas never formally repealed it, and in 2017 it published a new document with a different line. See Hamas’s new document.

Hamas Covenant, 1988 · Britannica, “Hamas”

Dec 17, 1992 Israel deports 415 Islamists to Lebanon. After Hamas kills a border policeman, Israel expels 415 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to a hillside in south Lebanon, where they camp for a year. Most return in 1993.

UN Security Council resolution 799 (1992)
Nov 15, 1988

The PLO declares a State of Palestine

Meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council declares an independent State of Palestine. The statement that comes with it accepts UN Resolutions 242 and 338, which means accepting Israel.

The declaration says, “The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be.” Dozens of countries recognized the new state within months.

The 1988 declaration, A/43/827 · Britannica, “Palestine: International recognition” · BBC timeline, “PLO opens door to peace”

Jul 31, 1988 Jordan gives up its claim to the West Bank. King Hussein cuts Jordan’s legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, which leaves the PLO as the only Arab claimant to it.

BBC timeline, “PLO opens door to peace”

Dec 13–14, 1988 Arafat renounces terrorism, and the US talks to the PLO. At a UN session moved to Geneva after the US refused him a visa, Arafat accepts Israel’s right to exist and renounces terrorism. The US opens its first official talks with the PLO, and suspends them in 1990 after a PLO faction’s raid on an Israeli beach.

Arafat in Geneva, UNISPAL · BBC timeline, “PLO opens door to peace”
Oct 30 – Nov 1, 1991

The Madrid peace conference

The United States and the Soviet Union bring Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians to one table for the first time. The Palestinians come inside Jordan’s delegation, because Israel will not talk to the PLO.

US Office of the Historian, Madrid · BBC On This Day, 1991 · BBC timeline, “Madrid Summit”

Aug 1990 – Feb 1991 The Gulf War. Iraq fires 39 Scud missiles at Israel, and at the request of the US, Israel does not strike back. Arafat sides with Saddam Hussein, which costs the PLO its money from the Gulf, and after the war Kuwait drives out most of its 400,000 Palestinians.

BBC On This Day, 1991 · US Office of the Historian, “The Gulf War, 1991” · BBC timeline, “Madrid Summit”

1989–1990s A million immigrants from the former Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union opens and falls apart, about a million of its Jews and their families move to Israel.

Britannica, “aliyah”
Madrid and Oslo

1991 to 1995. Israel and the PLO recognize each other and set up a Palestinian Authority, and bombings and a massacre test the deal.
Mar 30, 1993

Israel closes the territories

After a string of stabbings, Israel seals off the West Bank and Gaza and requires Palestinians to have permits to enter Israel. It is the start of a system of permits and checkpoints that grows over the following decades.

Human Rights Watch, Jul 1996 · OCHA, Apr 2026
Sept 9–13, 1993

Oslo: Israel and the PLO recognize each other

After secret talks in Norway, the PLO recognizes Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognizes the PLO as the Palestinians’ representative. On the White House lawn, Rabin and Arafat shake hands on a plan for five years of Palestinian self-rule.

The Declaration of Principles left the hardest questions, Jerusalem, the refugees, the settlements, borders and security, to talks on a final deal that were to begin by May 1996. Those talks never reached one. See Oslo accords.

In their letters to each other, Arafat wrote that the PLO “recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security,” and Rabin that Israel had decided “to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.”

Declaration of Principles, Sept 13, 1993 · US Office of the Historian, Oslo · BBC On This Day, 1993 · Britannica, “Oslo Accords” · BBC timeline, “Declaration of Principles” · The 1993 letters of recognition, UNISPAL
Feb 25, 1994

Massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs

Baruch Goldstein, an American-born settler, opens fire on Muslims at prayer in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque and kills 29 before he is beaten to death. Israel then closes Palestinian shops and streets in the center of Hebron.

Jews call the shrine the Cave of the Patriarchs and Muslims the Ibrahimi Mosque. It is where both believe Abraham is buried.

BBC On This Day, 1994 · Britannica, “Cave of the Patriarchs” · UN Security Council resolution 904 (1994) · BBC timeline, “Birth of the Palestinian Authority”
Apr 6 and 13, 1994

Hamas’s first suicide bombings in Israel

Hamas bombs a bus in Afula and another in Hadera, killing 13 people, and says it is avenging Hebron. Suicide bombing becomes the main weapon of the groups that reject Oslo.

BBC timeline, “Birth of the Palestinian Authority”

Oct 19, 1994 – Jan 22, 1995 Bombings in Tel Aviv and at Beit Lid. A Hamas bomber kills 22 people on a Tel Aviv bus. Three months later Islamic Jihad bombers kill 21 soldiers and a civilian at the Beit Lid junction.

BBC timeline, 1995
May 4 – Jul 1, 1994

The Palestinian Authority is born

Under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, Israeli troops pull out of most of Gaza and the town of Jericho, and a Palestinian Authority takes over. Arafat comes home on July 1 after 27 years in exile.

BBC On This Day, 1994 · Britannica, “Palestinian Authority” · BBC timeline, “Birth of the Palestinian Authority” · The Gaza-Jericho Agreement, A/49/180
Oct 26, 1994

Israel and Jordan make peace

King Hussein and Rabin sign a peace treaty in the Arava desert, and Jordan becomes the second Arab state to make peace with Israel.

Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace · BBC On This Day, 1994
Sept 28, 1995

Oslo II divides the West Bank

A second agreement hands the Palestinian Authority the West Bank’s main cities, shared control of its villages, and leaves Israel in full control of about 60% of the land, for an interim period that never ends.

The three zones are Areas A, B and C. Area C, under Israel’s full control, holds the settlements, most of the farmland and open land, and the Jordan Valley.

BBC On This Day, 1995 · Britannica, “Israel: Oslo II and Rabin’s assassination” · BBC timeline, 1995 · The Oslo II agreement, A/51/889

Jan 20, 1996 The first Palestinian elections. Palestinians elect Arafat president, with 88% of the vote, and give his Fatah movement a majority in the new Legislative Council. Hamas boycotts the vote.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock”
Nov 4, 1995

Rabin is assassinated

Yigal Amir, an Israeli law student opposed to the Oslo accords, shoots Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin dead at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Shimon Peres takes over.

BBC On This Day, 1995 · Britannica, “Yitzhak Rabin” · BBC timeline, 1995
Oslo’s hard years

1996 to 2000. Bombings, settlement building and missed deadlines wear the peace process down, and a summit meant to finish it fails.
Feb 25 – Mar 4, 1996

Four bombings in nine days

After Israel kills Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s chief bomb maker, Hamas and Islamic Jihad bombers kill about 60 people on buses in Jerusalem, in Ashkelon and outside a Tel Aviv shopping center.

Three months later, Benjamin Netanyahu, who promised security first, narrowly won Israel’s election.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock”

Apr 18, 1996 Shelling of a UN base at Qana, Lebanon. During an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, Israeli shells hit a UN compound at Qana where civilians were sheltering, killing 106. Israel says it was a mistake.

UN report on Qana, S/1996/337

May 29, 1996 Netanyahu is elected. Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud narrowly beats Shimon Peres in the first direct election for prime minister.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock” · New York Times, May 30, 1996
Sept 24–27, 1996

Clashes over a tunnel in Jerusalem

Israel opens a new exit to an archaeological tunnel along the Western Wall, near the Haram al-Sharif. Three days of clashes, including gunfights between Palestinian police and Israeli troops, leave about 80 people dead.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock”
Jan 15, 1997

Hebron is divided

Israel hands 80% of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority and keeps control of the part where its settlers live, around the holy site.

Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron · BBC timeline, “Deadlock”

Mar 1997 Building starts at Har Homa. Israel begins building Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood on a hill in East Jerusalem facing Bethlehem. Palestinians call it a breach of the Oslo accords, and talks stall.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock”

Sept 25, 1997 A botched assassination in Amman. Mossad agents try to poison the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan. To get its captured agents back, Israel supplies the antidote and frees Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

BBC timeline, “Deadlock”

Oct 23, 1998 The Wye River Memorandum. At a US summit, Netanyahu agrees to further West Bank withdrawals in return for Palestinian security steps. Only the first stage is carried out.

The Wye River Memorandum · Britannica, “Israel: The Wye River Memorandum” · BBC timeline, “Deadlock”

Dec 14, 1998 The Palestinian charter is amended. With President Clinton watching in Gaza, Palestinian delegates vote to drop the clauses of their charter that called for Israel’s destruction.

Clinton in Gaza, Dec 14, 1998
Jul 11–25, 2000 Disputed

The Camp David summit fails

Bill Clinton hosts Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat for two weeks of talks on a final peace. Barak goes further than any Israeli leader before him on Jerusalem and land. Arafat turns the terms down, and the summit ends without a deal.

Who was to blame is still argued over. Clinton and Barak blamed Arafat for rejecting the offer without making one of his own. Robert Malley, an American negotiator, and Hussein Agha argued that the offer was less than it seemed and the process flawed. Palestinian negotiators said it would have left them a state without real sovereignty and no fair answer for the refugees.

Camp David statement, Jul 25, 2000 · Clinton’s statement on the talks, Jul 25, 2000 · BBC timeline, “Second intifada” · Robert Malley and Hussein Agha, Aug 9, 2001 · Ross and Grinstein, “Camp David: An Exchange”

May 17, 1999 Barak is elected. Ehud Barak of Labor wins Israel’s election, and in September signs a memorandum at Sharm el-Sheikh with Arafat setting a new timetable for the talks.

Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, Sept 4, 1999

May 24, 2000 Israel leaves south Lebanon. After 18 years, Israel pulls its last troops out of its “security zone” in south Lebanon. Hezbollah claims victory.

BBC timeline, “Second intifada” · Israel’s foreign ministry, 2000 (archived)
The second intifada

2000 to 2002. A far deadlier uprising brings suicide bombings inside Israel and Israeli tanks back into Palestinian cities.
Sept 29, 2000 Disputed

The second intifada begins

A day after Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount, Israeli police kill seven Palestinian protesters at al-Aqsa, and the uprising spreads. It is far deadlier than the first.

Israel says Arafat planned or encouraged it. Palestinians say it was the answer to Sharon’s visit and to years of occupation. An international committee led by the former US senator George Mitchell found no proof either that the visit alone caused it or that the Palestinian Authority planned it.

By B’Tselem’s count, reported by the BBC in February 2005, Israelis killed 3,223 Palestinians and Palestinians killed 950 Israelis, 649 of them civilians, from September 2000 to early 2005. The death of a 12-year-old boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, filmed in Gaza on its second day, became a symbol of the uprising for Palestinians. Israel’s army later disputed that its troops fired the shots.

Britannica, “Israel: The second intifada” · The Mitchell report, 2001 · BBC On This Day, 2000 · BBC timeline, “Second intifada” · BBC, Feb 8, 2005 · The Guardian, Sept 29, 2000

Sept 28, 2000 Sharon walks onto the Temple Mount. Ariel Sharon, then leader of the opposition, visits the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, with hundreds of police. Palestinians call it a provocation, and the protests the next day turn deadly.

