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Region, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. It extends east to the Jordan River, north to the border between Israel and Lebanon, west to the Mediterranean, and south to the Negev desert, reaching the Gulf of Aqaba. The political status and geographic area designated by the term have changed considerably over the course of three millennia. The eastern boundary has been particularly fluid, often understood as lying east of the Jordan and extending at times to the edge of the Arabian Desert. A land of sharp contrasts, Palestine includes the Dead Sea, which is the lowest natural point of elevation on Earth, and mountain peaks higher than 2,000 ft (610 m) above sea level. In the 20th and 21st centuries it has been the object of conflicting claims by Jewish and Arab national movements. The region is sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Settled since early prehistoric times, mainly by Semitic groups, it was occupied in biblical times by the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, and Judaea. It was subsequently held by virtually every power of the Middle East, including the Assyrians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, and Ottomans. It was governed by Britain after the end of World War I (191418)from 1922, under a League of Nations mandateuntil 1948, when the State of Israel was proclaimed. Armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq attacked the next day. They were defeated by the Israeli army. For later history of the region, Israel; Jordan; West Bank; Gaza Strip.

For more information on Palestine, visit Britannica.com.

Area located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean south of Lebanon and northeast of Egypt.

The area known as Palestine has taken on different geographic and political connotations over time. The following discussion distinguishes between (a) pre-twentieth-century history of the area; (b) Palestine as a territory under British administration from late 1917 to early 1948; and (c) Palestine as the territory administered by the Palestine National Authority since 1994, also known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Pre-Twentieth-Century History

Palestine has since ancient times been a crossroads between Asia, Europe, and Africa. Its climate is arid. The southern half, the Negev, is desert, but in the north there are several fertile areas. The principal water source is the Jordan River, which flows south through Lake Tiberias into the Dead Sea.

Palestine is of central importance to three monotheistic faiths: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. For 1,300 of the past 1,400 years, the land was under Muslim rule. Most European and North American Christians and Jews consider Palestine on both sides of the Jordan to be the Holy Land of the Old Testament of the Bible. Although the British initially designated the area of the Palestine Mandate to extend eastward to Mesopotamia (Iraq), by the early twentieth century most people took the Jordan River to be the eastern border of Palestine.

The earliest inhabitants of Palestine were the Canaanites. The land was conquered by numerous invaders, including (in the fourteenth century B.C.E.) the Hebrews and the Philistines, who gave the country its name. The Israelites, a confederation of Hebrew tribes, established a unified kingdom in the area under David and Solomon (c. 1000 - 922 B.C.E.), which subsequently split into the kingdoms of Israel in the north and Judaea in the south. From 587 B.C.E., Palestine became a province of the Persian Empire, and was later ruled by Jewish kings as part of the Roman empire. The Romans crushed the Jewish revolts of 66 - 73 and 132 - 135 C.E., killing and exiling many Jews, and renaming the area Syria Palaestina.

In 638 C.E. Arabian Muslim armies captured Jerusalem and replaced the Byzantine rulers of the area, which thereafter became known as Filastin. Arab geographers in the tenth century referred to Filastin as one of the provinces of Syria, but by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the term was no longer used.

From the fifteenth century until the end of World War I, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. Changing provincial and administrative boundaries within the empire blurred Palestine's separate existence. In an attempt to centralize government administration, the Ottoman Empire was divided into new administrative regions under the Vilayet Law of 1864. Under this arrangement the central and largest part of Palestine, as well as Transjordan, became part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus. The northern part of the country, including Acre, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkarm, was part of the vilayet of Beirut. Jerusalem, Gaza, Hebron, and Beersheba became the sanjak (district) of Jerusalem, which, because of the city's special religious status and because of European interest, was established as an independent unit governed directly from Constantinople (now Istanbul).

By the mid-nineteenth century the population of Palestine was about 500,000, the vast majority of whom were Muslims. The southern half of the country, later called the Negev, was mostly desert, sparsely inhabited by bedoun tribes. Overall, only about a third of Palestine was suitable for cultivation.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a commercial bourgeoisie comprised of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and German Templars played an important role in the incorporation of Palestine's economy into the world economic system. There was a major increase in cultivation of export commodities that included wheat, barley, sesame, olive oil, and oranges. Small-scale industries produced textiles, soap, oil, and religious items.

Palestine as a modern political entity came into existence as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Although the Arabs of the region considered themselves to be a distinctive group, there was no serious conflict between them and the Ottoman Turkish establishment until the early twentieth century. Nineteenth-century Palestinian elites approved of and benefited from the Ottoman reform effort (Tanzimat, from 1839 to 1876), and many of them held influential posts in the ruling establishment in Constantinople. Several served in the parliament; Nablus was reputed to be especially favored by Sultan Abdülhamit II. It was against this backdrop that an Arab "decentralist" movement would emerge before World War I, and within this wider pan-Arab political sentiment the first seeds of a distinct Palestinian nationalism were sown.

Although Jews had been living in Palestine (which they call Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel) for millennia, the first politically motivated Jewish immigration came in 1882. At the time, the Jewish population was about 24,000, mostly comprised of Orthodox Jews unaffiliated with the Zionist movement. They were settled mainly in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. There was little friction between these Jews, the "Old Yishuv," and the indigenous Arab population. However, as the number of Zionist settlements increased, quarrels arose between them and neighboring villages over grazing, crops, and land issues. Between 1886 and World War I, there were several armed clashes that resulted from Jewish settlers purchasing land from absentee Arab owners and subsequently dispossessing the peasant cultivators.

Growing opposition to Zionism and emergence of a new pan-Turkish ideology following the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 led to a heightened sense of distinctive Palestinian patriotism. Although most of the Palestinian elite remained loyal to the Ottoman sultan during World War I, a few prominent intellectuals identified with the nascent pan-Arab nationalist movement. During the war, opposition to Ottoman authority increased because of economic disasters (caused by a locust plague, drought, and famine) with which the Ottoman authorities failed to cope, and because of the repressive measures imposed by the Turkish governor, Cemal Paça.

Palestine under British Rule

Before World War I the area that became Palestine was sometimes known as "southern Syria." With the retreat of the Ottoman Army, Palestine was occupied by British forces under General Sir Edmund Allenby in 1917 and 1918, and was placed under a military government administration known as Occupied Enemy Territory Administration South (OETA-S) until 1 July 1920, when the military regime was replaced by a British civil administration. During three decades of British rule, Palestinians further developed their national consciousness and were able to exercise some degree of national-communal political activity.

In London, the British foreign secretary, Arthur J. Balfour, wrote a letter on 2 November 1917 defining His Majesty's Government's new policy favoring the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In April 1918 a Zionist Commission arrived in Jaffa with a mission (despite a local publication ban on the Balfour Declaration) to prepare the Yishuv to enjoy special status and privileges under an expected pro-Zionist British regime that would encourage Jewish immigration, settlement, land purchase, and - eventually - statehood. Rumors about the impending implementation of the Balfour policy alarmed many sectors of the Palestinian population, whose local leadership created, during the first year of the British occupation, a country-wide organization to express its opposition to Zionism. The Muslim-Christian Association (MCA) first appeared in Jaffa early in November 1918, and in Jerusalem later the same month; subsequently it set up branches in various Palestinian towns. The purpose behind creating the MCA was to organize a Palestinian national struggle against the threat of Zionism.

The top leadership of the MCA was drawn largely from the older generation of urban notables who had social standing in Ottoman times. Initially, the
MCA, under former Jerusalem mayor Musa Kazim al-Husayni, did not have much political power, and its significance derived from the fact that it embodied the concept of political cooperation between Muslims and Christians in Palestine. Gradually, however, it became a group of leaders and activists who were able to mobilize important segments of Palestinian society around a program of independence and opposition to Zionism. Their main instruments of political action were petitions submitted to the Palestine government and the organizing of demonstrations and other campaigns on instructions from the Jerusalem secretariat, which was headed by Jamal al-Husayni. Yet the notables who led the MCAs were interested in maintaining friendly relations with the new British masters of the country.

