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A brief history of modern Palestine

In my post yesterday about the past 20 years of horrific Israeli behavior I noted that "There are reasons things have turned out this way, many of them the responsibility of Arab nations and the Palestinians themselves."

Unsurprisingly, many people asked just exactly what part of the historical record could explain or justify Israeli conduct. It's a fair enough question, because although this history is both contentious and well-known, it's also peculiarly unknown to a lot of people these days.

So here's a nickel summary. First off, this is the original 1947 UN map showing the partition of the old British Mandate in Palestine into two new states, one Jewish and one Arab. There are several things to notice:

  • Gaza is much larger than it is today and almost touches the West Bank.
  • Jerusalem is solidly within the West Bank and is designated as an international enclave.
  • The city of Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast is an Arab enclave.
  • Arab lands extend north to the border with Lebanon.
  • All of these areas were to be connected by extraterritorial roads, guaranteeing free passage within each state and free passage of all to Jerusalem.

So what happened? Zionist leaders weren't thrilled with the partition but reluctantly accepted it. Arab leaders rejected it completely. Partly this was on the grounds that Israel had been given the best land, but mostly it was because they flatly refused to accept the establishment of a Jewish state. They declared war on Israel as soon as the partition was announced, with the stated intent of destroying it.

They lost, and by the time the war ended a lot of territory had changed hands. Israel took Jaffa, the northern Arab region, most of Gaza, and much of the West Bank—and forcibly expelled nearly a million Palestinians from Israeli territory in the process. Jordan seized the rest of the West Bank. Egypt took the remaining piece of Gaza. The extraterritorial roads, needless to say, were consigned to the dustbin of history.

From that point on the Arab states enforced a total air and land blockade against Israel while Egypt blocked its use of the Suez Canal. In 1956, Egypt's president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, preventing Israel from developing an alternate route to the Red Sea and Asia. At the same time he nationalized the Suez Canal, prompting an invasion from Britain, France, and Israel. They pulled back due to international pressure and Nasser reopened Aqaba.

During the rest of the 50's Palestinian fedayeen trained in Eqypt mounted repeated attacks across the border into Israel. In 1964 Nasser created the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1967 he blockaded Aqaba again and planned an imminent war against Israel, joined by other Arab states.

They lost. During the war Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights on the border with Syria. Israel then began building settlements on the West Bank in order to protect itself from further attacks.

In 1973 the Arab States attacked again. This was a close run thing, but again, they lost. The 1973 war shook Israel badly, and after it ended they ramped up the settlement program.

In 1988 Palestinians launched the First Intifada, a civil uprising against Israelis. This happened against a background, over the previous two decades, of hijackings, terrorist attacks, missiles launched into Israeli territory, PLO attacks across the Lebanese border, and the establishment of Hezbollah after the Lebanon War.

The Palestinians lost that intifada. Then, at the Camp David Summit in 2000, peace terms between Israel and the Palestinians seemed to be finally in sight, but the PLO pulled out and the talks collapsed. Shortly afterward, the Second Intifada started, marked by gunfights, suicide bombings, stone-throwing, and rocket attacks. The suicide bombings in particular produced an understandable panic among the Israeli population.

Nonetheless the Palestinians lost. In 2005 Israel withdrew from Gaza but Hamas won elections to run the territory. They declared their unconditional desire to destroy Israel, which was met by an Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza. Since then Hamas has kept up a steady but intermittent barrage of missiles fired into Israel. In 2023 they launched a brutal cross-border attack against Israel.

To summarize:

1948: Arabs launch a war of destruction against Israel.

1956: Egypt blockades the Gulf of Aqaba and nationalizes the Suez Canal, touching off a war.

1967: Arab states plan a war of destruction against Israel but are stopped before it can begin.

1973: Arab states launch yet another war of destruction against Israel.

1982: PLO attacks from Lebanon incite a border war with Israel.

1988: Palestinians launch the First Intifada.

2000: Palestinians launch the Second Intifada.

2007: Hamas takes over Gaza and promises the destruction of Israel.

2023: Hamas launches a brutal attack on Israeli civilians, torturing and killing over a thousand people while taking 200 hostage.