BBC On This Day, 2000 · BBC timeline, “Second intifada”
Oct 1–8, 2000

Police kill 13 protesters inside Israel

Israeli police kill 12 Arab citizens of Israel and a man from Gaza in protests in Galilee. A state inquiry, the Or Commission, later faults the police and decades of discrimination.

BBC timeline, “Second intifada”
Oct 12, 2000

Two Israeli reservists killed in Ramallah

A Palestinian mob beats two Israeli army reservists to death after they take a wrong turn into Ramallah. A man shows his bloodied hands to the crowd from the window of the police station where they were held.

BBC, Oct 13, 2000 · The Guardian, Oct 13, 2000 · CNN, Oct 12, 2000
Dec 23, 2000 – Jan 27, 2001

The Clinton Parameters and the Taba talks

Clinton proposes the outline of a final deal: about 94 to 96% of the West Bank, the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to Palestine, and a limited return of refugees. Both sides accept it with reservations.

Talks at Taba, in Egypt, in January 2001 came close to a deal, and ended with Israel’s election.

BBC timeline, “Mitchell report; Sharon returns”

Feb 6, 2001 Sharon wins power. Ariel Sharon of Likud beats Barak by a landslide.

BBC On This Day, 2001 · BBC timeline, “Mitchell report; Sharon returns”
Mar 27, 2002

The Passover massacre

A Hamas bomber kills 30 people at a Passover meal in a hotel in Netanya, the deadliest attack of the uprising, in a month in which about 130 Israelis are killed.

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · CNN, Mar 27, 2002 (archived)

Jun 1 and Aug 9, 2001 The Dolphinarium and Sbarro bombings. A bomber kills 21 people, most of them teenagers, outside a Tel Aviv disco. In August a bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem kills 15.

BBC timeline, “Mitchell report; Sharon returns” · The Guardian, Jun 2, 2001

Oct 17, 2001 An Israeli minister is assassinated. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine kills Israel’s tourism minister, Rehavam Ze’evi, in a Jerusalem hotel, avenging Israel’s killing of its leader in August.

BBC timeline, “Mitchell report; Sharon returns”

Aug 19 and Oct 4, 2003 A truce collapses, and a bombing in Haifa. A bus bombing in Jerusalem ends a short truce. In October a bomber kills 21 people, Jews and Arabs, at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa.

BBC timeline, “Road map hopes”
Mar 28, 2002

The Arab Peace Initiative

At a summit in Beirut, the Arab League offers Israel full normal relations in return for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a “just solution” for the refugees.

Israel did not take it up. The Arab League has renewed the offer since.

Britannica, “Arab Peace Initiative” · BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · The Arab Peace Initiative, A/56/1026

Jun 24, 2002 Bush calls for a Palestinian state and new leaders. President George W. Bush becomes the first US president to call for a Palestinian state, and asks the Palestinians to choose leaders “not compromised by terror.”

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · White House, Jun 24, 2002

Apr 30, 2003 The Quartet’s roadmap. The Quartet publishes a three-stage plan toward a Palestinian state. Mahmoud Abbas, made prime minister in March, resigns in September after clashing with Arafat.

A Performance-Based Roadmap · BBC timeline, “Road map hopes”

Dec 1, 2003 The unofficial Geneva Initiative. Israeli and Palestinian politicians out of office sign a detailed model of a final peace deal, which neither government adopts.

BBC timeline, “Road map hopes”
Mar 29 – May 10, 2002 Disputed

Israel retakes West Bank cities

Israel sends its army back into the West Bank’s cities, besieges Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, and fights in Jenin refugee camp, where 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers die. A siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem lasts 39 days.

Palestinian officials spoke at first of hundreds killed in Jenin. A report by the UN Secretary-General, and investigations by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, found no massacre but serious violations, including unlawful killings. Israel had blocked a UN fact-finding team.

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · BBC, May 10, 2002 · Human Rights Watch, May 2002 · Amnesty International, Nov 4, 2002 · UN report on Jenin, A/ES-10/186

Jan 3, 2002 An arms ship is seized. Israeli commandos seize the Karine A, a ship carrying weapons, in the Red Sea. Israel and the US tie the shipment to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied”
Jun 2002 onward Disputed

Israel starts building the barrier

Israel begins a fence and wall along and inside the West Bank to keep out bombers. About 85% of its planned route runs inside the West Bank, cutting Palestinians off from land, from Jerusalem and from each other.

Israel calls it a security fence and credits it with stopping most suicide bombings. Palestinians call it an annexation wall. The world court said in 2004 that the parts built inside the West Bank break international law. The route figure is the UN’s.

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · B’Tselem, Dec 2005 (archived) · OCHA, “West Bank Barrier”
Roadmaps and withdrawals

2003 to 2005. Plans for a Palestinian state come and go, Hamas’s founder and Arafat die, and the uprising winds down.
Mar 22, 2004

Israel kills Hamas’s founder

An Israeli helicopter fires missiles at Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as he leaves a mosque in Gaza. His successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, is killed a month later.

BBC timeline, “Arafat dies” · The Guardian, Mar 23, 2004

Jul 22, 2002 A one-ton bomb on a Gaza apartment block. Israel kills the head of Hamas’s armed wing, Salah Shehade, with a one-ton bomb that also kills 14 other people, nine of them children. An Israeli inquiry later faults the intelligence behind it.

BBC timeline, “West Bank re-occupied” · Israel Prime Minister’s Office, Feb 27, 2011
Jul 9, 2004

The world court on the barrier

In an advisory opinion, the world court finds the parts of the barrier built in the West Bank contrary to international law and says Israel should take them down. Israel rejects it.

Days before, Israel’s own Supreme Court had ordered part of the route moved, to ease the harm to Palestinian villages. The barrier still stands along most of its planned route.

ICJ, the barrier case · BBC timeline, “Arafat dies” · ICJ, summary of the 2004 opinion · OCHA, Jul 8, 2014
Nov 11, 2004

Arafat dies

Yasser Arafat dies in a hospital in Paris at 75, after three years kept by Israel inside his compound in Ramallah. What killed him has never been settled.

BBC On This Day, 2004 · Britannica, “Yasser Arafat” · BBC timeline, “Arafat dies”

Jan 9, 2005 Abbas is elected president. Mahmoud Abbas, a founder of Fatah and the PLO’s chief negotiator at Oslo, wins the election to succeed Arafat.

BBC On This Day, 2005 · Britannica, “Mahmoud Abbas” · BBC timeline, “Gaza pullout”
Feb 8, 2005

A truce at Sharm el-Sheikh

Sharon and Abbas meet in Egypt and declare an end to the violence. The uprising winds down, though killings go on.

BBC On This Day, Feb 8, 2005 · BBC timeline, “Gaza pullout”

Jul 9, 2005 The call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. About 170 Palestinian groups call for boycotts of Israel until it ends the occupation, gives its Arab citizens full equality and respects the refugees’ right of return. Israel calls the movement an attempt to deny its right to exist.

BBC timeline, “Gaza pullout” · BDS Movement, Jul 9, 2005
2005 to 2023 Gaza sealed, the West Bank settled

Leaving Gaza

2005 to 2007. Israel pulls out of Gaza, Hamas wins a Palestinian election and then takes Gaza by force, and Israel and Egypt seal it.
Aug 15 – Sept 12, 2005 Disputed

Israel pulls out of Gaza

Israel removes all 21 of its settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank, about 8,000 settlers, many of them carried out by soldiers. Its last troops leave on September 12.

Israel kept control of Gaza’s borders, its airspace and its sea, and of who and what could go in and out, except at the crossing to Egypt. Whether that left Gaza occupied is disputed. Israel says its occupation of Gaza ended in 2005. The UN, the world court in 2024 and rights groups say its control of the borders kept it an occupying power.

The Guardian, Aug 22, 2005 · Human Rights Watch, Oct 29, 2004 · Britannica, “Israel: Conflict in Gaza” · BBC timeline, “Gaza pullout”

Dec 18, 2003 Sharon says he will leave Gaza. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, long the champion of the settlements, announces that Israel will pull out of Gaza on its own if there is no peace deal.

BBC timeline, “Road map hopes”

Apr 14, 2004 Bush’s letter to Sharon. In a letter backing the plan, President Bush writes that a final deal should take account of “new realities on the ground,” including Israel’s large settlement blocs, and that refugees should settle in a Palestinian state rather than in Israel.

BBC timeline, “Arafat dies”

Nov 15, 2005 A deal to open Gaza’s crossings. Brokered by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, an agreement opens the Rafah crossing to Egypt under European monitors. It largely stops working after June 2006.

Agreement on Movement and Access, UNISPAL · EU Council Joint Action 2005/889

Jan 4, 2006 Sharon’s stroke. A massive stroke ends Sharon’s career, and Ehud Olmert takes over his new party, Kadima, and the government.

BBC, Jan 16, 2006
Jan 25, 2006

Hamas wins the Palestinian election

In the first Palestinian parliamentary election in ten years, Hamas wins 74 of 132 seats and Fatah 45. International observers call the vote free and fair.

The Quartet of the US, the EU, the UN and Russia said aid would depend on the new government recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting the agreements already signed. Hamas refused, and most direct aid was cut off. Its leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, wrote that Hamas would not sell its people or principles for foreign aid.

Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister at the time, said in 2017 that it had been wrong to boycott Hamas after its win.

The Guardian, Jan 31, 2006 · Al Jazeera, Jan 28, 2006 · The Observer, Oct 14, 2017
Jun 25, 2006

An Israeli soldier is taken at the Gaza border

Fighters from Hamas and allied groups tunnel into Israel, kill two soldiers and carry Gilad Shalit back into Gaza. Israel answers with a long offensive and bombs Gaza’s only power plant.

BBC, Oct 18, 2011 · CNN, Jun 29, 2006

Oct 18, 2011 One soldier for 1,027 prisoners. After five years, Israel frees 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit. Among them is Yahya Sinwar, who later plans the attack of October 7, 2023.

BBC, Oct 18, 2011 · Al Jazeera, Oct 18, 2011
Jul 12 – Aug 14, 2006

War with Hezbollah

After Hezbollah captures two Israeli soldiers on the border, Israel goes to war in Lebanon for 34 days. About 1,100 Lebanese and 165 Israelis die, and a UN resolution ends the fighting.

Security Council Resolution 1701 called for Hezbollah to leave the south of Lebanon to the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers. It was never fully carried out.

UN Security Council resolution 1701 (2006) · BBC, Sept 9, 2006
Jun 10–15, 2007

Hamas takes over Gaza

After months of street fighting, Hamas routs Fatah’s forces in Gaza in five days. Abbas dismisses the unity government and appoints a new one in the West Bank. Palestinians now have two rival governments.

