Hamas, an acronym of its official name, Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military movement governing parts of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Christians are a religious community of the Palestinian people consisting of those who identify as Christians, including those who are cultural Christians in addition to those who actively adhere to Christianity. They are a religious minority within the State of Palestine and within Israel, as well as within the Palestinian diaspora. Applying the broader definition, which groups together individuals with full or partial Palestinian Christian ancestry, the term was applied to an estimated 500,000 people globally in the year 2000. As most Palestinians are Arabs, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Christians also identify as Arab Christians.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the conflict include the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security, water rights, the permit regime, Palestinian freedom of movement, and the Palestinian right of return.
This timeline of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict lists events from 1948 to the present. The Israeli–Palestinian conflict emerged from intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine between Palestinian Jews and Arabs, often described as the background to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The conflict in its modern phase evolved since the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 and consequent intervention of Arab armies on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs.
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory", and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also uses the term "occupied Palestinian territory". The government of Israel and its supporters use the label "disputed territories" instead.
Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. In 2012, in a de facto recognition of statehood, it was designated a non member observer state by the United Nations, and it is recognized by more than two thirds of UN member states. Palestine shares borders with Israel to the west and north, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. The state comprises the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The population of Palestine exceeds five million people, and covers an area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi). Jerusalem is its proclaimed capital and the official language is Arabic. The majority of Palestinians practice Islam while Christianity also has a significant presence. Rafah is the largest city and Ramallah serves as the administrative center.
Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was a Palestinian political leader and co-founder of Hamas, along with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Palestine is a geographical region in West Asia. It is usually considered to include modern-day Israel and the State of Palestine, though some definitions also include parts of northwestern Jordan. Other historical names for the region include Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, or the Holy Land.
The Green Line or 1949 Armistice border is the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It served as the de facto borders of the State of Israel from 1949 until the Six-Day War in 1967, and continues to represent Israel’s internationally recognized borders with the two Palestinian territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian political violence refers to actions carried out by Palestinians with the intent to achieve political objectives that can involve the use of force, some of which are considered acts of terror, and often carried out in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian groups include self-determination in and sovereignty over Palestine, or 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. This includes the objective of ending the Israeli occupation. More limited goals include the release of Palestinian prisoners or the Palestinian right of return.
Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights since the Six-Day War of 1967. It previously occupied the Sinai Peninsula and southern Lebanon as well. Prior to Israel's victory in the Six-Day War, occupation of the Palestinian territories was split between Egypt and Jordan, with the former having occupied the Gaza Strip and the latter having annexed the West Bank; the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights were under the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria, respectively. The first conjoined usage of the terms "occupied" and "territories" with regard to Israel was in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which was drafted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and called for: "the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East" to be achieved by "the application of both the following principles: ... Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict ... Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
Events in the year 2011 in the Palestinian territories.
The Itamar attack, also called the Itamar massacre, was a terrorist attack on an Israeli family in the Israeli settlement of Itamar in the West Bank that took place on 11 March 2011, in which five members of the same family were murdered in their beds. The victims were the father Ehud (Udi) Fogel, the mother Ruth Fogel, and three of their six children—Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, the youngest, a three-month-old infant. The infant was decapitated. The settlement of Itamar had been the target of several murderous attacks before these killings.
