The record

Timeline

A century and a half, read in order. Every entry is dated, summarised, and carried back to primary and scholarly sources.

Span
1858–2024
Entries
56
Eras
8

Ottoman era

1858–19114 entries

  1. 1858

    The Ottoman Land Code

    A reform meant to raise revenue introduced individual land registration and allowed private ownership of vast tracts — restructuring who owned Palestine, and creating the paper record that later dispossession would be built on.

  2. 1872

    Jerusalem Made a Separate District

    Ottoman administrative reorganisation enlarged the district of Jerusalem and raised it to separate status reporting directly to Istanbul — drawing, decades before the Mandate, the outline of the territory that would be called Palestine.

  3. 1897

    The First Zionist Congress

    The congress that opened in Basel on 29 August 1897 — about two hundred participants, sixty-nine of them delegates — founded the Zionist Organization and adopted a programme seeking a home for the Jewish people 'secured under public law'. The country in question already had a population. The programme did not mention it.

  4. 1911

    Filastin Newspaper Founded

    Isa al-Isa began publishing Filastin in Jaffa in January 1911. It addressed its readers as Palestinians, warned of the consequences of Zionist land purchase, and was shut down by the Ottoman authorities in 1913 for 'inciting ethnic prejudice.'

British Mandate

1917–19477 entries

  1. 1917

    The Balfour Declaration

    Britain publicly commits to the establishment of a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, without consulting its overwhelmingly Arab population.

  2. 1922

    The Mandate for Palestine

    The League of Nations approved the Mandate on 24 July 1922. Its preamble wrote the Balfour Declaration into international law, and its articles obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration and settlement — while referring to the Arab majority only as 'the existing non-Jewish communities.'

  3. 1929

    The Buraq Uprising

    A year-long dispute over access to al-Buraq — the Western Wall — erupted in August 1929 into violence that spread from Jerusalem to Hebron and Safed. The Shaw Commission counted 133 Jews and 116 Arabs killed; many of the Arab casualties, it found, were caused by rifle fire from the police and military.

  4. 1930

    Red Tuesday — the executions at Acre prison

    On 17 June 1930 the British Mandate hanged Fuad Hijazi, Muhammad Jamjoum and Atta al-Zir at Acre prison for the events of August 1929. The day entered Palestinian memory through the songs sung for them — above all the funeral song from Acre prison that is still sung a century later.

  5. 1936–1939

    The Great Arab Revolt

    A nationwide uprising against British colonial rule and mass immigration, beginning with a six-month general strike and crushed by overwhelming military force.

  6. 1937

    The Peel Commission

    The first official proposal to partition Palestine, published on 7 July 1937, also contained the first official proposal to move its people: a transfer of land and, 'if necessary', of population, from the territory assigned to the Jewish state.

  7. 1947

    The UN Partition Plan

    The UN General Assembly votes to partition Palestine into two states, assigning the majority of the land to a Jewish state at a time when Jews were a third of the population.

The Nakba

1948–19496 entries

  1. 1948

    The Battle of al-Qastal

    Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, commander of the Army of the Holy War, is killed retaking the village of al-Qastal on the Jerusalem road — a loss from which Palestinian irregular forces never recovered.

  2. 1948

    The Expulsion of Lydda and Ramle

    Between the two UN truces of July 1948, Israeli forces took the twin cities of Lydda and Ramle and expelled their populations on foot toward the Arab lines. Close to a thousand people died in the cities and on the road.

  3. 1948

    Plan Dalet

    The Haganah's Plan D, finalised on 10 March 1948 and set in motion in early April, provided for securing the area of the Jewish state and the settlements beyond it — including, where villages resisted, their destruction and the expulsion of their inhabitants.

  4. 1948

    The Nakba

    More than 700,000 Palestinians are expelled or flee from their homes during the war surrounding Israel's establishment; over 400 villages are depopulated or destroyed.

  5. 1948

    UN General Assembly Resolution 194

    Adopted on 11 December 1948, resolution 194 (III) established the Conciliation Commission for Palestine and, in paragraph 11, resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, with compensation for those choosing not to return.