History is contingent. It's not right to say that Palestinians today "deserve" ill treatment because of something that happened in 1948. But at repeated points since then, Arab wars have provoked reactions that eventually metastasized into what we have today. Each of these reactions was a response to an attack in recent memory, and only over time have the beginnings fallen away into mist.

Given this history—even if you take a different view of who started what—it's all but inevitable that Israel would take harsher and harsher measures to protect itself. This doesn't justify the past two decades of Israeli callousness and cruelty, especially against Palestinians in the West Bank, but it does make it understandable.

283 thoughts on “A brief history of modern Palestine

  1. Goosedat

    1988: Col. Yehuda Meir testified Thursday that former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave orders in January, 1988, to break the bones of Palestinian inciters as punishment.

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  2. Goosedat

    “Approximately one million olive trees, many of which were centuries old, have been uprooted by Israel since 1967. They don’t only uproot them on the pretext that they need to make space for settlements or other Occupation infrastructure. They also claim that the olive trees represent “security threats” toward Israelis, as trees are posts behind which Palestinians hide to target soldiers. It’s madness.”

      1. Goosedat

        The only ambushes that have taken place in Palestinian olive orchards are by European/American colonial squatters attacking Palestinians harvesting their olives. The madness comes from the contortions supporters of Palestinian oppression exercise to justify the oppression.

              1. Goosedat

                the ambush took place in an alley. shots were claimed to be fired from an orchard, but by invading squatters, who are not only vicious ideologues but liars.

  3. ProbStat

    I think there COULD be a peaceful settlement to it all. I also think there WON'T be a peaceful settlement for reasons that I will give.

    My design of a peaceful settlement rests on these things:

    1. The Jewish People have the right to have a state.
    2. The European powers have an obligation to help the Jewish People have a state due to their centuries of antisemitic discrimination.
    3. Neither of these things ever gave anyone the right to drive the Palestinian Arabs from their homes nor to deny them self-government.
    4. It probably is true that Palestinian Arabs did not identify themselves as a distinct nation prior to 1948.

    Given all this, Israel is not a legitimate state, full stop. It would not exist except that there was massive violation of the rights of Palestinian Arabs.

    However, rather than spending tens of billions of dollars every year on weapons, and killing thousands of people every so often, instead the formation of Israel could be replaced by BUYING the territory from the people who rightfully had sovereignty in it.

    I figure that if $1 trillion could be raised for the effort, that would mean around $100,000 for every Palestinian ... who are conveniently pretty well documented for being UN-recognized refugees.

    And I think a lot of Palestinians would accept this. They could move anywhere in the world and have a good headstart ... or they could combine efforts and set up a state of their own somewhere else. Peacefully.

    I don't think this will ever happen for two reasons. First, it would essentially require Israelis to admit that their state was illegitimately formed, which many of them are probably constitutionally incapable of.

    But second, and more importantly, a lot of arms manufacturers and hegemonist powers are invested in the conflict remaining violent, and they have enough clout to keep it from happening.

    What I expect instead to happen is that eventually -- as I think al Qaeda wanted and now Hamas seems to want -- some small portion of the 2 billion Muslims in the world will be motivated to participate in the opposition to the 20 million or so Jews in the world having taken territory from Muslims, and there will basically be a second Holocaust until what remains of the Jewish People will abandon the notion of Israel.

    :-/

    1. MF

      Laugh. How do you perfect the Palestinian Authorities from taking a big chunk of that trillion dollars and using it to fund further terrorist attacks against Israel?

      Also, why does this require Israel to admit it is an illegitimate state? The Europeans could do this without any involvement by Israel.

      Finally, wouldn't the best way to fund this be by demanding that the Arab States contribute the value of the land and possessions that the Jews fleeing those states were forced to leave behind?

      1. Crissa

        Laugh?

        Israel refuses to accept the legitimacy of Palestinian courts, authority, external roads, and has spent a trillion dollars killing and torturing Palestinians.

        That seems the illegitimate part.

        1. MF

          1. Why should Israel recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian courts? Israel does not recognize Palestine. That is part of what it means when a country does not recognize another entity as a country.

          2. Can't understand what yo umean by "external roads".

          3. FAAFO. As long as Palestinians FA, the Israelis will help them FO. And, yes, that costs money.

      2. ProbStat

        The money would be given to individual Palestinians, not the Authority.

