History of Palestine

This article deals with the history of the Middle Eastern country of Palestine, from the founding of the post-WWI British mandate through the rise and fall of the first republic to the modern-day Palestinian state.

## Mandatory Palestine

The end of the First World War resulted in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, whose Middle Eastern holdings fell to Allied military occupation, ending hundreds of years of Ottoman rule. Palestine, which the Ottomans had administered as a province of Damascus, was occupied by the British via the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, while Syria and Lebanon would be controlled by the French. In 1919, the Muslim-Christian associations active throughout the Arab community convened in Jerusalem at the first Palestine Arab Congress; the platform of the congress called for representative, independent government, as promised to the Arab community by the British in exchange for the Arabs' siding with the Allies and uprising against Ottoman authorities near the end of the war. The congress also elected a council called the Arab Higher Committee, which became the proto-executive government of the Palestinian Arab community during the mandate.

In 1920, official military occupation ended with the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine, governed by a crown-appointed High Commissioner dispatched from London. The Arab Higher Committee sent three diplomats to London at the end of the year, in order to express the Palestinians' opposition to British rule; they also protested the Balfour Declaration, which significantly expanded the already-growing Jewish immigration to Palestine. In 1921, Arab suspicion of the British administration worsened after its subsidisation of electricity infrastructure in Jewish communities, which Arabs largely saw as proof of the administration's commitment to Zionism.

Jewish immigration had been increasing steadily since the turn of the century; after the establishment of the mandate, as well as the Jewish Agency, a British-backed Zionist organisation, the rapidly growing Jewish community began to see itself as a self-governing entity. As tensions increased with the Arabs, the narrative for a sovereign Israel grew stronger, as did the calls for independence from the Palestinian Arab community as well. Jewish militias, such as Haganah and Irgun, were established in multiple communities; in 1930, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam formed the Black Hand, a Palestinian Arab militia, originally to protect Palestine Arab Congress sessions, which the British outlawed in 1926. By the 1930s, however, militias on both sides began actively challenging British authority, mostly through acts of sabotage and propaganda.

After the death of al-Qassam in November 1935 due to a violent confrontation between British police and Black Hand members, shock and indignation spread like wildfire through the Arab community; following al-Qassam's crowded funeral in Haifa, the mood shifted rapidly to anger. The Black Hand grew exponentially during this period, and confrontations with the British increased in frequency, who responded by sending the Peel Commission to Palestine in April 1937 to propose a solution. The Arab revolt resumed after the commission proposed partition of the mandate between Jews and Arabs, which the Arab Higher Committee rejected outright. The Jewish militias and British police cooperated in subduing the violence; many Black Hand fighters were killed or arrested, as well as scores of rioting civilians. The uprising concluded in March 1939, with almost 10% of the Arab population dead, as well as many Jewish civilians and militiamen.

Jewish militias, especially Haganah, were severely strengthened in legitimacy and independence after, and as a result of, their cooperation with British authorities during the revolt. The Jewish community began to resemble a proto-state, not least because of British encouragement. However, the British response to the Arab revolt was a declaration known as the White Papers, which decreed that Jewish immigration to the mandate be reduced significantly.

With the advent of the Second World War, however, immigration slowed almost to a halt until 1945. After the war, however, the Jews would no longer cooperate with the British. Even during the war, many Jewish militias began their own uprisings against British authorities, which were weakened as a result of continuous fighting against the Axis powers on many fronts. However, after the Irgun assassinated British foreign minister Lord Moyne in Cairo in November 1944, Haganah arrested the assassins and much of the Irgun leadership, turning them over to the British.

## World War II

On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, the Italians attacked Palestine from the air, bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties.

As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents in World War II. A number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Even though Arabs were not highly regarded by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support as a counter to British hegemony. SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was keen to exploit this, going so far as to enlist the aid of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, sending him a telegram in November 1943, expounding his support for the Palestinian Arab struggle against the Jews.

In 1939, as a consequence of the White Paper decree of 1939, the British greatly reduced the number of immigrants allowed into Palestine. World War II and the Holocaust started shortly thereafter and once the 15,000 annual quota was exceeded, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were interned in detention camps or deported to places such as Mauritius.

Starting in 1939, a clandestine immigration effort called Aliyah Bet ('illegal immigration' in Hebrew) was spearheaded by an organisation called Mossad LeAliyah Bet. Tens of thousands of European Jews escaped the Nazis in boats and small ships headed for Palestine. The Royal Navy intercepted many of the vessels; others were unseaworthy and were wrecked; a Haganah bomb sunk the SS Patria, killing 267 people; two more were sunk by Soviet submarines. The motor schooner Struma was torpedoed and sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 with the loss of nearly 800 lives. The last refugee boats to try to reach Palestine during the war were the Bulbul, Mefküre and Morina in August 1944. A Soviet submarine sank the motor schooner Mefküre by torpedo and shellfire and machine-gunned survivors in the water, killing between 300 and 400 refugees. Illegal immigration resumed after World War II.

After the war 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of US President Harry S. Truman and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately granted entry to Palestine, the British maintained the ban on immigration.

## Post-WWII, beginning of Zionist insurgency, termination of mandate

The three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the Jewish Resistance Movement and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Following the bombing, the British Government began interning illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. In 1948 the Lehi assassinated the UN mediator Count Bernadotte in Jerusalem. Yitzhak Shamir, future prime minister of Israel, was one of the conspirators in the operation.

The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain, and caused the United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for postwar reconstruction. The Labour Party had promised before its election to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British Jewish and Arab militancy increased and the situation required the presence of over 100,000 British troops to maintain control of the country. Following the Acre Prison Break and the retaliatory hanging of British Sergeants by the Irgun, the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and withdraw by no later than the beginning of August 1948.

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 was a joint attempt by Britain and the United States to agree on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision. The Committee approved the American recommendation of the immediate acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It also recommended that there be no Arab, and no Jewish State. The Committee stated that "in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine." U.S. President Harry S Truman angered the British Government by issuing a statement supporting the 100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committee's findings. Britain had asked for U.S. assistance in implementing the recommendations. The U.S. War Department had said earlier that to assist Britain in maintaining order against an Arab revolt, an open-ended U.S. commitment of 300,000 troops would be necessary. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants would almost certainly have provoked another Arab uprising.

These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The UN created UNSCOP (the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a general survey of the situation in Palestine, and issued its report on 31 August. Seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. Three members (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.

