Late 19th century the Ottoman Empire rulled over Palestine.

 

In 1878, according to Ottoman records the population was: 87% Muslim, 10% Christian, 3% Jewish. Jerusalem was the city where the proportion between these different creeds was roughly equal.

 

Ottoman Palestine was, in the first decade of 20th century, a place where people of different believes and faith lived peacefully together.

 

In the late 19th century the austro-hungarian empire was facing the hypernationalism of at least 10 of its composing different nations. Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl had hoped Jewish could mingle and be part of these different european nations. Soon he realized that might not be possible and Jews had to leave Europe and settle in their own state. The concept of Jewish nationalism came to be known as Zionism.

 

1917 British government issues the Balfour Declaration: "The establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." At the same time the britains promised the Palestine to 3 parties: to themselves (with the alliance with the french with whom they had previously agreed in dividing the Arab territories and the Brits would keep Palestine), to the Meccans (agreement made with Shariff Hussein, then the ruler of Mecca) and to the Zionists. After World War I the Brits themselves made sure that there were established separate institutions for Christians, Jews and Musslims ("divide and rule principle").

 

Between 1920 and 1939 the British tried to honor the Balfour Declaration: 320 000 jews came into Palestine. In 1938 the Jewish were about 30% of the entire Palestine's population. As they were settling in they bought land and then evicted the Arab workers.

The Palestinian Arabs started to grow a feeling of being a Palestinian Nation, that came to erupt with the 1936 revolt against the British. With the help of the Jewish militias, the British brutally suppressed the Palestinian Arabs' revolt. After that, the British issued a white paper where they called for the establishment of a joint arab and jewish state, that should happen in a 10 years time frame, at that time they also stopped facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine, as they had been doing up until then. That decision left no one happy!

 

WORLD WAR II 1939-1945 during this period the Palestine conflict was actually very peaceful.

After the war ended, the British handed over the conflict to the recently created UN (United Nations).

 

1947 UN Partition Plan Jewish and Arab states. It called for 2 equal-sized states. But the set borders were like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

1948 Arab-Israeli war broke out. Israelis won. Armistice was signed in 1949, and Israel occupied 1/3 more land than what was set by the UN Partition Plan. Meanwhile Jordan controlled and annexed the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem and Egypt the Gaza strip. Over 700 000 Palestinians fled their homes and became refugees in neighbour Arab countries. 1949 to Israel it meant the beginning of their nation, to the Palestinians Arabs it was the nakba (the catastrophe), as they became, all of the sudden, stateless. In the next 18 years, territorially nothing would change. War broke out again in 1967, between Israel and several Arab states, the Six Days War. Israel won and gained control of the West Bank, the Gaza strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Israel slowly began settling all the previous territory that was establshed by international law as Palestinian, countering that Palestine isn't really a state, so there's no violation of any law, establishing these settlements.

 

Late 1980's the Palestinians launched the first intifada ("shaking off"). The first intifada also saw the founding of Hamas, which launched the first suicide bombing attack, against Israel, in 1993. Hamas started gaining support because of its initial social welfare projects in Gaza (schools, mosques and clinics).

Clinton talks seemed to work up a solution, but then, they failed. Ehud Barak's Government was undermined.

 

2000 september, Ariel Sharon, marche with 1000 armed men to the mountain of the Temple. This led to a much more violent 2nd intifada, where 3000 Palestinians and 1000 Israelis were killed.

 

In 2002 Israelis began the construction of a wall around the West Bank, but instead of following the borders established after the 1967 war, it was built to include many Israeli settlements on the Israeli side.

 

In 2005 Yasser Arafat died. Hamas won the majority of the parliament seats.