        And why would the Palestinians accept the deal if Israel continued to insist that no wrong had ever been done to them?

        Finally, you're a little bit racist, aren't you?

        1. MF

          1. And if any Palestinians will live under control of the PA or Hamas how will you prevent the PA or Hamas from taking some of that money through taxes, etc?

          2. Supposedly, the Palestinians want to take the deal because of the money. Why do they also need any kind of admission from the Israelis?

          3. What, exactly, do you think I said that is racist?

    2. tomtom502

      OK, just for fine I'll bite.
      "They could move anywhere in the world and have a good headstart"
      Who would let them in? You are talking 5 or 7 million people (are you offering the money to Israeli Arabs?)

      What about the people who don't accept the money?

      You would make signing away right of return a condition for getting money, does that mean the people who don't sign get to return?

      As for your prediction, it is pretty clear the world's muslims aren't going to war over the Palestinians, all trends go the other way. A more likely outcome IMHO is a hardening of Israel into a pariah apartheid state over the next couple decades and a global response of sanctions, trade restrictions, and opprobrium (the S. Africa model). Finally international pressure cuts deep and Israel negotiates a deal the Palestinians can accept, not out of the kindness of their hearts, but out of self-interest.

      1. ProbStat

        If a critical mass of Palestinians accept the deal, the ones who don't become inconsequential as opposition to Israel ... so they might as well accept the deal, too.

        And I think you conflate the path of Muslim governments with the Muslim people. You might be right if things were proceeding normally, but the Israelis are becoming more and more extreme. Indonesia and Turkiye are starting for the first time to recognize the plight of the Palestinians as something that they should be concerned with.

    3. Steve C

      Can you list any non-Jewish States that have been around for more than 25 years that are not “legitimate states”?
      Any Democracies?

    4. memyselfandi

      Your claim 1 is a bald face lie. Lots of ethnic groups don't have their own state. No indigenous american group has their own state. And it is pure evil to claim European Jews deserve state in Asia.
      If 2 is true, it is in Europe, not in Asia.
      4) This is again a bald face lie.
      Two problems with your proposed solution, $100k wouldn't be enough, and it would be sanctioning genocide.

  4. Goosedat

    One of the first measures adopted, without legal authorization, on the conquest of Jerusalem in 1967 was to evict 650 Palestinians from their homes in the heart of Jerusalem, and reduce their homes and shrines to rubble in order to make way for the construction of the plaza.[18][19] From the outset of the occupation of the Palestinian territories up to 2019, according to an estimate by the ICAHD, Israel has razed 49,532 Palestinian structures, with a concomitant displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.[20] Israel regards its practice as a form of deterrence of terrorism, since a militant is thereby forced to consider the effect of his actions on his family. Before the First Intifada, the measure was considered to be used only in exceptional circumstances, but with that uprising it became commonplace, no longer requiring the Defense Minister's approval but a measure left to the discretion of regional commanders.[21] Israel blew up 103 houses in 1987; the following year the number rose to 423.

    1. Toofbew

      What's your source of information and where are the footnotes? Just quoting passages from a book without acknowledgement (plagiarism) doesn't make it your argument.

      Seriously, what's your source?

  5. Goosedat

    The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the killings of around 460 to 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War between 16 and 18 September 1982.

  6. tomtom502

    Great Ezra Klein interview with retired Nimrod Novik, top aide to Shimon Peres

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-nimrod-novik.html

    Here's a teaser
    "what we felt was essential was allowing the Palestinian security agencies to perform their duty without embarrassing them in front of their own constituencies. They used to be the pride and joy of the Palestinian street. When they walked into the street in their uniform, they symbolized state in being. And with time, our conduct presented them as subcontractors of the Israeli occupation. When there is no political horizon, they are no longer serving Palestinian national interests, they are serving the Israeli occupation. And with that, morale goes down, and performance goes down."

  7. Ugly Moe

    It's only a guess, but I suspect many Americans object to supporting the Israelis financially, since they're more the Goliath in the fight than the David.

    1. Toofbew

      Not sure that's correct. There are way more Muslims than Jews by orders of magnitude. If even 10 percent of Muslims wage war on Israel, there will be a nuclear conflagration.

