Palestinian Territories
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Palestinian Territories is one of the names given to the territory formed by the regions of the West Bank (5,655 km² of land area and 220 km² of the Dead Sea) and the Gaza Strip (365 km²) This term is particularly used to a greater extent in Israel and to a certain extent in the United States, while in other countries in general the terms State of Palestine or simply Palestine are often used.
The lands that make up the Palestinian Territories were part of the British Mandate for Palestine, formed in 1920 as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. They were destined by the United Nations Plan for the partition of Palestine in 1947 to constitute an Arab State alongside the Jewish State. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, they were conquered, militarily occupied and administered accordingly by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and by Israel since 1967 as a result of its victory in the Six-Day War. As a consequence of the Camp David Accords, the Israeli government created the Civil Administration in 1981 to deal with all bureaucratic functions within the territories conquered in 1967. In 1994, in accordance with the Oslo accords between the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO) and the Government of Israel, the Palestinian National Authority was created, which was designated to control both security and civil administration in the urban areas of the territories and civil administration in rural areas. In 2005 Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and, as a consequence, the administration of that territory passed de facto to Hamas.
This designation can refer to the territories governed by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA),[citation needed] but can also include the entire territory of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The name does not include the Golan Heights (occupied today by Israel, but belonging to Syria]), nor the Shebaa Farms (claimed by Lebanon and Syria), nor the Sinai Peninsula, conquered by Israel in 1967 and returned to Egypt in 1979 following the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty.
These territories could become a future independent State of Palestine. The PNA claims East Jerusalem as its capital, because it is located in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Being excluded from the Oslo agreements, led the PNA to locate the ministries and government bodies in Ramallah, close to Jerusalem, and in Gaza.
Since November 29, 2012, Palestine is a non-member observer state of the UN. However, the territories defined as zone C by the Oslo Accords (currently, and as a consequence of the Wye River Memorandum, the Approximately 60% of the West Bank (although originally, in the Oslo Accords it was 72-74%) is still under full Israeli occupation and governed by the Israeli Civil Administration while the Palestinian National Authority has full control over Area A (not more than 18% of the West Bank, approximately).
Terminology
Occupied Palestinian Territory
The bulk of UN member states consider these territories to be under a regime of military occupation. For this reason, the UN calls them with the term “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (in English Occupied Palestinian Territories - OPT); As early as 1967, Security Council Resolution 242, unanimously approved, called for the "Withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from the territories they occupied during the recent conflict," and the "termination of all situations of belligerence or allegations of their existence, and respect and recognition of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all the States in the area and of their right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders and free from threats or acts of force". of the United Nations, this term designates a single political entity, made up of two physically separated territories (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) and from which Israel must withdraw under a peace treaty that also guarantees its security and the "right to live in peace under secure borders". The peace treaty between Israel and Jordan of October 26, 1994 also speaks of "Israeli military rule," referring to the West Bank. The same is said in paragraph 78 of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the security wall of July 9, 2004, in which Israel is defined as the "occupying Power". For the ICJ, the creation of the Palestinian National Authority has not changed the situation of occupation by Israel.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally dismantled its settlements in the Gaza Strip, in an unprecedented move called the Israeli Unilateral Withdrawal Plan or "Disengagement Plan," so the term would not reflect the whole reality of the territories.[
On December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 2334 reaffirming "that the establishment of settlements by Israel in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity" and " expressing grave concern that continued Israeli settlement activities are jeopardizing the viability of the 1967 border-based two-state solution."
The term "Occupied Palestinian Territories" refers to the military occupation and Israeli administration of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem since 1967.
Contested Territories
For its part, Israel calls them "disputed territories", because of the final status of those territories as well as their final borders, according to various UN resolutions[citation required] and the Roadmap, must be decided in an agreement between both parties in conflict. The Israeli point of view considers that the expression "occupied territory" conditions the debate, is not used in similar cases (such as Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Tibet, the island of Zubarah or the Kuril Islands) and does not conform to international law (where this expression is limited to territories that have counted with prior sovereignty). In this definition of "disputed territories", Israel excludes the main settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, since they are considered by Israel as an integral part of its national territory, although such annexations are not recognized as legitimate by the UN, in accordance with Resolution 2334 of its Security Council. It must be borne in mind that Israel has only delimited its borders with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) through bilateral treaties, with the remaining limits remaining indefinite.