As part of its efforts to promote Palestinian national demands, the MCA was instrumental in convening a country-wide congress in Jerusalem from 27 January to 9 February 1919. Called the first Palestine Arab Congress, it was followed by six more, the last of which was held in 1928. The MCA also initiated the formation of the Arab Executive (AE) Committee that tried to coordinate the national struggle in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Government of Palestine under the Mandate

Following the British takeover, Palestine acquired fixed boundaries, its own government, and a political identity separate from the surrounding countries carved from the Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France. Its separate identity was given international recognition when Great Britain assumed the Mandate for Palestine under the League of Nations in July 1922. In 1923 the British unilaterally divided the area of the original mandate into Transjordan (east of the Jordan River) and western Palestine, with the Jewish national home provisions of the mandate applying only to the latter territory. The area east of the river became the autonomous emirate (principality) of Transjordan (later the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan) under the Amir Abdullah, son of the sharif of Mecca.

According to the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, Great Britain was ultimately responsible to the League of Nations for governing the country, which was ruled, in effect, like a colony, under a high commissioner (HC) appointed by the British government. The HC was responsible to the Colonial Office in London rather than to the local population and had authority to make all government appointments, laws, rules, and regulations. He was backed by British military forces and police. Most high commissioners were former British colonial officials or army generals. The government of Palestine created its own courts, postal service, police force, customs, railroad and transportation network, and currency backed by the British pound sterling. Until 1948 the inhabitants of the country, both Arabs and Jews, were legally called Palestinians and considered British subjects.

The British attempted to introduce a limited measure of self-government through establishment of advisory and legislative councils during the 1920s and 1930s. The first, set up in October 1920, was a nominated advisory council (AC) pending the establishment of a legislative body. The AC was composed of ten Palestinian officials: four Muslims, three Christians, and three Jewish members of the Yishuv.

In August 1922 the HC, Sir Herbert Louis Samuel, proposed as a first step toward self-government a constitution that called for the replacement of the AC with a legislative council (LC). The proposed LC was to be composed of twenty-three members: eleven appointed British members, including the high commissioner, and twelve elected Palestinian members, incuding eight Muslims, two Christians, and two Jews. However, in order to safeguard the Balfour policy of support for the Jewish national home, the HC would retain a veto power and the council's legislative authority would not extend to such central issues as Jewish immigration and land purchase.

The Jews reluctantly accepted, but the Palestinians rejected the proposed constitution and boycotted the elections for the LC in February 1923. Palestinian leaders argued that participation in the council would be tantamount to acceptance of the British Mandate and Balfour policy, which they feared would lead to their subjugation under a Jewish majority in an eventual state. The poor election turnout caused the HC to shelve the LC proposal and revert to the idea of an advisory council. But Samuel failed to convince Palestinian leaders to sit on a revised AC; nor was his subsequent proposal to establish an "Arab Agency" (to be parallel to the "Jewish Agency" recognized under the mandate) any more successful at winning the cooperation of local politicians. Samuel thereupon abandoned the idea of encouraging popular participation in the governing of Palestine. Although the idea of establishing a LC would be revived in 1928 and again in the early 1930s, the British were unable to win both Arab and Jewish support for their proposals. As a result, Palestine was governed, from 1923 until the end of the Mandate in 1948, by a HC in consultation with an AC composed only of British officials.

Britain's Dual Obligation and Intercommunal Rivalry. The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine incorporated provisions of the Balfour Declaration calling for "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." It also recognized the "historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine," promised support of Zionist objectives, and gave preference to Jewish land acquisition and settlement. Although the mandate (like the Balfour Declaration) made no specific reference to the Arab population as possessing national rights (referring to them as the "existing non-Jewish communities"), it prohibited "discrimination of any kind . . . between the inhabitants of Palestine."

As a result of this dual obligation to both foster the establishment of the Jewish national home and ensure "that the rights and position of other sectors of the population are not prejudiced," British policy was ambivalent, and at first seemed destined to arouse unrealizable expectations on the part of both communities. Initial support for Zionist objectives was indicated in the appointment of Herbert Samuel, an Anglo-Jewish leader sympathetic to Zionism, as the first HC to Palestine (1920 - 1925). However, opposition by the country's Arab majority to the establishment of a Jewish homeland and to larger imperial interests became a major obstacle to full British cooperation with Zionist leaders who were eager, for their part, to proceed full speed toward their objectives of a Jewish majority and an eventual Jewish state in Palestine.

The dissatisfaction of Palestine's Arab population with Britain's pro-Zionist policy was expressed peacefully in the forms of public demonstrations, protest letters and petitions, and the dispatch of several delegations to London and Geneva. Palestinian leaders, seeking self-determination and the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine, feared Jewish domination (through increasing immigration and land purchases) and the establishment of a Jewish state. Nationalist frustrations led to periodic rioting (April 1920, May 1921, November 1922, August 1929, November 1933) and to a full-scale rebellion known as the Arab Revolt (1936 - 1939). Local British security forces restored law and order, and the Colonial Office in London issued several policy statements (White Papers) in attempts to redefine or clarify its Palestine policy. But all attempts to bridge the gap between the Arab and Jewish communities were unsuccessful; each community proceeded to develop itself with little, if any, contact with the other. By 1939 Great Britain had retreated from its position on implementing the Balfour provisions of the mandate.

Each community developed its own educational, health, welfare, cultural, political, and labor organizations. Arab schools supported by the Mandatory government's Education Department were conducted in Arabic with their own curriculum. The Yishuv had its own schools, where the language was Hebrew, and its own Hebrew University, founded in 1925. The two communities lived largely separately; contact was only at the peripheries, in government offices, or in a few business enterprises. The Yishuv was mainly urban, concentrated in the coastal region and in the city of Jerusalem, whereas the Arab sector was largely rural, in central Palestine.

By the end of the mandate in 1948, the Palestinian population had doubled, mostly through natural increase, from just over 650,000 (1922 census) to 1.3 million. During the same period the population of the Yishuv increased even more dramatically, largely through immigration, from about 84,000 to approximately 650,000. The increase in the Jewish population from about a tenth to a third of the total population of Palestine was accompanied by extensive expansion of the Yishuv's socioeconomic and politicomilitary infrastructure. The number of rural collectives (kibbutzim), cooperatives (moshavim), and private farms increased several times; the all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv grew from an adjunct of Jaffa to the second largest municipality in the country. Jewish-owned industry dominated the economy. Despite the growth of its rural sector, the Yishuv was 85 percent urban by the end of the mandate, and Jewish-owned land comprised less than 7 percent of the total, although more than a quarter of the cultivated area was Jewish.

The Yishuv developed its own political parties and self-governing institutions that took responsibility for functions not under jurisdiction of the mandatory government, such as courts, education, and social welfare. The British recognized the World Zionist Organization as the official agency to implement establishment of the Jewish national home. Within Palestine the Yishuv elected its elected assembly (Assefat ha-Nivharim), whose national council (Vaʿad Leʾumi) ran the day-to-day affairs of the Jewish community. More than a dozen political parties were divided into four principal categories: labor, general Zionist, Orthodox religious, and Sephardic or Oriental. The strongest political bloc was labor by virtue of its control of the Histadrut, the large labor federation that controlled much of the Yishuv's economy, and of the largest paramilitary group, the Haganah.

Palestinian Political Organization during the Mandate. The Palestinian community was much less centralized and more loosely organized than the Yishuv. The older politicians, representing the traditional elite and notable families who had been closely associated with the Ottoman establishment, had formed the MCA in 1918 and continued to lead the Palestine Arab Congresses by holding positions on the Arab Executive.

With the defeat of Faisal's Arab kingdom by the French in July 1920, Palestinian leaders who had previously been engaged in the struggle for independent "Greater Syria" focused on local problems, primarily the struggle against the British mandate and the Jewish national home. Later that year, the third Palestinian Arab Congress convened in Haifa, elected an AE committee, and sent a delegation to plead the Palestinian cause both at the Colonial Office in London and at the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva. Neither the congresses nor the AE were successful in attaining their objective, and both gradually lost credibility. When its chairman, Musa Kazim al-Husayni, died in 1934, the Arab Executive ceased to exist.

Throughout the mandate period serious rivalry for political office and government favor existed between members of the Nashashibi and Husayni families. The most influential Palestinian leader was al-Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, appointed by the British as mufti of Jerusalem in 1921 and elected president of the Supreme Muslim Council in 1922. By virtue of these positions he commanded extensive financial resources and influence throughout the Palestinian community. Prior to 1936 the mufti pursued a policy of cooperation that aided the High Commissioner in keeping the peace. However, following the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936, al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni became more militantly anti-British. His activities ultimately led the British to seek his arrest, but in mid-1937 he escaped, first to Lebanon, then to Iraq.