## Partition

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly, voting 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union as Resolution 181 (II)., while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant full civil rights to all people within their borders, regardless of race, religion or gender. It is important to note that the UN General Assembly is only granted the power to make recommendations, therefore, UNGAR 181 was not legally binding. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines changed their votes at the last moment after concerted pressure from the U.S. and from Zionist organisations. The five members of the Arab League, who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan.

The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news.

The partition plan was rejected out of hand by Palestinian Arab leadership (the Arab Higher Committee and Palestine Arab Congress) and by most of the Arab population. That evening, the Arab Higher Committee proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Palestine, to come into effect at midnight of the following day (30 November 1947), and declared itself the All-Palestine Provisional Government; the same declaration named the Palestine Arab Congress as the nation's official legislature, and claimed sovereignty over all territory of the former mandate, refusing to recognise Israel. Congress officially established the All-Palestine Army the following day, composed mostly of regular Black Hand battalions and associated Arab nationalist militias, led politically by Ragheb al-Nashashibi, a prominent member of the Palestine Arab Congress, and supplied with weapons by Syria and Egypt. Meeting in Cairo in November and December 1947, the Arab League officially recognised the new republic, then adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the Israel question.

## Civil war

Immediately after the UN resolution, the 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine broke out between the Arab and Jewish communities, with multiple attacks between Jewish and Arab militias, and a complete breakdown of British authority. On December 16, 1947, the British Palestine Police Force withdrew from the Tel Aviv area, home to more than half of the Jewish population, and turned over responsibility for the maintenance of law and order in the area to Jewish police. As the civil war raged on, British military forces gradually withdrew from Palestine, although they occasionally intervened in favour of either side. As they withdrew, they handed over control to local authorities, and locally raised police forces on both sides were charged with maintaining law and order. With the Jewish and Arab police forces obviously taking sides in the conflict, areas the British withdrew from often quickly became war zones. The British maintained strong presences in Jerusalem and Haifa, even as Jerusalem came under siege by Arab forces and became the scene of fierce fighting; the British occasionally intervened in the fighting largely to secure their evacuation routes, including by proclaiming martial law and enforcing truces. The Palestine Police Force was largely inoperative, and government services such as social welfare, control of water supplies, and postal services were withdrawn. In April 1948, the British withdrew from most of Haifa, but retained an enclave in the port area to be used in the evacuation of British forces, and temporarily retained RAF Ramat David airbase to cover their retreat, leaving behind a volunteer police force to maintain order. The city was quickly captured by the Haganah in the Battle of Haifa. Following the victory, British forces in Jerusalem announced that they had no intention of assuming control of any local administrations, but would not permit any actions that would hamper the safe and orderly withdrawal of British forces from Palestine, and would set up military courts to try persons who interfered. Although by this time British authority in most of Palestine had broken down, with most of the country under the control of either Jewish or Arab forces, the British air and sea blockade of Palestine remained firmly in place.

The British had notified the U.N. of their intent to terminate the mandate not later than 1 August 1948. However, early in 1948, the United Kingdom announced its firm intention to end its mandate in Palestine on 14 May. In response, President Harry S Truman made a statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition, stating that "unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means... unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result."

The Jewish Leadership, led by future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, on the afternoon of 14 May 1948, to come into force at midnight. On the same day, the Provisional Government of Israel asked the US Government for recognition, on the frontiers specified in the UN Plan for Partition. The United States immediately replied, recognising "the provisional government as the de facto authority."

At the same time that the state of Israel was being declared, the Haganah took over formerly British-controlled areas in Jerusalem. In Arab-controlled East Jerusalem, the Palestine Arab Congress passed the Constitution of the Republic of Palestine, which had been commissioned by the Arab Higher Committee after the rejection of the partition plan. As the mandate era came to an end, radical Jewish forces, from whose actions the Haganah attempted to distance themselves, began to clear Palestinian Arab communities in the area which would become Israel, causing a mass exodus known to Arabs as the Nakba, which continued until the end of the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. The Haganah itself, as well as parts of other Jewish militias, became the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

On 15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine formally ceased to exist. The status of British forces still in the process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign territory, the Palestine Police Force formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of Palestine was lifted, and all Mandatory Palestine passports ceased to give British protection.

## Arab–Israeli War

Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi and 2,800 Egyptian troops, known as the Arab Legion, crossed over the borders into Palestine, linking up with the 7,119-strong All-Palestine Army (APA). The combined Arab forces then invaded the newly-declared State of Israel, starting intense fighting which quickly spread to Gaza. The combined invading forces took control of the Palestinian Arab areas and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The fighting was interrupted by several truce periods, and took place mostly on the former territory of the British Mandate and for a time also in the Egyptian-controlled Sinai Peninsula as well as southern Lebanon.

The first mission of the Jewish forces was to hold on against the Arab armies and stop them, as the Arabs enjoyed major advantage, such as the initiative and regular infantry and armoured units wielding vastly superior firepower. As the British stopped blocking the incoming Jewish immigrants and arms supply, the Israeli forces grew steadily with large numbers of immigrants and weapons, that allowed the Haganah to transform itself from a paramilitary force into a real army. Intelligence provided by the French consulate in Jerusalem to Israel on the Arab armies' invading forces and their revised plan to invade the new state contributed to Israel’s success in withstanding the Arab invasion. The besieged Israeli-controlled West Jerusalem was only saved via the opening of the so-called "Burma Road", a makeshift bypass road built by Israeli forces that allowed Israeli supply convoys to pass into Jerusalem. Parts of the area where the road was built were cleared of Jordanian snipers in May and the road was completed on 14 June.

The Arab forces in Latrun managed to cut off supplies to West Jerusalem. Though some supplies, mostly munitions, were airdropped into the city, the shortage of food, water, fuel and medicine was acute. The Israeli forces were seriously short of food, water and ammunition. King Abdullah of Jordan ordered the Arab Legion to enter Jerusalem on 17 May. The Arab Legion fired 10,000 artillery and mortar shells a day, and also attacked West Jerusalem with sniper fire. Heavy house-to-house fighting occurred between 19 and 28 May, with the Arab Legion and APA eventually succeeding in pushing Israeli forces from the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as well as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The 1,500 Jewish inhabitants of the Old City's Jewish Quarter were expelled, and several hundred were detained. The Jews had to be escorted out by the Arab forces to protect them against Palestinian Arab mobs that intended to massacre them. On 22 May, the Arab Legion attacked the kibbutz Ramat Rachel south of Jerusalem. After a fierce battle in which 31 Jordanians and 13 Israelis were killed, the defenders of Ramat Rachel withdrew, only to partially retake the kibbutz the following day. Fighting continued until 26 May, until the entire kibbutz was recaptured.

