The Palestinian story: belonging, loss and the hope for freedom

Before anything else: home

The Palestinian story does not begin with refugees or struggle. It begins with families, towns and villages, with work and farming, schools, art and neighbours. The Palestinian Museum’s digital archive collects the photographs, letters and diaries of those lives.¹ Palestinian embroidery, which UNESCO inscribed as intangible cultural heritage in 2021, passes from generation to generation, and with it skill and identity.²

A national identity took shape in the late Ottoman and British Mandate years, together with newspapers and political movements.³ Having had no earlier state does not cancel a people or its rights. Many Jews saw Zionism as a return home and a chance of safety; many Palestinian Arabs saw it as a threat to their future in the land where they lived. Nothing that followed makes sense without both views.

1929 and 1936–1939: blood and revolt

In August 1929 tension over the Western Wall, which Muslims call al-Buraq, exploded. The British Shaw Commission counted 133 Jews and 116 Arabs killed, most of the Arabs by British forces.⁴ In Hebron 67 Jews were murdered; 22 Arab families hid Jewish neighbours and saved dozens.⁵

In 1936 a general strike, led by the Arab Higher Committee under Haj Amin al-Husseini, grew into a revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration. After the Peel Commission proposed partition in 1937, it flared up again. Britain crushed it by 1939: according to the Institute for Palestine Studies, some 5,000 Palestinians were killed and nearly 15,000 wounded, and the leadership was exiled, jailed or split. Palestinian society reached 1948 weakened. In 1939 the British White Paper capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 people over five years.⁶⁷

1947–1948: the Nakba

On 29 November 1947 the UN recommended partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under an international regime, by 33 votes to 13.⁸⁹ The Jewish leadership accepted; the Palestinian Arab leadership and the Arab states rejected the plan as unjust to the Arab majority.¹⁰ Leaders took that decision; nobody asked the farmer in his village. Fighting broke out within days.¹⁰

It began as a war between neighbours: Arab irregulars attacked Jewish communities and forces, and Jews were killed.¹⁰ In the spring of 1948 the Jewish forces went on the offensive. Tiberias, Haifa, Safad and Jaffa fell in April and May, and most of their Arab inhabitants fled or were driven out.¹¹ On 9 April the Irgun and Lehi attacked Deir Yassin, a village with a non-aggression pact with its Jewish neighbour, Givat Shaul. They killed about a hundred villagers, most of them women, children and old men, and the news hastened the flight.¹²

On 14 May Israel was declared; on 15 May Arab armies crossed into the former Mandate (an invasion, in Israeli terms; in Arab accounts, the Arab armies entering Palestine).¹⁰¹¹ In July Israeli forces captured Lydda and Ramle and drove out tens of thousands of residents, who had to walk east. According to the Institute for Palestine Studies, the same forces killed 426 people in Lydda, most of them people who had sheltered in the city’s mosque.¹¹

By the end of the war more than half of the Palestinian Arabs had been uprooted.⁷ Estimates range from just over 700,000 refugees (the UN figure cited by the Israeli historian Benny Morris) to three-quarters of a million (the Institute for Palestine Studies).¹³¹¹ More than 400 villages and towns were emptied and most were destroyed; All That Remains, edited by Walid Khalidi, documents 418, and other counts range from 290 to 472.¹⁴ This is what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe.¹⁵

The refugees were not allowed back. In December 1948 UN Resolution 194 said that those wishing to return and live at peace with their neighbours should be allowed to, and others compensated; Israel did not permit the return.¹⁵ In 1950 the Absentees’ Property Law handed refugees’ land and homes to a state custodian; according to Adalah, it became the main legal tool for transferring refugee property to the state.¹⁶ The proposed Arab state never arose: Jordan held the West Bank and Egypt held Gaza.¹⁰

What the historians argue about

Benny Morris

The Israeli historian, whose archival work changed the debate, holds that attacks by Jewish forces and the fear of them were the main cause of the flight. There were expulsions, he says, but the Zionist side did not enter the war with a plan or policy of expulsion.¹³

Walid Khalidi

The Palestinian historian challenged the claim that Arab leaders ordered the inhabitants to leave, calling it a myth, after studying Arab archives, press releases and radio broadcasts.¹⁷ He also edited the register of the 418 destroyed villages.¹⁴

Mahmoud Yazbak

The Palestinian historian spoke at the same workshop as Morris. He estimated that about 80 per cent of the people of the areas that became Israel were expelled or fled, and argued that blocking return amounts to expulsion.¹³

Ilan Pappé and the Institute for Palestine Studies

Pappé presents Plan Dalet as a blueprint for expulsion and calls 1948 ethnic cleansing.¹⁸ The Institute for Palestine Studies’ encyclopaedia describes it the same way, in an entry by the historian Maher Charif.¹¹