Supporters of the mufti, called Councilites (almajlisiyyun), were opposed by "the Opposition" (almuʿaridun) led by the Nashashibi family. Both groups were supported by extensive clan (hamula) networks and client relationships. The Husaynis, the larger network, were considered more militant than the Nashashibis, who were willing to compromise with the British. Even though both factions rejected the Jewish national home, these internal rivalries constituted a weakness vis-à-vis the more cohesive Jewish community.

Following demise of the Arab Executive in 1934, younger and more militant elements became active in local Palestinian politics, leading to the creation of the Palestinian branch of the pan-Arab Independence (Istiqlal) Party headed by Awni Abd al-Hadi, who was joined by Akram Zuʿaytir and Muhammad Izzat Darwaza. The old MCA and AE forces also regrouped into rival Arab political parties, chiefly the Palestine Arab Party, organized by the Husaynis, and the National Defense Party, headed by the Nashashibis. The Palestine Arab Party was founded in March 1935 by Jamal al-Husayni, a relative of alHajj Amin al-Husayni. Many political activists who had previously supported the AE (1920 - 1934) joined its ranks. Its leaders maintained close contact with the Roman Catholic community through its officers, Alfred Rock and Emile al-Ghuri, and with the activist scouts' movement and workers' societies in Jerusalem and Haifa. The party endorsed the following set of "national demands," which were later endorsed by an umbrella organization representing all major parties: (a) repudiation of the Balfour Declaration; (b) full stoppage of Jewish immigration and land purchases; and (c) the immediate establishment of Palestine as an independent state under Arab control.

The National Defense Party was formed on 2 December 1934 by the supporters of Raghib alNashashibi, the former mayor of Jerusalem. The leaders encompassed most Arab mayors; important politicians from large landowning families; influential middle-class Christians; and the Jaffa branch of the Palestine Arab Workers Society. The party denounced the sale of land to Zionist landholding companies and sought limitations on Jewish immigration. Nonetheless, it was tacitly more cooperative with the British authorities and Zionist leaders, and (unlike the Husaynis) maintained good relations with Amir Abdullah of Transjordan.

General Strike and Revolt, 1936 - 1939.By April 1936, growing Palestinian concern at the rapid influx of Jewish immigration and the accompanying frustration at British unwillingness to fulfill their national demands led to a general strike against the British authorities and the Yishuv. The strike soon became an uprising, drawing support from the whole Palestinian community and from Arab nationalist circles in the neighboring lands. The Arab Higher Committee (AHC), chaired by the mufti and representing a broad coalition of Arab political organizations, was formed to lead the uprising. Elements of the Palestine Arab Party formed an underground paramilitary force that remained active until suppressed by the British in early 1939.

During a lull in the fighting (1936 - 1937), the British sent a Royal Commission of Inquiry under William Robert Wellesley, the first Earl Peel, to ascertain the causes of the rebellion and to propose solutions. In July 1937 the Peel Commission recommended a form of radical surgery: the partition of Palestine into a small Jewish coastal state, and a larger Arab state to be joined with Transjordan. The Palestine Arab Party denounced the plan, and the revolt resumed, this time with greater support from nationalist groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The National Defense Party, for its part, accepted the Peel Commission concept of territorial partition and was not averse to the idea of linking the Arab portion of Mandatory Palestine to Abdullah's Trans-jordan. The party was criticized by other Palestinian politicians for deviating from the antipartition consensus.

The short-lived unity behind the AHC was broken when the uprising entered its second phase in 1937. The Nashashibi member of the AHC resigned, leaving leadership in the hands of the mufti and his allies. In 1937 the British outlawed the AHC and arrested and deported several of its members. The mufti and several of his associates fled to Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, from which they attempted to keep the rebellion alive. During 1937 and 1938 a number of assassinations took place as the struggle between followers of the Nashashibis and Husaynis turned violent, contributing to a leadership vacuum in the Palestinian community. By 1939 the rebellion petered out as a result of the conflict within the Palestinian community and the massive use of force by the British. In the end, the Palestinians had suffered staggering losses: more than 3,000 dead, 15,000 to 20,000 wounded, and more than 5,000 leaders and fighters in detention.

In their search for a political formula that would reestablish tranquility in Palestine in light of a looming European war, the British convened a roundtable conference of Arab and Zionist representatives at London's St. James's Palace in early 1939. Bickering over who should represent the Palestinians contributed to the ineffectiveness of the small Palestinian delegation (headed by Jamal al-Husayni and George Antonius) that sat through many meetings alongside those of Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. When the conference broke down without reaching consensus, Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald issued a White Paper in May that retracted the Peel Commission's partition recommendation and proposed instead that, over a period of ten years, self-governing institutions would be developed for an eventual independent Palestinian state that would not be dominated by either Arabs or Jews. At the same time, the White Paper restricted Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years, with any subsequent immigration dependent on Arab approval. Furthermore, the purchase of land by Jews would be limited in some parts of Palestine and forbidden in others. The White Paper thus limited the expansion of the Jewish community and its territorial holdings, but fell short of the Palestinians' demands for total stoppage of immigration and the immediate granting of independence.

During and after World War II.Overshadowed by the necessities of prosecuting the British war effort after 1939, local political activity in Palestine was quiescent, despite the absence of consensus in support of the new White Paper policy. Within the Yishuv, official Zionist policy was to fight the restrictions of the MacDonald White Paper as if there were no war against Germany, while helping in the fight against the Axis powers as if there were no White Paper. Britain was left to pursue its war effort without official Zionist, Arab, or Palestinian endorsement of the provisions in the White Paper.

Faced with these new directions in British policy, attempts were made to revive the AHC, but these were marred by the continuing rift between the Husaynis and Nashashibis and by the absence of many exiled leaders whom the British had prevented from returning to the country. By 1941 the National Defense Party had become inactive, although Raghib al-Nashashibi continued to issue statements in its name. Some leaders of the Palestine Arab Party were able to return to Palestine and reopen the party's offices in April 1944 and to use its connections with the Arab Bank and the local press to regain substantial influence. A Husayni-dominated AHC was organized in 1945, but it was countered by an opposition Arab Higher Front. When Jamal al-Husayni returned in February 1946 he gained control over the AHC as well as the Palestine Arab Party. Later that year the Arab League intervened, and another AHC was set up.

In the struggle following World War II the AHC rejected various British and Anglo-American compromise proposals and, ultimately, the 1947 United Nations (UN) partition proposal. Paramilitary organizations formed to oppose partition were split between the Husayni al-Futuwwa and the opposition al-Najjada. The 29 November 1947 announcement of the UN General Assembly vote recommending partition led to Palestinian attacks on Jewish quarters in Jerusalem, triggering an intermittent "civil war" that lasted from December 1947 to May 1948. The 14 May proclamation of Israel's independence, immediately upon the official termination of the mandate and the withdrawal of British forces and administration, was followed by the invasion of Palestinian territory by the armies of Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. The first Arab - Israel war, which also involved Lebanese forces and volunteers from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, ended in early 1949 with the defeat of the Arab forces and the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

The fighting of 1948 to 1949 displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians (approximately half the Arab population of Palestine) who had fled or been expelled by Jewish (later Israeli) forces. This fragmentation of Palestinian society and the creation of a huge refugee population became known as alNakba - the catastrophe. For many years, controversy has swirled around the question of responsibility for this massive defeat and for the creation and persistence of the Palestinian refugee problem. Blame has been attributed variously to a deliberate Israeli policy of expulsion; disunity, distrust, and disorganization among Palestinian leaders and their supporters in the neighboring Arab countries; and tactical or strategic errors made by the Palestinian leadership - notably their rejection of the UN partition proposal. Recent archival research has unearthed new evidence for the first explanation, and has drawn attention to a fourth contributing factor: the asymmetry or imbalance of forces - throughout the Mandate period, but especially after 1937 - between the Yishuv and the Palestinian community. The former was growing, determined, better armed, and highly disciplined, and had enjoyed British protection during its formative years. The Palestinians, on the other hand, were demoralized, disunited, and without effective leaders, many of whom had been killed or exiled during and after the revolt.