On 24 October, the IDF launched Operation Hiram and captured the entire upper Galilee area, driving the Lebanese Army back into to Lebanon, and ambushing and destroying an entire Syrian battalion and half a Palestinian battalion. The Israeli force of four infantry brigades was commanded by Moshe Carmel. The entire operation lasted just 60 hours, during which numerous villages were captured, often after locals or Arab forces put up resistance. Arab losses were estimated at 400 dead and 550 taken prisoner, with low Israeli casualties. Some prisoners were reportedly executed by the Israeli forces. An estimated 50,000 Palestinian refugees fled into Lebanon, some of them fleeing ahead of the advancing forces, and some expelled from villages which had resisted, while the Arab inhabitants of those villages which had remained at peace were allowed to remain and became Israeli citizens. The villagers of Iqrit and Birim were persuaded to leave their homes by Israeli authorities, who promised them that they would be allowed to return. Israel eventually decided not to allow them to return, and offered them financial compensation, which they refused to accept.

Israel launched a series of military operations to drive out the Arab armies and secure the borders of Israel. However, invading the West Bank might have brought into the borders of the expanding State of Israel a massive Arab population it could not absorb. The Negev desert was an empty space for expansion, so the main war effort shifted to Negev from early October. Israel decided to destroy or at least drive out the Egyptian expeditionary force since the Egyptian front lines were too vulnerable as permanent borders.

After ten months of fighting, the National Defence Party, a prominent party in the Palestine Arab Congress, led the Arab League-sponsored Palestine Liberation Committee in answering Israel's offer for negotiating a ceasefire; the subsequent armistice agreement established the "Green Line", ending the fighting and separating the two fledgling states along the frontline dividing their forces. Israel attempted postwar negotiations with the Palestinians; however, the executive leadership and Congress remained steadfast in their claim to the entire territory of the former mandate and their refusal to recognise Israel, insisting the Green Line borders were only temporary. The Arab Legion would remain in the Palestinian republic until early 1961, when the need for a strong deterrent had subsided in the eyes of Arab League leadership.

In March 1950, Ragheb al-Nashashibi, General Secretary of the National Defence Party, ran unopposed in the presidential election and was inaugurated as the first President of Palestine in July of the same year. Elections were also held for the Palestine Arab Congress, in which Nashashibi's National Defence Party won 59 of 100 seats, with the remaining 41 seats going to the Palestine Arab Party (24) and the Independence Party (17). Thus began the beginning of the postwar sovereign Palestinian state.

## First Republic, beginning of Cold War

*See also: First Palestinian Republic*
Upon assuming office, President Nashashibi set about building a solid foundation for his government. To him it was clear the Israeli state had already honed its intelligence and security apparatus, coming to master the use of political intrigue to its benefit. If the new Palestinian republic was to survive, let alone maintain credible claim to Israeli-controlled territory, it would need to match its rival in such areas. As international relations realigned themselves following the Second World War into the two blocs which would confront each other during the Cold War, Palestine found itself naturally aligning with the Soviet side, not necessarily for ideological reasons but as a natural result of Israel's growing closer to the capitalist western powers, especially the United States.

The armed forces themselves were officially subordinated to the new defence ministry; in January 1951, President Nashashibi hosted a group of Soviet advisors, who undertook to creating a blueprint for military and industrial modernisation. The All-Palestine Army became the name for the armed forces as a whole, with the newly established air force and naval corps being incorporated into its chain of command. The first Palestinian naval base, El-Qassem Naval Station, was built south of the Port of Gaza City, which hosted the first five frigates purchased from the Soviet Navy in September 1951. Nashashibi also created the elite Republican Guard as part of the army in December 1950, which to this day serves as the official military security force of the president and executive government.

Interior ministry officers recruited thousands of workers, establishing state-subsidised construction cooperatives, responsible for building the new infrastructure required by the Ministry of Defence, such as ports, naval stations and military airbases, as well as other government projects like roads and relevant residential and commercial infrastructure. In December 1951, Jerusalem Airport was opened near Ramallah, which became the main gateway to the republic. Many urban areas became rebuilt and modernized by the government-led campaign.

## Death of Nashashibi

On 25 July 1951, barely a year into his presidency, Nashashibi died from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 71 years old. A large state funeral was held in the Old City of Jerusalem, with his coffin carried by crowds to the Temple Mount and into the al-Aqsa Mosque, where the eulogy was read. The event was featured on the very first official broadcast of Palestinian national television, the republic's state-owned PBA-TV. Nashashibi was buried in the Muslim cemetery in the Jabal Sahyoun neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

Almost immediately following the president's death, a power struggle ensued between high-ranking members of government and the military, who had been aligned in various factions over bitter disagreements predating Nashashibi's death. The late president's National Defence Party, elitist in nature, had never been as popular as the Palestine Arab Party, founded and led by prominent members of the Husseini family, which had large-scale support from the middle class and much of the politically active working class; Ahmad Shukeiri was named the Palestine Arab Party's official candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Many activists began to call for the National Defence Party to step aside. Many people worried about a potential coup attempt, or at the very least a proliferation of the struggle within the armed forces. However, the Republican Guard remained loyal to the party, and Nashashibi's former vice president, Hisham Shalash, served as acting president until the subsequent presidential election, which the Palestine Arab Congress scheduled for December 1951.

Shalash did not run in the presidential election, surprising many. However, in another widely unforeseen turn of events, several leaders of the Palestine Arab Party, including Shukeiri, were arrested on treason charges before the election, and Rafiq al-Tamimi of the National Defence Party was elected president the following month. The National Defence Party retained all its seats and won three more in the Palestine Arab Congress in the subsequent legislative elections.

## Tamimi administration

The Tamimi administration began with a series of trials before the Supreme Court through 1952, in which Husseini and 17 other high-ranking members of the Palestine Arab Party, including two army generals, were accused of conspiring to overthrow the government and establishing contact with Israeli intelligence which committed to help the conspirators. Shukeiri was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to twent-five years in prison. The two generals, Muhammed Aref al-Maqdisi and Hassan Omran Shalash, who were convicted of personally meeting with Israeli agents and organising Palestinian military capitulation during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, were sentenced to death, but managed to flee the country.

Tamimi would remain president until 1957. One of his major contributions during his term in office was the founding of the Ministry of Education, which established a public school system and subsidised the founding of al-Quds University.