Efraim Karsh

The Israeli historian calls the claim that Israel was founded on the premeditated dispossession of the Arabs unfounded, and argues that the documents show the reverse.¹⁹

What is not in dispute

As this site reads the research, the argument is about intention and planning, not the outcome: hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and were not allowed to return.¹³¹⁵

1949–1967: camps, borders and the PLO

The refugees scattered. According to the Institute for Palestine Studies, about 280,000 reached the West Bank, 190,000 Gaza, 100,000 Lebanon, 75,000 Syria and 70,000 the east bank of the Jordan.¹¹ Many of them and their descendants have lived in camps ever since, with UNRWA’s schools and clinics.²⁰ According to the UN, more than 5 million Palestine refugees live across the Middle East today.¹⁵

For nineteen years Jordan ruled the West Bank and Egypt Gaza, and no Palestinian state arose in either.¹⁰⁷ In 1964 the first Palestine National Congress, meeting in Jerusalem, founded the PLO under Ahmad al-Shuqairi; its charter declared partition and Israel null and void. In January 1965 Fatah began armed operations against Israel.²¹

Those who stayed: the Palestinian citizens of Israel

About 160,000 Palestinians stayed inside Israel and became its citizens; until 1966 they lived under military government.²²²³ On 29 October 1956 a curfew was imposed on the Arab villages near the Jordanian border at half an hour’s notice. In Kafr Qasim, Border Police officers shot villagers returning home after it began, and killed 49 people, children among them. The policemen were tried, but all were free by 1960, and the senior officer, Colonel Issachar Shadmi, was fined one prutah, the smallest coin, writes the historian Adel Manna.²²

On 30 March 1976, after the government ordered land expropriations in the Galilee, Arab citizens demonstrated in Sakhnin, Arraba and Deir Hanna; Israeli forces killed six unarmed demonstrators. The day is marked every year as Land Day.²⁴ In October 2000, as the second intifada began, police killed 13 people during protests in Arab towns; the state Or Commission found no justification for the killings, and no police officer was put on trial.²⁵

Arab citizens are about a fifth of Israel’s population, some two million people; they vote and are elected, and in 2021 Ra’am became the first independent Arab party in a governing coalition.²³ In 2018 the Knesset passed the Nation-State Law, 62 to 55: it says national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people, downgrades Arabic to a “special status” and does not mention equality. In 2021 the Supreme Court upheld it, ten to one; Justice George Karra, the only Arab on the panel, wrote in dissent that leaving out equality was deliberate.²⁶

After 7 October 2023 Adalah documented, within five weeks, dozens of Arab citizens questioned, arrested or charged over online posts; the authorities alleged incitement or support for terror, while Adalah says most of the posts were protected speech, such as sympathy for civilians in Gaza.²⁷ Arab citizens are also at the heart of Jewish–Arab movements such as Standing Together.²⁸

1967: the Naksa and the start of the occupation

In the spring of 1967 Egypt massed forces in Sinai, demanded that the UN force leave and closed the Straits of Tiran; Israel saw a grave threat.²⁹ On 5 June Israel struck Egypt from the air, in what it describes as a pre-emptive attack, and the war spread to Jordan and Syria.³⁰ In six days Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan.²⁹

Palestinians call it the Naksa, the setback. The UN estimates that about half a million Palestinians were displaced in this second wave.⁷ Those who stayed began life under Israeli military rule, which in the West Bank continues today. In November 1967 Resolution 242 set out principles for a just and lasting peace, among them Israeli withdrawal and a just settlement of the refugee problem.⁷

The PLO and the armed struggle: from Karama to Beirut

After 1967 the guerrilla groups took over the PLO. The battle of Karama, in March 1968, raised their standing, and in February 1969 Fatah’s leader, Yasser Arafat, became PLO chairman, a post he held until his death in 2004.²¹ For many Palestinians it was the first body that spoke in their name. In 1974 the UN General Assembly reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination, independence and sovereignty, and gave the PLO observer status.⁷

The “armed struggle” was also aimed at civilians, and this site calls that terror. In September 1972 members of Black September murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.³¹ In May 1974 gunmen of the Democratic Front seized a school in Ma’alot; according to the Jewish Virtual Library, they murdered 25 hostages, 22 of them children.³²³³ In 1978 a squad led by Dalal Mughrabi hijacked a bus on the Coastal Road; according to Israel’s foreign ministry, 38 civilians were murdered, 13 of them children.³⁴