Disappearance and Reemergence of Palestine

With the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in May 1948 and the occupation of the Gaza Strip by Egypt and of the West Bank by Jordan, Palestine ceased to exist as a separate political entity. Yet, during the 1950s, Arab, British, and UN documents continued to refer to the situation "in Palestine" when dealing with Israel, the neighboring Arab states, and areas inhabited by displaced Palestinians. Even without a political territory or government, Palestinians maintained their distinctive national and historic consciousness, and were reluctant to cease identifying with their lost home-land.

Putting their hopes in UN resolutions, the declarations of their own exiled leaders, and the promised support of neighboring Arab regimes, most Palestinians continued to dream of their eventual return to their homes and the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state. As refugees, the Palestinians became the focus of international relief efforts; successive generations of Palestinians were born in exile and in refugee camps of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Yet, political solutions based on the Palestinians' right to return or compensation (UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948) eluded generation after generation of Middle Eastern leaders.

Some Palestinians in exile became active in seeking political and military solutions that would result in their return and the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. Despairing of the efforts on their behalf of members of the League of Arab States, Palestinians developed their own leadership, known as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Initially created by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964, the PLO's first chairman was Ahmad Shuqayri. After 1968 the PLO became an autonomous umbrella organization under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, bringing together many Palestinian groupings. For the next decade, the PLO adopted "armed struggle" as its primary mode of operation, thereafter developing a diplomatic campaign to restore Palestinians to their homeland by replacing the Jewish Israeli state. The boundaries of the future Palestinian state were declared to be those of the former British mandate.

The PLO's quest for international recognition of Palestinian rights was crowned with its first major success in 1974, when the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3236 in support of the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people in Palestine" to "self-determination without external interference," to "national independence and sovereignty," and "to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted." The following year, the UN created the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Although they provided only moral support, such declarations and activities added much-needed international legitimacy to the Palestinians' quest for recognition of their right to a homeland during a period when both Israel and the United States were defining the PLO as a terrorist organization unworthy of inclusion in diplomatic discussions.

A decade later, in a further effort to open a dialogue with the United States, and hoping to capitalize diplomatically on the intifada against Israeli occupation that had been sparked in December 1987 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, representatives at the twentieth meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers in November 1988 issued a symbolic declaration of Palestinian independence. At the same time, they formally endorsed the land-for-peace and mutual recognition approaches contained in UN Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 - a resolution whose text makes no mention of the Palestinians or their rights. Afterward, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat issued several prepared statements denouncing the use of terrorism by all parties, and implying that the future Palestinian state would exist alongside, rather than in place of, the Jewish state of Israel. Arafat's last step resulted in the opening of a PLO dialogue with the United States.

During the 1991 Madrid Conference and subsequent talks at the U.S. State Department, Palestinian leaders were invited to participate (as part of a joint delegation with Jordanians) for the first time in direct negotiations with Israel. Following the historic mutual recognition between the Israeli government and PLO and the signing of the Oslo Accord in September 1993, a process was begun to provide for phased Israeli withdrawals, beginning in Jericho, from occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In early 1994 a Palestinian National Authority (or Palestine Authority) was created to administer these areas as further interim negotiations continued for additional Israeli pull-backs and other measures toward a final settlement. The Palestine Authority (PA) thus became an embryo government of a still-to-be-created sovereign Palestinian state. Many disappointments and frustrations prevented the scheduled later stages of negotiation from taking place or bearing fruit. This resulted in an untenable situation marked by violence and repression, most dramatically exploding into the second (alAqsa) intifada in September 2000. In the course of suppressing this Palestinian intifada, the Israel Defense Forces reoccupied, for varying lengths of time, many parts of the territories that had come under the rule of the weakened PA.

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Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918 - 1929. London: Frank Cass, 1974.

Porath, Yehoshua. The Palestinian Arab National Movement:From Riots to Rebellion, 1929 - 1939. London: Frank Cass, 1977.

Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882 - 1914. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Updated ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

A Survey of Palestine for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. 2 vols. Reprint, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991.

— DON PERETZ
UPDATED BY NEIL CAPLAN,
MUHAMMAD MUSLIH, AND
ANN M. LESCH

Historic region on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, comprising parts of modern Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.

• Known as the Holy Land, it is a place of pilgrimage for several religions, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
• Israel, the homeland of the Jews, was established in Palestine in 1948. The Palestine Liberation Organization, under Yasir Arafat, is committed to establishing a Palestinian state, which would include territory on the West Bank and Gaza Strip now partially occupied by Israel. (See Arab-Israeli conflict, intifada, Oslo Accord, Palestinian Authority.)

• Judaism - Holy Land: Canaan; Palestine

For other uses, see Palestine (disambiguation).

An 1890 map of Palestine as described by medieval Arab geographers, with Jund Filastin administrative area

Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين‎ Filasṭīn, Falasṭīn, Filisṭīn; Greek: Παλαιστίνη, Palaistinē; Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: פלשתינה Palestina) is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} The region is also known as the Land of Israel (Hebrew: ארץ־ישראל Eretz-Yisra'el),^[7] the Holy Land and the Southern Levant,^[8] and historically has been known by other names including Canaan, Zion, Syria Palaestina, Southern Syria, Jund Filastin and Outremer.

The boundaries of the region have changed throughout history, and were first defined in modern times by the Franco-British boundary agreement (1920) and the Transjordan memorandum of 16 September 1922, during the mandate period. Today, the region comprises the country of Israel and the Palestinian territories.^[9]

Palestine is also used to refer to the State of Palestine which, since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, has referred to a state in the Palestinian territories on 22% of "historical Palestine".^[10] The State of Palestine is recognized today by approximately two-thirds of the world's countries, although this status is not recognized by the United Nations, Israel and major Western nations such as the United States.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Overview 2.2 Ancient period 2.3 Classical antiquity 2.4 Middle Ages 2.5 Modern period 3 Boundaries 4 Demographics 4.1 Early demographics 4.2 Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods 4.3 Current demographics 5 See also 6 References 7 Bibliography 7.1 Works written or compiled since 1945 7.2 Works written before 1918 8 External links 8.1 Maps

Etymology

Further information: Definitions of Palestine and History of the name Palestine

The term Peleset (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in numerous Egyptian documents referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c.1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first mention is thought to be in texts of the temple at Medinet Habu which record a people called the Peleset among the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III's reign.^[11] The Assyrians called the same region Palashtu or Pilistu, beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c.800 BCE through to emperor Sargon II in his Annals approximately a century later.^[12][13][1] Neither the Egyptian or Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.

The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BC Ancient Greece.^[14] Herodotus wrote of a 'district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, the first historical work clearly defining the region, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.^{[15][16][17][18][19][20]} Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition in Meteorology, writing "Again if, as is fabled, there is a lake in Palestine, such that if you bind a man or beast and throw it in it floats and does not sink, this would bear out what we have said. They say that this lake is so bitter and salt that no fish live in it and that if you soak clothes in it and shake them it cleans them," understood by scholars to be a reference to the Dead Sea.^[21] Later writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region. This usage was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.^[22] Other writers, such as Strabo, a prominent Roman-era geographer (although he wrote in Greek), referred to the region as Coele-Syria around 10-20 CE.^[23][24] The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined Iudaea Province with Galilee and other surrounding cities such as Ashkelon to form "Syria Palaestina" (Syria Palaestina), which some scholars state was in order to complete the dissociation with Judaea.^[25][26]

The Hebrew name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth)- usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible more than 250 times. The Greek word Palaistinē (Παλαιστίνη, "Palaistine") is generally accepted to be a translation of the Semitic name for Philistia; however another term – Land of Philistieim (Γη των Φυλιστιειμ, transliteration from Hebrew) – was used in the Septuagint, the second century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, to refer to Philistia.^[27] In the Torah / Pentateuch the term Philistia is used 10 times and its boundaries are undefined. The later Historical books (see Deuteronomistic history) include most of the biblical references, almost 200 of which are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel, where the term is used to denote the southern coastal region to the west of the ancient Kingdom of Judah.^{[28][12][13][22]}

During the Byzantine period, the entire region (Syria Palestine, Samaria, and the Galilee) was named Palaestina, subdivided into provinces Palaestina I and II.^[29] The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutaris, sometimes called Palaestina III.^[29] The Arabic word for Palestine is فلسطين (commonly transcribed in English as Filistin, Filastin, or Falastin).^[30] Moshe Sharon writes that when the Arabs took over Greater Syria in the 7th century, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration before them, generally continued to be used. Hence, he traces the emergence of the Arabic form Filastin to this adoption, with Arabic inflection, of Roman and Hebrew (Semitic) names.^[12] Jacob Lassner and Selwyn Ilan Troen offer a different view, writing that Jund Filastin, the full name for the administrative province under the rule of the Arab caliphates, was traced by Muslim geographers back to the Philistines of the Bible.^[31] The use of the name "Palestine" in English became more common after the European renaissance.^[32] It was officially revived by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and applied to the territory that was placed under The Palestine Mandate.