While the civilian area of government grew and stabilised, the armed forces became plagued by factionalism during this time. Tamimi complained to the press that "many men in the highest of military [positions]... with their petty alliances and self-preservational careerism, in essence maintain their own little fiefdoms, centres of power which detract in kind from the authority and even the legitimacy of the state."[PBA–TV, 1954] Some historians maintain that, between 1952 and 1955, the al-Tamimi faction in control of the state apparatus extended only as far as the centre of the National Defence Party and the Republican Guard. In September 1954, Tamimi issued an executive ban on factions in the government and armed forces, and commissioned internal security officers to enforce this policy.

In December 1956, multiple high-ranking military officers, card-carrying members of the Palestine Arab Party, staged a coup attempt. The attempt failed, with the Republican Guard successfully defending the capital from divisions of the armed forces loyal to the coup. Great instability and societal distress resulted, and was followed by another government campaign of repression against the Palestine Arab Party involving months of arrests of members and intimidation of supporters throughout society. Tamimi also attempted to purge the armed forces of officers loyal to the coup-plotters, significantly reducing the effectiveness of the Palestinian Army for some time.

## Suez Crisis

On 29 October 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai, which at the time was administered by Egypt. Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to cease fire, which was ignored. On 5 November, Britain and France landed paratroopers along the Suez Canal. It later became clear that the Israeli invasion and the subsequent Anglo-French attack had been planned beforehand by the three countries, with a view to regaining control of the Suez Canal, which Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalised the previous year.

The three allies had attained a number of their military objectives: the Egyptian forces were largely defeated, and much of the canal was in their control, with only a pocket of resistance from Egyptian and allied Palestinian forces who had managed to hold Port Said. However, the canal was now useless due to an Egyptian naval blockade. Heavy political pressure from the United States and the USSR led to a withdrawal. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had strongly warned Britain not to invade; he now threatened serious damage to the British financial system by selling the US government's pound sterling bonds. The Suez Canal was closed from October 1956 until March 1957. Israel fulfilled some of its objectives, such as attaining freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, which Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950.

The crisis ended with Israel and its allies withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula, which was left under Palestinian control, and the creation of a United Nations force to patrol the Israeli-Palestinian border (the Green Line), known as the Multinational Force and Observers. The following year, the Palestinian and Egyptian governments ratified a bilateral treaty agreeing to shared control of the Suez Canal in order to offset the imperialist drive against its nationalisation, officially founding the Suez Canal Company as a joint state-owned enterprise, which would go on to be a major staple of both nations' economies.

## Abd al-Hadi administration

Tamimi passed away in December 1956. He had planned to run again in the 1957 election, which went ahead with Hussein Sharif, who had served as Tamimi's deputy in the National Defence Party, on the ticket. However, the party lost its majority of seats to the Independence Party led by Awni Abd al-Hadi in elections to the Palestine Arab Congress, and Abd al-Hadi was officially elected president in May 1957 with 55.6% of the votes. One of Tamimi's final actions before leaving office was to host the 1956 Sharm al-Sheikh summit of the Arab League, in which Palestine was officially made a full member state.

Immediately after President Abd al-Hadi assumed office, tensions with Israel increased. Abd al-Hadi increased military spending significantly in fiscal year 1958; by 1959, the majority of military-age males were serving in the army or in other military-related professions. Anticipating a standoff with Israel, the president called upon fellow Arab League members to commit to backing Palestine should a repeat of the 1948 war occur. Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Egypt agreed to back the republic in the event of Israeli aggression; Jordan backed out soon after secret negotiations with Israel, which caused diplomatic confusion amongst the Arab League members and raised tensions on both sides. Nevertheless, the 1950s would end wihour another violent confrontation.

In February 1961, the final Arab Legion companies left the Palestinian republic. This began a period of decline in foreign Arab political control of the young republic. In early 1963, the Syrian and Egyptian military advisors who has been tasked with training the Army of the Republuc of Palestine and bringing its military technology up to date, left the country and were succeeded by Soviet advisors hosted later that year by Abd al-Hadi.

Abd al-Hadi won the presidential election of 1962, and in 1963 began another six-year term. The runner-up in the election was the rapidly growing Palestinian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which had actuallly been established in 1949 and which dominated the ranks of the armed forces. The Ba'athists also won the highest amount of seats in the legislative elections, with the Independence Party forced to enter into a coalition with the Conservative Party in order to retain control of congress.

## 1964 coup

In November 1964, high-ranking officers of the armed forces loyal to the Palestine Arab Party, led from behind bars by Shukeiri, arrested Abd al-Hadi and his cabinet and took control of the government, setting up a Revolutionary Command Council as the new executive, which subsequently freed Shukeiri and elected him as is chairman. It was later revealed that the leaders of the Palestinian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party, which commanded the loyalty of most of the armed forces by that point, had gone along with the conspiracy. After the coup, elections were still held for the Palestine Arab Congress, which saw the Independence Party completely sidelined by a Palestine Arab Party-Ba'athist coalition. A presidential election was held in April 1965 in which Shukeiri ran unopposed.

The coup had little reactionary effect on the Palestinian population as a whole. At this time, the majority of the politically active civilian population was still pro-Palestine Arab Party, the nationalist party, while Ba'athist ideology dominated the ranks of the armed forces. The coup-leaders were overwhelmingly middle-class in their background, with a vested interest against the rule of the Independence Party which was elitist in nature. Therefore, the coup mostly represented a transition toward the status quo, and was not seen as a revolution, even if the new government attempted to represent it as such. The armed forces became increasingly radicalised at this point, with nationalism promoted even over socialist ideology which was the backbone of the Ba'ath; however, even the leaders of the military were from a working class background, while the new regime was led by the nationalist new middle class. Nevertheless, due in no small part to the official government line, confrontation with Israel and an overall irredentist narrative became the overriding theme in national politics.

## Six-Day War

The continuing Palestinian refugee issue as well as Israel's participation in the invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956 continued to be significant grievances for the Palestinian state and the Arab world. Arab nationalists, led by Shukeiri and Egyptian President Nasser, continued to be hostile to Israel's existence and made grave threats against its Jewish population. By the mid-1960s, relations between Israel and Palestine had deteriorated to the extent that a number of border clashes had taken place.

In April 1967, Syria shot at an Israeli tractor ploughing in the demilitarized zone, which escalated to a prewar aerial clash. In May 1967, following misinformation about Israeli intentions provided by the Soviet Union, Palestine expelled the UN peacekeepers who had been stationed in the Sinai Peninsula since the Suez conflict, and Egypt announced its intention to blockade Israel's access to the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran, which Israel considered an act of war. Tension escalated, with both sides' armies mobilising.