The armed groups also clashed with the Arab states that hosted them. In September 1970 the Jordanian army moved against them, and by July 1971 the PLO had been driven out to Lebanon; Palestinians remember that month as Black September.²¹ In June 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon with the declared aim of destroying the PLO; its fighters were evacuated from Beirut and its leaders moved to Tunis.⁷ On 16–18 September 1982 Lebanese Phalangist militiamen massacred Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila camps, in an area under Israeli military control; Israel’s Kahan Commission found that Israel bore indirect responsibility.⁷³⁵

1987–1993: the first intifada

In December 1987, twenty years into the occupation, an uprising broke out: the intifada, the “shaking off”. It was a mass civil revolt: strikes, a boycott of Israeli goods, refusal to pay taxes, and popular committees that ran food, care and secret classes when the army closed the schools. It was also violent: stone-throwing and other violence were part of it.³⁶

The army answered with gunfire and mass arrests.³⁶ According to B’Tselem, Israeli forces killed at least 1,087 Palestinians from December 1987 to September 1993, 240 of them minors. Palestinians killed 100 Israeli civilians and 60 members of the security forces.³⁷ Palestinians also killed Palestinians: by January 1994, 770 to 940 had been killed as suspected collaborators, according to the Christian Science Monitor; B’Tselem said no reliable figures existed.³⁸

1988–1993: from a declaration of independence to mutual recognition

In November 1988, in Algiers, the Palestine National Council proclaimed the State of Palestine.⁷ A month later, in Geneva, Arafat accepted Resolutions 242 and 338, recognised Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism.³⁹ The long road there is told in the PLO’s road, 1974–1988. In 1991, at Madrid, Palestinians from the occupied territories, led by the Gaza physician Haidar Abdel-Shafi within a joint delegation with Jordan, sat across the table from Israel.⁴⁰⁴¹

In the letters of September 1993 the PLO recognised Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and renounced terrorism and violence; Israel recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, though not a Palestinian state.⁴² The Oslo Accord set up an interim arrangement and left the permanent issues open.

Since 1948 Israel had held 77 per cent of Mandate Palestine; the state the PLO now sought would stand on the rest.⁷ The Interim Agreement of 1995 divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C. Borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements were left for later talks, which ended without agreement at Camp David in 2000 and at Taba in 2001.

The Oslo years and the second intifada

During the years of talks, the violence went on. On 25 February 1994 the settler Baruch Goldstein, of the Kach movement, carried out a terrorist massacre of Muslim worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron; the Security Council condemned the massacre, which with its aftermath took the lives of more than 50 Palestinian civilians.⁴³ Hamas carried out a series of attacks on Israelis.⁴⁴ And the number of settlers kept growing.⁴⁵

The second intifada broke out at the end of September 2000, after Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif.⁴⁴ Armed Palestinian groups carried out suicide bombings that murdered Israeli civilians on buses, in restaurants and in the streets;⁴⁶ according to B’Tselem, Palestinians killed 1,083 Israelis in the following decade, 741 of them civilians.⁴⁷

Palestinians remember the same years as years of closures, funerals and fear. Israeli military operations killed many Palestinian civilians.⁴⁶ According to B’Tselem, Israeli forces killed 6,371 Palestinians between September 2000 and September 2010, at least 2,996 of whom were not taking part in the fighting; the count includes later fighting in Gaza.⁴⁷

Life under occupation, by the numbers

Settlers

In 1993, the year of Oslo, about 110,000 settlers lived in the West Bank (not counting East Jerusalem); in 2023, about 465,000; in East Jerusalem, about 230,000. These are Peace Now’s counts; it lists 146 settlements set up by government decision and, in 2023, 155 outposts.⁴⁵⁴⁸

Checkpoints and movement

In December 2025 the UN’s OCHA counted 925 movement obstacles in the West Bank, among them 89 checkpoints staffed around the clock, against an average of 647 over the previous twenty years. In 2025, 36 per cent of 87,427 patients’ applications to reach hospitals in East Jerusalem and Israel were refused or left unanswered.⁴⁹

The barrier

Israel built it during the second intifada, saying it was needed for self-defence; it is 712 km long, and about 14,000 Palestinians live between it and the Green Line.⁴⁹ In 2004 the International Court of Justice advised that the sections inside the occupied territory are contrary to international law and must be dismantled, rejecting the self-defence argument.⁵⁰

Areas A, B and C

The temporary division of the Interim Agreement still shapes daily life. Area C, more than 60 per cent of the West Bank, is under near-total Israeli control of planning and building; according to OCHA (2014), about 70 per cent of it is off-limits to Palestinian development, and only about 1 per cent is planned for it.⁵¹

Demolitions

OCHA has recorded every demolition in the West Bank since 2009; most are of buildings without an Israeli permit, which OCHA says is nearly impossible to get.⁵² In 2013 alone, 565 Palestinian structures in Area C were demolished and 805 people displaced, almost half of them children.⁵¹

