What is palestine like today

In , the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city.

That plan was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by the Arab side and never implemented. In , unable to solve the problem, British rulers left and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the state of Israel. Many Palestinians objected and a war followed. Troops from neighbouring Arab countries invaded.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in what they call Al Nakba, or the "Catastrophe". By the time the fighting ended in a ceasefire the following year, Israel controlled most of the territory. Jordan occupied land which became known as the West Bank, and Egypt occupied Gaza. Jerusalem was divided between Israeli forces in the West, and Jordanian forces in the East.

Because there was never a peace agreement - with each side blaming the other - there were more wars and fighting in the following decades. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes - Israel says this would overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.

Israel still occupies the West Bank, and although it pulled out of Gaza the UN still regards that piece of land as occupied territory. Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. The US is one of only a handful of countries to recognise the city as Israel's capital. In the past 50 years Israel has built settlements in these areas, where more than , Jews now live. Palestinians say these are illegal under international law and are obstacles to peace, but Israel denies this.

Gaza is ruled by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has fought Israel many times. Israel and Egypt tightly control Gaza's borders to stop weapons getting to Hamas. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank say they are suffering because of Israeli actions and restrictions. Israel says it is only acting to protect itself from Palestinian violence. The threatened eviction of some Palestinian families in East Jerusalem has also caused rising anger.

There are a number of issues which Israel and the Palestinians cannot agree on. These include: what should happen to Palestinian refugees; whether Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank should stay or be removed; whether the two sides should share Jerusalem; and - perhaps most tricky of all - whether a Palestinian state should be created alongside Israel.

To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs both want the same land. And a compromise has proven difficult to find.

Palestinians, the Arab population that hails from the land Israel now controls, refer to the territory as Palestine, and want to establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land. Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the land back a couple thousand years, the current political conflict began in the early 20th century. Jews fleeing persecution in Europe wanted to establish a national homeland in what was then an Arab- and Muslim-majority territory in the Ottoman and later British Empire.

The Arabs resisted, seeing the land as rightfully theirs. An early United Nations plan to give each group part of the land failed, and Israel and the surrounding Arab nations fought several wars over the territory. Today, the West Bank is nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority and is under Israeli occupation. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, an Islamist fundamentalist party, and is under Israeli blockade but not ground troop occupation. Though the two-state plan is clear in theory, the two sides are still deeply divided over how to make it work in practice.

Israeli forces retaliated by launching airstrikes on Gaza, killing 28 people, including nine children, in the first few hours, and threatening an expanded response lasting days , including a ground invasion. That sense has deepened over the last couple of years with the Abraham Accords normalising relations between Israel and important Gulf Arab states and the continued rise in the Israeli economy and living conditions.

Israeli leaders also saw Hamas break from its Gazan confines by using its escalation with Israel to attempt to negotiate concessions on Jerusalem, not solely the lifting of the blockade on Gaza, as it had done in the past.

In so doing, Hamas appeared to be usurping leadership of the Palestinian national movement from President Abbas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. While the , , and wars were all focused on Gaza, the new round of fighting, including in Gaza, has reaffirmed the centrality of Jerusalem in the conflict. The evolving situation in East Jerusalem — at the Holy Esplanade and in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah — has come to epitomise the fundamental elements underlying the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the experiences of Palestinians living through it.

With growing frequency, Palestinians in these protests raised calls for Hamas, a self-described Islamic national liberation and resistance movement, to step in and do something, clearly positioning the movement in Palestinian eyes as a bulwark against Israeli aggression in contrast with Fatah in the West Bank.

At these same protests, Palestinians hurled insults at Abbas and the PA for their ineffectiveness at defending Jerusalem, particularly after they had used the city as the pretence for cancelling Palestinian legislative elections.

Indeed, throughout the events that have transpired over the past month, the PA has been consistently mocked. In turn, the PA and Fatah have been relatively silent about these developments, while also cracking down on protests in the West Bank that have erupted in solidarity with Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The novelty this time around, which will inevitably carry longer-term ramifications, was the popular agitation of Palestinians throughout Israel-Palestine, as if boundaries — and particularly the Green Line, marking the armistice line after the war and today separating Israel from the West Bank — had vanished.

The mobilisation occurred despite decades of Israeli attempts at territorial cantonisation that had in effect cut off East Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland, of which it is an intrinsic part, in the two and a half decades since the signing of the Oslo accords, and separated Palestinian citizens of Israel from Palestinians in the occupied territories since The widespread nature of the fighting and unrest means that a single ceasefire is not going to restore calm, even if it may take the edge off the worst of the violence.

In the wake of the 23 March Israeli elections, from which a new coalition government has yet to emerge, Israeli politicians are taking hawkish stances.

There is currently no end date for the operation. Others criticise the government for its lack of strategy regarding Gaza since Israel pulled soldiers and Jewish settlers out of the strip in The state is evading other options. It is not even discussing other strategies. Israeli commentators and military analysts have started assembling a victory narrative, talking about how heavy a hit Hamas has taken, giving the appearance that the war may wind down within a matter of days.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, Bennett has called off efforts to form an alternative coalition with Lapid, saying he will go back to negotiating with Netanyahu to form a government. Alternatively, Israel would go to yet another election. In either case, Netanyahu would succeed, for now, in his effort to stay in power. Hamas has issued a list of demands, all of which, unlike in past escalations, have centred on Jerusalem.

It has made clear that it will not consider a ceasefire until Israel ceases its expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah, and evacuates its forces from Al-Aqsa mosque, allowing for freedom of access to and worship at the mosque. Beyond these two central demands, Hamas has also called for the release of all prisoners detained in these recent events and Israeli acquiescence to Palestinian legislative elections including in East Jerusalem.

Hamas is unlikely to see its demands regarding Jerusalem fulfilled — no Israeli government can afford to make concessions in that respect. In Gaza, the Islamist movement will have to consider how much destruction it can allow, given that the task of rebuilding will fall on its shoulders. Its endgame remains unclear. The PA has been largely silent, offering little more than soundbites condemning Israeli violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza.

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh criticised the UN Security Council for failing to produce a joint statement on the situation in a 13 May tweet — but PA officials have said little else of note. Other Middle Eastern countries have deplored the turn of events but likely to little avail. Turkey has expressed similar sentiments. Wider international reaction has likewise been muted, at least at the government level, reflecting a deep malaise in diplomacy regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The U. As on many past occasions when it has blocked UN action on this file, the U. This position, which echoes the stances of previous administrations, leaves Washington isolated diplomatically. Moreover, blocking statements and debate on Gaza at the Security Council will benefit China which has been working on draft Council statements on the crisis with Tunisia and Norway and Russia, which can use it whenever the U.

The Biden administration entered office hoping not to spend significant time or political capital on the Israel-Palestine conflict and, to date, it has shown no sign of getting more involved. In public, U.