A unity government agreed at Mecca in February 2007 had lasted three months. Since June 2007, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority parts of the West Bank, and no national election has been held since 2006.

BBC, Jun 13, 2007 · BBC, Jun 15, 2007 · The Guardian, Jun 15, 2007 · NPR, Jun 12, 2007
Jun–Sept 2007 Disputed

Israel and Egypt seal Gaza

Israel and Egypt close Gaza’s borders to most people and goods. In September Israel declares Gaza a “hostile entity” and limits fuel, power and imports. Eased at times, the blockade lasts until the war of 2023.

Israel calls it a defense against Hamas’s weapons. The UN and rights groups call it collective punishment of Gaza’s people. A UN panel in 2011, the Palmer report, found Israel’s naval blockade legal. Other UN bodies disagreed.

Britannica, “Gaza Strip: Blockade”

Jan 23, 2008 Gaza’s border wall is blown open. Hamas fighters blow holes in the wall along Gaza’s border with Egypt, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans cross into Egypt to buy what they can’t get at home.

NPR, Jan 23, 2008

May 31, 2010 Israel raids a flotilla bound for Gaza. Israeli commandos board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in international waters, and nine Turkish activists are killed, a tenth dying later. Soldiers are wounded. Israel then eases its blockade of consumer goods.

Al Jazeera, Sept 2, 2011 · UN Palmer report, Sept 2011 (archived)
Wars over Gaza, talks over the West Bank

2007 to 2014. Israel and Hamas fight three wars over Gaza, while peace talks in the West Bank start and stop and stop again.
Dec 27, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009

The first Gaza war

Israel launches a three-week air and ground offensive it calls Operation Cast Lead, to stop rocket fire from Gaza. About 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis are killed.

B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, counted 1,391 Palestinians killed, 759 of them not taking part in the fighting. Israel’s army counted 1,166, of whom it said 709 were fighters. Ten Israeli soldiers were killed, four of them by friendly fire, and three Israeli civilians.

UN Security Council resolution 1860 (2009) · BBC, Jan 5, 2009 · OCHA Gaza situation report, Jan 2, 2009 (archived)

Jun 19 – Dec 19, 2008 A six-month lull in Gaza. A truce brokered by Egypt sharply cuts rocket fire. It frays after an Israeli raid on a tunnel on November 4, and Hamas will not renew it.

BBC, Jun 18, 2008 · The Guardian, Nov 5, 2008

Sept 15, 2009 The Goldstone report. A UN fact-finding mission led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone accuses both Israel and Hamas of war crimes in the war. Israel, which refused to cooperate, rejects it. In 2011 Goldstone writes that he no longer believes Israel targeted civilians as a matter of policy. The mission’s other members stand by the report.

The Goldstone report, A/HRC/12/48 · The Guardian, Apr 14, 2011
Nov 14–21, 2012

Eight days of war in Gaza

Israel kills Hamas’s military commander, Ahmed Jabari, and bombs Gaza for eight days, while rockets reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Egypt brokers a ceasefire. About 170 Palestinians and six Israelis die.

Reuters, Nov 21, 2012 · Times of Israel, Nov 21, 2012
Nov 29, 2012

Palestine becomes a UN observer state

The UN General Assembly votes 138 to 9 to make Palestine a “non-member observer state,” 65 years to the day after the partition vote. Israel announces 3,000 new settlement homes.

UN General Assembly resolution 67/19 · BBC, Nov 30, 2012 · The Guardian, Nov 29, 2012

Sept 23, 2011 Abbas asks the UN to admit Palestine. Abbas applies for full UN membership, and the bid stalls in the Security Council. UNESCO admits Palestine in October, and the US cuts off its funding to UNESCO.

CNN, Nov 11, 2011 · Reuters, Jul 14, 2011
Jul 2013 – Apr 2014

Kerry’s talks collapse

Nine months of talks led by the US secretary of state, John Kerry, end in April 2014 amid disputes over a promised release of prisoners, new settlement building, Palestinian moves to join international treaties and a Fatah-Hamas unity deal.

As of 2026 they were the last direct talks on a final peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

BBC, Aug 15, 2013 · NPR, Nov 6, 2013

Nov 27, 2007 Talks restart at Annapolis. At a US conference, Olmert and Abbas agree to try for a final deal by the end of 2008. In September 2008 Olmert offers a map giving the Palestinians about 94% of the West Bank, with swaps of land. Abbas does not accept it before Olmert’s government falls, and why the offer lapsed is still argued over.

US State Department, Nov 20, 2007

Mar 31 – Nov 25, 2009 Netanyahu returns, and accepts a state with conditions. Netanyahu becomes prime minister again. After President Obama’s speech in Cairo, he backs a demilitarized Palestinian state, and in November he freezes new settlement building in the West Bank for ten months.

BBC, Apr 6, 2009 · BBC, Jun 2021 · Obama in Cairo, Jun 4, 2009

Sept 2–26, 2010 Direct talks, then the freeze ends. Talks open in Washington and stall within weeks, when the freeze runs out and Israel does not extend it.

Reuters, Sept 27, 2010 · BBC, Oct 8, 2010
Jun 12 – Jul 2, 2014

Three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and killed

Members of Hamas kidnap and kill three Israeli teenagers hitchhiking in the West Bank. Days after their funerals, Israeli extremists kidnap a Palestinian boy of 16, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, in Jerusalem and burn him to death.

Israel arrested hundreds of Hamas members while it searched for the boys. Abu Khdeir’s killers, three Israelis, were convicted of murder.

CNN, Jun 26, 2014 · Times of Israel, Aug 6, 2014 · The Guardian, Jul 5, 2014 · The Guardian, Jul 6, 2014
Jul 8 – Aug 26, 2014

The 2014 Gaza war

Israel’s 50-day offensive, Operation Protective Edge, aims at Hamas’s rockets and its tunnels into Israel. More than 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians by the UN’s count, and 73 Israelis are killed.

A UN commission of inquiry counted 2,251 Palestinians killed, 1,462 of them civilians, 551 of them children. Israel’s count was lower, and it said a far larger share were fighters. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.

The commission found that both Israel and the armed groups in Gaza may have committed war crimes. Amnesty International documented summary killings by Hamas of Palestinians it accused of collaborating with Israel.

Amnesty, May 27, 2015 · The Guardian, Mar 27, 2015 · UN commission of inquiry, A/HRC/29/52
Knives, courts and a new US line

2014 to 2020. Palestinians turn to international courts, a wave of stabbings hits Israel, and the United States moves its embassy to Jerusalem.
Jan 2 – Apr 1, 2015

Palestine joins the International Criminal Court

Palestine accepts the International Criminal Court’s power back to June 13, 2014, and joins the court. Israel, which is not a member, says the court has no power over it because Palestine is not a state.

The court’s prosecutor opened a full investigation in March 2021, after its judges ruled that the court can hear cases from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel called the investigation antisemitic. See The ICC issues arrest warrants.

Times of Israel, Feb 2021 · International Criminal Court
Jul 31, 2015

An arson attack kills a Palestinian family

Jewish extremists firebomb a house in the West Bank village of Duma, killing 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh, and later both his parents. An Israeli settler is convicted of murder in 2020 and sentenced to life.

Reuters, Sept 14, 2020 · Times of Israel, Sept 10, 2015
Oct 2015 – 2016

A wave of stabbings

Young Palestinians, most of them acting alone, carry out stabbings, shootings and car rammings in Israel and the West Bank. Israeli forces shoot many of the attackers dead.

By the Guardian’s count at the six-month mark, the attacks had killed 30 Israelis and two Americans, and more than 200 Palestinians had been killed, more than 130 of them while carrying out attacks, or what Israel said were attacks.

The Guardian, Mar 31, 2016 · Israel MFA, “Wave of terror 2015” (archived)

Mar 6, 2008 Eight students killed at a Jerusalem seminary. A Palestinian gunman from East Jerusalem kills eight students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva.

Israel’s foreign ministry, Mar 6, 2008 (archived)

Mar 11, 2011 A family killed in Itamar. Two Palestinians from the village of Awarta kill five members of the Fogel family, among them a baby, in the settlement of Itamar.

Israel MFA memorial pages (archived)

Nov 18, 2014 Attack on a Jerusalem synagogue. Two Palestinians kill four worshippers and a police officer at a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood.

UN News, Nov 19, 2014 · CNN, Nov 18, 2014
Dec 23, 2016

The Security Council condemns settlements

With the United States abstaining rather than using its veto, the council says Israel’s settlements have “no legal validity” and are a “flagrant violation” of international law. Israel calls the vote shameful.

UN Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) · BBC, Dec 23, 2016
May 1, 2017

Hamas’s new document

Hamas publishes a new statement of its principles. It accepts a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines as a “formula of national consensus” without recognizing Israel, and says its fight is with Zionism, not with Jews.

It did not formally repeal the 1988 charter, and a senior Hamas official said soon after that its stance toward Israel had not softened.

The Guardian, May 1, 2017 · Reuters, May 10, 2017
Dec 6, 2017 – May 14, 2018

The US recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

President Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moves the US embassy there on May 14, 2018. The UN General Assembly votes 128 to 9 against the move, and the Palestinian leadership cuts off contact with his administration.

UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/19 · Reuters, Dec 7, 2017 · White House, proclamation, Dec 6, 2017

Jul 14–27, 2017 Metal detectors at al-Aqsa. After gunmen kill two Israeli police officers at the Haram al-Sharif, Israel puts metal detectors at its gates. Muslims pray in the streets outside in protest for two weeks, until Israel takes them away.

Reuters, Jul 24, 2017

Aug 31, 2018 The US stops funding UNRWA. The US, until then UNRWA’s largest donor, ends its funding of the agency.

Congressional Research Service, 2018 · CNBC (AP), Aug 31, 2018

Mar 25 and Nov 18, 2019 The US on the Golan and the settlements. Trump recognizes Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. In November his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, says the US no longer regards settlements as inconsistent with international law.

CNN, Mar 25, 2019
Mar 30, 2018 – Dec 2019 Disputed

The Great March of Return

Tens of thousands of Gazans protest each week at the fence with Israel, demanding the refugees’ return and an end to the blockade. Israeli troops shoot dead more than 200 people, 60 of them on the day the US embassy opens.

Israel says Hamas used the protests as cover for attacks on the fence, and that troops fired at people who tried to breach it. A UN commission of inquiry found in 2019 reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at people who posed no immediate threat, including children, journalists and medics. Israel rejected its report.

OCHA, Apr 6, 2020 · Reuters, Apr 27, 2018 · UN commission of inquiry, A/HRC/40/74
Jul 19, 2018

The nation-state law

The Knesset passes a Basic Law defining Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” saying national self-determination there is “unique to the Jewish people,” lowering Arabic’s status and calling Jewish settlement a national value.

Arab and Druze citizens protested that it made them second-class citizens. Its supporters said it wrote down what Israel had always been.