Water

According to OCHA (2014), more than 70 per cent of the Palestinian communities lying wholly or mostly in Area C are not connected to a water network; in some, people get by on 20 litres a day, a fifth of what the World Health Organization recommends.⁵¹

Detention without trial

In October 2026 Israel was holding 3,101 administrative detainees, held without trial, among 7,846 “security” prisoners and detainees, plus 1,419 people classed as “unlawful combatants”: Israel Prison Service figures as published by HaMoked.⁵³

Settler violence

OCHA recorded more than 6,500 settler attacks causing Palestinian casualties or damage between January 2023 and August 2026, and more than 6,199 people displaced by settler attacks and access restrictions.⁵⁴ The attackers are individuals and groups, not a whole public.

What the Court found in 2024

On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice advised that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and must be brought to an end as rapidly as possible.⁵⁵ In September 2024 the UN General Assembly demanded an end to the occupation within 12 months.⁷

Gaza, 2005–2023: disengagement, split and blockade

In 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers from Gaza in the disengagement,⁵⁶ but kept control of the Strip’s borders, coast and airspace.⁷ In 2006 Hamas won the Palestinian legislative election, and in June 2007 it took the Strip by force; the split with the Palestinian Authority has lasted ever since. Israel tightened restrictions on people and goods, citing security, and the blockade did severe damage to livelihoods.⁵⁷

The people of Gaza were caught between Hamas rule and a blockade that decided who and what went in and out. A civilian is not the regime that rules him, and his rights do not lapse because of what it does.

7 October 2023 and the war in Gaza

On 7 October 2023 the terrorist organisation Hamas, together with other armed groups, led a terrorist attack in Israel in which innocent civilians were murdered and hostages were taken.⁵⁸⁵⁹ According to Israeli government figures, about 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted.⁶⁰ It was not a protest and not a legitimate national struggle, and no injustice justifies it.

Hamas is not the Palestinian people, and the war that followed struck everyone in the Strip: widespread destruction and mass displacement.⁶¹ In October 2025 only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were working, some only in part.⁶⁰ On 22 August 2025 the IPC, the international system that classifies food crises, determined that there was famine in Gaza Governorate.⁶²⁷

Israeli military operations in Gaza killed at least 67,869 Palestinians, among them 20,179 children, by the ceasefire of October 2025, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.⁶⁰ According to UNRWA, citing Gaza’s health authorities, the count had reached 73,914 by 24 September 2026.⁶³ The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.⁶⁴

The war reached the international courts. In South Africa’s genocide case, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel in January 2024 to take all measures to prevent acts of genocide and to let aid in, and called for the hostages’ release; more orders followed in March and May. These are provisional measures, not a ruling on the case.⁶⁵⁶⁶ In November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, on suspicion of starvation as a method of warfare and of crimes against humanity. It also issued one for the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.⁶⁷ In September 2025 a UN commission of inquiry stated that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.⁷ Israel rejects the genocide accusation and the famine finding. In The Hague it argued that it is fighting a war of defence, not a war against the Palestinian people; its foreign ministry said that “there is no famine in Gaza”.⁶⁶⁶²

In October 2025 a ceasefire came into effect. A year on, OCHA reported on 2 October 2026 that shelter, water and aid are still short in Gaza. In the West Bank, displacement after demolitions, settler violence and disrupted schooling go on.⁶¹

Today: millions of people, not one voice

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2025 about 3.43 million Palestinians lived in the West Bank and about 2.13 million in Gaza, about 5.56 million together. It is a Palestinian agency’s estimate for a given date, not the number of Palestinians in the world.⁶⁸

The West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the diaspora live under different legal statuses and in different conditions. They differ by age, place, belief and politics, and they do not all back the same leadership or the same path.

Those who chose another way: non-violent struggle, culture and encounter

In 2003 the route of the barrier threatened the village of Budrus. A local organiser, Ayed Morrar, united members of Fatah and Hamas in an unarmed struggle; his 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, led a group of women to the front line, and hundreds of Israelis joined them. The struggle succeeded and became a model for other villages, as the makers of the film “Budrus” tell it.⁶⁹

Combatants for Peace was founded in 2006 by former fighters from both sides who chose non-violence, and every year it holds a joint Israeli–Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony.⁷⁰ In the Parents Circle – Families Forum, Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost loved ones work together for reconciliation.⁷¹ Choosing negotiation is part of this story too: the recognition letters of 1993, and unofficial drafts written with Israelis, such as the Geneva Initiative.

And there is culture. The poet Mahmoud Darwish, born in 1941 in the Galilee village of al-Birwa, gave his people’s struggle a voice.⁷² The embroidery, photographs and letters in the Palestinian Museum’s archive tell the same story without words.¹