Other denominations
Although the media often use the terms «Palestinian Territories», «Occupied Territories», or simply «Palestine» as if they were synonyms, it is worth clarifying the following:
Occupied Territories
It is a confusing term since, used in the context of the region, it can refer to two different territorial realities: the Palestinian Territories, or the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. This is due to the fact that in the course of this war Israel not only conquered the Palestinian Territories, but also conquered the Sinai Peninsula, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which would incorporate into the Israeli administration in 1981, being a territorial extension claimed by Syria, except for the Shebaa farms which are claimed by Lebanon.
Palestine
The term Palestine can refer to two historical realities:
- Prior to the Palestinian partition plan that envisaged the creation of a Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state, it has designated a geographical region without precise limits, also known as the Holy Land, as the province of the Ottoman Empire and finally as the British Protectorate, and which included in addition to the Palestinian Territories, the space currently occupied by the State of Israel and Jordan. Finally, Arab extremist sectors also call Palestine to the territory of the current State of Israel, in addition to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
- Since the end of the centuryXX.many countries and international agencies designate the Palestinian territories as "Palestine", referring to the independent State claimed by the PLO in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In fact, since 15 December 1988, the UN used the term "Palestine" instead of "Organization for the Liberation of Palestine" (OLP) in its organization, its agencies and its affiliated agencies, and since 29 November 2012 it has admitted "Palestine" as a non-member observer State. On the other hand, the diplomatic representations of the Palestinian National Authority accredited abroad are known as embassies and diplomatic missions "of Palestine", and not "of the Palestinian territories".
Liberated Territories
This term is used by some nationalist sectors of Israel to refer to the territories that were conquered by this country during the Six-Day War of 1967. These sectors believe that the territories of Judea and Samaria and, to a lesser extent, Gaza are an integral part of the State of Israel for historical, moral and religious reasons, and should be annexed by it.
History
British Mandate of Palestine
After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the League of Nations granted the Mandate over the Palestine region to the United Kingdom, at the San Remo Conference (1920), held in Italy. The territory to be administered included all of what is currently Israel, the West Bank with East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Jordan.
In 1943, approximately 1,514,000 dunams, approximately 1,514,000 dunams, were 6% of the area of the British Mandate (which included present-day Jordan). In 1945, the Yishuv had a population of 579,000, 31.5% of the Palestinian population, "a small but solid quasi-state". In 1946, most of the British Mandate of Palestine (some 90,000 square kilometers east of the Jordan River, 77% of the region's total territory) was allocated to the creation of the Arab entity of Transjordan. On November 29, 1947, the UN approved in its resolution 181/11 the Plan for the Partition of Palestine, which proposed its division into two States, one Arab and the other Jewish, granting approximately half of the land to each one, and a regime autonomous international authority for the city of Jerusalem, under the authority of the United Nations. To the Jewish community, with around 30% of the population, it awarded 55% of the territory (although 45% corresponded to the Negev desert), and to the Arab community, with 67% of the population, 45%. The division established two states divided into barely united portions: without territorial homogeneity and in the Jewish case with a 50% Arab population, it left both parties dissatisfied. However, in the opinion of Fraser (2004) "the Zionism's opinion since 1937 about partition had been inconsistent, some seeing partition as the only way to achieve state-building, others seeing it as a betrayal of the Zionist dream". In any case, the Jews accepted the Plan and the Arabs rejected it outright.