CNN, Jul 19, 2018 · Times of Israel, Jul 19, 2018
Aug 13 – Dec 10, 2020

The Abraham Accords

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, then Sudan and Morocco, agree to normal relations with Israel in deals brokered by the US. Israel suspends its plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Palestinian leaders call it a betrayal.

US State Department, “The Abraham Accords” · CNN, Aug 13, 2020 · NPR, Dec 10, 2020

Jan 28, 2020 Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan. Trump’s plan offers the Palestinians a state on about 70% of the West Bank, with Israel annexing its settlements and the Jordan Valley and keeping Jerusalem whole. The Palestinians reject it, and Israel prepares to annex.

“Peace to Prosperity,” Jan 2020 · Trump with Netanyahu, Jan 28, 2020

Sept 2023 Talk of a Saudi-Israeli deal. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince says “every day we get closer” to normal ties with Israel, in talks that also involve a US defense pact and steps for the Palestinians. Two weeks later comes October 7.

Reuters, Sept 18, 2024
The last years before the war

2021 to October 6, 2023. Rights groups accuse Israel of apartheid, Jerusalem and Gaza erupt again, and Netanyahu returns at the head of Israel’s most right-wing government.
Jan 12, 2021 – Feb 1, 2022 Disputed

Rights groups accuse Israel of apartheid

B’Tselem, then Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, conclude that Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians. Israel and its supporters call the charge false and antisemitic.

Human Rights Watch, Apr 27, 2021 · Amnesty International, Feb 1, 2022

Oct 22, 2021 Six Palestinian groups declared terrorist organizations. Israel outlaws six Palestinian rights and civil society groups, saying they are fronts for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The groups, and international rights groups, reject the charge.

Amnesty International, Oct 2021 · Al Jazeera, Oct 22, 2021
May 6–21, 2021

Jerusalem, Gaza and mixed cities erupt

Threatened evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and police raids at al-Aqsa lead Hamas to fire rockets at Jerusalem. An 11-day war follows, and Arab and Jewish citizens attack each other in Israel’s mixed cities.

The UN counted 261 Palestinians killed in Gaza, 67 of them children, and 13 people were killed in Israel. Human Rights Watch found apparent war crimes by both Israel and Palestinian armed groups.

Al Jazeera, May 1, 2021 · BBC, Jul 27, 2021 · Human Rights Watch, Jul 27, 2021

Aug 5–7, 2022 Three days of war with Islamic Jihad. Israel strikes Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the group fires rockets back, until Egypt brokers a truce. Hamas stays out of the fight.

UN News, Aug 8, 2022
Nov 1 – Dec 29, 2022

Netanyahu returns with the far right

Netanyahu wins back power at the head of a coalition with Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are given powers over the settlements and the police.

The coalition’s founding terms say the Jewish people have an “exclusive and inalienable right” to all of the Land of Israel.

Times of Israel, Nov 6, 2022

Jun 13, 2021 A government with an Arab party. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid replace Netanyahu at the head of a coalition that, for the first time, includes an Arab party, Ra’am. It falls apart a year later.

Times of Israel, Jun 13, 2021 · AP, Apr 6, 2022
Jan 4 – Jul 24, 2023

The judicial overhaul splits Israel

The government’s plan to curb the Supreme Court brings hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets every week, and reservists threaten not to serve. The first law passes on July 24. The court strikes it down in January 2024.

The Guardian, Jul 8, 2023 · PBS NewsHour (AP), Sept 12, 2023
Jan–Jul 2023

The West Bank’s deadliest year in decades

A Palestinian gunman kills seven people outside a Jerusalem synagogue. After a gunman kills two Israeli brothers near Huwara, hundreds of settlers burn homes and cars in the town. In July Israel sends 1,000 troops into Jenin camp.

An Israeli general called the settlers’ rampage in Huwara a “pogrom.” By year’s end, before and after October 7, it was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the UN began keeping count in 2005.

NPR, Jan 27, 2023 · AP, Feb 27, 2023 · The Guardian, Feb 27, 2023 · OCHA, casualty data

Mar 2022 onward Attacks in Israeli cities, raids in Jenin and Nablus. A string of attacks kills 19 people in Israeli cities in the spring of 2022. Israel answers with nightly raids in the northern West Bank, where new armed groups, the Lions’ Den and the Jenin Brigade, have formed.

GlobalSecurity.org, “Operation Break the Wave” · Arab News, 2023

May 11, 2022 The journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is shot dead. The Al Jazeera correspondent is shot in the head while covering an Israeli raid in Jenin. After first blaming Palestinian gunmen, Israel’s army says in September there was a “high possibility” that one of its soldiers shot her by mistake.

CNN, Sept 5, 2022 · CNN, May 24, 2022
2023 to today October 7 and the war

October 7

October 7 to 26, 2023. Hamas leads the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, and Israel goes to war in Gaza.
Oct 7, 2023

Hamas leads an attack on southern Israel

Thousands of fighters led by Hamas break through the fence around Gaza and kill about 1,200 people in Israeli towns, army posts and at a music festival, by Israel’s count. They take 251 hostages into Gaza.

Hamas called it “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Its armed wing led it, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups joined, and some civilians from Gaza crossed too. About 364 of the dead were killed at the Nova music festival, and many more in kibbutzim like Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz. Israel first counted 1,400 dead and revised it to about 1,200 once the bodies of attackers had been identified.

A UN commission of inquiry found in June 2024 that Hamas’s armed wing and other groups committed war crimes, among them deliberate killing and hostage-taking. Human Rights Watch found war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN’s envoy on sexual violence found “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence took place at several sites.

Hamas says it aimed at military targets and that civilians died in the chaos or by Israeli fire. The UN and the rights groups found civilians were killed on purpose. Some early stories, like one of 40 beheaded babies, were not borne out, and the AP traced how two false accounts of sexual violence spread. The UN envoy’s findings stand.

Reuters, Nov 10, 2023 · NPR, Oct 7, 2023 · UN commission of inquiry, Jun 12, 2024 · UN commission of inquiry, A/HRC/56/CRP.3 · Human Rights Watch, Jul 17, 2024 · UN envoy on sexual violence, Mar 4, 2024 · AP, May 22, 2024 · Britannica, “October 7 attack” · Israeli government, the victims · Hamas, Jan 21, 2024 · INSS, on Hamas’s January 2024 document

Oct 7–8, 2023 Israel declares war on Hamas. Prime Minister Netanyahu says “we are at war.” The cabinet formally declares war the next day, Israel begins bombing Gaza, and about 300,000 reservists are called up.

AP, Oct 7, 2023 · BBC, Oct 7, 2023
Oct 8, 2023

Hezbollah opens a second front

Hezbollah fires on Israeli positions from Lebanon in support of Gaza. Fire across the border empties towns on both sides of it for more than a year.

Tens of thousands of people were moved out of their homes on each side of the border. The fighting grew into a war in September 2024. See Hezbollah’s leader killed.

BBC, Nov 3, 2023

Oct 19, 2023 onward The Houthis join from Yemen. Yemen’s Houthis fire missiles and drones at Israel and, from November, attack ships in the Red Sea. The US and Britain strike Yemen from January 2024, and Israel from July 2024.

AP, Mar 31, 2024

Jan 2, 2024 Hamas’s deputy leader killed in Beirut. An Israeli drone strike in Beirut kills Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau.

Reuters, Jan 2, 2024
Oct 9, 2023

Israel cuts off Gaza

Israel’s defense minister orders a “complete siege” of Gaza, with “no electricity, no food, no fuel,” and the water piped from Israel is cut too. The first 20 aid trucks come in from Egypt on October 21.

Yoav Gallant’s words are among those the world court quoted in January 2024 in the case South Africa brought. Human Rights Watch called the siege collective punishment, which international law forbids. Israel says it allowed aid in and that Hamas stole it.

Al Jazeera, Oct 9, 2023 · AP, Oct 14, 2023 · Human Rights Watch, Oct 18, 2023 · Case Chronicle, South Africa v. Israel, in order
Oct 17, 2023 Disputed

A blast at a Gaza hospital

An explosion in the courtyard of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City kills many people who were sheltering there. Gaza officials blame an Israeli strike. Israel and several Western governments blame a misfired rocket from Gaza.

Gaza’s health ministry said 471 people were killed. An early US intelligence estimate was 100 to 300. Human Rights Watch found that the evidence “points to a misfired rocket” but called for a full investigation. Hamas and the ministry still say Israel did it. The card is in the middle because who caused the blast is disputed.

BBC Verify, Oct 18, 2023 · Human Rights Watch, Nov 26, 2023 · Reuters, Oct 18, 2023 · Al Jazeera, Oct 20, 2023
Oct 2023 onward

Violence rises in the West Bank

Israeli raids, attacks by settlers and Palestinian attacks all rise. 2023 becomes the West Bank’s deadliest year in the UN’s records, and the years after are deadlier still.

The UN keeps a count, since 2005, of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and by settlers, and of Israelis killed.

OCHA, casualty data

Aug 28, 2024 Israel’s largest West Bank raid in two decades. Hundreds of troops with air support raid Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas for more than a week, the biggest operation in the northern West Bank since 2002.

AP, Aug 29, 2024 · Reuters, Aug 29, 2024
Into Gaza

October 27 to December 2023. Israel’s army invades Gaza. A week’s truce frees the first hostages, and South Africa takes Israel to the world court.
Oct 27, 2023

Israel’s ground invasion begins

Under a near-total blackout of phones and internet, Israeli troops and tanks push into northern Gaza and surround Gaza City. The same day, the UN General Assembly calls for a humanitarian truce.

AP, Oct 31, 2023 · UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/21

Oct 13, 2023 Israel tells northern Gaza to move south. Israel orders about 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to move south within 24 hours. The UN calls that impossible without devastating consequences. In time more than 90% of Gaza’s people are driven from their homes, many of them again and again.

CNN, Oct 14, 2023 · Al Jazeera, Oct 12, 2026

Oct 31, 2023 A strike on Jabalia camp. Israeli bombs hit Jabalia refugee camp. Israel says it killed a Hamas commander behind October 7. Gaza officials say dozens of civilians died.

BBC, Oct 31, 2023 · The Guardian, Nov 1, 2023
Nov 15, 2023 Disputed

Israeli troops enter al-Shifa hospital

Israel says Hamas runs a command center under Gaza’s biggest hospital and sends troops in. It shows a tunnel shaft. Doctors and Hamas deny the hospital was used. Troops raid it again in March 2024.

The US said its own intelligence supported Israel’s claim. How much the evidence shows is still argued over. The second raid ended on April 1, 2024, with the hospital in ruins.

AP, Nov 13, 2023 · BBC, Apr 1, 2024 · Reuters, Apr 1, 2024
Nov 24 – Dec 1, 2023

A week’s truce and the first exchange

Hamas frees 105 hostages, most of them women and children, and Israel frees 240 Palestinian women and teenagers from its prisons. The fighting starts again on December 1.