Some other terms that have been used to refer to all or part of this land include Canaan, Greater Israel, Greater Syria, the Holy Land, Iudaea Province, Judea,^[33] Israel, "Israel HaShlema", Kingdom of Israel, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael or Ha'aretz), Zion, Retenu (Ancient Egyptian), Southern Syria, and Syria Palestina.

History

Main article: History of Palestine

Further information: Time periods in the region of Palestine

Overview

Situated at a strategic location between Egypt, Syria and Arabia, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region has been controlled by numerous different peoples, including Ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Sunni Arab Caliphate, the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans, the British and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Modern archaeologists and historians of the region refer to their field of study as Syro-Palestinian archaeology.

Ancient period

A fanciful 1759 map entitled The Holy Land or Palestine. It supposes the depiction in the Holy Scriptures of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel and the locations of the 12 tribes as per Tobias Conrad Lotter, a geographer from Augsburg, Germany

The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. During the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550-1400 BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse. The Philistines arrived and mingled with the local population, and according to Biblical tradition, the United Kingdom of Israel was established in 1020 BCE and split within a century to form the northern Kingdom of Israel, and the southern Kingdom of Judah. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c.740 BCE, which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c.627 BCE. According to the bible, a war with Egypt culminated in 586 BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II and the local leaders of the region of Judea were deported to Babylonia. In 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was replaced by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder, the exiled population of Judea was allowed to return to Jerusalem.

Classical antiquity

5th century CE: Byzantine provinces of Palaestina I (Philistia, Judea and Samaria) and Palaestina II (Galilee and Perea)

In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region, and the region changed hands numerous times during the wars of the Diadochi. ultimately joining the Seleucid Empire between 219-200 BCE. In 116 BCE, a Seleucid civil war resulted in the independence of certain regions including the minor Hasmonean principality in the Judean Mountains. From 110 BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, creating a Judean-Samaritan-Idumaean-Ituraean-Galilean alliance. The Judean (Jewish, see Ioudaioi) control over the wider region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea, a term which had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judean Mountains. Between 73-63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence in to the region in the Third Mithridatic War, conquering of Judea in 63 BCE, and splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. The three year Ministry of Jesus, culminating in his crucifixion, is estimated to have occurred from 28-30 CE, although the historicity of Jesus is disputed by scholars. In 70 CE, Titus sacked Jerusalem, resulting in the dispersal of the city's Jews and Christians to Yavne and Pella. In 132 CE, Hadrian joined the province of Iudaea with Galilee to form new province of Syria Palaestina, and Jerusalem was renamed "Aelia Capitolina". Between 259-272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire. Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil Wars of the Tetrarchy (306–324), the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine's mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction. In 614 CE, Palestine was annexed by another Persian dynasty; the Sassanids, until returning to Byzantine control in 628 CE.^[34]

Middle Ages

Tower of Ramla, constructed in 1318

Palestine was conquered by the Islamic Empire, beginning in 634 CE. In 636 CE, the Battle of Yarmouk during the Muslim conquest of Syria symbolized the complete Muslim takeover of the region, which was regarded as Bilad a-Sham (Greater Syria). In 661 CE, with the assassination of Ali, Muawiyah I became the uncontested Caliph of the Islamic World after being crowned in Jerusalem. In 691, the Dome of the Rock became the world's first great work of Islamic architecture.^{[citation needed]} The Umayyad were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. From 878 Palestine was ruled from Egypt by semi-autonomous rulers for almost a century, beginning with Ahmad ibn Tulun, and ending with the Ikhshidid rulers who were both buried in Jerusalem.^{[citation needed]} The Fatimids conquered the region in 969. In 1073 Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire, only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098, who then lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099. Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until defeat by Saladin's forces in 1187, after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyubids. A rump crusader state in the northern coastal cities survived for another century, but, despite seven further crusades the crusaders were no longer a significant power in the region. The Fourth Crusade led directly to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, dramatically reducing Christian influence throughout the region.

The Mamluk Sultanate was indirectly created in Egypt as a result of the Seventh Crusade. The Mongol Empire reached Palestine for the first time in 1260, beginning with the Mongol raids into Palestine under Nestorian Christian general Kitbuqa and reaching an apex at the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut. In 1486, hostilities broke out between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Turks in a battle for control over western Asia and the Ottomans captured Palestine in 1516.

Modern period

Further information: History of Zionism, British Mandate for Palestine, and History of Israel

1947 UN Partition Plan for State of Palestine, founded within the greater Palestine region

The new era in Palestine. The arrival of Sir Herbert Samuel, H.B.M. High Commissioner with Col. Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Salmond and Sir Wyndham Deedes, 1920.

In 1832 Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Ali's Egypt, but in 1840 Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations. The end of the 19th century saw the beginning of Zionist immigration and the Revival of the Hebrew language. The movement was publicly supported by Great Britain during World War I with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The British captured Jerusalem a month later, and were formally awarded a mandate in 1922. The non-Jewish Palestinians revolted in 1920, 1929 and 1936. In 1947, following World War II and the Holocaust, the British Government announced their desire to terminate the Mandate, and the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the territory into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish leadership accepted the proposal but the Arab Higher Committee rejected it; a civil war began immediately, and Israel was declared in 1948. The 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes were unable to return following the Lausanne Conference, 1949. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel captured and incorporated a further 26% of the Mandate territory, Jordan captured the region today known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt. In the course of the Six Day War in June 1967, Israel captured the rest of Mandate Palestine from Jordan and Egypt, and began a policy of Israeli settlements. From 1987 to 1993, the First Palestinian Intifada against Israel took place, ending with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. In 2000, the Second or Al-Aqsa Intifada began, and Israel built a security barrier. Following Israel's unilateral disengagement plan of 2004, it withdrew all settlers and most of the military presence from the Gaza strip, but maintained control of the air space and coast.

Boundaries

The boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history.^[35][36] The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah, the Dead Sea and River Jordan) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories. At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period, territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the Arab Caliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and the northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun, while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq, which during the ninth century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filasteen (Arabic: جند فلسطين‎).^[37]

The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to the coast north of Mount Carmel. Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt.^[38] Pliny, writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.^[39]

Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, "First Palestine", and Palaestina Secunda, "Second Palestine"), have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn ("Jordan" or Jund al-Urdunn).^[12]

Nineteenth century sources refer to Palestine as extending from the sea to the caravan route, presumably the Hejaz-Damascus route east of the Jordan River valley. Others refer to it as extending from the sea to the desert. Prior to the Allied Powers victory in World War I and the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, which created the British mandate in the Levant, most of the northern area of what is today Jordan formed part of the Ottoman Vilayet of Damascus (Syria), while the southern part of Jordan was part of the Vilayet of Hejaz. What later became part of British Mandate Palestine was in Ottoman times divided between the Vilayet of Beirut (Lebanon) and the Sanjak of Jerusalem.^[40]

The Zionist Organization provided their definition concerning the boundaries of Palestine in a statement to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919; it also includes a statement about the importance of water resources that the designated area includes.^[41][42] On the basis of a League of Nations mandate, the British administered Palestine after World War I, promising to establish a Jewish homeland therein.^[43] The original Mandate Palestine included what is now Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan), and Transjordan (the present kingdom of Jordan), although the latter was disattached by an administrative decision of the British in 1922.^[44] To the Palestinian people who view Palestine as their homeland, its boundaries are those of Mandate Palestine excluding the Transjordan, as described in the Palestinian National Charter.^[45]

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Palestine

Early demographics

Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two methods – censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settlement.

According to Magen Broshi, an Israeli archaeologist "... the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period—the late Byzantine period, around AD 600"^[46] Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes: "... the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshi's population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure."^[47]

Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods

Palestine, by S. Munk, Vilna 1913.

In the middle of the 1st century of the Ottoman rule, i.e. 1550 AD, Bernard Lewis in a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman Rule of Palestine reports:^[48]

From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.

