modern palestine - *from wiki - beware wikileaks - Modern period The new era in Palestine. The arrival of Herbert Samuel as the first High Commissioner for Palestine in 1920. Samuel had promoted Zionism within the British Cabinet, beginning with his 1915 memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine. Beside him are Lawrence of Arabia, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Salmond and Wyndham Deedes. Further information: History of Zionism and History of Israel Palestine passport and Palestine coin from Mandatory Palestine In 1830, on the eve of Muhammad Alis invasion, the Ottoman Porte transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Acre. According to Silverburg, in regional and cultural terms this move was important for creating an Arab Palestine detached from Syria (bilad al-Shams). According to Pappe, it was an attempt to reinforce the Syrian front in face of Muhammad Alis invasion.[49][50] Two years later, in 1832, Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Alis Egypt, but in 1840, Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations. The end of the 19th century saw the beginning of Zionist immigration and the Revival of the Hebrew language. The movement was publicly supported by Great Britain during World War I with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The British began their Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1915. The war reached southern Palestine in 1917, progressing to Gaza and around Jerusalem by the end of the year. The British secured Jerusalem in December 1917. They moved into the Jordan valley in 1918 and a campaign by the Entente into northern Palestine led to victory at Megiddo in September. The British were formally awarded the mandate to govern the region in 1922. The non-Jewish Palestinians revolted in 1920, 1929, and 1936. In 1947, following World War II and The Holocaust, the British Government announced its desire to terminate the Mandate, and the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. The Jewish leadership accepted the proposal, but the Arab Higher Committee rejected it; a civil war began immediately, and the establishment of the State of Israel was declared in 1948. Following what is known as the 1948 Palestinian exodus, the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes were unable to return following the Lausanne Conference of 1949. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israel captured and incorporated a further 26% of the Mandate territory, Jordan captured the region today known as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt. In the course of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel captured the rest of Mandate Palestine from Jordan and Egypt, and began a policy of Israeli settlements. From 1987 to 1993, the First Palestinian Intifada against Israel took place, which included the Declaration of the State of Palestine in 1988 and ended with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. In 2000, the Second or Al-Aqsa Intifada began, and Israel built a security barrier. Following Israels unilateral disengagement plan of 2004, it withdrew all settlers and most of the military presence from the Gaza strip, but maintained control of the air space and coast. In 2012, the State of Palestine replaced the PLO as UN observer following United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19.[51] Evolution of Mandate Palestine and modern Palestinian Territories v · t · e 1916–22 Proposals: Three proposals for the post World War I administration of Palestine. The red line is the International Administration proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, the dashed blue line is the 1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference, and the thin blue line refers to the final borders of the 1923–48 Mandatory Palestine. 1947 (Actual): Mandatory Palestine, showing Jewish-owned regions in Palestine as of 1947 in blue, constituting 6% of the total land area, of which more than half was held by the JNF and PICA. The Jewish population had increased from 83,790 in 1922 to 608,000 in 1946. 1947 (Proposal): Proposal per the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), 1947), prior to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The proposal included a Corpus Separatum for Jerusalem, extraterritorial crossroads between the non-contiguous areas, and Jaffa as an Arab exclave. 1948–67 (Actual): The Jordanian occupied West Bank and Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip (note the dotted lines between the territories and Jordan / Egypt), after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, showing 1949 armistice lines. 1993–Present: Extant region administered by the Palestinian National Authority (under Oslo 2). Boundaries Satellite image of the region of Palestine, 2003. The boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history.[52][53] The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah, the Dead Sea and River Jordan) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories. At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period, territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the Arab Caliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and the northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun, while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq, which during the ninth century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filasteen (Arabic: جند فلسطين).[54] The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to the coast north of Mount Carmel. Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt.[55] Pliny, writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was formerly called Palaestina among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.[56] Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, First Palestine, and Palaestina Secunda, Second Palestine), have served as a name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn (Jordan or Jund al-Urdunn).[6] Nineteenth-century sources refer to Palestine as extending from the sea to the caravan route, presumably the Hejaz-Damascus route east of the Jordan River valley. Others refer to it as extending from the sea to the desert. Prior to the Allied Powers victory in World War I and the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, which created the British mandate in the Levant, most of the northern area of what is today Jordan formed part of the Ottoman Vilayet of Damascus (Syria), while the southern part of Jordan was part of the Vilayet of Hejaz. What later became part of British Mandate Palestine was in Ottoman times divided between the Vilayet of Beirut (Lebanon) and the Sanjak of Jerusalem.