The Geopolitics of Palestine, Explained

Early on Saturday morning, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented multipronged attack on Israel that caught intelligence officials the world over by surprise. Israel swiftly declared war and began retaliating against the Gaza Strip, which is controlled internally by Hamas but has been under an Israeli military blockade since 2007. So far, hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian soldiers and civilians have died in fighting that shows no sign of abating—and could yet expand to new fronts.

At its core, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dispute over land—specifically, who has the right to live in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and under what conditions they can do so. Within this area, the question of where Israel starts and Palestine ends is a complicated one that has changed over time. It also depends on whom you ask.

Though Israel has never delineated all of its official boundaries, most of the international community recognizes the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which for the first time divided Jerusalem into eastern and western sectors and created the West Bank and Gaza as geopolitical entities. Together, the latter two areas are referred to as the “Palestinian territories,” even if Palestinians have never had full control over how they are run.

It’s the enclave in the south, the Gaza Strip, that is at the center of the latest outbreak of violence—and which is now the target of an Israeli military onslaught.

How did these territories come about?

British soldiers enter the Old City of Jerusalem to impose a curfew after Arab rioting against Jews during the British mandate in Palestine in October 1938. Matson Eric/GPO/AFP via Getty Images

In the early 20th century, Jewish immigration to the British mandate for Palestine, a slice of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, accelerated. Arrivals were driven by rising antisemitism in Europe and a rising Jewish national movement known as Zionism. In 1947, amid growing tensions between Palestinians and Zionist militias and in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, the brand-new United Nations voted to divide Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states; the contested city of Jerusalem would be under international control.

An August 1949 map of Palestine shows the proposed U.N. partition plan. Foreign Office Research Department/Royal Geographical Society via Getty Images

Most Jewish groups supported the plan, while Arab groups and the governments of Arab states rejected it. Violent confrontations between the two sides intensified, and the U.N. blueprint as envisaged was never implemented.

In May 1948, after Britain dissolved the mandate, Zionist leaders declared Israel an independent state. A group of Arab countries including Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and what was then called Transjordan invaded, triggering the first Arab-Israeli War. As Israeli forces seized territory, thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and became refugees in what is referred to as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe.

The Jordanians occupied and annexed East Jerusalem as well as a block of territory to its east, while Egypt occupied a seaside sliver of land north of the Sinai Peninsula about twice the size of Washington, D.C., that included the town of Gaza. Many Palestinian refugees fled to the Egyptian- and Jordanian-occupied areas. Jordan’s territory would become known as the “West Bank” (of the Jordan River), while Egypt’s has since been called the “Gaza Strip.” Israel and its Arab foes reached armistice agreements the following year.

How did Israel take control of the Palestinian territories?

In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel launched preemptive attacks against Egypt and Jordan and managed to take East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Sinai Peninsula. Though Israel incrementally returned Sinai to Egypt starting in 1979 as part of peace negotiations, it has occupied the other territories ever since.

Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 but has held off making the same official designation in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, it steadily built up a vast settlement enterprise in both territories—considered illegal by most of the international community—while maintaining officially that their final status would be determined in future negotiations. Israel withdrew from its settlements in Gaza during a contested disengagement campaign in 2005 but has expanded them dramatically in the West Bank.

In a brief optimistic period following the signing of the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, it seemed as though portions of the West Bank and Gaza might one day merge to become an independent Palestinian state. However, the implementation of the accords quickly unraveled as the region became roiled by political violence following the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli extremist as well as the Second Intifada, or uprising.

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How is the West Bank governed today?

A follow-up treaty to the first Oslo Accord established the Palestinian Authority (PA), a quasi-government in the Palestinian territories that experts agree has little actual power and acts mostly as a security subcontractor to Israel. The PA—led by unpopular President Mahmoud Abbas—officially manages only 18 percent of the West Bank, known as Area A, though Israeli forces can still enter the PA’s area at will. The PA has administrative control of another 22 percent—Area B—where the Israeli military has security control. The overwhelming majority of the West Bank (60 percent, known as Area C) is blocked off for Israeli settlements and is under Israeli control. Many leading human rights organizations have concluded that the conditions faced by West Bank Palestinians are tantamount to apartheid. Others have argued that the territory is already de facto annexed.

What about Gaza?

Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Oct. 10.Saher Alghorra/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Initially, the PA governed both the West Bank and Gaza. But the PA lost control over Gaza after elections in 2006, in which the Islamist Hamas party defeated Fatah, the long-dominant political party of Yasser Arafat that Abbas now leads. Unlike the secular Fatah, which recognizes Israel, Hamas—founded in Gaza in 1987 during the First Intifada—rejects what it calls the “Zionist entity.”

Hamas’s 2006 election victory plunged the PA into crisis and led to a civil war between Fatah and Hamas, with Hamas taking over Gaza in a 2007 battle. Israel, with Egyptian support, immediately responded with a land, air, and sea blockade that has been decried by human rights organizations as a form of “collective punishment.” Sixteen years later, Gaza is regularly referred to as an “open-air prison.” The U.N. considers Israel’s occupation in the enclave ongoing, despite the 2005 disengagement, though Israel disputes this.

Gaza is home to 2.3 million people and is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. From their respective border crossings, Israel and Egypt decide who and what can enter and exit the territory, including humanitarian support. Israel also controls the strip’s electricity supply and can turn it off at will. The blockade has decimated Gaza’s economy—and Gazans’ quality of life. Gaza today is deeply impoverished: Eighty percent of Gazans rely on aid to survive, and, even before this week’s full siege, 95 percent did not have access to clean drinking water. Around half do not have enough to eat. Many are unable to obtain proper medical care due to a notoriously restrictive Israeli permitting system.

The undemocratic PA has not held national elections since 2006 in part because Abbas and his international benefactors—in particular Israel and the United States—fear what may happen in the West Bank if Hamas wins again.

Why has Gaza become such a hot spot?

Unlike Fatah, Hamas’s raison d’être is to fight Israel—and the feeling has become mutual. Since Israel’s blockade began in 2007, Israel has conducted four large-scale military assaults on Gaza, not including its ongoing operation. Hamas regularly launches rockets into Israel, and Israel retaliates in kind. Past fighting has disproportionately led to Palestinian casualties. In 2019, the International Criminal Court announced an investigation into both Hamas and Israel for alleged war crimes.

Hamas’s latest attack on Israel is unparalleled; at the time of writing, the death toll was over 1,000 Israelis, mostly civilians. In response, Israel launched ongoing retaliatory airstrikes that it said targeted Hamas sites. Palestinian officials, however, have said that these have so far also hit civilian infrastructure. So far, 849 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed. Those casualty numbers are only expected to rise, particularly in Gaza: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a total ban on food, water, fuel, and medicine entering the already-besieged territory. Netanyahu is reportedly planning a ground invasion.