According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 had about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews^[49]

According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,^[50] the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of which 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.^[51] McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882, 737,389 in 1914, 725,507 in 1922, 880,746 in 1931 and 1,339,763 in 1946.^[52]

In 1920, the League of Nations' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were 700,000 people living in Palestine:

Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.

—^[53]

By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin).

Current demographics

See also: Demographics of Israel, Demographics of the Palestinian territories, and Demographics of Jordan

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others".^[54] Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim — 22% from Europe,the former Soviet republics, Russia, and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.^[55]

Of Israel's 7 million citizens, 516,569 Jewish ones live in enclaves referred to as Israeli settlements and outposts in various lands adjacent to the state of Israel occupied by Israel during the Six Day War.^[56][57][58]

According to Palestinian evaluations, The West Bank is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip by another 1.4 million. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel's National Security^[59] there are 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. This study was criticised by demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who estimated 3.33 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined at the end of 2005.^[60]

According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the population in Israel and the Palestinian Territories stands between 9.8 and 10.8 million.

Jordan has a population of around 6,000,000 (2007 estimate).^[61][62] Long term Palestinian war refugees constitute approximately half of this number.^[63]

See also

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• Outline of Palestine
• Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Names of the Levant
• Outline of the Palestinian territories
• Place names of Palestine

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Carl S. Ehrlich "Philistines" The Oxford Guide to People and Places of the Bible. Ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford University Press, 2001.
2. ^ "The Palestine Exploration Fund". The Palestine Exploration Fund. http://www.pef.org.uk/oldsite/Paldef.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
3. ^ "Palestine:". JewishEncyclopedia.com. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=31&letter=P. Retrieved 2011-09-15. 
4. ^ Pappe, Ilan (2006). A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-68315-7. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521683157. Retrieved 6 Feb 2011. 
5. ^ Kramer, Gudrun (2008). A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11897-3. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0691118973. Retrieved 6 Feb 2011. 
6. ^ Ahlstrom, Gosta (1993). The History of Ancient Palestine. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. ISBN 0-8006-2770-9. http://www.amazon.com/dp/0800627709. Retrieved 6 Feb 2011. 
7. ^ Gideon Biger (2004). The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840-1947. RoutledgeCurzon. passim. 
8. ^ de Geus, 2003, p. 7.
9. ^ Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Bruce Alan Masters, Gábor Ágoston
10. ^ The current position was expressed by Mahmoud Abbas in his September 2011 speech to the United Nations: "When we adopted this program, we were taking a painful and very difficult step for all of us, especially those, including myself, who were forced to leave their homes and their towns and villages, carrying only some of our belongings and our grief and our memories and the keys of our homes to the camps of exile and the Diaspora in the 1948 Al-Nakba, one of the worst operations of uprooting, destruction and removal of a vibrant and cohesive society that had been contributing in a pioneering and leading way in the cultural, educational and economic renaissance of the Arab Middle East. Yet, because we believe in peace and because of our conviction in international legitimacy, and because we had the courage to make difficult decisions for our people, and in the absence of absolute justice, we decided to adopt the path of relative justice - justice that is possible and could correct part of the grave historical injustice committed against our people. Thus, we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967. [1]
11. ^ Fahlbusch et al., 2005, p. 185.
12. ^ ^{a b c d} Sharon, 1988, p. 4.
13. ^ ^{a b} Room, 1997, p. 285.
14. ^ Jacobson, David M. (February 1999). Weinstein, James M.. ed. "Palestine and Israel". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (The American Schools of Oriental Research) (313): 65–74. ISSN 0003097X. JSTOR 1357617. ""The earliest occurrence of this name in a Greek text is in the mid-fifth century b.c., Histories of Herodotus, where it is applied to the area of the Levant between Phoenicia and Egypt."..."The first known occurrence of the Greek word Palaistine is in the Histories of Herodotus, written near the mid-fifth century B.C. Palaistine Syria, or simply Palaistine, is applied to what may be identified as the southern part of Syria, comprising the region between Phoenicia and Egypt. Although some of Herodotus' references to Palestine are compatible with a narrow definition of the coastal strip of the Land of Israel, it is clear that Herodotus does call the "whole land by the name of the coastal strip."..."It is believed that Herodotus visited Palestine in the fifth decade of the fifth century B.C."..."In the earliest Classical literature references to Palestine generally applied to the Land of Israel in the wider sense.""  and David Jacobson (May/Jun 2001). "When Palestine Meant Israel". BAR 27:03. http://cojs.org/cojswiki/When_Palestine_Meant_Israel,_David_Jacobson,_BAR_27:03,_May/Jun_2001.. Retrieved 2 March 2012. "As early as the Histories of Herodotus, written in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., the term Palaistinê is used to describe not just the geographical area where the Philistines lived, but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt—in other words, the Land of Israel. Herodotus, who had traveled through the area, would have had firsthand knowledge of the land and its people. Yet he used Palaistinê to refer not to the Land of the Philistines, but to the Land of Israel" 
15. ^ Jacobson, David M., Palestine and Israel, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 313 (Feb., 1999), pp. 65–74
16. ^ The Southern and Eastern Borders of Abar-Nahara Steven S. Tuell Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 284 (Nov., 1991), pp. 51–57
17. ^ Herodotus' Description of the East Mediterranean Coast Anson F. Rainey Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 321 (Feb., 2001), pp. 57–63
18. ^ In his work, Herodotus referred to the practice of male circumcision associated with the Hebrew people: "the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine themselves confess that they learnt the custom of the Egyptians.... Now these are the only nations who use circumcision." The History of Herodotus
19. ^ Beloe, W., Rev., Herodotus, (tr. from Greek), with notes, Vol.II, London, 1821, p.269 "It should be remembered that Syria is always regarded by Herodotus as synonymous with Assyria. What the Greeks called Palestine the Arabs call Falastin, which is the Philistines of Scripture."
20. ^ Elyahu Green, Geographic names of places in Israel in Herodotos This is confirmed by George Rawlinson in the third book (Thalia) of The Histories where Palaestinian Syrians are part of the fifth tax district spanning the territory from Phoenicia to the borders of Egypt, but excludes the kingdom of Arabs who were exempt from tax for providing the Assyrian army with water on its march to Egypt. These people had a large city called Cadytis, identified as Jerusalem.
21. ^ Meteorology By Aristotle
22. ^ ^{a b} Robinson, Edward, Physical geography of the Holy Land, Crocker & Brewster, Boston, 1865, p.15. Robinson, writing in 1865 when travel by Europeans to the Ottoman Empire became common asserts that, "Palestine, or Palestina, now the most common name for the Holy Land, occurs three times in the English version of the Old Testament; and is there put for the Hebrew name פלשת, elsewhere rendered Philistia. As thus used, it refers strictly and only to the country of the Philistines, in the southwest corner of the land. So, too, in the Greek form, Παλαςτίνη), it is used by Josephus. But both Josephus and Philo apply the name to the whole land of the Hebrews ; and Greek and Roman writers employed it in the like extent."
23. ^ Studies in Hellenistic Judaism ：Louis H. Feldman
24. ^ The Hellenistic settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa ：Getzel M. Cohen
25. ^ Lehmann, Clayton Miles (Summer 1998). "Palestine: History: 135–337: Syria Palaestina and the Tetrarchy". The On-line Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces. University of South Dakota. http://www.usd.edu/~clehmann/erp/Palestine/history.htm#135-337. Retrieved 2008-07-06. 
26. ^ Sharon, 1998, p. 4. According to Moshe Sharon: "Eager to obliterate the name of the rebellious Judaea", the Roman authorities (General Hadrian) renamed it Palaestina or Syria Palaestina.
27. ^ Jacobson, David M. (February 1999). Weinstein, James M.. ed. "Palestine and Israel". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (The American Schools of Oriental Research) (313): 65–74. ISSN 0003097X. JSTOR 1357617. 
28. ^ Lewis, 1993, p. 153.
29. ^ ^{a b} Kaegi, 1995, p. 41.
30. ^ Marshall Cavendish, 2007, p. 559.
31. ^ Lassner and Troen, 2007, pp. 54–55.
32. ^ Gudrun Krämer (2008) A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel Translated by Gudrun Krämer and Graham Harman Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-11897-3 p 16
33. ^ Judea^{[dead link]}
34. ^ Greatrex-Lieu(2002), II, 196
35. ^ According to the Jewish Encyclopedia published between 1901 and 1906: "Palestine extends, from 31° to 33° 20′ N. latitude. Its southwest point (at Raphia = Tell Rifaḥ, southwest of Gaza) is about 34° 15′ E. longitude, and its northwest point (mouth of the Liṭani) is at 35° 15′ E. longitude, while the course of the Jordan reaches 35° 35′ to the east. The west-Jordan country has, consequently, a length of about 150 English miles from north to south, and a breadth of about 23 miles at the north and 80 miles at the south. The area of this region, as measured by the surveyors of the English Palestine Exploration Fund, is about 6,040 square miles. The east-Jordan district is now being surveyed by the German Palästina-Verein, and although the work is not yet completed, its area may be estimated at 4,000 square miles. This entire region, as stated above, was not occupied exclusively by the Israelites, for the plain along the coast in the south belonged to the Philistines, and that in the north to the Phoenicians, while in the east-Jordan country the Israelitic possessions never extended farther than the Arnon (Wadi al-Mujib) in the south, nor did the Israelites ever settle in the most northerly and easterly portions of the plain of Bashan. To-day the number of inhabitants does not exceed 650,000. Palestine, and especially the Israelitic state, covered, therefore, a very small area, approximating that of the state of Vermont." From the Jewish Encyclopedia Boundaries and Extent
36. ^ According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), [2] Palestine is:

    "[A] geographical name of rather loose application. Etymological strictness would require it to denote exclusively the narrow strip of coast-land once occupied by the Philistines, from whose name it is derived. It is, however, conventionally used as a name for the territory which, in the Old Testament, is claimed as the inheritance of the pre-exilic Hebrews; thus it may be said generally to denote the southern third of the province of Syria.

    Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the " River of Egypt " to Hamath). However, the Hebrews themselves have preserved, in the proverbial expression " from Dan to Beersheba " (Judg. xx.i, &c.), an indication of the normal north-and-south limits of their land; and in defining the area of the country under discussion it is this indication which is generally followed.

    Taking as a guide the natural features most nearly corresponding to these outlying points, we may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from the mouth of the Litany or Kasimiya River (33° 20' N.) southward to the mouth of the Wadi Ghuzza; the latter joins the sea in 31° 28' N., a short distance south of Gaza, and runs thence in a south-easterly direction so as to include on its northern side the site of Beersheba. Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins. Perhaps the line of the pilgrim road from Damascus to Mecca is the most convenient possible boundary. The total length of the region is about 140 m (459.32 ft); its breadth west of the Jordan ranges from about 23 m (75.46 ft) in the north to about 80 m (262.47 ft) in the south."

37. ^ Kamal Suleiman Salibi (1993). The Modern History of Jordan. I.B.Tauris. pp. 17–18. ISBN 1-86064-331-0. 
38. ^ Herodotus, The Histories Bk.7.89
39. ^ cf. Pliny, Natural History V.66 and 68.
40. ^ "Palestinim, Am Behivatsrut," by Kimmerling, Baruch, and Joel S. Migdal - Keter Publishing, ISBN 965-07-0797-2
41. ^ "Zionist Organization Statement on Palestine, Paris Peace Conference, (February 3, 1919) The Boundaries of Palestine". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/zoparis.html. Retrieved 2010-08-24. 
42. ^ "Statement of the Zionist Organization Regarding Palestine Presented to the Paris Peace Conference (with proposed map of Zionist borders) February 3, 1919". Mideastweb.org. http://www.mideastweb.org/zionistborders.htm. Retrieved 2010-08-24. 
43. ^ "Middle East Documents Balfour Declaration". Mideastweb.org. http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-16. 
44. ^ "The British Mandate for Palestine". Mideastweb.org. http://www.mideastweb.org/mandate.htm. Retrieved 2009-06-16. 
45. ^ Said and Hitchens, 2001, p. 199.
46. ^ Magen Broshi, The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 236, p.7, 1979.
47. ^ Yigal Shiloh, The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas, and Population Density, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 239, p.33, 1980.
48. ^ Bernard Lewis, Studies in the Ottoman Archives—I, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 469–501, 1954
49. ^ Scholch, 1985, p. 503.
50. ^ McCarthy, 1990, p.26.
51. ^ McCarthy, 1990.
52. ^ McCarthy, 1990, pp. 37–38.
53. ^ Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine^{[dead link]}
54. ^ Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Israel. "Population, by religion and population group" (PDF). http://www1.cbs.gov.il/shnaton56/st02_01.pdf. Retrieved 2006-04-08. 
55. ^ Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Israel. "Jews and others, by origin, continent of birth and period of immigration" (PDF). http://www1.cbs.gov.il/shnaton56/st02_24.pdf. Retrieved 2006-04-08. 
56. ^ Israel Central Bureau of Statistics: [3] [4] [5]
57. ^ Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies: [6]^{[dead link]} [7]^{[dead link]} [8]^{[dead link]} [9]^{[dead link]}
58. ^ Foundation for Middle East Peace: [10]^{[dead link]} [11]^{[dead link]}.
59. ^ Bennett Zimmerman & Roberta Seid (January 23, 2006). "Arab Population in the West Bank & Gaza: The Million Person Gap". American-Israel Demographic Research Group. http://web.archive.org/web/20080416015924/www.thefourthwayisrael.com/demographicadvantage.html. Retrieved 2006-09-27. 
60. ^ Sergio DellaPergola (Winter 2007, No. 27). "Letter to the Editor". Azure. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. http://web.archive.org/web/20070927012451/http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=356. Retrieved 2007-01-11. 
61. ^ Jordan: Facts & Figures, accessed 22 May 2007.
62. ^ CIA World Factbook, accessed 22 May 2007.
63. ^ Assessment for Palestinians in Jordan, Minorities at Risk, accessed 22 May 2007.

Bibliography

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New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers ISBN 0-306-46122-6 Biger, Gideon (1981) "Where was Palestine? pre-World War I perception", in: AREA (journal of the Institute of British Geographers); Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 153–160 Broshi, Magen (1979) "The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period", in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 236, p. 7, 1979 Byatt, Anthony (1973) "Josephus and Population Numbers in First-century Palestine", in: Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 105, pp. 51–60. Chancey, Mark A. (2005) Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus. Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-84647-1 Chase, Kenneth (2003) Firearms: a Global History to 1700. Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-82274-2 Doumani, Beshara (1995) Rediscovering Palestine: merchants and peasants in Jabal Nablus 1700-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-20370-4 Ember, Melvin; Peregrine, Peter Neal, eds. (2001). Encyclopedia of Prehistory. 8 : South and Southwest Asia (1 ed.). Springer. p. 185. ISBN 0-306-46262-1.  Fahlbusch, Erwin; Lochman, Jan Milic; Bromiley, Geoffrey William; Barrett, David B.; Mbiti, John (2005). The encyclopedia of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-2416-1, 9780802824165. http://books.google.com/?id=sCY4sAjTGIYC&pg=PA185&dq=prst+medinat+habu+philistine&q=  Farsoun, Samih K. & Naseer Aruri (2006) Palestine and the Palestinians; 2nd ed. Boulder CO: Westview Press ISBN 0-8133-4336-4 Finkelstein, I., Mazar, A. & Schmidt, B. (2007) The Quest for the Historical Israel. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature ISBN 978-1-58983-277-0 Gelber, Yoav (1997) Jewish-Transjordanian Relations 1921-48: alliance of bars sinister. London: Routledge ISBN 0-7146-4675-X Gerber, Haim (1998) "Palestine" and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century", in: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol 30, pp. 563–572. Gilbar, Gar G. (1986) "The Growing Economic Involvement of Palestine with the West, 1865-1914", in: David Kushner (ed.). Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period: political, social and economic transformation. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 90-04-07792-8 Gilbar, Gar G. (ed.) (1990) Ottoman Palestine: 1800-1914: studies in economic and social history. Leiden: Brill ISBN 90-04-07785-5 Gilbert, Martin (2005) The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-35900-7 Gottheil, Fred M. (2003) "The Smoking Gun: Arab immigration into Palestine, 1922-1931, Middle East Quarterly, X (1) Grisanti, Michael A.; Howard, David M. (2003). Giving the Sense: understanding and using Old Testament historical texts (Illustrated ed.). Kregel Publications. ISBN 0-8254-2892-0, 9780825428920. http://books.google.com/?id=stMd0QV97IYC&pg=PA160&dq=%22united+monarchy%22+evidence+archaeology&q=%22united%20monarchy%22%20evidence%20archaeology  Hansen, Mogens Herman (ed.) (2000) A Comparative Study of Thirty City-state Cultures: an investigation. Copenhagen: Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab ISBN 87-7876-177-8 Harris, David Russell (1996) The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia. London: Routledge. ISBN 1-85728-537-9 Hayes, John H. & Mandell, Sara R. (1998) The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity: from Alexander to Bar Kochba. Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox Press ISBN 0-664-25727-5 Hughes, Mark (1999) Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917-1919. London: Routledge ISBN 0-7146-4920-1 Ingrams, Doreen (1972) Palestine Papers 1917-1922. London: John Murray ISBN 0-8076-0648-0 Kaegi, Walter Emil; Kaegi, Walter Emil (1995). Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Reprint, illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48455-3, 9780521484558. http://books.google.com/?id=YSULouFrzx4C&pg=PA41&dq=byzantine+palestine+I+and+II&q=  Khalidi, Rashid (1997) Palestinian Identity. The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press ISBN 0-231-10515-0 Johnston, Sarah Iles (2004) Religions of the Ancient World: a guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01517-7 Karpat, Kemal H. (2002) Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History. Leiden: Brill ISBN 90-04-12101-3 Killebrew, Ann E. (2005). Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines and Early Israel 1300-1100 BC. Society of Biblical Literature. ISBN 1-58983-097-0 Kimmerling, Baruch and Migdal, Joel S. (1994) Palestinians: The Making of a People. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-65223-1