Qatar, Egypt and the United States brokered it. Aid deliveries rose while it lasted.

Reuters, Nov 22, 2023 · AP, Nov 29, 2023 · The Guardian, Dec 1, 2023

Nov 15, 2023 The Security Council’s first resolution. After four failed drafts, the Security Council calls for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” and the release of all the hostages. The US, Britain and Russia abstain.

UN Security Council resolution 2712 (2023)

Dec 1, 2023 onward The war moves south to Khan Younis. When the truce ends, Israel takes the war into southern Gaza, where most of the people from the north had fled.

WHYY (AP), Dec 2023 · KVIA (AP), Dec 3, 2023

Dec 8–22, 2023 The US vetoes a ceasefire, and the Assembly demands one. The US vetoes a Security Council call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The General Assembly demands one, 153 to 10. A council resolution on aid passes on December 22.

UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/22 · UN Security Council resolution 2720 (2023)
Dec 29, 2023

South Africa takes Israel to the world court

South Africa accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza at the world court. The court has not decided that question. Its orders of 2024 told Israel to prevent acts of genocide and to let aid in.

Israel calls the accusation false and says its war is self-defense against Hamas. The case has its own five pages in the Case Chronicle, with every step of it, linked below.

ICJ, case 192 · Case Chronicle, South Africa v. Israel

Jan 26, 2024 The court’s first order. The court orders Israel to prevent acts of genocide and to let aid in. It does not order Israel to stop the war, and it does not find that genocide is happening.

ICJ, case 192

May 24, 2024 The court’s Rafah order. The court orders Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah, and anything else there that may inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about their destruction. Israel says its operation does no such thing, and goes on.

ICJ, case 192
Hunger, Rafah and the courts

January to July 2024. Hunger spreads in Gaza, Israel moves into Rafah, and the world court finds the occupation unlawful.
Jan 26, 2024 Disputed

Israel accuses UN aid staff over October 7

Israel says 12 staff of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, took part in October 7. The United States, Britain, Germany and others freeze their funding. Most later restore it.

The UN’s internal investigators found that nine staff “may have been involved,” and they were fired. An independent review led by Catherine Colonna, a former French foreign minister, found that Israel had not yet backed up its wider claim that many UNRWA staff belong to armed groups.

BBC, Jan 26, 2024 · The Guardian, Jan 26, 2024
Feb 29, 2024 Disputed

Deaths around an aid convoy in Gaza City

More than 100 Palestinians die as crowds surround aid trucks in Gaza City and Israeli troops open fire. Israel says most died in a crush. Gaza officials and UN experts call it a massacre.

Gaza’s health ministry counted 112 dead, later 118. Israel’s army said in March that its troops had fired at “suspects” who approached them, and not at the convoy.

CNN, Mar 8, 2024 · UN special rapporteurs, Mar 2024 · BBC, Mar 2, 2024

Apr 1, 2024 Seven aid workers killed by Israeli strikes. Three strikes hit a World Central Kitchen convoy and kill seven aid workers from five countries. Israel calls it “a grave mistake” and dismisses two officers.

AP, Apr 1, 2024 · The Guardian, Apr 4, 2024
May 6–7, 2024

Israel moves into Rafah

Israel orders eastern Rafah emptied, seizes the crossing to Egypt and pushes into the city, where more than a million people had fled. The United States holds back one shipment of heavy bombs.

About 800,000 people fled Rafah within two weeks, by the UN’s count. By the end of May, Israel held the whole of Gaza’s border with Egypt.

PBS NewsHour, May 8, 2024 · AP, May 2024 · Case Chronicle, South Africa v. Israel, in order

May 26, 2024 Fire in a tent camp in Rafah. An Israeli strike on two Hamas commanders sets a camp for displaced people on fire, and Gaza officials say 45 people died. Netanyahu calls it “a tragic mishap.”

NPR, May 27, 2024 · CNN, May 27, 2024

Aug 10, 2024 A strike on a school used as a shelter. An Israeli strike on al-Tabi’in school in Gaza City during dawn prayers kills about 90 people, by Gaza officials’ count. Israel says about 20 militants were using it, and disputes the toll. Airwars, a group that tracks civilian harm, confirmed at least seven militants among the dead.

Airwars, incident record, Aug 10, 2024 · Al-Monitor (AFP), Aug 10, 2024
Jun 8, 2024 Disputed

Four hostages rescued at Nuseirat

Israeli forces free four hostages taken from the Nova festival, in a daytime raid on Nuseirat camp. Gaza officials say 274 Palestinians were killed. Israel says fewer than 100.

BBC, Jun 8, 2024 · BBC, Jun 9, 2024
Jul 19, 2024

The world court calls the occupation unlawful

In an advisory opinion the General Assembly asked for, the world court says Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza is an unlawful occupation and should end “as rapidly as possible.” Israel rejects it.

It is advice, not a binding ruling, and it is a separate case from South Africa’s. Netanyahu said Jews cannot be occupiers in their own land. Palestinian leaders hailed it. In September 2024 the General Assembly gave Israel twelve months to end its presence, by 124 votes to 14.

ICJ, the 2024 opinion · UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/24 · Algemeiner, Jul 19, 2024 · The New Arab, Jul 2024

Dec 30, 2022 The UN asks the world court about the occupation. The General Assembly asks the court for an opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s long occupation.

UN General Assembly resolution 77/247 · Reuters, Jan 20, 2023

Jul 17, 2024 The Knesset votes against a Palestinian state. Israel’s parliament votes 68 to 9 that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan would be “an existential danger” to Israel.

The Jewish Chronicle, Jul 18, 2024 · Arab News, opinion, Jul 2024
Jul 30–31, 2024

Hamas’s leader killed in Tehran

Hours after Israel kills a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, a blast kills Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau, in a guesthouse in Tehran. Israel admits months later that it was behind it.

Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, its leader in Gaza, as its overall leader on August 6.

AP, Jul 31, 2024 · Reuters, Jul 31, 2024 · Al Jazeera, Aug 6, 2024

Jul 13, 2024 A strike on al-Mawasi kills Hamas’s military chief. Israel bombs a compound in the al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone” to kill Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s armed wing. Gaza officials say about 90 people died. Hamas confirms Deif’s death in 2025.

BBC, Jul 13, 2024 · BBC, Jan 30, 2025
The war widens

August 2024 to January 2025. The war spreads to Lebanon and Iran, Israel kills Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s leaders, and the International Criminal Court issues warrants.
Aug 29 – Sept 2, 2024

Six hostages killed in a tunnel

Israeli troops find six hostages shot dead by their captors in a tunnel in Rafah, days before. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protest, and the main labor union strikes for a deal to bring the rest home.

AP, Sept 1, 2024 · Times of Israel, Sept 1, 2024
Sept 27, 2024

Hezbollah’s leader killed

After days of the heaviest strikes on Lebanon since 2006, Israeli bombs on Beirut’s southern suburbs kill Hassan Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah since 1992.

AP, Sept 28, 2024

Jul 27, 2024 Twelve children killed on a soccer field. A rocket kills 12 Druze children and teenagers in Majdal Shams, in the Golan Heights. Israel and the US blame Hezbollah, which denies it.

AP, Jul 30, 2024 · Reuters, Jul 28, 2024

Sept 17–18, 2024 Exploding pagers in Lebanon. Thousands of pagers and hundreds of radios used by Hezbollah explode across Lebanon, killing dozens of people, children among them, and wounding thousands. Netanyahu later confirms Israel did it.

Al Jazeera, Sept 17, 2024 · Times of Israel, Nov 10, 2024

Oct 1, 2024 Ground war in Lebanon. Israeli troops cross into south Lebanon in what Israel calls limited raids on Hezbollah, and order people out of border villages. The fighting goes on until the ceasefire of November 27.

The Guardian, Oct 1, 2024
Oct 6, 2024 Disputed

A new siege of northern Gaza

Israel surrounds Jabalia and the far north of Gaza for three months and orders everyone to leave. Critics say it is carrying out a plan to empty the north. Israel says it is fighting Hamas units that have regrouped.

Reuters, Oct 6, 2024 · AP, Nov 1, 2024

Dec 27, 2024 The last working hospital in northern Gaza is raided. Israeli troops raid Kamal Adwan Hospital and force hundreds of patients and staff to leave, and part of it burns. Israel says Hamas fighters were using it.

Al Jazeera, Dec 27, 2024
Oct 16, 2024

Yahya Sinwar is killed in Rafah

An Israeli patrol in Rafah kills Hamas’s leader, the man who planned October 7, in a chance encounter. Hamas keeps fighting, and keeps holding the hostages.

BBC, Oct 17, 2024
Oct 28, 2024

Israel bans UNRWA

The Knesset passes two laws barring UNRWA from working on Israeli sovereign territory and cutting off all contact with it. They take effect on January 30, 2025.

The Guardian, Oct 28, 2024

Oct 22, 2025 The world court on Israel’s duties to the UN and to aid. In a second advisory opinion, the court says Israel, as occupying power, must help UN relief reach Gaza, UNRWA’s included, and must not use starvation as a method of warfare. Israel rejects it.

ICJ, the 2025 opinion · ICJ opinion summary, Oct 22, 2025

Jan 20, 2026 Israel demolishes UNRWA’s Jerusalem headquarters. Israeli bulldozers tear down UNRWA’s offices in East Jerusalem. The UN condemns it.

Al Jazeera, Jan 21, 2026 · i24NEWS, Jan 2026
Nov 21, 2024

The ICC issues arrest warrants

The International Criminal Court issues warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges including starvation as a method of warfare, and for Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif. Israel calls the court antisemitic and challenges its power over the case.

The court’s member states are bound to arrest anyone it has a warrant for who sets foot on their soil. Israel said by then that Deif was dead.

BBC, Nov 21, 2024 · Reuters, Nov 22, 2024 · ICC press release, Nov 21, 2024 · International Criminal Court

May 20, 2024 The prosecutor asks for warrants. The court’s prosecutor asks its judges for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, and for three Hamas leaders, Sinwar, Deif and Haniyeh.

BBC, May 20, 2024 · NPR, May 20, 2024 · International Criminal Court

Nov 5, 2024 Netanyahu fires his defense minister. Netanyahu fires Gallant, citing a “crisis of trust,” and names Israel Katz. The same day, Donald Trump is elected US president.

The Guardian, Nov 5, 2024

Jul 24 – Oct 9, 2026 The ICC under pressure. The court’s member states remove its prosecutor, Karim Khan, over sexual misconduct. On October 9 the US puts sanctions on the whole court. The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant still stand.

The National, Oct 9, 2026 · WRVO (NPR member station), Jul 24, 2026
Nov 27, 2024

A ceasefire in Lebanon

Israel and Hezbollah stop fighting under a deal brokered by the US and France. Israel is to withdraw within 60 days, Hezbollah to pull back north of the Litani River, and Lebanon’s army to move in.

Israel kept five hilltop positions in Lebanon and went on striking Hezbollah. The war there began again in March 2026.