1948 Arab-Israeli War
In 1948 the British Mandate ended, and immediately afterwards David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel in the territory assigned by the UN a year earlier, with Arab opposition to said Plan. According to Martin Gilbert, David Ben-Gurion told Auni Abdul Hadi, a pre-1948 Arab politician:
Our ultimate goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, not as a minority but as a community of several million. In my opinion, it is possible to create in a period of forty years, if Transjordania is included, a community of four million Jews in addition to the Arab community of two million.Martin Gilbert
The five neighboring Arab states (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt) bet on the destruction of the fledgling Jewish state and invaded it the day after its proclamation, which led to the first Arab-Israeli war. In the intermittent war that took place over the next 15 months (with several truces promoted by the UN), Israel acquired an additional 26% of the territory of the former Mandate, while Transjordan and Egypt occupied the remaining part allocated by the UN to the Arab state. -Palestinian: Egypt occupied and administered Gaza, while Transjordan occupied and later annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, renaming the country Jordan. In 1949 an armistice was reached between Israel and the Arab countries embodied in the Green Line, and it was accepted by the international community.
After the war, the Arab territory initially planned by the UN was reduced to less than half. It shrank from 11,800 km² to just 5,400 km², while Israel increased its territory from an area of 14,500 km² to a land area of 20,850 km².
The expulsion and flight of Palestinians in 1948 was, in proportion to the population affected, one of the largest forced migrations in modern Middle East history. It affected approximately 53% of the Arab population of Palestine and 82% of the Arabs residing in the part of Palestine that became Israel. The war displaced thousands of people in both directions: between 600,000 and 800,000 Arabs from the Israeli zone were forced to move to neighboring Gaza and the West Bank, and also to other more distant Arab countries, giving rise to the Palestinian refugee problem, which still persists today. The United Nations gives an official figure of 726,000 people, although according to the UN's own terminology, only a third are technically refugees; the rest, those who settled in Gaza and the West Bank, are displaced within the country itself.
100,000 Arabs remained in the Israeli zone, who acquired Israeli nationality. In parallel, the Jewish communities that lived in Arab countries (many from before those lands were Arabized and Islamized), were forced to emigrate in the following years. During the 1950s alone, 608,200 Oriental Jews, a number equivalent to that of Palestinian refugees, fled or were expelled from Arab territories and took refuge in Israel, where they obtained Israeli citizenship thanks to the so-called Law of Return; another 290,800 Jewish refugees settled in France or the United States (see Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries).
Creation of the PLO
In 1964 the Organization for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO) was founded in Jerusalem, which since 1969 would be controlled by the organization Al Fatah, led by Yasir Arafat. In its founding statutes, in article 24, the PLO declared not to claim any sovereignty over the territory of the West Bank, "belonging to the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan" and the Gaza Strip. This position changed radically in the approaches after the Israeli occupation of 1967. Until then, the Arabs did not call themselves Palestinians, but Jordanians or Arabs, and it was the birth of the PLO that led to the demand for a Palestinian Nation sovereign (in 1956, Ahmed Shukeiri, the future president of the PLO, affirmed "that Palestine is nothing more than Syria of the south". ). In 1974, the PLO would be recognized by the General Assembly of the United Nations as the representative of the Palestinian Arab people.
Some Palestinians defined themselves as part of a large pan-Arab nation, adhering to Baathist ideology. In this sense, in 1977 Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the pro-Syrian faction of the PLO as-Saiqa, founded by the Baath party, and a leading member of the Baath party in Syria, commented in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
There is no Palestinian people. The creation of a Palestinian state is a means for the continuation of our struggle against Israel and for Arab unity... But in reality there is no difference between Jordanians and Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of the Arab people. Only for political and tactical reasons we speak of the existence of a Palestinian identity, since it is in the national interest of the Arabs to oppose Zionism a separate existence of the Jordanians. For tactical reasons, Jordan is a state with fixed borders, cannot claim Haifa and Jaffa. I as a Palestinian, on the contrary, can claim Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheba and Jerusalem. But as soon as our rights have been restored to all of Palestine, we will not wait another minute for the unification of Jordan and Palestine.
In this land lived Arabs who mostly came from Syria and Jordan, but also Jews. In this sense, the Jews are also Palestinians. For this reason, at her time, Prime Minister Golda Meir said: "I am also a Palestinian."
It was also Golda Meir who said: "We can only have peace with the Arabs, when they love their children more than they hate us."