The Six-Day War began on June 5, 1967, with Israel launching surprise strikes against Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian air-fields in response to the mobilization of Palestinian and Syrian forces on the Israeli border. A period of high tension had preceded the war. In response to Palestinian sabotage acts against Israeli targets, Israel raided multiple Palestinian Army positions in the West Bank and initiated flights over Syria, which ended with aerial clashes over Syrian territory, Syrian artillery attacks against Israel, followed by Israeli responses against Syrian positions in the Golan Heights and encroachments of increasing intensity and frequency into the demilitarized zones along the Syrian border, and culminating in Egypt following through on its threat to block the Straits of Tiran, which Israel responded to by total mobilization of the military.

Within six days, Israel had won a decisive land war. Israeli forces had taken control of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Palestine, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Overall, Israel's territory grew by a factor of three, including almost two million Arabs placed under Israel's direct control in the newly captured territories. The resulting expansion of territory led to the establishment of an administration on those territories to run the affairs of indigenous populations falling under Israeli military rule. The Palestinian state ceased to exist in practice, its army in tatters and top leadership exiled to Cairo.

## Occupation and insurgency

Within weeks after the end of the war, Israel began building settlements in the occupied territories, notably the West Bank and Gaza. By 1970, the settler population in the West Bank alone had passed 100,000. Many settlements were built on Palestinian land, confiscated from owners and their families by the occupying military administration. The Palestinian population soon began to openly protest and rebel against this activity, which for Israel meant a threat to the safety of its settlements; the settlements and roads connecting them to mainland Israel were thus barricaded, cutting off traditional routes of travel, severely disrupting the local economy. For example, the Palestinian market town of Salfit was cut off from the main road to the nearest city of Nablus, 10 km to the north, with which it traded regularly, by the private road of the settlement of Ariel on the outskirts of the town. The authorities also refused to issue building permits to Palestinians, forcing displaced families to construct illegally; this was then used as justification for further demolishing of homes or evictions of locals and their replacement with settlers.

In 1970, a group of Ba'athist officers of the disbanded Palestinian Army, led by General Rifaf Khan and Colonel Yasser Arafat, founded the Palestinian National Salvation Front (PNSF) at the Arab League conference in Cairo; much of the exiled Palestinian government as well as members of the Palestine Arab Congress declared their support for the front's leadership. Khan took over the Revolutionary Command Council as de facto leader, while Shukeiri technically remained president from his exile in Cairo. Nevertheless, from the beginning, partisan forces were loyal to the Palestinian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party, which organised multiple brigades of exiled partisans in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as a network of clandestine cadres in Israeli-occupied territory. In Jordan and Lebanon, partisans were able to operate essentially as a state within a state, due to weak central government, and thus controlled multiple strategic areas. In 1972, the Black September Organisation, a paramilitary group allied to the Salvation Front, kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The same year, partisans in Jordan called for the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy, which attempted to disarm them, resulting in a military confrontation and the assassination of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tal, ending in the Palestinian partisans' expulsion from Jordan.

By 1973, the PNSF was already circulating an underground newspaper in the occupied territories, which reached tens of thousands of Palestinians. As indignation and anger grew toward the occupation and settler activity, more and more Palestinians began joining the front's cadre network, and began smuggling weapons into the territories. Confrontations between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian youth throwing stones continued, but more and more young men were joining the PNSF, going to Lebanon or Syria for training and returning to occupied Palestine ready to take up arms. The PNSF fought alongside the Egyptian Army during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, which ended in Israeli victory; however, the partisans took control of Port Said after it was abandoned by the Egyptians, and by 1974, all partisan militias in occupied Palestine were under PNSF control. In April 1974, partisans began to sabotage Israeli infrastructure in the Sinai and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces cracked down on many partisan elements in spring 1975; many safehouses and weapons caches were discovered, and members arrested, which ultimately added fuel to the fire. By the end of the year, amid mass civilian demonstrations, partisan forces were openly confronting Israeli forces in the Sinai.

## Sinai War

The Sinai War officially began on 19 February 1976, when the IDF began shelling partisan-controlled Port Said, and the PNSF and allied partisan forces responded by driving the IDF from Fort Budapest and later Arish. Israeli military intelligence had severely underestimated the size of partisan forces already within occupied territory: despite overwhelming air supremacy over the Sinai, the IDF very quickly lost control of most urban Palestinian areas outside of the West Bank.

By the end of the year, the PNSF controlled the Mediterranean coast from Port Said to Gaza City. Areas under partisan control were subjected to heavy bombing by the Israeli Air Force; however, infantry forces were unsuccessful in retaking such areas, and Israel began losing a ground war in the Sinai. Partisans in the West Bank soon began rising up as well, often taking occupation forces by surprise, placing them on the defensive resulting in Israeli loss of control of much urban Palestinian territory. Through 1977, Israeli forces desperately tried to retake lost ground, but by the year's end were focused on protecting settlements from partisan forces. In December 1977, as violence intensified, Israel evacuated most of the settlements, leaving IDF brigades in control to launch counteroffensives against Palestinian forces, which were pushed back but managed to regroup.

In February 1978, the PNSF acquired multiple military aircraft from the Soviet Union, which were transferred to Syria. Partisan pilots would travel to Syria and train; in early 1978, a partisan air force had been established, called the Volunteer Air Corps, which answered to Palestinian leadership. After intense dogfights with Israeli jets, partisan forces managed to gain air superiority over the western Sinai, thus allowing Port Said International Airport to be used as the Volunteer Air Corps' base. Many Israeli and Palestinian planes were downed in clashes over the Sinai through late 1978. By January 1979, most of the former Palestinian republic's territory was under control of partisan forces. Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an elite paramilitary division of partisan fighters, made several incursions deep into Israeli territory, involving hostage situations and multiple suicide bombings, which caused severe moral damage and may ultimately have forced Israel to the negotiating table.

In late 1978, the Israelis lost control of several settlements in the West Bank, most of which had not been properly evacuated. In Ariel, partisans rounded up settler families, turning them over to the Ba'athist political police, whose officers had been provided with a list of people connected to the occupation. Similarly, areas lost and retaken by Israel were combed for citizens who had assisted partisan forces during the uprising. By the end of the war, both sides were hosting tens of thousands of prisoners of war.

