The Hundred Years' War on Palestine summary

As the 1920s rolled into the 1930s, Palestine remained under British control. During this time, the Empire struggled to balance the region's competing factions. The Zionist movement continued bringing tens of thousands of settlers a year, and the Arab majority bristled against this new competition.

In 1937, the British attempted to quell tensions by partitioning the area; the Peel Commission declared that 17 percent of the region would be reserved for a Jewish state. The plan pushed Palestinians into open revolt. Over the next two years, the British violently suppressed Arab uprisings – ultimately killing, wounding, or imprisoning 10 percent of adult males in the county. 

The Six-Day War of 1967 truly lives up to its name. This short conflict, fought between Israel and its neighbors – Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon – hardly lasted a week. 

The altercation stemmed from lingering animosity about Israel's successful expansion in 1948. Egypt stoked the tensions by closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. In response, Israel launched a devastating preemptive air strike on the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces. In the days that followed, Israeli regiments would capture the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the entire Sinai Peninsula.

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon in Beirut. Office workers are strolling home to start the weekend, and families are out on leisurely shopping trips. Then, suddenly: explosions. The earth shakes as several 2,000-pound bombs detonate in the distance. Dozens more follow.

This is the opening foray of the 1982 Lebanon War. The hostilities begin with Israeli air raids on Beirut – the largest attack on an Arab capital since World War II – and continue with a full-scale ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

In some ways, the next phase of Palestinian resistance began with a discrete event. One night in December 1987, an Israeli army vehicle struck and killed four Palestinians in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza. Outrage about the collision sparked spontaneous demonstrations and protests that snowballed into an eight-year anti-colonial campaign called the first intifada, or uprising.

In other ways, though, the intifada was a long time coming. For two decades after the Six-Day War, Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and other territories had led increasingly precarious lives under Israel’s so-called enlightened occupation. With the accumulated pressure of poverty and dispossession, frustrations were bound to pour over.

Let’s look at daily life in the Occupied Territories one decade after the Oslo Accords. For the average Palestinian, life has only gotten worse. 

The territories are divided and subdivided by an intricate network of Israeli barriers and checkpoints. Traveling requires elusive government permits, and those who obtain them are still subject to humiliating searches and extensive delays. International trade is severely restricted, and the economy is in ruins – the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip hovers around 50 percent. In contrast, Israeli settlers continue to arrive and travel freely on exclusive overpasses. 

How do colonial occupations end? If history is our guide, these unjust political arrangements conclude in one of three ways.

The first and most dire conclusion is the complete elimination or subjugation of the indigenous people – such was the outcome of the United States’ conquest of the American continent. The second and most rare outcome is the full expulsion of the colonizing power – this came to pass with Algerian independence in the 1960s. The third and final endgame arrives through dismantling colonial supremacy and a serious movement toward reconciliation – here, South Africa and Ireland are key examples.