Six Day War
During the Six-Day War, in 1967, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, which had previously annexed this territory (the annexation being recognized by Pakistan and the United Kingdom), along with the Syrian territories of the Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt renounced its claims to the Gaza Strip in 1979, while Jordan renounced the West Bank in 1988. As a result, a peace treaty was signed on March 26, 1979 between Egypt and Israel, and a treaty The Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement was concluded on October 26, 1994. These two countries were the first to sign peace with their neighbor and recognizing Israel as a sovereign country.
Since 1967 the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli military occupation, after the Six-Day War, while East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel at the same time that it reunified the entire city by proclaiming it the indivisible capital of the State of Israel through the Jerusalem Law.
Proclamation of the State of Palestine and peace processes
On November 15, 1988, Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, carried out the declaration of independence of the State of Palestine, in an act that was considered symbolic because his organization did not exercise control over any territory.
In 1991, at the Madrid Peace Conference, peace negotiations began that should have culminated in the creation of an Arab state in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. Negotiations led to the Oslo Accords of 1993, from which Israel began a slow withdrawal from the occupied territories, basically from population centers, transferring responsibility to the Palestinian Authority.
The slow progress of the peace process was halted in the year 2000, with the outbreak of the second Intifada, just at the moment when Israel's negotiating positions had reached their all-time high. In the Israeli media, the version that attributes the beginning of this Intifada to the refusal of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, to accept the proposal of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, which offered 95% of the disputed territories, predominates in the Israeli media, although the sources Palestinian organizations and international media analysts attributed the origin of the revolt to Ariel Sharon, together with hundreds of policemen, visiting the area outside the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, something that was considered by the Palestinians as a provocation (despite having been accepted by the head of Palestinian security in the West Bank, Jibril Rajub). An international commission managed by the UN and commissioned by the parties, the Mitchell Commission, determined that "Sharon's visit did not cause the Al Aqsa Intifada". In 2005 the Israeli government promoted the withdrawal of its army and the eviction eight thousand Israelis after dismantling all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank, a measure known as the Israeli Unilateral Withdrawal Plan and completed in September 2005.
In December 2017, Donald Trump proclaimed the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thus provoking new conflicts in the area. Almost no country in the world supported the measure taken by Trump, since this would only serve to increase tensions and damage the peace process.
Political-administrative organization
As a result of the Oslo Accords signed between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established in 1994. This legal-political entity was designed as a transitory autonomy, whose final status should have materialized in the course of the following five years, as a result of peace negotiations between the two parties.
According to the Oslo Accords, the mission of the Palestinian National Authority was to exercise control over the internal security and civil affairs of the urban areas of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (referred to as Area A, originally 3% of the West Bank), and civil control over the rural areas of these same territories (defined as zone B). The rest of the territories, called area C (which includes the Jewish colonies of Gaza and the West Bank, the Jordan Valley area and the land connections between Palestinian cities and which initially accounted for 72-74% of the West Bank), were to be according to these agreements under the sole responsibility of the State of Israel.
Later, and as a consequence of the Wye River memorandum, signed in 1998, an additional Israeli withdrawal of approximately 13% of the West Bank was agreed, bringing Area C from 72-74% to 60% approximately of the territory and zone A 18%. These withdrawals were only partially carried out, as the number of Israeli settlers more than doubled between 1993 and the present (from 270,000 to approximately 560,000).
As a consequence of the Camp David Accords, and by virtue of Military Order No. 947, the Israeli government created the Civil Administration in 1981 to handle all bureaucratic functions within the West Bank and Gaza. The Civil Administration was entrusted with "civil affairs in the region, in accordance with the directives of this order, for the welfare and good of the population and in order to supply and implement public services, and taking into account the need to maintain an orderly administration and public order in the region" Currently, the Civil Administration has full authority over the population of the territories defined as zone C by the Oslo Accords (currently 60% of the West Bank, approximately) in matters related to security, urban planning, construction and infrastructure. It also has civil and security coordination and liaison functions with the Palestinian National Authority in areas A and B. The Civil Administration is an integral part of the Israeli army and central command for both routine and emergency operations. Since 2010 it has been headed by Brigadier General Moti Elmoz. For Gaza there is a Liaison and Coordination Administration.