In late February 1979, Israeli and Palestinian leadership met at Camp David in the United States, hosted by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, to negotiate a peace treaty. After many false starts, a treaty was almost agreed upon in which both states would recognise the other. However, Khan and Arafat rejected the Israeli condition of sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which was under Israeli control. An armistice was signed instead on 5 March 1979, ending the war, with Israel and Palestine returning to the borders of the Green Line.

## Ba'athist Palestine

After the signing of the armistice, Palestinian leadership dissolved the Revolutionary Command Council, commissioned the drafting of a new constitution and called for elections to the Palestine Arab Congress. Congress elections were held in July 1979, with the Ba'ath Party winning 164 out of 233 seats. A new constitution was signed by the Palestine Arab Congress on 14 September 1979, and Rifaf Khan, leader of the PNSF and Regional Secretary of the Palestinian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party, was elected President of Palestine in October. Khan was inaugurated as president in early November; he nominated Yasser Arafat for the office of Prime Minister, which was confirmed by the Palestine Arab Congress in January 1980.

The main Palestinian National Salvation Front militias were reorganised as the Palestinian Armed Forces: regular forces became the Palestinian Army while the military police brigades became the Gendarmerie, responsible for policing in the new republic. The Palestinian Regional Branch founded the Palestinian National Guard as a unified command of community militias and fedayeen forces which had not become integrated into the regular armed forces of the restored republic, including many Ba'athist and nationalist militias which had fought alongside the PNSF in the Sinai War, as well as Arafat’s paramilitary al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The Palestinian government soon secured a renewed arms supply contract from the Soviet Union. On 14 December, the Palestinian Constitution of 1979 was signed by the 133-member lower house of the Palestine Arab Congress, declaring the Cabinet of Palestine the executive government of the republic, subordinated by several secretariats. The State Secretariat of Internal Affairs became the main security agency of the country, while the State Secretariat of Defence was given authority over the armed forces. A new State Secretariat of Foreign Affairs was also formed, headed by Foreign Secretary Akram Yunus, which established several diplomatic missions with countries that had recognised the republic.

President Khan, as part of his party's socialist policy, nationalised a large portion of the economy, notably utilities and food production facilities, and a fair amount of the manufacturing and construction industries as well. The state also created a social security system, providing unemployment insurance and retirement pensions, as well as income for disabled persons. Many larger corporations were able to avoid nationalisation by being converted into employee-owned cooperatives. Khan's administration also began large-scale development of social housing throughout the nation's main urban areas, followed by a comprehensive campaign of land reform, which involved state appropriation of multiple unused homes as well as the collectivisation of many farms and the creation of an aid commission for private farmers.

In the spring of 1980, a series of protests emerged, mostly in West Bank cities and Port Said, contesting the results of the 1979 election. Most of the protest organisers were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been barred from running in the election due to the fact that it had never been recognised by the pre-occupation government. At first, the government was passive and simply denounced the demonstrators, but the following day forcibly dissolved the protests, resulting in at least 100 deaths. Over the following weeks, Internal Affairs officers arrested multitudes of Brotherhood members; however in the end most were released without charges, but the group itself was outlawed the following year and membership made a felony.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, commanded by Arafat, fought alongside the Syrian Army against Israeli forces in Lebanon from 1982 to 1983, during that country's civil war. After Israel's withdrawal from involvement in Lebanon, Palestinian forces mostly withdrew as well, but continued to support the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in an advisory capacity until the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990. After the end of the civil war, the government established strong diplomatic ties with Hezbollah, which Palestinian leadership saw as a dependable ally against the Israeli threat and the unstable backdrop of the postwar Lebanese coalition government. This strategic relationship with Hezbollah, which peaked in the mid-90s amid violent confrontation with Israel, continues to the present day.

In 1984, the Muslim Brotherhood staged massive demonstrations throughout urban areas of Palestine, protesting the secular nature of the government and calling for an attack against Israel. After the beginning of large riots which the police failed to disperse, Khan ordered a crackdown, and the Republican Guard besieged multiple demonstrations and security forces arrested scores of armed Islamists, many of whom opened fire on government troops or burned Ba'ath Party offices and police buildings. In the following weeks, the government raided all known Muslim Brotherhood offices and arrested leaders; membership in the organisation was made punishable by death according to an executive decree.

In 1985, the State Secretariat of Health was established by the Cabinet of Palestine. The order effectively nationalised the healthcare industry in the nation, providing large subsidies to hospital infrastructure and contracting several corporations to build new public hospitals and clinics. The subsidies also greatly expanded the faculties of health at Al-Quds University and Port Said University. The following year, the oil and natural gas industry was nationalised as well, and the Palestinian and Egyptian governments jointly overhauled and expanded the Suez Canal Company and related joint infrastructure. These decisions greatly strengthened the economy of Palestine, allowing it to rebuild after the destruction and desolation of war, and significantly reducing unemployment and raising the standard of living.

## Nuclear crisis

In late September 1984, Israel accused the Palestinian government of performing underground nuclear research; indeed, Israeli intelligence had been aware of a large, elaborate underground military facility constructed in the mountains of the southern Sinai since at least 1980. Due to the highly clandestine nature of the Palestinian government's defence projects and related infrastructure, no "smoking gun" as it were could be found, despite several joint Mossad-CIA reconnaissance operations, some of which were directly thwarted by Palestinian counterintelligence, later admitted to by the American government. Israeli leadership pressured the United States to issue an ultimatum to Khan over the alleged program; however, due to the pressure from the Soviet Union, a staunch ally of Palestine at the time, no action was taken. However, several rounds of sanctions proposals proceeded at the United Nations Security Council throughout 1985.

In early 1988, Israel destroyed several research facilities near Jericho in an airstrike, prompting a UN Security Council meeting. At the session, Israeli leadership accused the Palestinian government of developing a clandestine nuclear weapons program, claiming the site they struck was being used to enrich weapons-grade uranium. Palestine immediately denied this accusation, stating the airstrikes were an illegal aggression. After two months of mounting international pressure, Khan agreed to allow UN weapons inspectors into the country, to determine the truth regarding the Israeli accusations. On 16 May 1988, the inspectors arrived in the West Bank, leaving almost a month later, reporting that no evidence had been found of nuclear development, whether for energy or military use. However, the committee did find traces of uranium in the ruins of the facility destroyed in the Israeli airstrike, which Israel held up as proof of the program and of the Palestinians' unwillingness to acknowledge its existence.