[57] The Zionist Organization provided its definition of the boundaries of Palestine in a statement to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.[58][59] On the basis of a League of Nations mandate, the British administered Palestine after World War I, promising to establish a Jewish homeland.[60] The Palestinian National Charter describe the boundaries of the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people as those of Mandate Palestine excluding the Transjordan.[61] Demographics Main article: Demographics of Palestine Early demographics Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two methods – censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement, density factor for each settlement. According to Magen Broshi, an Israeli archaeologist ... the population of Palestine in antiquity did not exceed a million persons. It can also be shown, moreover, that this was more or less the size of the population in the peak period—the late Byzantine period, around AD 600[62] Similarly, a study by Yigal Shiloh of The Hebrew University suggests that the population of Palestine in the Iron Age could have never exceeded a million. He writes: ... the population of the country in the Roman-Byzantine period greatly exceeded that in the Iron Age...If we accept Broshis population estimates, which appear to be confirmed by the results of recent research, it follows that the estimates for the population during the Iron Age must be set at a lower figure.[63] Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods In the middle of the 1st century of the Ottoman rule, i.e. 1550 AD, Bernard Lewis in a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman Rule of Palestine reports:[64] From the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron. The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses, olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens. According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850 was about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly 85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews[65] According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,[66] the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in 1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of whom 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.[67] McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in 1882; 737,389 in 1914; 725,507 in 1922; 880,746 in 1931; and 1,339,763 in 1946.[68] In 1920, the League of Nations Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were 700,000 people living in Palestine: Of these, 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850, there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years, a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions. —[69] By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including bedouin). Current demographics See also: Demographics of Israel, Demographics of the Palestinian territories and Demographics of Jordan According to Israels Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israels 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% others.[70] Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second- or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim (immigrants) — 22% from Europe,the former Soviet republics, Russia, and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.[71] Of Israels 7 million citizens, 516,569 Jewish ones live in enclaves referred to as Israeli settlements and outposts in various lands adjacent to the state of Israel occupied by Israel during the Six Day War.[72][73][74] According to Palestinian evaluations, the West Bank is inhabited by approximately 2.4 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip by another 1.4 million. According to a study presented at The Sixth Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israels National Security,[75] there are 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. This study was criticised by demographer Sergio DellaPergola, who estimated 3.33 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined at the end of 2005.[76] According to these Israeli and Palestinian estimates, the total population in Israel and the Palestinian territories stands between 9.8 and 10.8 million. Jordan has a population of around 6,000,000 (2007 estimate).[77][78] Long term Palestinian war refugees constitute approximately half of this number.[79] A report was released by the UN in August 2012 and Maxwell Gaylard, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territory, explained at the launch of the publication: “Gaza will have half a million more people by 2020 while its economy will grow only slowly. In consequence, the people of Gaza will have an even harder time getting enough drinking water and electricity, or sending their children to school”. Gaylard present alongside Jean Gough, of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Robert Turner, of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The report projects that Gaza’s population will increase from 1.6 million people to 2.1 million people in 2020, leading to a density of more than 5,800 people per square kilometre.[80] Modern politics Main articles: Palestinian people, Palestinian territories, State of Palestine and Palestinian National Authority The region of Palestine gave its name to the historical mandate region, the State of Palestine as declared in 1988 and the areas of modern Palestinian government control. The region of Palestine is the eponym for the Palestinian people and the culture of Palestine, both of which are defined as relating to the whole historical region, usually defined as the localities within the border of Mandatory Palestine. However, since the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the term State of Palestine refers only to the West Bank and Gaza. This discrepancy was described by Mahmoud Abbas as a negotiated concession in a September 2011 speech to the United Nations: ... we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967.[81] The term Palestine is also sometimes used in a limited sense to refer to the parts of the Palestinian territories currently under the administrative control of the Palestinian National Authority, a quasi-governmental entity which governs parts of the State of Palestine under the terms of the Oslo Accords.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:56:24 +0000
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