The Civil Administration is a part of a larger entity known as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Unit, which is subordinate to Israel's Defense Minister and is part of the State Major General. COGAT is responsible for the implementation of Israeli government policy in the West Bank and Gaza and is the civil authority for urban planning and residential infrastructure in the West Bank, where it serves the needs of Israeli settlements. Since 2009 it has been led by Commander General Eitan Dangot.
The Civil Administration prohibits Palestinian construction in 70% of area C, due to various reasons such as the definition of these areas as state lands or nature reserves, or because of the incorporation of these lands into the jurisdiction of the settlements and the regional councils. In the remaining 30% of zone C, building is not a priori prohibited, but any type of construction must be previously approved by the Civil Administration, whether for private homes, agricultural structures or infrastructures. The Civil Administration, however, imposes severe restrictions on construction. To date, the Civil Administration has avoided approving any master plans for more than 90% of the villages located entirely within zone C and has approved master plans for only 16 villages. These plans, prepared without the participation of local residents, do not meet their needs, since the limits established in these plans were determined according to the built-up areas of each town at the time of planning, which prevents the expansion to meet population growth. Consequently, Palestinians do not bother to apply for a building permit, so demolition orders are common. According to Civil Administration figures, between 2000 and 2012 the Civil Administration issued 9,682 demolition orders for Palestinian structures built without permission and has demolished 2,829 of them.
International recognition of Palestine
The Palestinian National Authority enjoys some international recognition as the representative institution of the Palestinian people. In 1974, the UN General Assembly recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, granting it observer status. It can thus participate in all the work of the Assembly and in the international conferences convened by the UN, and since 1976, it has been regularly invited by the Security Council to participate in its deliberations on the situation in the Middle East, the question of Palestine and related matters.
The ANP receives funding from various international donors including the European Union and the United States, which blocked aid in 2006 due to the electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections, since this group (considered by those as a terrorist group) refuses to comply with the three demands of the international community: recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist, renounce terrorism or other types of violence and accept the validity of the Oslo agreements.
On October 31, 2011, the UNESCO General Assembly admitted Palestine into its midst. 107 of the 194 member states of the UN organization voted in favor, 14 against, and 52 abstained. In response, Israel accelerated the construction of new housing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and froze the transfer of funds to the Palestinian authorities., which guarantee 30% of the budget of the Palestinian Authority; However, international pressure forced the Israeli government to backtrack on this last measure, although it failed to halt the construction of 2,000 new homes in the West Bank settlements. For its part, the United States, UNESCO's largest contributor, announced that it would stop contributing to the organization's budget, given that a federal law prohibits financing UN agencies that recognize Palestine as a state.
In September 2012, the president of the PNA, Mahmud Abbas, announced that the Palestinians will go before the UN General Assembly to request their admission as a "non-member state". Palestinian sources indicated that the text of the petition should include the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and respect for the so-called Road Map. In November 2012, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that if the Palestinians went ahead with their recognition project, Israel could dismantle the Palestinian authority and overthrow its president, Mahmud Abbas.
Finally, on November 29, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly debated the change of status of the Palestinian territory in the organization, so that it would go from being an "entity" to a "non-member observer state", which would mean a diplomatic breakthrough for the creation of the independent Palestinian state of Israel. The Palestinian petition was approved the same day with 138 votes in favor, 41 abstentions and 9 votes against. The resolution, co-sponsored by 60 countries, declared itself in favor of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and called for an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and for an independent, sovereign, democratic and contiguous Palestinian State with borders defined before 1967..
Human rights in the Palestinian Territories
The situation of occupation in which a large part of the territory finds itself and its status as a nation without a state and in the process of independence greatly conditions, according to various organizations, the lives of Palestinian citizens. This situation has been denounced by organizations from various fields: pro-human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Intermón-Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Paz Ahora and B'Tselem, international organizations such as the UN and its agencies (UNICEF, Office of the United Nations for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OCHA and the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East), the European Union and political parties, among others. These organizations consider that the acts committed by some Israeli institutions such as the construction of the West Bank Wall, selective assassinations, the destruction of houses and the construction of settlements in the West Bank constitute a violation of the rights of Palestinian citizens. Hamas and Fatah have also been accused of human rights violations against the Palestinian population itself, which include illegal detentions, torture and summary executions.