Several analysts maintain that the Palestinian Armed Forces have been nuclear capable since as early as 1985. As is the case with Israel, however, the government continues to flat-out deny the existence of a nuclear program, which could not be reliably demonstrated to be a fact by foreign parties. If true, however, this would make Palestine the first Arab country to successfully develop nuclear weapons.

## Death of Khan

President Khan died in a plane crash on 25 March, 1990. Yasser Arafat, who had served as vice-president since 1988, became acting president. Elections were called for the following September. An elaborate state funeral was held that April in Port Said, attended by dignitaries from most Arab League member states and many other nations, including Venezuela, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union.

Yasser Arafat succeeded Khan as Regional Secretary of the Palestinian Regional Branch, and was inaugurated as president on 20 January 1991, after which he began an intense program of expansion of the armed forces. Jerusalem Airport was converted into a military airbase after the late 1991 opening of Rifaf Khan International Airport nearby. In September 1993, Israel and Palestine signed the Oslo Accords, which created a roadmap to forming an agreement over the status of Jerusalem, which was still under Israeli control and continued to be an issue for Palestinians.

As a result of increasing resentment toward Israel among the Palestinian population, as well as calls for the government to champion the rights of Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem in apartheid-like conditions, Arafat became the embodiment of nationalism and the wider pan-Arab struggle against Israel. The cult of personality surrounding Arafat grew to relatively large proportions in the months leading up to the first Mount Zion War; indeed, many contemporary commentators noted the high approval ratings of Arafat and the Ba'ath Party amongst the general Palestinian population, who supported Arafat's challenging stance toward Israel. When the state appropriated many failing businesses important to the country's economic infrastructure as per Ba'athist policy, many additional jobs were created, and the standard of living doubled between 1989 and 1994, further contributing to Arafat's popularity.

## First Mount Zion War

In January 1993, two Israeli spies were captured by Palestinian counterintelligence at a military facility in Jericho. One of the spies, agent Martha Rishon, died in custody after ingesting a cyanide capsule; her partner, however, agent Joseph Rabinovich, was taken into custody by the Republican Guard, and eventually faced a military trial which sentenced him to death. After pleas for clemency from Israel and many Western countries were ignored, the Israeli Mossad launched an elaborate mission to rescue Rabinovich, involving a body double, which ultimately failed. The execution of Rabinovich on 15 August 1993 began a period of heightened tension between Israel and Palestine, with an escalation of threats back and forth, and both nations' armed forces beginning to mobilise.

On 29 January 1994, after Israel attempted to construct a barrier in the Mount Zion neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, which would have permanently cut it off from the rest of the West Bank, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades launched an attack on Israeli forces guarding the construction in the neighbourhood. Arafat ordered a full mobilisation of the army the following day, and by the beginning of February, Israeli and Palestinian regular forces were clashing heavily around East Jerusalem. After five weeks of fighting, and the Israeli siege of Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as the grounding of the Palestinian Air Force and destruction of the new international airport, the Palestinians signed an armistice with Israel. Ramallah and Bethlehem in the end did not fall to Israel, but East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli occupation until after the second Mount Zion War two years later.

After the signing of the armistice, Arafat ordered a further expansion of the military, especially the Air Force, blaming the Palestinian loss of East Jerusalem on a lack of capable air power. In August 1994, oil deposits were discovered in Palestinian territorial waters in the Mediterranean, near Arish. The Palestine Oil and Gas Co., state-owned since the nationalisation in 1989, began the construction of several drilling rigs, most of which were completed by the end of 1995. The increased revenues from oil sales secured Arafat's proposed expansion and modernisation of the Air Force as well as the Palestinian Navy, including a new base near Port Said. Roman Kindi, recently promoted to Air Chief Marshall, led the rebuilding and expansion of the Air Force, which would prove invaluable a year later. The two major domestic defence contractors were also nationalised, and significantly expanded once public revenue could be invested in arms manufacturing, which created thousands of new jobs.

## Second Mount Zion War

The armistice, as a last-minute ceasefire based on mutual interest, failed to address any of the issues at the root of the conflict. The Oslo Accords, which stipulated that Israel begin a process of transferring East Jerusalem to UN control, was ignored, and the city remained under Israeli military occupation through 1994 and 1995. Naturally, by the end of 1995, resentment over Israeli control of East Jerusalem, which for Palestinians meant evictions from their property and loss of access to the Old City and the al-Aqsa Mosque, was already beginning to boil over. In early October 1995, President Arafat issued an ultimatum to Israel: Either return control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City, to the Palestinian government, or there would be another war.

In November 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Israeli Jewish extremist Yigal Amir. Rabin's successor, Shimon Peres, originally blamed the assassination on a conspiracy by Palestinian intelligence. It later became clear Amir had acted alone; however, the stage was already set for another confrontation. In late January 1996, Peres called Arafat's bluff, stating all of Jerusalem was Israeli sovereign territory, and greatly increasing the military presence and security precautions there. The following day, Arafat narrowly escaped an attempt on his life by Israel's Mossad while inspecting a Gendarme regiment in Nablus, provoking him and the Palestinian government to follow through on their threat.

The Second Mount Zion War officially began when the Palestinian Army besieged Israeli positions in East Jerusalem, which involved heavy shelling as well as close air support on both sides. After the IDF downed seven Palestinian MiGs, Arab citizens in the city began rioting, quickly taking up arms and taking control of the city from the inside. Within a week, East Jerusalem was under Palestinian military control, but suffering heavy bombardment from Israeli jets, including parts of the Old City itself. This time round, however, the Palestinian Air Force was not grounded and continued to challenge Israeli air superiority; Air Chief Marshall Roman Kindi would later receive the Hero of Palestine award from the presidency for his decisive action in coordinating close air support for the Palestinian takeover of East Jerusalem, which ultimately forced Israeli leadership to the negotiating table. However, what followed was a disaster in which several besieged Israeli forces in the American Colony of central East Jerusalem threatened to use sarin gas against their attackers, to which the Palestinian Army responded by an actual sarin attack, resulting in multiple Israeli casualties and hundreds of civilian casualties on both sides.

After the Palestinian Army took control of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City following the sarin attack, Peres and Arafat were invited to official negotiations by the United Nations. After many false starts, both parties agreed to the UN proposal, which allowed East Jerusalem to remain under Palestinian control, but made the Old City a demilitarised zone, which would be monitored by the UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) divisions stationed at the Old City. On 25 March 1996, after just over two months of fighting, an armistice was signed, and the MFO divisions arrived in Jerusalem.

