From the 19th century to the Oslo Accords (1993–1995)
Introduction
This pamphlet was first published in Greek one year after October 7, 2023. On that day, Hamas and other Palestinian organizations’ militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel by breaking out of the Gaza Strip. An estimated 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed in the attack, while some 250 were taken hostage and brought back to Gaza.
The October 7 attack was a huge blow to the prestige of the Israeli state, which appeared totally unprepared and unable to prevent an assault of such magnitude, despite its powerful army (the Israeli Defense Forces – IDF) and its notorious intelligence service (the Mossad).
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies responded to Hamas’ attack by launching a genocidal war against the Palestinian people. As of the time of this publication (August 2025), at least 61,500 Palestinians have been killed.
Most of the victims in Gaza and the West Bank have been civilians — women and children — as the IDF has repeatedly bombed schools, hospitals, churches, refugee camps, and even UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugees) facilities.
After almost two years of relentless bombardment, Gaza has been flattened and turned into a ghost area. All basic infrastructure — housing, water, sanitation, energy, food production, health care, etc. — has been destroyed, while hundreds of thousands have been injured. The more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza are constantly on the move, seeking safe refuge within a tiny piece of land of just over 360 km², which is continuously bombed.
At the same time, attacks by the Israeli army and armed Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank are continuing. In September 2024, Israel escalated the conflict with terrorist attacks using beepers and walkie-talkies, while razing entire building blocks in Beirut and assassinating the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. In June 2025, Israel — followed by the US — attacked Iran, in a move that threatened to turn the entire Middle East into a war zone. Now, the Israeli government seems to be preparing for a military occupation of the Gaza Strip.
Internationalist Standpoint has analysed and taken a stand on these dramatic events in a series of articles published on internationaliststandpoint.org since October 2023. We will not repeat all of our analysis and positions here. The purpose of this long article is to outline the main milestones in the historical development of the Palestinian question, from its origins at the end of the 19th century to the Oslo Accords (1993–1995).
We believe that a more comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the history of the Palestinian question can better equip those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s demand for freedom and self determination, those who are involved in the movement against the war and genocide inflicted on the Palestinians, and those who struggle for peace, freedom, and prosperity for all the peoples of the Middle East and the wider region — regardless of religion or nationality.
The Birth of the Palestinian National Question
The Palestinian question has taken different forms over its hundred-year history — a history of mass uprooting, occupation, brutal oppression, endless massacres, and untold suffering, which the Palestinian people are still experiencing today.
The policies of the imperialist powers and the Zionist–Jewish bourgeoisie are primarily responsible for the creation of the Palestinian question, the ethnic oppression, and the bloodshed that has lasted for so many decades. On the other hand, the ruling classes of the Arab countries and the various Palestinian leaderships, which have changed over time, have failed to lead the Palestinian people to the goal of freedom and the creation of an independent state. The cycle of violence and chaos seems impossible to break, and the cost is being paid by innocent people — overwhelmingly Palestinians, but also innocent Israeli citizens.
The Palestinian people are experiencing genocide and ethnic cleansing, living in miserable conditions and without a state of their own. Yet Israeli citizens also do not live in security and peace, as promised by the Zionist narrative.
To understand the Palestinian question in depth, we need to go back in history and start from the beginning.
The roots of the Palestinian question lie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The historical circumstances of that period can be briefly summarised as follows:
- The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, to which the Middle East and North Africa belonged.
- The economic, political, and military penetration of British and French imperialism into the region.
- The attempts to establish independent Arab nation-states.
- Anti-Semitism and pogroms against Jews in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, combined with the emergence of the political movement of Zionism.
The Disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
Since the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire had been in a process of disintegration. The major imperialist powers of Europe — mainly Britain and France — were expanding their economic and political influence in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East.
This economic penetration, combined with reforms under the Ottoman Tanzimat period and the growing influence of European powers, paved the way for capitalist methods of production. European capital, backed by its national governments, invested in the region, building railways and other infrastructure, and thus opened up domestic economies to the world market.
As feudal relations receded, capitalist relations developed. These changes had a major impact on the wider region of Palestine, where land began to be concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.
At the same time, France and Britain were steadily strengthening their political influence by opening consulates and “educational institutions.” In doing so, they were preparing to divide among themselves the spoils that would result from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. These were the decades before World War I, when competition among the most powerful imperialist countries for international markets and world domination was becoming increasingly intense.
Like the Balkans, the geographical area of the Middle East was a mosaic of many different ethnic and religious groups: Arab Muslims (mainly Sunni and Shia), Druze, Jews, Orthodox Christians (both Greeks and Arabs), Catholic Christians, and others. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century were Arab Muslims (see data below).