      The original partition plan for Palestine (Philistine) looks crazy, but they had just a couple of years before created West and East Germany with Berlin surrounded by East Germany and the Berlin Wall.

      And one of East Germany's brightest Soviet prospects is now running for his fifth term as "president" of Russia. So that partition was not an unalloyed success even from the beginning and eventually it fell apart as Germany reunited.

      I can see a united Israel incorporating the Gaza strip and the West Bank. The current situation is unstable.

      1. Crissa

        That seems to ignore the technology, financing, and soldier motivation.

        Israel hasn't been David in more than half a Century.

      2. Ugly Moe

        I meant in respéct to Palestine they are Goliath. If all Muslims unite against Israel I suspect it will have more to do with Sharon than Hamas.

    2. tomtom502

      Biden's bear hug has opened a split in the Democrats. Younger Democrats definitely see Israel as the goliath. I cannot imagine the Democratic Party supporting unconditional aid forever for the reasons MY gives and reasons he doesn't give (a lot of Israeli myths are being exposed, but oldsters have trouble letting go).

      Is the bear hug a last gasp of the old order or will it take twenty years? I can't tell. But the trend is clear.

    3. Atticus

      What? Israel has always been the David. They've had to fight off the Arab countries whose populations massively outnumbered Israel's. And, the Arabs had the support of the Soviets during some of the wars.

      If you're talking just about the last couple months, yes, obviously Israel is much bigger and stronger than Gaza and the Palestinians. But for most of its history Israel has been the underdog.

  8. azumbrunn

    This history is just a tad partisan. It is in fact nothing but a list of armed engagements and Palestinian uprisings. It lacks any mention of the Camp David peace accord and the subsequent agreement with Jordan, the Oslo accords, Prime Minister Rabin and his assassination. Netanyahu's policy of deliberately and progressively making any peace deal impossible is also AWOL in this "history".

    It proves nothing.

    1. gs

      Also, Kevin never seems to get around to mentioning the discovery of the Leviathon natural gas field off the coast of Gaza in 2000. By rights and with Israel's agreement this belongs to the Palestinians as per the Oslo Accord, which was signed when no one believed there were any petroleum or gas resources to be had (obviously, or Israel would never have signed).

      Everything Kevin says in his "last 20 years" post

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_the_Gaza_Strip

      makes perfect sense when you realize that Israel has been doing everything it possibly can do to keep this windfall out of Palestinian hands and the Palestinians (and a lot of other people) have been getting more and more angry about it for 20 years.

  9. CeeDee

    Thank you for this summary of the State of Israel and the problems they've faced. The map is particularly interesting. The people who devised this whole plan must have been crazy. Just a glimpse at the map tells any thinking person that this arrangement didn't have a hope of working.

  10. zaphod

    This Orwellian pronouncement by Israel caught my eye today:

    "Israel rejects claims it is trying to force Palestinians out of Gaza"

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/11/israel-hamas-war-idf-khan-younis-gaza-hostages-threats

    "Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, rejected suggestions Israel intended to empty Gaza of Palestinians as “outrageous and false accusations”, arguing that the aim was only to persuade Palestinians to leave the principal combat areas.

    The UN and other agencies, however, have said the impact of the offensive has been to make the whole of Gaza uninhabitable and to cripple the humanitarian effort."

    So who should you believe? The Israeli government or your eyes?

    The eyes have it.

  11. samgamgee

    Interesting take, though a bit ahistorical. Very much a western media headlines perspective with large gaps in actions taken either by Israel or zionists over the same time period. Also, basically conflating Palestinians with all Arabs and Muslim countries and thus culpable for nation states they have no control over.

  12. Goosedat

    From Henry A. Giroux on December 8 at CounterPunch:

    Amid the current Israel-Hamas war, images of children covered in blood, limbs missing, bodies robbed of life are forgotten amidst the calls for security and revenge “created and maintained by planes and weapons of war.”[5] This is especially true for the children of Gaza. Under such circumstances, memory fails, and history no longer serves as a warning and moral witness to the depravity of sacrificing children to the cruelty of prioritizing war over peace. When history, ethics, and respect for human dignity disappear in the framing of violence, especially with regard to the killing of children, silence becomes both a form of betrayal and an accessory to ignorance and violence.[6] Whether by Hamas or Israel, And the killing and wounding of children will continue, and must be condemned.