AP, Nov 26, 2024 · BBC, “Lebanon ceasefire”

Dec 8, 2024 Assad falls, and Israel moves into Syria. As Syria’s government collapses, Israel sends troops into the UN buffer zone on the Golan and up Mount Hermon, and strikes most of Syria’s military stockpiles.

The Guardian, Dec 8, 2024 · Times of Israel, Dec 10, 2024
A ceasefire, and the war again

January to August 2025. A six-week ceasefire brings hostages home. Then Israel stops all aid, goes back to war, and the UN-backed hunger monitor finds famine in Gaza City.
Jan 19, 2025

The first ceasefire

A deal brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US stops the fighting. Over six weeks Hamas hands over 33 hostages, eight of them dead, and Israel frees about 1,900 prisoners. Displaced people walk back north.

It took effect a day before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Talks on its second stage, which was to free all the remaining hostages and end the war, never began.

Britannica, “Israel-Hamas War” · Reuters, Jan 19, 2025

Mar 25, 2024 The Security Council demands a ceasefire. For the first time the council demands an immediate ceasefire, for Ramadan. The US abstains and calls the resolution non-binding. Most other members say it binds.

UN Security Council resolution 2728 (2024)

May 31 – Jun 10, 2024 Biden’s three-stage plan. President Biden lays out a deal in three stages, and the Security Council endorses it. It is the outline of the ceasefire that comes seven months later.

UN Security Council resolution 2735 (2024) · BBC, Jun 12, 2024

Feb 20, 2025 The Bibas children’s bodies come home. Hamas hands over the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, aged 4 and 9 months when they were taken, at a staged ceremony. The body said to be their mother’s is someone else’s, and hers is returned the next day. Hamas says an Israeli strike killed them. Israel’s forensic institute says their captors did.

CNN, Feb 20, 2025 · Times of Israel, Feb 2025
Jan 21, 2025

Operation “Iron Wall” empties West Bank camps

Israel launches its longest West Bank operation in decades in Jenin camp, then Tulkarm and Nur Shams. Tens of thousands of people are driven out, and troops stay in the camps for more than a year.

Israel says the camps had become bases for armed groups backed by Iran.

The Guardian, Jan 21, 2025 · Al Jazeera, Jan 23, 2025

Dec 5, 2024 – Jan 2025 The Palestinian Authority fights armed groups in Jenin. The Palestinian Authority’s security forces move on Jenin camp, held by fighters tied to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in the largest operation the PA has mounted. It calls the fighters outlaws, and they accuse it of doing Israel’s work.

The Guardian, Jan 6, 2025 · The New Arab, Dec 18, 2024
Feb 4, 2025

Trump proposes that the US “take over” Gaza

Standing beside Netanyahu, Trump says the United States should take over Gaza, move its people to other countries and rebuild it as “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Arab states reject it.

Egypt drew up a plan to rebuild Gaza with its people in place, and an Arab League summit adopted it in March 2025.

Reuters, Feb 20, 2025 · BBC, Feb 11, 2025
Mar 2, 2025

Israel stops all aid into Gaza

As the ceasefire’s first stage ends without a deal on the next, Israel bars every truck of food, fuel and medicine, and later cuts the last power line. Nothing enters for 11 weeks, until May 19.

AP, Mar 9, 2025

Oct 1–3, 2025 A flotilla is stopped at sea. The Israeli navy stops boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla, carrying activists and aid toward Gaza, and detains those aboard.

Al Jazeera, Oct 3, 2025 · Times of Israel, Oct 1, 2025

Jan 1 – Mar 1, 2026 Israel bars 37 aid groups. Israel orders 37 international aid groups, among them Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam, out of Gaza and the West Bank for refusing to hand over details of their Palestinian staff. The groups say it would put their workers in danger. Israel says the rules screen out links to Hamas. Its Supreme Court upholds the ban in May.

Al Jazeera, Feb 27, 2026 · Al Arabiya, May 20, 2026
Mar 18, 2025

Israel resumes the war

Israeli strikes across Gaza before dawn kill more than 400 people and end the ceasefire. Israel says Hamas refused to free more hostages. Hamas says Israel broke the deal.

AP, Mar 18, 2025 · B’Tselem, Mar 18, 2025

Mar 23, 2025 Fifteen rescue workers killed near Rafah. Israeli troops kill 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, among them a UN staff member, and bury them with their vehicles. A phone video contradicts the army’s first account that the convoy had no lights. An army inquiry later dismisses a deputy commander and says six of the dead were Hamas members, which the Red Crescent denies.

BBC, Mar 31, 2025 · The Guardian, Apr 3, 2025 · CNN, Mar 31, 2025

Mar 25, 2025 Gazans protest against Hamas. Hundreds of people in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, chant “Hamas out” and call for an end to the war, in what is called the largest protest against Hamas inside Gaza since October 7. Smaller protests follow elsewhere.

The Guardian, Mar 25, 2025 · Al-Monitor, Mar 2025

May 16, 2025 Israel moves to hold Gaza. Israel launches an offensive, “Gideon’s Chariots,” to take and hold territory and push Gaza’s people into a small part of the south. By summer the army says it controls about three-quarters of Gaza.

BBC, May 17, 2025 · Times of Israel, Aug 4, 2025
May 26, 2025 Disputed

A new aid system backed by the US and Israel

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation opens a few guarded food sites in the south, in place of the UN’s hundreds of distribution points. Hundreds of people are shot dead trying to reach them over the summer.

By the counts of Gaza’s health ministry and the UN, hundreds of people were killed near the foundation’s sites by the end of June. Israel says its troops fired warning shots at people who came toward them, and the foundation says no one was killed at its sites. It shut down in November 2025.

BBC, May 9, 2025 · BBC, Jun 30, 2025 · AP, Nov 25, 2025
Jun 13–24, 2025

Israel and Iran fight a 12-day war

Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear sites and kills generals and scientists. Iran fires hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli cities. The United States bombs three nuclear sites on June 22, and a ceasefire follows.

Twenty-eight people were killed in Israel, by the Times of Israel’s list. Iran’s health ministry said more than 1,000 were killed in Iran.

NPR, Jun 24, 2025 · Times of Israel, Jun 30, 2025

Apr 1–19, 2024 Iran attacks Israel directly for the first time. After an Israeli strike kills Iranian generals in Damascus, Iran launches about 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Nearly all are shot down, and Israel strikes back near Isfahan.

AP, Apr 1, 2024 · The Guardian, Apr 14, 2024

Oct 1 and 26, 2024 Iran fires again, and Israel strikes Iran. Iran fires about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, saying it is avenging Haniyeh and Nasrallah. Three weeks later Israel strikes Iran’s air defenses and missile plants.

The Guardian, Oct 1, 2024 · AP, Oct 26, 2024
Aug 8 – Sept 16, 2025

Israel decides to take Gaza City

Israel’s security cabinet approves a plan to capture Gaza City, where about a million people live. The ground offensive begins on September 16, and hundreds of thousands flee south.

PBS NewsHour, Aug 22, 2025 · NPR, Sept 16, 2025
Aug 10, 2025

Al Jazeera’s Gaza team killed

An Israeli strike on a press tent kills Anas al-Sharif and four of his Al Jazeera colleagues. Israel says he led a Hamas cell and shows documents. Al Jazeera and press freedom groups reject the claim.

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls the war in Gaza the deadliest for journalists that it has recorded.

Al Jazeera, Aug 10, 2025 · CNN live page, Aug 11, 2025 · Committee to Protect Journalists

Aug 25, 2025 Strikes on Nasser Hospital kill journalists and rescuers. Israeli strikes hit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis four times, killing journalists and rescue workers who had come to help. Israel says it was aiming at a Hamas camera.

BBC, Aug 29, 2025 · CNN, Aug 26, 2025
Aug 14–20, 2025

Israel approves the E1 settlement

Israel approves about 3,400 homes in E1, between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, a plan frozen for decades because it would cut the West Bank in two. Smotrich says it “buries” the idea of a Palestinian state.

The Guardian, Aug 14, 2025 · CNN, Aug 14, 2025 · Times of Israel, Sept 11, 2025 · UN Security Council briefing, 2026
Aug 22, 2025 Disputed

Famine is confirmed in Gaza City

The IPC, the world’s hunger monitor, confirms famine in the area around Gaza City, the first it has found in the Middle East. Israel calls the finding false.

By December the monitor found that the famine had ended, though most people in Gaza still faced crisis levels of hunger. Israel says the IPC used flawed data and methods and has demanded it withdraw the report. The IPC stands by it.

Reuters, Dec 19, 2025 · The Guardian, Jul 31, 2025 · Times of Israel, Aug 22, 2025 · Al-Monitor, Aug 2025

Mar 18, 2024 Famine warnings for northern Gaza. The IPC says famine is “imminent” in northern Gaza. Children begin dying of malnutrition. Air drops and a pier built by the US follow, and deliver little.

UN News, Mar 18, 2024 · VOA via GlobalSecurity, Mar 18, 2024
A second ceasefire

September to December 2025. A UN inquiry finds genocide, more countries recognize Palestine, and a plan from Trump brings the last living hostages home.
Sept 9, 2025

Israel strikes Hamas’s leaders in Qatar

Israeli jets bomb a building in Doha where Hamas’s negotiators are meeting. Five Hamas members and a Qatari officer die, and the senior leaders survive. Qatar is a US ally and one of the mediators.

Al Jazeera, Sept 9, 2025 · Times of Israel, Sept 10, 2025 · AP, Sept 14, 2025
Sept 16, 2025 Disputed

A UN inquiry says Israel committed genocide

The UN’s commission of inquiry on Israel and the Palestinian territories, chaired by Navi Pillay, concludes that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel calls the report “distorted and false” and the commission biased.

The commission is not a court. The world court has not decided South Africa’s case. Amnesty International and other groups had reached the same conclusion, and the United States, Germany and others reject it. On October 9, 2026, Pillay won the Nobel Peace Prize, and Netanyahu’s office denounced the choice.

UN commission of inquiry, Sept 16, 2025 · BBC, Sept 16, 2025 · CNN, Sept 16, 2025 · AP, Oct 11, 2026 · Arab News (AFP), Sept 16, 2025

Jun 12, 2024 A UN inquiry finds war crimes on both sides. The same commission’s first report on the war finds war crimes by Hamas’s armed wing on October 7 and by Israel in Gaza.

AP, Jun 12, 2024

Dec 5, 2024 Rights groups accuse Israel of genocide. Amnesty International concludes that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Human Rights Watch finds “acts of genocide” over the cutting off of water. Israel calls both reports false.

Amnesty International, Dec 5, 2024 · Human Rights Watch, Dec 19, 2024
Sept 21–22, 2025

Britain, France, Canada and others recognize Palestine

Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal recognize a State of Palestine, and France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco and Andorra follow at the UN. About 157 of the UN’s 193 members now do.

