page_title: Palestinian political violence
section_title: Overview and context
hierarchical_section_title: Palestinian political violence / History / Overview and context
caption_attribution_description: English: A demolished farmhouse in Tel Mond, Israel, after a fedayun attack
context_page_description: Palestinian political violence refers to acts of violence or terror motivated by Palestinian nationalism. These political objectives include self-determination in and sovereignty over Palestine, the "liberation of Palestine" and recognition of a Palestinian state, either in place of both Israel and the Palestinian territories, or solely in the Palestinian territories. Periodically directed toward more limited goals such as the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, another key aim is to advance the Palestinian right of return.
  Palestinian groups that have been involved in politically motivated violence include the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.
context_section_description: In protest against the Balfour Declaration, which proposed Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, and its implementation under a League of Nations Mandate for Great Britain, Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, from November 1918 onwards, began to organize in opposition to Zionism. By the end of Ottoman rule, the Jewish population of Palestine was 56,000 or one-sixth of the population. Hostility to Jewish immigration led to incidents, such as the riots of April 1920, the Jaffa riots of 1921, the 1929 Palestine riots, until a general Arab revolt broke out for three years, in 1936–1939, which was crushed, with the loss of 5,000 lives, by the British army. After the passing of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 which called for the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish States, a Palestinian Civil War broke out. On the declaration of the state of Israel, 15 May 1948, a full-scale war, involving also the intervention of neighbouring Arab states, took place, with casualties of 6,000 Israelis and, according to the 1958 survey by Arif al-Arif, 13,000 Palestinians and the exodus, through expulsion, or panicked flight, of approximately 700,000 Arab Palestinians who subsequently became refugees. In the Six-Day War, a further 280,000–360,000 Palestinians became refugees, and the remaining Palestinian territories were also occupied from Jordan and from Egypt, and later began to be settled by Jewish and Israeli settlers, while the Palestinians were placed under military administration. While historically, Palestinian militancy was fragmented into several groups, the PLO led, and eventually united, most factions, while conducting military campaigns that varied from airplane hijackings, militant operations and civil protest. In 1987, a mass revolt, of predominantly civil resistance, called the First Intifada, exploded, leading to the Madrid Conference of 1991, and subsequently to the Oslo I Accord, which produced an interim understanding allowing a new Palestinian authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to exercise limited autonomy in 3% (later 17%) of the West Bank, and parts of the Gaza Strip not used or earmarked for Israeli settlement. Frustration over the perceived failure of the peace talks to yield a Palestinian state led to the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, which ended in 2005, coincident with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The rise of Hamas, the use of Palestinian rocketry and Israel's control of Gaza's borders, has led to further chronic violence, culminating in a further two conflicts, the Gaza War of 2008–09 and Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012. It is estimated that since 1920, when the first riots against Jews broke out, 90,785 Arabs including Palestinians have died, and some 67,602 been wounded in all wars and conflicts between Israel and its neighbors. On the other hand, 24,841 Jews and Israelis have died and 35,356 have been wounded during the same period. Since 1967, some reports estimate that some 40% of the male population of the West Bank and Gaza have been arrested or detained in Israeli prisons for political or military reasons.
caption: A demolished farmhouse in Tel Mond, Israel, after a fedayun attack.
exif: {}