The different ethnic and religious groups lived side by side, with no border divisions, as they all belonged to the Ottoman Empire. The administrative system of the Sultan’s power was based on a network of local notables who acted as intermediaries between the central state and the various provinces.
From the end of the 19th century until 1948, around 50 notable Palestinian families concentrated considerable political, economic, and religious power in their hands. Most of these notables held positions in the religious hierarchy of Islam (muftis, imams, etc.).
At the same time, the various currents of Arab nationalism began to develop. Arab nationalism expressed the interests of the rising bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes in the big cities, who were mainly merchants and gained influence through the opening up of the Palestinian agricultural economy to the international market.
However, Arab nationalism also reflected the aspirations of the poor peasant masses of the countryside (the fellahin). The fellahin, increasingly reduced to tenants on their own land, faced the constant threat of eviction whenever the new, often foreign, landowners decided to expel them.
The rise of Arab nationalism was also fuelled by the growing fear among the Arab masses of the increasing Jewish immigration from Europe, which had begun in the 1880s under the direction of the Zionist movement. During this period, Zionist organisations were purchasing land and establishing agricultural settlements in Palestine.
A key aim of Zionist policy was to remove the local Palestinian population from the land, in order to make both land and jobs available for the new Jewish settlers. The first outbreaks of violence occurred when large landowners — mostly absentee landlords and often non-Palestinians — sold tracts of farmland to Zionists.
Zionism and the Jewish Socialist Movement
In Palestine, as in other areas of the Middle East and North Africa, there had been Jewish communities for centuries. By the late 19th century, the Jews of the region were a small minority, while the vast majority of the population were Arab Muslims.
The majority of Jews lived in the diaspora. Large Jewish communities existed in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, in countries such as Russia and Poland. The Jews of Europe were known as Ashkenazim, while those expelled from the Iberian Peninsula were called Sephardim.
In the period under discussion, diaspora Jews faced discrimination, racism, persecution, and oppression. The ruling classes and European governments scapegoated Jews, blaming them for the social crises they themselves had created — much as refugees and immigrants are scapegoated today.
In Poland and Russia, violent pogroms were launched against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, around 4 million Jews emigrated to Western European countries and the USA in search of safety.
Jewish communities were, of course, not uniform. There were deep class divisions: on one side stood wealthy Jews (merchants, bankers, industrialists, etc.), and on the other, the poor working-class Jews.
These class divisions found political expression in two opposing currents within the Jewish communities. Gradually, sections of the Jewish bourgeoisie turned to Zionism, while large sections of the Jewish working class embraced socialist and revolutionary ideas.
Jewish workers, because of the double oppression they suffered, played an important role in the labour and socialist movement — either through the Social Democratic parties in their respective countries or through the General Jewish Workers’ Federation (Bund). For socialist Jews, the primary task was the struggle for rights and emancipation in the countries where they lived, and they linked this struggle to the revolutionary fight of the entire working class against capitalism.
In contrast, for the Zionists, the central goal was the creation of a “Jewish homeland” — a Jewish national state. For the Jewish capitalists, the Jewish state promised by Zionism could best serve their own class interests, both in competition with other capitalists and in relation to the working class.
Some early tendencies within the Zionist movement claimed to have a connection to socialism. The most important organisation of this type was Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”), founded in 1905 in Russia and acquiring an international character in 1907. In essence, however, Zionism was the political expression of the class interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie.
It is no coincidence that the Comintern (Communist International or Third International), at the time when Lenin, Trotsky, and other major Marxist revolutionaries were in its leadership, refused to admit pro-Zionist “socialist” organisations into its ranks and described Zionism as a tool of British imperialism. It also predicted that Jewish immigration to Palestine would lead to bloody conflicts between Jews and Arabs.
In its early stages, Zionism was a minority political current among diaspora Jews, for whom the only “homeland” was the countries where they had lived for generations and where they generally saw themselves as part of the working class. Zionism represented not a struggle for liberation but an “escape” to an unknown land.
In 1896, the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State, which called for a “return to Palestine.” In 1897, the first international congress of Zionist organisations was held in Basel, Switzerland, at which the World Zionist Organization was founded. In 1906, the 5th Zionist Congress decided that the goal of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine.
From 1882 to 1914, two large waves of immigration brought around 65,000 European Jews to Palestine, increasing the Jewish share of the population to about 13%. The Zionists promoted the slogan: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” But Palestine was not uninhabited — at the dawn of the 20th century, the Arab population exceeded 600,000.
