Pre-1948
Maps
It can be super useful to visualize this region using maps, though keep in mind that even maps can have biases, depending on the source and the way they are described.
This map gives a great visual intro to Israel, the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, and Gaza today.
The BBC and the Washington Post lay out major territorial changes in the region from the Ottoman Empire until the present day.
USA Today, Al Jazeera, and CJPME describe the history of the region more in-depth, in charts, maps, and diagrams. These sources also describe topics and events that we will tackle in more detail in upcoming newsletters, so feel free to ask questions if you’re confused!
Jewish Virtual Library links maps for each partition/peace proposal since before the founding of the State of Israel.
Reuters and USA Today have created map resources to describe the current war between Israel and Gaza, going into detail about where rockets are coming from and landing, where the hospitals are, etc
Early Palestine
Encyclopedia Britannica, as usual, gives an excellent overview of the history of the region, going back to the Stone Age. Note that the name of that land has changed along with its ownership and control.
From 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire had control of the region. Here is a Jewish source and Palestinian source about that time period, and what life and politics were like.
The British Mandate
In 1920, the Council of the League of Nations appointed Britain as the ruler of the region. The borders of the land, as a separate country, were defined for the first time in many centuries. Until then, under the Ottoman Empire, the land's boundaries had not been defined because it was part of other large Ottoman districts like the district of Damascus and was not a distinct political unit. The term name "Palestine" that was chosen for this Mandate was based on the term name "Palestina" that was given to the country by the Roman Empire in the second century CE:
The text of the Palestine Mandate can be found here.
Here are dissections of the British Mandate era (1917-1947) by the UN Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and from the Jewish Virtual Library. You will note that they have different perspectives on key topics such as the Balfour Declaration, Zionism, and the founding of the State of Israel.
This historical overview comes from GCHQ, an intelligence agency of the UK government, and focuses on British intelligence in the British Mandate and their relationship (cooperation and struggles) with Jewish militias:
This article from Al-Jazeera begins with David Balfour, and centers on the detrimental effect that the Balfour Declaration had on the Palestinian people.
This period was marked both by productive and harmful Jewish-Muslim relations, Jewish-British relations, and Muslim-British relations. Ask us more on the Hotline!
Context: The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.
Holocaust refugees’ attempts to immigrate to Palestine is explored in this article from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia
Some suggest that the Holocaust was a central impetus in Jewish emigration and the establishment of the State of Israel.
Not all, Jewish or Muslim, agree with this. Here is an op-ed by Dov Waxman deconstructing the connection between the establishment of the State of Israel and the Holocaust. Decolonize Palestine also argues against this idea.
Indigeneity
Both Muslims and Jews have made claims that they constitute an indigenous population to the region. According to the UN, “indigenous peoples live on all continents, from the Arctic to the Pacific, via Asia, Africa and the Americas. There is no singularly authoritative definition of indigenous peoples under international law and policy” — you can read (skim) their report here.
The 1980 UN report “Acquisition of Land in Palestine,” was prepared by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. It gives a Palestinian history of the ownership of the land in the region primarily from 1948.
This description of the earliest known Jewish communities in the region is provided by the Israeli Embassy.
Here are two parallel sources about land ownership and acquisition in the 20th century. One from a Palestinian organization, and another from a Jewish organization.
The Jewish Virtual Library provides a census of Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the land since the 1500s.