The United Nations maintains an Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OCHAOPT) which periodically produces reports analyzing the humanitarian situation in the Territories.
On June 5, 2007, Amnesty International released a report titled Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: 40 years of occupation, no security, no basic rights, in which it denounced the abuses that, according to the organization, have been committed against the Palestinian population since the Six Day War.
Palestinian armed groups
There are some Palestinian organizations and political parties that practice or have practiced armed struggle or terrorism against Israel and its citizens (both inside and outside Israel and the Palestinian territories), as a means to achieve their objectives, which have varied over time. Not all organizations support violent attacks against the Israeli population in the same way, nor have they remained the same over time, as their intensity and form have varied, having declared numerous truces depending on the geopolitical situation at the time..
Political violence by Palestinian Arab groups predates the creation of the State of Israel (1948) and, therefore, the occupation of the Palestinian territories (1967). During the British Mandate, the Hebron massacre and the Safed Massacre (1929) took place. The Great Arab Revolt (1936) also involved numerous acts of sabotage against British infrastructures and terrorist attacks against the Jewish population, encouraged by Palestinian leaders such as Amin Al-Husseini, at a time of mutual violence between the Arab and Jewish populations. It must also be said that the forceful British repression of this rebellion greatly disorganized and weakened the Palestinians, which left them without any defense against attacks by armed Jewish groups such as the Hagana or the Irgun.
The non-acceptance of the UN partition plan agreement of 1947 was the justification that served the incipient Jewish state, already endorsed by the international community, for not respecting it either and going beyond the borders imposed at the table of talks. The Palestinians disowned it because for them it meant handing over control of more than half of the territory to less than a third of the population when the truth is that they were the legal owners of most of the Palestinian land before the peace accords. partition. On the other hand, the Jewish leaders accepted the agreement as a good starting point for the creation of a Jewish state. A state that should have a large Jewish majority, which was not the demographic reality of the region. These events led to an upsurge in violence. The inevitable confrontation given the obvious conflict of interests was resolved in favor of the Jews, who were much better armed and organized, which led to the expulsion of a large number of Palestinians from the territories they inhabited, creating, since then, the problem that is still current and difficult. Palestinian refugee solution (see Nakba). The complete destruction of numerous Palestinian villages and the forcible seizure of their lands carried out with careful planning lead many current historians to consider this episode as organized ethnic cleansing.
Despite the repeated armistice agreements, the situation of the Palestinians is seen by themselves as one of great historical injustice and permanent humiliation, which has led to the proliferation of numerous armed groups that, on the one hand, resist the occupation by attacking colonies, checkpoints or any military unit and on the other have tried to instill fear in Israeli society either through attacks inside its borders or through the firing of rockets in neighboring areas. Although the activities of resistance to the occupation have full consensus among Palestinian society, the same does not occur with the activities of terrorism against civilians within the borders of Israel, which some groups reject or try to minimize so as not to give Israel pretexts to attack Palestinians. their civilian population and to not be seen by the outside as terrorists but as resistance to the occupation.
The Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is, in fact, the main source of tension that, from its beginnings, has motivated numerous attacks by fedayeen against Israeli civilians, both inside and outside Israel (hijacking of planes and attacks such as the Munich Massacre). In the 1980s, with the PLO in exile in Tunisia, there was a decrease in attacks. But, after the Oslo agreements, the violence has continued: since the signing of those agreements (1993) and until July 2005, 821 Israeli civilians have been killed in acts of political violence, mainly through suicide bombings. Most of them (553) were inside the 1949 armistice lines.
Organizations that engage in political violence against Israel and its citizens have been designated terrorist organizations by the United States, the European Union, and other countries:
- Hamas
- Palestinian Islamic Jihad
- Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Black September
- Popular Resistance Committees
- Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
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