The growing pressure felt by Arabs from the steady increase of the Jewish population and the eviction of poor Palestinian farmers from their land led to the first violent clashes between the two communities. In 1909, Zionist organisations formed paramilitary groups known as Hashomer (“The Watchman”). These units were tasked with guarding newly acquired lands and the growing number of Jewish agricultural settlements.
World War I and British Imperialism
The Zionist leadership pursued a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they organised and financed — largely with the support of wealthy Zionist capitalists — the immigration of Jews to Palestine in order to alter the demographic balance. On the other hand, they approached the imperialist powers, seeking to convince them that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would serve their strategic interests. Such a state, they argued, would not only offer a “solution” to the Jewish question but would also safeguard imperialist interests in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
As a result, the Zionist movement established close links with the economic and political elites of Europe, particularly in Britain.
World War I broke out in August 1914. The Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of Germany. In order to weaken the Ottomans, the British promised the Arabs independence in exchange for launching a revolt against the Ottomans — and thus against the German-led alliance.
In 1916, the Arab Revolt, led by Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi in the Hejaz region (the western coast of present-day Saudi Arabia), began under direct British guidance. The revolt succeeded: the Ottoman Empire was defeated, and in 1918 Hussein’s son, Faisal, established an Arab government in Damascus with the participation of Syrians, Iraqis, and Palestinians.
But the imperialists are not known for their honesty. At the very time they were promising independence to the Arabs, Britain and France secretly signed the Sykes–Picot Agreement in 1916 (named after the negotiators Mark Sykes of Britain and François Georges-Picot of France).
The Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Origins of the British Mandate
The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Middle East into zones of influence between Britain and France. Britain took control of Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq, while France claimed Syria and Lebanon. The imperialist powers drew arbitrary borders—often literally with a ruler—creating the straight lines that still mark today’s maps. In 1920, the French ousted Faisal, burying the prospect of an independent Arab state—“Greater Syria”—once and for all.
The agreement provoked anger across the region. Between 1919 and 1920, violent riots erupted in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. After 1917, Palestine came under British control and administration, a period that lasted until 1948, when the State of Israel was established. Officially, this era was called “British Mandate for Palestine”.
The Balfour Declaration
A turning point in the creation of Israel was the Balfour Declaration. In November 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour wrote to the Zionist leader and wealthy capitalist Lord Rothschild:
“His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”
This was the first explicit commitment by British imperialism to support the Zionist plan for a Jewish state in Palestine.
The First Clashes
The Balfour Declaration was incorporated in full into the “British Mandate” for Palestine, approved by the League of Nations in 1923. The League—described by Lenin as the “League of Thieves”—was the forerunner of the United Nations in the interwar period. Under the Mandate, Britain undertook to create the conditions for a Jewish national state and was obliged to assist Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine.
The Mandate also granted the “Jewish Agency for Israel” official status as a public body with broad economic and social powers. Until then, the Agency had been responsible for Jewish immigration and settlement from the diaspora. Now, with Britain’s backing, it evolved into a parallel embryonic state and organized the Jewish militia, the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israeli army.
British policy under the Mandate greatly strengthened the Zionist side and accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the early 1920s, the population of Palestine included around 700,000 Arab Palestinians, 83,000 Jews, and 80,000 Christians and Druze. By the mid-1930s, Jews made up about 30% of the population.
Land ownership also shifted rapidly. Zionist organizations bought large tracts from poor, indebted Palestinian farmers, while Jewish capital from abroad poured into Jewish businesses. For Palestinians, the British Mandate became inseparable from the Zionist project. Tensions exploded in April 1920 with the first major mass clashes between Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish community.
By 1929, the situation had become explosive. On August 23, under the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, nationalist Arabs launched attacks against Jews in response to Zionist provocations. The riots began at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Arab attacks targeted Jewish communities as well as Zionist institutions. The death toll was 133 Jews and 116 Arabs.
In the face of these developments, the young PCP (Palestinian Communist Party) took a stand against nationalist conflicts and in favour of unity between Arab and Jewish workers.
According to the then (Jewish-born) leader of the PCP, Joseph Berger-Barzilai, Britain fomented nationalist and racist hatred in order to divide the two communities because it feared the unity of Jewish and Arab workers.
In a statement, the PCP cited the deteriorating living conditions of Arab workers and peasants as the main cause of the 1929 riots. According to the PCP, the British colonial administration managed to turn what was initially an anti-colonial movement into an anti-Jewish pogrom, and reactionary Jewish and Arab leaders each played their part in fomenting religious conflict by turning the Western Wall into a symbol of a struggle for power.