  13. Pittsburgh Mike

    The other side of the coin is that while the West and Israel have talked about a two state solution, Israel has continually since 1984 moved more and more settlers into the West Bank, evicting Palestinians on all sorts of pretexts.

    https://www.statista.com/chart/20001/number-of-israeli-settlers-living-in-the-west-bank-by-year/

    Sitting by as Israel continues to grab Palestinian land makes the Palestinian Authority look powerless.

    AFAICT, neither side has moved towards peace in decades. The Palestinians, although they have recognized Israel, have never abandoned the idea that all descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 have a right of return to Israel proper. The Israelis have never really offered an independent Palestinian state, and as per the graph above, keep pushing West Bank Palestinians into smaller and smaller regions. The Gazans are already pushed together.

    Neither side is even moving in the right direction. To me, it looks like at least another generation of bloodshed.

    It's a pity, because we know what the eventual solution will be: right of return only to Palestine. Palestine on the pre-67 West Bank and Gaza, with some connection between them. Demilitarized Palestine.

    How many people have to die before they get there?

    1. AbolishFederalIncomeTaxes

      You are 100% correct in terms of the eventual settlement. Unless, there is a wider war. Then, all bets off.

      1. Pittsburgh Mike

        At least initially demilitarized. I think any peace process has to be a trust building exercise, considering the sheer volume of horrible things each side has done to the other over the years. I just have to believe that one step will be a completely independent state with an international force monitoring lack of militarization.

        If you look at a map of Israel/Palestine, you see that Palestine will inevitably nearly bisect Israel, so I have to believe that Israel would never want a foreign army that close to splitting Israel in half.

        It doesn't really matter, though, because Israel is nowhere near electing a government willing to create even a rump Palestinian state, and both Hamas and the Israeli right need the other's atrocities to justify their own.

        1. KenSchulz

          Your perspective is very much on target. I also support the two-state solution, and agree that it cannot happen without international intervention.

  14. Steve C

    Just want to bring this to the front.

    ScentofViolets said "Another missing piece of 1948 was that Truman didn't want to acknowledge Israel as a state and initially refused to do so. But hey, 1948 is also an election year and a coalition of Zionists and their backers paid him a friendly little visit and said hey, that's a nice little Presidency you have there, be a shame if you'd lose it, which you will if you don't get the Jewish vote in those Northeast states you need to win ..."

    Here is the electoral map.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/ElectoralCollege1948.svg/700px-ElectoralCollege1948.svg.png

    Truman lost every state in the Northeast except MA and RI. Even if he lost them, he would have won the presidency.

    You can make your own decisions about ScentofViolets' reliability.

  15. Steve C

    Here is the entirety of the article on Wikipedia that supports your claim that a coalition of Zionists extorted the President.

    "When a formal American declaration in favour of partition was given on 11 October, a public relations authority declared to the Zionist Emergency Council in a closed meeting: 'under no circumstances should any of us believe or think we had won because of the devotion of the American Government to our cause. We had won because of the sheer pressure of political logistics that was applied by the Jewish leadership in the United States'. “

    No citations. Which public relations authority? Which closed meeting?
    Is it possible the PR firm exaggerated their power because they wanted credit for the victory?

    Is this sufficient evidence for you to claim a Zionist coalition that can control the Presidential outcome? If this is not your claim, please state that clearly, because it seems like it is.

    If it is your claim, maybe look at this.

    Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Occupation_Government_conspiracy_theory

    From Judis:
    But faced once more with pressure from the Zionist lobby, and with a presidential election looming, he gave up and backed the U.N. plan….
    Once again, however, under pressure from the Zionist lobby and from liberal Democrats who, in the shadow of the Holocaust, enthusiastically backed a Jewish state, he relented, and in May 1948 recognized the new state of Israel. Truman’s motives were primarily political. He feared losing votes in the coming presidential election, particularly in New York, which at the time was the country’s largest electoral prize, over a refusal to recognize Israel.

    Which makes no sense, given that Truman won with a large margin while losing New York. His opponent was the Governor of New York.
    Again, no citations, no quotes, just Judis stating things that make no sense.

  16. pjcamp1905

    If you're at all interested in the actual history of the region, with all the jeremiads scrubbed off, read Arab and Jew by David Shipler, former Jerusalem correspondent for the New York Times.