In March 1998, Palestine became a member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, renouncing the intention to develop or keep chemical weapon. A month later, the last stocks of sarin gas and other nerve agents were destroyed by the Palestinian Gendarmerie with assistance from the Russian government. Notably, however, the leadership did not answer calls from the West to sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel repeated its accusations from a decade earlier of a Palestinian nuclear program, and stated that any further Palestinian attempts to enrich uranium would be seen as a national security threat. Nevertheless, the millennium would end without any serious confrontation.

## War on Terror

After 9/11 the United States and its NATO allies invaded Afghanistan. President Arafat immediately stated his opposition to foreign interference in the country, stating that the Afghan people would be better off fighting the Taliban themselves. Nevertheless, Palestinian military intelligence worked to sabotage an al-Qaeda network in the West Bank connected to Bin Laden, providing useful information to the Saudi government which was passed on to the Americans. The CIA, however, often accused Arafat's administration of secretly supporting Islamist groups, which the government denied as patently ridiculous, citing the secular nature of the Ba'ath Party and its history of conflict with Islamist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Shortly after the start of the Iraq War in 2003, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad strongly condemned the American invasion before the Arab League summit and later the United Nations, calling it an illegal move based on a false narrative. From the beginning, the Palestinian government stood firmly in support of the Syrian position, refusing to cooperate with the regional pro-US alliance. American CIA officials would later admit that in Iraq, they could never tell which clandestine organisations were genuine al-Qaeda and which were fronts for Palestinian or Syrian military intelligence.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist Iraqi government, the foreign allied regional branches of the Iraqi-dominated Ba'athist movement ceased to function formally, leaving the Syrian-dominated movement as the sole representative of Ba'athism and the Ba'ath Party. The two Jordanian parties merged to form the Damascus-aligned Jordanian Regional Branch, sending delegations to the Syrian as well as Palestinian government.

## Death of Arafat

President Arafat died from an intracerebral hæmorrhage on 11 November 2004, at 75 years of age, in Paris, France where he had been receiving medical treatment for several days. Poisoning was suspected as a possible cause of death, but was never proven. A large, elaborate state funeral was held two weeks later in East Jerusalem and Ramallah, where Arafat was buried in the National Martyrs' Cemetery. Vice-president Roman Kindi, who had served as Air Chief Marshall (head of the Air Force) during the 1996 Mount Zion War, had become *de facto* leader of the Ba'ath Party's Palestinian Regional Branch in early 2000 as Arafat aged, and was appointed Vice President by Arafat a year later. Following Arafat's death, Kindi became acting president until the upcoming elections, which were scheduled for May 2005.

Kindi was nominated by the Palestinian Regional Branch to run as its presidential candidate, which was officially confirmed in January 2005. In the May presidential election, Kindi won with 78.7% of the votes; the following November, the Ba'ath Party won 89 out of 133 seats in the lower house of the Palestine Arab Congress, the remainder of which went to the Nationalists (27 seats) and the Communists (17 seats). In May 2005, Kindi was inaugurated as President of Palestine.

After his inauguration, Kindi effected a reorganisation of the internal security forces; his role as head of the Air Force prior to election as president contributed to the Air Force Intelligence Directorate becoming the government's most powerful intelligence agency, with authority over the other military intelligence directorates as well as the state security apparatus.

## Arab Spring, occupation of Jordan

*Main articles: Arab Spring; Palestinian occupation of Jordan*
In early 2011, most North African and Middle Eastern countries were affected by a wave of unrest and revolutionary fervour which became known as the Arab Spring. After the Egyptian Revolution, civilian uprisings began in Jordan, leading to the overthrow of the government and flight of King Abdullah from Amman, who was granted asylum in East Jerusalem. Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda militant groups quickly took control of the country, with the government completely surrendering control on 19 June 2011.

On 24 June 2011, President Kindi ordered a general mobilisation of the armed forces. The following day, the Palestinian Army, supported by the Air Force and paramilitary brigades, entered Jordan, quickly taking control of several strategic areas. A ground war ensued in which the Islamist forces had to resort to guerilla tactics, as the Palestinian invasion quickly solidified into an occupation. By the end of 2011, urban areas and the vast majority of the population were under the control of Palestinian and allied forces, with only pockets of Islamist militant insurgent resistence in the eastern desert.

The Jordanian Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party was immediately commissioned by the Palestinian occupation regime to form the new provisional government, also electing a committee to draft a new constitution. King Abdullah was reinstated as monarch, but his role was limited to that of figurehead as the Palestinian occupation and Jordanian Regional Branch controlled the provisional government. In early 2012, several schisms occurred in the Jordanian leadership, leading to a deterioration of the situation. At this point, Kindi decided to extend the military occupation indefinitely, in order to secure the legitimacy of the provisional government led by the Jordanian Regional Branch, and allow elections to be held. Palestinian security agencies were involved in numerous arrests of Jordanian political figures over the following months, especially Muslim Brotherhood members and absolute monarchists, but including supporters of political parties opposed to the Ba'athists as well. In the end, the Jordanian Regional Branch and multiple allied Republican and constitutional monarchist parties agreed to form a coalition, which took over the provisional government in January 2013 and began to resume control over the government institutions and security forces of Jordan.

In 2014, as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took over vast swathes of eastern Syria, Kindi sent several divisions of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and some special forces units of the Palestinian Army to support the Syrian government. In 2015, the Russian government began large-scale military intervention in support of the Syrian government, indirectly strengthening Russian-Palestinian diplomatic relations. In January 2016, President Kindi expelled several Saudi diplomats from the embassy in East Jerusalem, due in part to controversy over Saudi funding of terrorist groups in Jordan and Syria, calling Saudi Arabia the "world's number one supporter, financier and exporter of terrorism" on PBA-TV later that month. The following year, Saudi-Palestinian relations further soured over Saudi-American policy agreements regarding Syria.

In 2015, Palestinian security forces and military intelligence commissioned the Eagle Program, an elaborate clandestine effort to identify and destroy the infrastructure and network of the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Islamist groups, via surveillance, infiltration, interrogation as well as targeted killings. By early 2017, the overwhelming majority of Islamist front organisations and financing structures had been dissolved. Certain Islamist groups which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Syria carried out the Al-Rawda Massacre in a Sufi village on the Sinai's Mediterranean coast at the end of the year, allegedly in retaliation for the Eagle Program and the Palestinian government's related comprehensive counterterrorism efforts. Since the beginning of 2018, however, no major terrorist attacks have taken place, and the situation in Jordan has stabilised to the point that the Palestinian military leadership has begun taking steps to wind down the occupation and turn over full control of the country to the coalition-led provisional government.