  6. 1949

    The Armistice Agreements

    Four agreements signed between February and July 1949 — Egypt's and Jordan's on Rhodes, Lebanon's at Ras al-Naqoura, Syria's at Hill 232 near Mahanayim — ended the fighting and drew the Green Line, a military demarcation the parties expressly agreed was not a political border. No peace treaty followed for thirty years.

Occupation

1956–199617 entries

  1. 1956

    The Suez War and the Kafr Qasim Massacre

    Israel joins Britain and France in a secret war on Egypt; on its first day, Border Police massacre 49 Palestinian citizens of Israel in Kafr Qasim.

  2. 1959

    The Founding of Fatah

    A core of Palestinian refugees in Kuwait, among them Yasser Arafat and Khalil al-Wazir, launches the Palestinian National Liberation Movement — announced to the world in the Beirut magazine Filastinuna.

  3. 1964

    Founding of the PLO

    The Palestine Liberation Organization is established in Jerusalem, creating an umbrella body that comes to represent Palestinians in exile and under occupation.

  4. 1967

    The Six-Day War

    Israel captures the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in six days, beginning a military occupation that continues to this day.

  5. 1967

    UN Security Council Resolution 242

    Adopted unanimously on 22 November 1967, resolution 242 emphasised the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and called for withdrawal from territories occupied in the recent conflict. It mentioned Palestinians only once, as a refugee problem.

  6. 1968

    The Battle of Karameh

    Palestinian fedayeen and the Jordanian army fight a full Israeli armored incursion at the Karameh refugee camp. The costly stand transforms Fatah into a mass movement almost overnight.

  7. 1968

    The Palestinian National Charter Revised

    Meeting in Cairo in July 1968, the Palestine National Council rewrites the PLO's 1964 charter, declaring armed struggle 'the only way to liberate Palestine' — the constitutional text of the fedayeen era.

  8. 1970–1971

    Black September

    Jordan's army crushes the PLO's armed presence in the kingdom in ten days of civil war in September 1970, and by July 1971 expels the fedayeen altogether — relocating the Palestinian armed movement to Lebanon.

  9. 1972

    The Assassination of Ghassan Kanafani

    A Mossad car bomb in Beirut kills the novelist and PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani, 36, and his seventeen-year-old niece Lamees — silencing the most celebrated literary voice of the Palestinian resistance.

  10. 1972–1973

    Munich and the Wrath of God

    Black September seizes the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics; eleven Israelis, five attackers and a German policeman die. Israel answers with a years-long assassination campaign across Europe and the Middle East.

  11. 1973

    The Verdun Street Raid

    Israeli commandos land by sea in Beirut and assassinate three senior PLO leaders — Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and the poet-spokesman Kamal Nasser — in their homes on Verdun Street.

  12. 1973

    The October War and Resolution 338

    Egypt and Syria attacked on 6 October 1973 to break the diplomatic deadlock over the occupied territories. The war ended with Security Council resolution 338, which ordered a ceasefire and, for the first time, negotiations 'between the parties concerned' to implement resolution 242.

  13. 1974

    Arafat's Olive Branch at the United Nations

    PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addresses the UN General Assembly for the first time — and days later the General Assembly grants the PLO observer status.

  14. 1974

    The Ten Point Program

    The 12th Palestine National Council adopts a phased program: a 'combatant national authority' on any liberated part of Palestinian territory. The first crack in the all-or-nothing position — and the birth of the Rejectionist Front.

  15. 1976

    Land Day

    A general strike against land confiscation in the Galilee is met with gunfire; six Palestinian citizens of Israel are killed, and a new national day is born.

  16. 1982

    Sabra and Shatila Massacre

    During Israel's occupation of West Beirut, a Lebanese Phalangist militia massacres Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps over three days.

  17. 1996

    Grapes of Wrath and the Qana Massacre

    During a sixteen-day Israeli offensive in Lebanon, artillery shells strike a UN compound sheltering displaced families at Qana, killing more than one hundred civilians.

Intifadas

1987–20045 entries

  1. 1987–1993

    The First Intifada

    A mass popular uprising erupts in Gaza and spreads across the occupied territories, defined by strikes, boycotts, and stone-throwing youth.

  2. 1988

    The Palestinian Declaration of Independence

    Meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council proclaims the State of Palestine and accepts UN Resolutions 242 and 338 — a de facto two-state formula.