The United States, Germany, Italy and Japan do not. Belgium’s recognition is to take legal effect only once Hamas is out of power and the hostages are home.

CNN, Sept 21, 2025 · UK government, Sept 2025

Apr 18 – May 10, 2024 Palestine’s bid for UN membership. The US vetoes full UN membership for Palestine. The General Assembly votes 143 to 9 that Palestine qualifies, and gives it new rights in the Assembly.

UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/23

May 28, 2024 Spain, Ireland and Norway recognize Palestine. Three European states recognize a State of Palestine, and Slovenia and Armenia follow in June. Israel recalls its ambassadors.

Al Jazeera, May 22, 2024

Jun 9–10, 2025 Abbas condemns October 7. In a letter to France’s president and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Abbas condemns the October 7 attack for the first time. He says Hamas must free every hostage, stop ruling Gaza and hand its weapons to Palestinian forces, and promises elections within a year.

Arab News (AFP), Jun 10, 2025 · Times of Israel, Jun 10, 2025

Jul 28–29, 2025 A UN conference on two states. France and Saudi Arabia host a UN conference that produces the New York Declaration, which condemns October 7, calls for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza, and lays out steps to a Palestinian state beside Israel, the two-state solution. The General Assembly endorses it 142 to 10. The US and Israel stay away.

UN conference on two states, Jul 2025 · Reuters, Jun 11, 2025
Sept 29, 2025

Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza

At the White House, Trump and Netanyahu present a plan: a ceasefire, every hostage freed within 72 hours, Hamas disarmed, Israel pulling back in stages, and Gaza run by Palestinian technocrats under a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump.

Netanyahu said he accepted it. Hamas agreed on October 3 to free the hostages and hand over the running of Gaza, and said its other points needed negotiating.

Reuters, Sept 30, 2025 · BBC, Oct 3, 2025 · CFR, “A Guide to the Gaza Peace Deal”
Oct 10, 2025

The guns mostly fall silent

Under the first stage of Trump’s plan, a ceasefire takes effect at noon. Israeli troops pull back to a “yellow line,” keeping about 53% of Gaza, and aid trucks start moving in.

Al Jazeera, Oct 12, 2026

Oct 13–14, 2025 Hamas retakes the streets. As Israeli troops pull back, Hamas sends police and fighters into the streets and fights clans and gangs it accuses of looting aid and working with Israel. About two dozen people are killed in one clash in Gaza City, and there are reports of executions. Hamas says it is restoring order.

The Guardian, Oct 13, 2025 · AP, Oct 14, 2025
Oct 13, 2025

The last living hostages come home

Hamas frees the 20 living hostages it still held, and Israel frees about 1,968 Palestinians: 250 serving sentences and about 1,700 detained in Gaza during the war. Trump speaks to the Knesset, then signs a declaration with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.

The bodies of 28 hostages were still in Gaza. Returning them took until January 2026.

Times of Israel, Oct 13, 2025 · The Guardian, Oct 11, 2025

Nov 17, 2025 The Security Council backs the plan. The council endorses Trump’s plan, the Board of Peace as a transitional authority for Gaza until the end of 2027, and an international force to keep the peace. Russia and China abstain.

UN Security Council resolution 2803 (2025) · Reuters, Nov 17, 2025
The second phase

2026. The plan’s second stage begins and the last hostage comes home, but Hamas keeps its guns, Israel keeps its lines, and a wider war with Iran begins.
Jan 14–22, 2026

The plan’s second phase, and the Board of Peace

The US declares the plan’s second stage begun. A committee of 15 Palestinian technocrats meets in Cairo to run Gaza, and Trump launches the Board of Peace in Davos. Hamas has not disarmed.

The committee was still in Cairo in July 2026, not yet allowed into Gaza.

White House, Jan 2026 · Reuters, Jan 14, 2026 · Al Jazeera, Jan 18, 2026 · Times of Israel, Jan 18, 2026 · Board of Peace, Jul 13, 2026
Jan 26, 2026

The last hostage’s remains come home

Israeli forces recover the remains of a police officer, Ran Gvili, in northern Gaza. For the first time since October 7, 2023, no hostage is left in Gaza. A week later the Rafah crossing reopens for a few people.

BBC, Jan 26, 2026 · AP, Jan 26, 2026 · NPR (AP), Feb 2, 2026 · AP, Feb 2, 2026
Feb 8–15, 2026 Disputed

Israel moves to register West Bank land

Israel’s cabinet lets Israelis buy West Bank land directly, widens Israeli enforcement into areas the Palestinian Authority runs, and orders the first registration of land in Area C since 1967.

Palestinians and the UN call it annexation. Israel says it is settling who owns what. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said, “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Times of Israel, Feb 8, 2026 · UN News, Feb 16, 2026

Sept 8, 2026 Twelve countries move against trade with settlements. Britain, France, Canada and nine other countries announce bans or limits on trade with Israeli settlements. Israel answers by ordering Britain’s consulate in East Jerusalem shut.

Al Jazeera, Oct 8, 2026 · Globes, Sept 2026 · UK government, Sept 8, 2026 · UK Foreign Secretary, Sept 8, 2026
Feb 28, 2026 – unresolved

The US and Israel go to war with Iran

American and Israeli strikes kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and much of its command. Iran fires missiles at Israel and the Gulf states and closes the Strait of Hormuz, and Hezbollah and the Houthis join in.

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei its new supreme leader. A ceasefire in April was extended, and in June the US and Iran signed a 14-point interim memorandum, mediated by Pakistan, to end the fighting “on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” It collapsed in July, and the two exchanged strikes for more than two weeks before pausing.

As of October 14, 2026, talks go on through Pakistan and Qatar, the Strait of Hormuz is still largely closed, and ships are still being hit there.

AP, Jul 8, 2026 · AP, Aug 12, 2026 · AP, Oct 14, 2026 · Reuters, Mar 23, 2026 · AP, Mar 2, 2026 · CNN, Jun 17, 2026

Mar 2, 2026 onward War again in Lebanon, then direct talks. Hezbollah fires on Israel after Khamenei’s killing, and Israel answers with strikes and its deepest ground invasion of Lebanon in more than 25 years. In April, Israel and Lebanon hold their first direct talks in decades, and truces and a US framework deal follow, though fire is still exchanged.

AP, “A timeline of the Iran war and…” · BBC, Apr 16, 2026 · Reuters live page, Apr 16, 2026
Mar 30, 2026

The Knesset passes a death penalty for deadly attacks

Israel’s parliament votes 62 to 48 to make death the usual sentence in the West Bank’s military courts for deadly attacks, which in practice applies only to Palestinians.

In May the Knesset set up a special military tribunal, with the power to sentence to death, for the attackers of October 7. The UN’s human rights chief urged Israel to repeal that law.

BBC, Mar 30, 2026 · Reuters, Mar 30, 2026 · Reuters, May 12, 2026 · UN human rights office, May 13, 2026
Jul 30 – Aug 9, 2026

A disarmament roadmap, and a fight over who moves first

Trump announces that Hamas has agreed to hand over its weapons in stages, with Israel’s troops pulling back as each stage is checked. Israel says it never agreed, and will not leave its lines until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The Board of Peace said on August 3 that there would be no Israeli withdrawal past the yellow line until Hamas’s weapons were handed in. By October, Israel’s restrictions covered about 65% of Gaza, by the UN’s count.

Al Jazeera, Jul 31, 2026 · CBS News, Jul 2026 · Al Jazeera, Aug 4, 2026 · OPB (NPR), Aug 9, 2026 · Board of Peace, “Gaza Roadmap” · AP, Jul 31, 2026 · AP, Aug 2, 2026 · AP, Aug 3, 2026 · Al Jazeera, Oct 12, 2026

Jul 6, 2026 Hamas dissolves its Gaza government. Hamas dissolves the committee that ran Gaza’s civil affairs, so that the technocrats’ committee can take over. Israel says nothing changes while Hamas keeps its guns.

PBS NewsHour, Jul 2026 · Al Jazeera, Jul 7, 2026
Jul–Oct 2026

Two elections called, and one postponed

Israel’s Knesset dissolves for an election on October 27, 2026. Abbas calls the first Palestinian parliamentary election since 2006, then on October 10 postpones it, with the vote for president, to September 11, 2027.

Abbas blamed Israeli measures and the state of Gaza, and Israel’s foreign minister called that a “ridiculous lie.” Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a breakaway Fatah faction led by Mohammed Dahlan had been building a joint list, and Hamas called the postponement “a step in the right direction.”

Al Jazeera, Jul 17, 2026 · Britannica, “2026 Israeli Elections” · Palestinian presidency, Aug 2026 · Euronews, Oct 10, 2026 · AP, Sept 29, 2026 · AP, Oct 10, 2026

Apr 29, 2021 Abbas postpones the last election. Abbas postpones the Palestinian election called for May 2021, blaming Israel for not allowing voting in East Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera, Apr 30, 2021

Mar 14, 2024 Abbas names a new prime minister. Under American pressure to reform the Palestinian Authority, Abbas names his longtime economic adviser, Mohammad Mustafa, to lead a government of technocrats that might one day run Gaza too.

AP, Mar 14, 2024 · Al Jazeera, Mar 14, 2024

Jul 23, 2024 Hamas and Fatah sign a unity pledge in Beijing. Hamas, Fatah and 12 smaller factions sign a declaration in China promising a unity government for Gaza and the West Bank after the war. Israel rules out any role for Hamas or the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, and the split goes on.

AP, Jul 23, 2024 · Al-Monitor, Jul 2024

Apr 26, 2025 Abbas names a deputy. Abbas, 89, makes his longtime aide Hussein al-Sheikh the PLO’s first vice president, and the front-runner to succeed him.

AP, Apr 26, 2025 · The New Arab, Apr 27, 2025
Next · Oct 27, 2026

Where it stands
- Oct 27, 2026Israel votes. The election decides who governs through the next stage of the plan for Gaza, and the West Bank.
- Sept 11, 2027The postponed Palestinian elections, for parliament and president, the first since 2006 and 2005.
- Nov 22, 2027South Africa’s next written answer is due in its case against Israel at the world court.
- Not setHamas’s disarmament, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and an international force on the ground, all of them stalled over which comes first.
- Not setAn end to the war with Iran, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
A year into the ceasefire, Israel holds about two-thirds of Gaza and keeps striking, Hamas holds the coast and has not disarmed, and no foreign force has deployed. Nearly 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire began, and more than 74,000 since October 2023, by the count of Gaza’s health ministry. Israel disputes the ministry’s count.

Around 1,200 people were killed in Israel on October 7, and 251 were taken hostage. None is left in Gaza.

Al Jazeera, Oct 13, 2026 · Al-Monitor, Oct 2026 · AP, Oct 10, 2026 · AP, Oct 7, 2026 · AP, Oct 7, 2026 · UN Secretary-General, Oct 6, 2026 · Al Jazeera, Oct 12, 2026

Every card links its sources. Where the two sides tell an event differently, its drawer gives each account and says whose it is. Every number comes with who counted it, and where the counts differ, both are given.