Köchler, Hans (1981) The Legal Aspects of the Palestine Problem with Special Regard to the Question of Jerusalem. Vienna: Braumüller ISBN 3-7003-0278-9 Kurz, Anat N. (2005) Fatah and the Politics of Violence: the institutionalization of a popular Struggle. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press ISBN 1-84519-032-7, ISBN 978-1-84519-032-3 Lassner, Jacob; Troen, Selwyn Ilan (2007). Jews and Muslims in the Arab world: haunted by pasts real and imagined (Illustrated ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-7425-5842-8, 9780742558427. http://books.google.com/?id=NYNCUXGoFWMC&pg=PA55&dq=arabic+palestine+philistine+filastin&q=  Lewis, Bernard (1993) Islam in History: ideas, people and events in the Middle East. Chicago: Open Court Publishing ISBN 0-8126-9518-6 Loftus, J. P. (1948), Features of the demography of Palestine, Population Studies, Vol 2 Louis, Wm. Roger (1969) "The United Kingdom and the Beginning of the Mandates System, 1919-1922", in: International Organization, 23 (1), pp. 73–96. McCarthy, Justin (1990) The Population of Palestine. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-07110-8. Mandel, Neville J. (1976) The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02466-4 Maniscalco, Fabio (2005) Protection, conservation and valorisation of Palestinian Cultural Patrimony Massa Publisher. ISBN 88-87835-62-4. Marshall Cavendish; Cavendish, Marshall (2007). Peoples of Western Asia (Illustrated ed.). Marshall Cavendish Corporation. ISBN 0-7614-7677-6, 9780761476771. http://books.google.com/?id=qA5LnP1pZacC&pg=PA559&dq=arabic+philistines&q=arabic%20philistines  Martindale, John R.; Jones, A.H.M.; Morris, John (1992). The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Volume III: AD 527–641. Cambridge University Press. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/978-0-521-20160-8|978-0-521-20160-8]]. http://books.google.gr/books?id=fBImqkpzQPsC  Metzer, Jacob (1988) The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine. Cambridge University Press. Mills, Watson E. (1990) Mercer Dictionary of the Bible. Mercer University Press ISBN 0-86554-373-9 Pastor, Jack (1997) Land and Economy in Ancient Palestine. London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-15960-1 Porath, Yehoshua (1974) The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929. London: Frank Cass ISBN 0-7146-2939-1 Redmount, Carol A. (1999) "Bitter Lives: Israel in and out of Egypt" in: The Oxford History of the Biblical World, ed: Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press Rogan, Eugene L. (2002) Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-89223-6. Room, Adrian (2006). Placenames of the World: origins and meanings of the names for 6,600 countries, cities, territories, natural features, and historic sites (2nd, illustrated ed.). McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-2248-3, 9780786422487. http://books.google.com/?id=M1JIPAN-eJ4C&pg=PA285&dq=palastu+Palestine+etymology&q=  Rosen, Steven A. (1997) Lithics After the Stone Age: a handbook of stone tools from the Levant. Rowman Altamira ISBN 0-7619-9124-7 Sachar, Howard M. (2006) A History of Israel: from the rise of Zionism to our time, 2nd ed., revised and updated. New York: Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 0-679-76563-8 Said, Edward W. & Hitchens, Christopher (2001) Blaming the Victims: spurious scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso ISBN 1-85984-340-9 Schiller, Jon (2009). Internet View of the Arabic World. PublishAmerica. ISBN 1-4392-6326-4, 9781439263266. http://books.google.com/?id=HQ-VAkIdiX0C&pg=PA98&dq=%22growing+number%22+%22king+arthur%22+israel&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22growing%20number%22%20%22king%20arthur%22%20israel  Schlor, Joachim (1999) Tel Aviv: From Dream to City. Reaktion Books ISBN 1-86189-033-8 Scholch, Alexander (1985) "The Demographic Development of Palestine 1850-1882", in: International Journal of Middle East Studies, XII, 4, November 1985, pp. 485–505 Schmelz, Uziel O. (1990) "Population Characteristics of Jerusalem and Hebron Regions According to Ottoman Census of 1905", in Gar G. Gilbar, ed., Ottoman Palestine: 1800-1914. Leiden: Brill. Shahin, Mariam (2005) Palestine: a Guide. Interlink Books ISBN 1-56656-557-X Sharon, Moshe (1988). The Holy Land in History and Thought: papers submitted to the International Conference on the Relations between the Holy Land and the World Outside It, Johannesburg, 1986. Brill Archive. ISBN 90-04-08855-5, 9789004088559. http://books.google.com/?id=Ec4UAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP15&dq=arabic+filastin+philistines&q=arabic%20filastin%20philistines  Shiloh, Yigal (1980) "The Population of Iron Age Palestine in the Light of a Sample Analysis of Urban Plans, Areas, and Population Density", in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 239, p. 33, 1980 Sicker, Martin (1999) Reshaping Palestine: from Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. New York: Praeger/Greenwood ISBN 0-275-96639-9 Stearns, Peter N. Citation from The Encyclopedia of World History Sixth Edition, Peter N. Stearns (general editor), © 2001 The Houghton Mifflin Company, at Bartleby.com. UNSCOP Report to the General Assembly[dead link] Westermann Verlag, Georg (2001) Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte; 2e Aufl. Braunschweig: Westermann ISBN 3-07-509520-6 Whitelam, Keith (1997) The Invention of Ancient Israel: the silencing of Palestinian history. London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-10759-8, ISBN 978-0-415-10759-4 Works written before 1918 Le Strange, Guy (1890) Palestine under the Moslems: a description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500; translated from the works of the mediaeval Arab geographers. [London] : Alexander P. Watt for the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund; Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin (Reprinted by Khayats, Beirut, 1965, with a new introd. by Walid Khalidy.; AMS Press, New York, 1975) ISBN 0-404-56288-4 Twain, Mark (1867) Innocents Abroad. London: Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-243708-5

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• www.palestinecenter.org - A website with current and historical information about Palestine
• Palestine Royal Commission Report (the Peel Report) (London, 1937) Jewishvirtuallibrary.org
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• Coins and Banknotes of Palestine under the British Mandate
• WorldStatesmen- Maps, flags, chronology, see Israel and Palestinian National Authority
• hWeb - Israel-Palestine in Maps
• Palestine Fact Sheet from the Common Language Project
• 1911 Encyclopedia description of Palestine
• Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

Maps

• Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - Palestine

Français (French)
n. - Palestine

Deutsch (German)
n. - Palästina

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Palestina

Español (Spanish)
n. - Palestina

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
巴勒斯坦

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 巴勒斯坦

한국어 (Korean)
팔레스타인 (지중해 동쪽의 옛 왕국; 1948년 이후 Israel 과 아랍지구로 나뉨)

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮פלסטינה‬

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