  17. beautylies

    Palestinians as oppressed peoples goes further back than the last 20 years

    In Germany’s left circles it became chic to wear a keffiyah (the “pali”) in the late 70ies / 80ies.
    Many Palestinians fled to W Berlin back then, and Berlin was punk capitol (other than London) so there’s this whole punk / left culture of donning the “pali”

    This comment also in context to yesterdays “seeing Israel through young eyes” post

  18. memyselfandi

    " but mostly it was because they flatly refused to accept the establishment of a Jewish state." In 1880, 59 years before this partition, less than 2% of Palestine's population was Jewish. Almost all of the jewish immigration between 1880 and this date was illegal. (During the ottoman period, immigration of non zionist jews was legal but close to non existent) . During the british mandate, britain was legally required to maintain the primacy of the arab population. And they did make further jewish immigration illegal in 1938.) The idea that the solution to more than a millennia of European mistreatment of jews was to give them a piece of asia and to hell with the people living there was pure racism.
    "The Palestinians lost that intifada. Then, at the Camp David Summit in 2000, peace terms between Israel and the Palestinians seemed to be finally in sight, but the PLO pulled out and the talks collapsed." The 'peace terms offered to the palestinians were an unmitigated joke and were essentially a demand for unconditional surrender and permanent slavery. no sovereignty of any kind was offered to the Palestinians. Of course they turned them down. And there was clearly no point to making a counter offer given how delusional the Israeli offer was.

  19. mcdruid

    Still the usual biased history, Kevin. Why don't you start paying attention?
    In 1948, the Zionists got about twice as much land per person than the Arabs.

    That wasn't enough, as Ben Gurion said: “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine “ So, no, they did not accept it.

    The Arabs, on the other hand, called for a more just Unitary State.

    Israel attacked Palestine first, in April of 1948: the Arabs did not start the war. They did not intend to destroy it.

    The Nakba was 700,000 Palestinians, of which 75,000 were Christians, expelled. A further 300,000 were expelled in 1967.

    Egypt did not plan a war against Israel in 1967: this canard has been debunked by everybody from President Johnson to Prime Minister Begin.

    At Camp David, both sides accepted the Clinton Parameters "with reservations" (Hell, even Wikipedia gets this right), but the reservations - on both sides -violated the parameters.

    Talks continued at Taba, until the ISRAELIs pulled out.

    Hamas, since 2006, has agreed to recognize Israel on the 1967 lines.

    Hamas, since 2006, has agreed to recognize Israel on the 1967 lines.

    Hamas, since 2006, has agreed to recognize Israel on the 1967 lines.

    Israel, since before becoming a state, has refused to recognize the Palestinians on any lines.

  20. mcdruid

    Or, to summarize:

    1880: The Zionists started a movement to invade Palestine and take the land away from the native inhabitants.

    1948: Israel, not satisfied with the lion's share of the land, invades Palestine. https://www.wrmea.org/1994-april-may/arab-jaffa-seized-before-israel-s-creation-in-1948.html

    Israel keeps the remaining Palestinians under martial law until 1967.

    In 1967, "the Israelis, anxious to have the initiative, simply attacked without any significant immediate provocation" CIA documents.

    1967: Israel illegally occupies another chunk of Palestinian territory. They start building on it and continue with the ethnic cleansing from 1948.

    1996: Oslo is signed. Netanyahu later boasts of destroying it.

    2001: "Barak halts talks until election" The Guardian 29 January.

    2000 Sharon instigates the second intifada

    2002: Israel rejects the Arab Peace Initiative

    2006: Hamas signs the "Prisoners' Document" recognizing the State of Israel along the 1967 borders.

    2008: Peace talks: Suspended by the Israelis, Netanyahu refuses to continue

    2014: Israel suspends the Kerry talks because the Palestinians signed the anti-corruption charter of the UN. https://newrepublic.com/article/118751/how-israel-palestine-peace-deal-died

    Through 2023: Israel invades Palestine multiple times daily

    2023 to October: 240 Palestinians, including 120 civilians, are killed by Israel.

    Ethnic cleansing continues and settlers and soldiers launch "pogroms" (in the words of an Israeli General), against Palestinians.

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