  3. 2000–2005

    The Second Intifada

    Ariel Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif ignites a far more violent uprising that leaves several thousand Palestinians and around a thousand Israelis dead.

  4. 2002

    The Battle of Jenin

    The fiercest battle of Operation Defensive Shield leaves the heart of Jenin refugee camp in ruins — and a bitter dispute over the death toll.

  5. 2004

    The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Wall

    On 9 July 2004 the International Court of Justice found that the wall Israel was building inside the occupied West Bank was contrary to international law, that Israel must stop building it, dismantle what stood and make reparation — and that other states must not recognise the situation it created.

Oslo years

1991–19954 entries

  1. 1991

    The Madrid Peace Conference

    The United States and the Soviet Union co-sponsor the first peace conference to bring Israel face to face with all its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians.

  2. 1993

    The Oslo Accords

    Israel and the PLO sign the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, launching a peace process meant to end the conflict within five years.

  3. 1994

    Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre

    Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein guns down twenty-nine Palestinian worshippers at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque during Ramadan; the restrictions imposed in response fall on Palestinians and hollow out Hebron's Old City.

  4. 1995

    Oslo II and the Division of the West Bank

    The Interim Agreement signed on 28 September 1995 cut the occupied West Bank into Areas A, B and C for a five-year transition. Thirty years later the transition has not ended, and Area C — about sixty percent of the territory — remains under full Israeli control.

Gaza under siege

2005–20187 entries

  1. 2005

    Israel's Disengagement from Gaza

    Israel unilaterally evacuates some 8,000 settlers and withdraws its troops from Gaza while retaining control of its borders, airspace, and territorial waters — leaving the Strip's legal status as occupied territory in lasting dispute.

  2. 2006

    Hamas Wins the Palestinian Elections

    Hamas wins seventy-four of 132 seats in internationally observed legislative elections, and the boycott that follows sets in motion the Palestinian schism, the 2007 takeover of Gaza, and the blockade.

  3. 2007

    The Gaza Blockade

    Israel and Egypt impose a sweeping land, air, and sea blockade on Gaza after Hamas takes control, restricting the movement of two million people and essential goods.

  4. 2008–2009

    Operation Cast Lead

    Israel's twenty-two-day offensive on a blockaded Gaza kills some 1,400 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis, and triggers a UN investigation that finds evidence of war crimes on both sides.

  5. 2012

    Operation Pillar of Defense

    An eight-day escalation, opened by Israel's assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari, kills 167 Palestinians and six Israelis before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

  6. 2014

    Operation Protective Edge: The 51-Day War on Gaza

    The deadliest escalation yet in Gaza: more than 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people in Israel are killed over fifty-one days, and a UN commission of inquiry finds evidence of war crimes by both sides.

  7. 2018

    The Great March of Return

    Tens of thousands of Gazans join weekly protests at the boundary fence demanding the right of return; Israeli snipers kill more than 180 demonstrators.

The present

2011–20246 entries

  1. 2011

    Palestine Joins UNESCO

    On 31 October 2011 UNESCO's General Conference admitted Palestine as a member state — the first UN agency to do so. The United States cut off its funding within days; Palestine went on to inscribe Bethlehem, Battir and Hebron on the World Heritage List.

  2. 2012

    Palestine Becomes a UN Observer State

    The UN General Assembly votes 138 to 9 to accord Palestine non-member observer state status, on the 65th anniversary of the partition plan.

  3. 2021

    The Unity Intifada and the May War on Gaza

    Protests over Sheikh Jarrah and raids on Al-Aqsa ignite a rare uprising across all of historic Palestine — and an eleven-day escalation in Gaza.

  4. 2024

    ICC Arrest Warrants

    On 21 November 2024 the International Criminal Court rejected Israel's challenges to its jurisdiction and issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and for the Hamas commander Mohammed Deif.

  5. 2024

    The ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Occupation

    On 19 July 2024 the International Court of Justice found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful and held that it must be brought to an end as rapidly as possible, settlements evacuated and reparation made. The General Assembly demanded compliance within twelve months.

  6. 2024

    The ICJ Genocide Case

    The International Court of Justice orders provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel over Gaza, finding the rights claimed plausible.