At this stage, the PCP maintained the consistent class-internationalist position developed by the Comintern when Lenin and Trotsky were in its leadership, before the rise of Stalin in 1924. The PCP’s position promoted the unity of Arab and Jewish workers against British imperialism, Zionism, and the Arab reactionary national elites. At the time, the PCP published two newspapers in two languages and sought to organise Palestinian and Jewish workers into joint trade unions.
Later, when the dominance of Stalinism in the USSR turned the Comintern into a representative of the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy abroad, the PCP abandoned its independent class position. From the 1930s onwards, the policy of the Comintern and the USSR towards the Palestinian cause was characterised by constant zigzags according to what suited the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy at any given moment. Thus, while in the 1930s the bureaucracy and Stalin sought “national unity” with the Arab nationalist movement, later, during the 1948 war, they appeared to ally themselves with Zionism, recognised the establishment of the State of Israel, and sent arms through Czechoslovakia to the Haganah.
The first Arab uprising of 1936–1939
Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, along with the establishment of other fascist governments in Europe during the same period, intensified persecution against the Jews of Europe and further strengthened Zionism, leading to new waves of immigration. Between 1929 and 1939, an additional 250,000 Jews emigrated from Europe to Palestine.
This situation led, in April 1936, to the first major Palestinian uprising. In its first phase, the uprising took the form of a massive general Arab strike that lasted for six months, until October of that year. In its second phase, between 1937 and 1939, it developed into armed clashes between guerrilla groups and local chieftains in the countryside.
The leadership of the uprising was initially held by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), which was dominated by urban nationalist elements, landowners, and religious leaders (muftis). The AHC mainly targeted Zionism but avoided a direct confrontation with the British, seeking instead to negotiate with them.
In the second phase of the uprising, leadership passed from the Arab Higher Committee to the religious-Islamic Qassamite movement. The Qassamites took their name from the Islamist guerrilla leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who was killed in a clash with the British in 1935. The Qassamite movement had links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and was influenced by the Islamic doctrine of al-Salafiyya, which advocated holy war (jihad). Their main slogan was: “Jihad, for God and country.”
In July 1937, a British government commission under Lord Peel proposed the partition of Palestine into two states. According to the Peel plan, the Jews would take 20% of the land of Palestine, while the Arabs would take about 70%, which would be incorporated into the single Arab state of Transjordan. Britain would retain control over Jerusalem and a corridor to the port of Jaffa. The plan also envisaged a population transfer, overwhelmingly to the detriment of the Arab Palestinians.
At the time, Britain exerted enormous influence over the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt, treating both as “strategic allies.” Through these two Muslim countries, it sought to implement policies that served its own interests without provoking opposition from the broader Arab Muslim masses. This is why Britain preferred incorporating Palestinian territories into Transjordan rather than creating an independent Palestinian state.
The Zionists welcomed the partition plan, which favoured them, while the Palestinian Arabs rejected it. The Peel plan played a decisive role in transforming the uprising from a mass movement of general strikes, demonstrations, and protests led by Arab nationalists into an armed movement led by the Qassamites.
The Qassamites won massive support among poor peasants in the Palestinian countryside, reaching some 20,000 armed fighters. In response, Britain mobilised troops and launched a brutal crackdown, leaving 5,000 Palestinians dead, 10,000 wounded, 30,000 displaced, and over 2,000 homes of suspected insurgents demolished.
By the end of the uprising in 1939, the Zionists had emerged stronger. Jews now constituted 31% of the total population and dominated industry, banking, and commerce. The Haganah had by then become an experienced and well-organised military force. On the other hand, some of the Islamic currents leading the insurgency began developing links with Hitler’s Nazi regime in reaction to British imperialist policies.
In particular, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, turned to Hitler’s Germany on the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally.” Husseini met Hitler in 1941, resided in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, adopted a publicly friendly attitude towards the Nazi regime, and helped organise a Bosnian Muslim unit in the Waffen-SS.
In 2015, Netanyahu attempted to exploit these events to blame Palestinian Muslims for the Holocaust of the Jews in the Nazi death camps—an historical falsification that amounted to an indirect “exoneration” of the Nazis.
Establishment of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba
World War II also played a pivotal role in the development of the Palestinian question.
The extermination of 6 million Jews – along with Roma, LGBT people, communists, trade unionists, and others – in Nazi concentration camps had a catalytic effect on Jewish consciousness.
The Zionist project promised Jews a safe homeland in Palestine. The prospect of a Jewish state was also supported by the United States, which emerged strengthened from World War II and took over the reins of global dominance from Britain.