Back to the shelf

Notes

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Where it starts

Where a history of this conflict begins is itself argued over. Many Israelis trace it to the Jewish people’s ties to the land and to Arab resistance to Zionism. Many Palestinians date it to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, or to Zionist settlement on land where they lived.

This page starts its story in 1881, with the first organized Jewish immigration and, soon after, the first Arab protests against it. That is where most histories written from either side start the conflict itself. Above that point the rail is dotted, and the cards on it are background: they say what both peoples trace their ties to the land through, and they take no side on it.

Who goes where

A card’s column says who acted, never who was right or who suffered. The October 7 attack is on the left because Hamas carried it out. Israel’s war in Gaza is on the right. Every card names the actual actor, an organization or a government, because a column is a people and an actor is not.

The middle is for everyone else: the Ottomans, Britain, the UN and the courts, the United States, the Arab states, Iran and Hezbollah, and events with no single actor or a disputed one. What the two sides did together, like an agreement both signed, is in the middle too, marked with a diamond. The columns aren’t even in every period, because who acted wasn’t.

Names, words and numbers

Some things have two names, one from each side: the 1948 war, the West Bank, the Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif. A card uses the plainest words it can, and its drawer gives both names and says who uses which. Words like terrorist, occupied, apartheid and genocide appear only as the words of the body that used them, with its document linked and the other side’s answer beside it.

Every number says who counted it. The count of the dead in Gaza since 2023 comes from the Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government. The UN and peer-reviewed studies have treated its counts as broadly reliable, and Israel disputes them. Where Israel’s figures differ, both are given.

Sources

Every card links its sources: the documents themselves where they exist, like the treaties, resolutions and court rulings, then reporting from outlets with no side in the conflict, reference works written to be neutral, and the bodies that keep counts. Where it is a side’s own telling that matters, the drawer says whose account it is. Rights groups are always named and quoted, never used as the page’s own voice.

A few links sit behind a check that a browser passes on its own, and a few are behind a paywall. Israel’s parliament blocks its website outside Israel, so no Knesset page is linked.

What it leaves out

This is one page for nearly a century and a half. Smaller events ride in the drawer of the card they belong with, and some are not here at all. The region’s other wars appear only where they touched this one. It is not a verdict on who is right, and it doesn’t try to be.

The case South Africa brought against Israel at the world court, over whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza, has its own pages, which go into far more detail than the cards here.

South Africa v. Israel

Tell me what I got wrong

If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a document or a report and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.

No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.

Events reviewed through October 14, 2026. Nothing that happened after that date is reflected here.

Terms

Plain English

Words this history uses because the two sides, the UN or the courts use them. Where a word belongs to one side, the definition says whose it is.

The land

Palestine: The land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Rome named its province Syria Palaestina after the Philistines of the coast, and Palestine is what most of the world called the land until 1948. Today the State of Palestine claims the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
Land of Israel: Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew: the name the Bible and Jewish tradition give the land, and the one Israelis use for it.
West Bank: The land west of the Jordan River that Jordan held from 1949 to 1967 and Israel has held since. Israel’s government calls it by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria.
Gaza Strip: A strip of coast about 25 miles long beside Egypt, home to about 2 million people. Egypt held it from 1949 and Israel from 1967. Israel took out its settlers and troops in 2005, and Hamas has run it since 2007.
East Jerusalem: The part of Jerusalem, Old City included, that Jordan held from 1949 to 1967. Israel took it in 1967 and annexed it. Most countries call the annexation unlawful and treat East Jerusalem as occupied.
Green Line: The 1949 armistice lines between Israel and its neighbors, drawn in green on the maps. It’s what most of the world means by “the 1967 lines.”
Areas A, B and C: How the 1995 Oslo II agreement split the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority runs Area A, the cities. It runs civil affairs in Area B while Israel keeps security control. Israel keeps full control of Area C, about 60% of the land.
Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif: One hilltop in Jerusalem’s Old City with two names. To Jews it is the Temple Mount, where the two ancient temples stood, Judaism’s holiest place. To Muslims it is the Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, with al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third holiest site.
Western Wall: Part of the old retaining wall of the Temple Mount, and the holiest place where Jews pray today. Muslims revere the same wall as al-Buraq.
Settlement: A community built for Israeli civilians on land Israel took in 1967. The UN Security Council and most countries say settlements break international law. Israel disputes that.
Occupation: A legal term for land held by a foreign army. The UN, the world court and most countries say Israel occupies the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Israel calls the West Bank disputed land rather than occupied, and says it ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.

People and movements

Zionism: The movement for a Jewish national home, and then a Jewish state, in the land Jews call the Land of Israel. It took shape in Europe in the 1880s and 1890s.
Yishuv: Hebrew for “settlement”: the Jewish community in Palestine before Israel was founded.
Aliyah: Hebrew for “going up”: Jewish immigration to the land. The waves before 1948 are numbered, from the First Aliyah of 1882.
The Mandate: Britain’s rule over Palestine from 1920 to 1948, under a mandate from the League of Nations. It bound Britain to help build a Jewish national home and to protect the rights of everyone else.
Haganah, Irgun and Lehi: The Jewish armed groups before 1948. The Haganah was the main one, under the Jewish Agency. The Irgun and Lehi broke away and fought Britain and the Arabs on their own terms, and Britain called them terrorists. All three were folded into Israel’s army in 1948.
Nakba: Arabic for “catastrophe”: what Palestinians call the loss of their homes and land in the 1948 war. Israelis call the same war the War of Independence.
Naksa: Arabic for “setback”: what Palestinians call the 1967 war and the second exile it brought.
PLO: The Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 and led by Fatah from 1969. Arab states recognized it as the Palestinians’ representative in 1974, and Israel did in 1993.
Fatah: The largest party in the PLO, founded around 1959 by Yasser Arafat and others. It runs the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Authority: The self-government the Oslo accords set up in 1994 in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. It lost Gaza to Hamas in 2007.
Hamas: An Islamist movement and armed group founded in Gaza in 1987. It won the Palestinian election of 2006 and has run Gaza since 2007. The US, the EU, Britain and others list it as a terrorist organization.
Islamic Jihad: Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller Islamist armed group backed by Iran.
Hezbollah: A Shia Islamist party and armed group in Lebanon, founded in the early 1980s and backed by Iran.
Intifada: Arabic for “shaking off”: a Palestinian uprising. The first ran from 1987 to 1993, the second from 2000 to about 2005.
Palestine refugees: The UN’s term for Palestinians who lost their homes and livelihoods in 1948, and their descendants. Israel objects to counting the descendants as refugees.
UNRWA: The UN agency for Palestine refugees, set up in 1949. It runs schools, clinics and aid in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Right of return: The Palestinian claim that refugees and their descendants may go back to the homes lost in 1948, based on UN Resolution 194. Israel rejects it, saying it would end Israel as a Jewish state.
Law of Return: Israel’s 1950 law giving every Jew the right to immigrate and become a citizen.
Knesset: Israel’s parliament.

The world’s bodies

Security Council: The UN’s 15-member council. Its decisions can bind every member, and any of its five permanent members, the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, can veto one.
General Assembly: The UN body of all its member states. Its resolutions say what most of the world thinks, but they don’t bind.
World court: The International Court of Justice, the UN’s court for disputes between countries. It also gives advisory opinions when a UN body asks it a legal question.
Advisory opinion: The world court’s answer to a legal question from a UN body. It carries weight, but it doesn’t bind anyone.
International Criminal Court: A court in The Hague that tries people for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Palestine joined in 2015. Israel isn’t a member and says the court has no power over its citizens.
Commission of inquiry: A panel of experts the UN Human Rights Council appoints to investigate. Its findings are its own conclusions. It isn’t a court.
IPC: The hunger monitor the UN and aid groups use, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. Famine is its worst level, declared only when lack of food, malnutrition and deaths each pass a set line.
Quartet: The US, the EU, the UN and Russia, which together sponsored peace plans from 2002.
Board of Peace: The body, chaired by Donald Trump, that the 2025 plan for Gaza set up to oversee its rule after the war. The UN Security Council endorsed it in November 2025.

Agreements and ideas

Oslo accords: The agreements of 1993 and 1995 in which Israel and the PLO recognized each other and set up the Palestinian Authority for five years, leaving the hardest questions for later talks that never ended in a deal.
Two-state solution: A Palestinian state beside Israel, roughly along the 1967 lines, as the way to end the conflict. It has been the stated aim of most peace efforts since the 1990s.

Chronological View

Israelite kingdoms in the hills

Babylon destroys the First Temple

Rome crushes two Jewish revolts

Arab Muslim rule begins

The Crusades

Four centuries of Ottoman rule

A changing Ottoman province

Where this history starts

Palestinians

The Zionist movement

The first Zionist settlers arrive

First disputes over land, first protests

Herzl and the First Zionist Congress

A Jerusalem notable writes to Herzl

The Second Aliyah: kibbutzim and Tel Aviv

Britain’s promise to the Arabs

Britain and France divide the region

The Balfour Declaration

The first Palestinian Arab congress

The Nebi Musa riots

The League of Nations approves the Mandate

The 1929 riots and the Hebron massacre

Refugees from Nazi Germany

The Arab Revolt

The Peel Commission proposes partition

The 1939 White Paper

The Holocaust

The mufti meets Hitler

Jewish armed groups turn on Britain

Survivors in the camps, and the US presses Britain

The King David Hotel bombing

Britain hands Palestine to the UN

A UN committee recommends partition

The UN votes to split the land

Civil war in Palestine

The Haganah adopts Plan D

The Deir Yassin massacre

The Hadassah convoy massacre

The Kfar Etzion massacre

Israel declares independence

Arab armies enter

Palestinians lose their homes

Lydda and Ramle are emptied

The last offensives, and killings in the villages

Resolution 194 and the refugees

Armistice lines: the “Green Line”

UNRWA is created

Two laws: absentees’ property and return

Jordan annexes the West Bank

Jews leave the Arab world

Military rule over Israel’s Arab citizens

The Qibya raid

The Suez War

The Kafr Qasim massacre

Killings in Khan Younis and Rafah

The PLO is founded

The Six-Day War

A second exile, the Naksa

Israel takes over East Jerusalem

The Arab League’s “three no’s”

The first settlements

Resolution 242: land for peace

The battle of Karameh

The Palestinian National Charter is rewritten

Black September: Jordan drives out the PLO

Murder at the Munich Olympics

The October War, or the Yom Kippur War

Kiryat Shmona and Ma’alot

The PLO is recognized as the Palestinians’ voice

“Zionism is a form of racism”

Land Day

Begin’s Likud wins

Sadat goes to Jerusalem

The Coastal Road massacre

The Camp David Accords

Egypt and Israel sign a peace treaty

Israel’s Jerusalem Law

Israel invades Lebanon to destroy the PLO

Massacre at Sabra and Shatila