The story behind Israel and Palestine is a long, overlapping history of land, identity, and power in a small territory that both peoples see as home. It began well before the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948 and continues today in the form of occupation, wars, and failed peace efforts.

Big picture in simple terms

  • Two main national movements are at the center: Zionism (Jewish nationalism) and Palestinian Arab nationalism, both claiming the same land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
  • The conflict mixes history, religion, colonialism, and modern geopolitics, which is why it feels so intractable and emotional for people worldwide.

How it started (late 1800s–1948)

  • In the late 19th century, Zionist thinkers pushed for a Jewish homeland in what was then Ottoman-controlled Palestine, where an Arab majority and a smaller Jewish minority already lived.
  • After World War I, Britain took control of Palestine and issued the Balfour Declaration (1917), supporting a “national home for the Jewish people” while also promising to protect the rights of existing non‑Jewish communities.
  • Jewish immigration grew sharply, especially after the Holocaust, increasing tensions with Palestinian Arabs over land, jobs, and political control.

Partition and the 1948 war

  • In 1947, the UN proposed splitting the land into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control; Jewish leaders accepted the plan in principle, Arab leaders rejected it as unfair.
  • In 1948, Jewish leaders declared the state of Israel; neighboring Arab states invaded, starting the first Arab–Israeli war.
  • Israel survived and expanded beyond the UN‑proposed borders; around 700,000–750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled, an event Palestinians call the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), while Israelis remember it as their war of independence.

Occupation and Palestinian statelessness

  • In the 1967 Six‑Day War, Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and other Arab territories; this is when the modern occupation of Palestinian territories began.
  • Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have since lived under varying forms of Israeli military control, checkpoints, and settlement expansion, while millions of refugees and their descendants remain outside historic Palestine.
  • The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) emerged, first seeking the elimination of Israel and later formally accepting a two‑state solution, aiming for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Oslo peace process and its breakdown

  • In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority and a framework for gradual peace and statehood, but left many core issues unresolved: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements.
  • Violence, political assassinations, suicide bombings, Israeli military operations, and ongoing settlement growth undermined trust; the Second Intifada (early 2000s) hardened attitudes on both sides.

Gaza, Hamas, and recent wars

  • After Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, the Islamist group Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and later took full control of Gaza; the West Bank remained under the Palestinian Authority (Fatah‑led).
  • Since then, Gaza has been under Israeli (and Egyptian) blockade and has seen repeated cycles of war between Hamas and Israel, with high Palestinian civilian casualties and rocket attacks on Israeli towns.
  • Those cycles escalated dramatically with the October 2023 Hamas attacks and the large‑scale Israeli offensive that followed, drawing ongoing international scrutiny over humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

Why it’s still unresolved

  • Core disputes remain deeply contested:
    • Who has sovereignty over Jerusalem.
    • Where borders should be drawn.
    • The fate of Palestinian refugees and their right of return.
    • The status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
    • Security guarantees for Israelis and freedom and statehood for Palestinians.
  • International efforts keep pushing ideas like a two‑state solution (an independent Palestine alongside Israel) or different power‑sharing models, but political divisions on all sides and shifting regional politics keep blocking a final deal.

Current situation and “latest news” angle

  • As of early 2026, fighting and airstrikes linked to the Israel–Hamas war are still reported in Gaza, with recurring Israeli military operations and high Palestinian casualty counts.
  • Diplomatic efforts talk about phases of ceasefires and reconstruction, but people in Gaza and Israel report that daily realities on the ground change much more slowly than the political announcements.

TL;DR: The story behind Israel and Palestine is a century‑plus struggle between two national movements claiming the same land, shaped by colonial rule, war, displacement, occupation, and failed peace deals, and it is still unfolding in real time.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.