On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, which provided for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab and a Jewish state, with Jerusalem to remain under international administration. Britain announced it would withdraw from Palestine.
The UN decision favoured the Zionist side. While Palestinians made up about 70% of the population (around 1.4 million people) and, before 1947, owned 92% of the land, the resolution gave them only 43% of the territory. By contrast, Jews, who made up 30% of the population (about 600,000), were allocated 57% of the land.
Immediately after the UN resolution was made public and Britain’s withdrawal was announced, Haganah and other Zionist militias began clearing territories of their Palestinian inhabitants.
On May 14, 1948, the day before the British mandate in Palestine officially ended, the Jewish People’s Council proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel. The following day, May 15, the first Arab-Israeli war began when troops from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia entered the former British Mandate territories.
The war ended in the summer of 1949 with an Israeli victory. Israel now controlled 77% of historic Palestine – significantly more than the territory allocated to it by the UN in 1947. In addition, Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
As a result of the war, about 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and became refugees in neighbouring Arab countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt). Their homes and property were expropriated by the new Israeli state.
The refugees were settled in camps, living in miserable conditions and in deep poverty. Other Palestinians remained in areas now part of Israel, where they faced oppression, repression, and systematic discrimination. The Israeli state imposed martial law on Palestinian villages and towns from 1948 until 1966.
In Israel, the 1948–1949 war is officially called the “War of Independence.” For Palestinians, however, it is remembered as the “Nakba,” meaning “Catastrophe” or “Destruction.”
The Nakba shaped the contemporary Palestinian question, whose core elements remain:
a) the mass displacement of Palestinian refugees alongside the occupation of Palestinian territories by the newly established State of Israel, and
b) the absence of an independent Palestinian state.
The post-war world
The end of World War II shaped a new global balance of power. The United States emerged far stronger than Britain and France and became the undisputed leader of the capitalist countries of the West.
The USSR also expanded its influence in Eastern Europe, where capitalism was overthrown and power was transferred to Communist Parties—under conditions of a one-party bureaucracy. In Eastern Europe, no genuine socialist regimes with workers’ democracy were established, unlike the early years of Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution. Instead, the regimes in Eastern Europe were from the outset deformed workers’ states, reflecting the nature of the USSR after Stalin’s rise to power.
In the USSR and Eastern Europe, economies were nationalised, capital expropriated, and central planning applied. But rather than power passing to the working masses, it became concentrated in the hands of a privileged and parasitic bureaucratic elite within the state and party apparatus. The foreign policy of the USSR was a continuation of the internal policy of the bureaucracy, primarily aimed at maintaining its privileges rather than overthrowing capitalism internationally. On this basis, Stalin agreed at the Moscow and Yalta conferences with British and US imperialists to divide the world into spheres of influence, establishing a new global status quo.
The resulting balance between these two competing blocs after World War II became known as the Cold War.
The Middle East, lying on the southern border of the USSR, with its vast oil reserves, and Egypt, with control of the Suez Canal, became even more strategically important within the Cold War context.
After World War II, peoples in former colonial countries rose up demanding independence from the shackles and brutal exploitation of British, French, and other Western imperialisms. Mass movements and revolutions erupted across Asia, Africa, and Latin America (China, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, etc.). This was the era of the Colonial Revolution—the revolutions of colonised peoples.
In the Arab world, the working class and poor masses were radicalizing to the left and looking towards the USSR (and secondarily towards Mao Zedong’s China). However, the mass left parties in Arab countries lacked the independent, class-based, internationalist policies that the Bolsheviks had applied to the national question.
In contrast to the Bolshevik policy, the Arab Left adopted the Soviet bureaucracy’s stance, which was dictated by maintaining the post-war status quo rather than promoting socialist revolution as the way to overthrow imperialism and national oppression.
The Arab Left embraced the Stalinist Stages Theory. According to this theory, in countries oppressed by imperialism, national independence and bourgeois parliamentary democracy must be achieved first; only after this process is completed should the question of socialist revolution be raised.
The practical task arising from the Stages Theory was to create a Popular Front of national unity between the working class and the local ruling class of the oppressed countries, to oppose imperialism and national oppression. The result was that bourgeois-nationalist political forces led the anti-colonial movements. Naturally, for these bourgeois nationalists, defending their own class interests for the period after independence took precedence over the anti-imperialist struggle.
Thus, the withdrawal of British imperialism from its various post-WWII possessions, combined with the divide-and-rule policy Britain methodically implemented globally, led to many national conflicts and unresolved issues, such as the Cypriot, Kurdish, and Middle East conflicts, to name a few.
