Israel and Palestine: One Land, Many Memories

In Jerusalem, a stone can be an archaeological find, a sacred relic, and a political argument at the same time. For a Jew, it may recall the Temple and ancient Judea. For a Palestinian, it may stand inside a city where their ancestors lived for centuries, under empires that changed while villages, families, and neighborhoods remained.

That is the difficulty of the history of Israel and Palestine. It is not only a sequence of wars. It is a land where many memories have become borders. And there is no simple list of owners, from the first to the last. For most of its history, empires ruled here. People of different languages, religions, and identities lived here nonetheless.

To understand today's conflict, we have to begin long before today's states appeared.

The region that the ancient Greeks and Romans called Palestine stood at the crossroads of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia. It was a narrow corridor between the Mediterranean and the desert. The cities of Canaan had their own rulers, temples, and trading networks, but they often lived under Egyptian influence or control.

At the end of the second millennium before Christ, the world of the eastern Mediterranean was shaken. Cities were destroyed, populations moved, and new communities appeared. In that environment, the first Israelite communities took shape in the highlands of Canaan, alongside the Philistines on the coast and other peoples of the region.

The oldest known extra-biblical reference to the name “Israel” appears on the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, around twelve hundred and eight before Christ. The Egyptian text seems to refer to a people, not to an organized state. This is the first crucial distinction: the historical presence of a population is not the same thing as the existence of a sovereign kingdom.

In the centuries that followed, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged. Biblical tradition speaks of a united monarchy under Saul, David, and Solomon, around the tenth century before Christ. Historians agree that Israelite and Judean kingdoms existed, but they still debate the exact size and power of the united monarchy described by the biblical texts.

After Solomon, around nine hundred and thirty before Christ, the kingdom divided. In the north stood the Kingdom of Israel, with Samaria as its capital. In the south stood the Kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital. The division did not erase their shared religious and cultural heritage, but it created two different political centers.

Neither kingdom remained independent forever. In seven hundred and twenty-two before Christ, the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern kingdom. In five hundred and eighty-six, the Babylonians captured Jerusalem, destroyed the First Temple, and exiled part of the population. Later came the Persians, the Hellenistic dynasties, and, for a time, the Hasmonean kingdom, which restored Jewish political independence over a significant part of the region.

In sixty-three before Christ, the Roman general Pompey entered Jerusalem. Judea first became a Roman client kingdom and later a Roman province. Its relationship with Rome was marked by rebellions, taxation, religious tensions, and violence.

In seventy after Christ, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple after the first major Jewish revolt. After the second revolt, the one led by Bar Kokhba, Rome renamed the province Syria Palaestina. The change of name did not erase Jewish presence, nor did it suddenly create a unified Palestinian people in the modern national sense. It does show, however, how often empires used names and administrative divisions to impose their own order.

The Byzantine period followed, then the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Crusaders, Saladin's Ayyubids, and the Mamluks. Jerusalem was sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, while political power changed hands again and again.

In fifteen sixteen and seventeen, the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks and ruled the region for roughly four centuries. There was no state called Palestine at that time. There were administrative districts, cities, villages, and religious communities within the Ottoman Empire. Most inhabitants were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians, alongside Jewish communities, especially in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias.

In the nineteenth century, Europe filled with nationalisms. Peoples increasingly saw themselves as nations that needed their own states. For many Jews, this idea met centuries of persecution, discrimination, and pogroms. Zionism emerged as a movement supporting the creation of a Jewish national home in the historic land of Israel.

Theodor Herzl, a journalist from Austria-Hungary, organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel in eighteen ninety-seven. For its supporters, Zionism was an answer to the insecurity of a minority that could never take European protection for granted. For the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine, however, the arrival of a political movement claiming the same land created fear: who would decide the future of the place where they already lived?

The First World War destroyed the Ottoman Empire. Britain made different promises to different interlocutors and, in nineteen seventeen, issued the Balfour Declaration. The British government stated that it would support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,” while also undertaking not to prejudice the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities.

The wording contained a huge contradiction. It spoke of a national home, not explicitly of a state, and described the Arab population as “non-Jewish communities,” without recognizing its national and political rights in the same way. In nineteen twenty-two, the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for Palestine. The document incorporated the Balfour Declaration, provided for Jewish immigration, and at the same time required protection of the rights of all inhabitants.

During the British Mandate, Jewish immigration increased, especially as Nazism and persecution made Europe increasingly dangerous. After the Holocaust, millions of European Jews had been murdered and hundreds of thousands of survivors were displaced. For many, the need for a safe refuge had become existential.

For Palestinian Arabs, the same period meant the loss of political control over their country, rapid demographic change, land purchases, competing national projects, and British rule without democratic independence. The Palestinian revolt from nineteen thirty-six to nineteen thirty-nine was suppressed by the British, with the cooperation and military assistance of Zionist institutions. Palestinian society emerged weakened, while Jewish armed organizations had grown stronger.

In nineteen forty-seven, Britain handed the problem to the United Nations. The UN special committee proposed, by majority vote, partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, while Jerusalem would be placed under an international regime. The General Assembly adopted the proposal as Resolution one hundred and eighty-one.

The Jewish leadership accepted the plan as a basis for statehood, although it was not satisfied with the borders. The Arab leadership rejected it, considering it unjust that the majority population would lose much of the political homeland and that partition was being imposed by an international body without the consent of the inhabitants. The plan was not implemented peacefully. Civil war between Jewish and Arab forces had already begun.

On the fourteenth of May, nineteen forty-eight, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. For Jews who had survived Europe, it was the return of political sovereignty and the creation of a state that could protect them. For Palestinians, the same process became the Nakba, “catastrophe”: around seven hundred thousand people were displaced or fled their homes during the war, and hundreds of villages were emptied or destroyed.

The war of nineteen forty-eight was not a single moment, but a chain of conflicts that had begun before independence and continued afterward. Armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq entered the war. Israel survived and captured more territory than the UN plan had proposed for it. The West Bank and East Jerusalem came under Jordanian control, while Gaza came under Egyptian administration. No Palestinian state was created.

Refuge became permanent. The UN established UNRWA for Palestinian refugees. Israeli citizens, meanwhile, built a new state under wartime conditions, with Jewish populations arriving not only from Europe but also from Arab and Muslim countries. In both societies, the memory of nineteen forty-eight became a foundation of identity: independence for one people, dispossession for the other.

In nineteen sixty-seven, in six days, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Sinai was later returned to Egypt, but the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza became the core of the Palestinian question in the modern era.

For Israel, the occupation became connected to strategic depth and security after a war it saw as existential. For Palestinians, it meant military rule, restrictions on movement, confiscations, settlements, and the absence of a sovereign state. The UN Security Council, through Resolution two hundred and forty-two, established the framework of “land for peace,” but the political solution never arrived.

In nineteen eighty-seven, the First Intifada erupted, a mass Palestinian uprising against the occupation. In nineteen eighty-eight, the Palestine Liberation Organization declared the State of Palestine and, in practice, accepted the framework of Security Council Resolutions two hundred and forty-two and three hundred and thirty-eight. In nineteen ninety-three, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority was created, and limited self-government began in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

The Oslo Accords did not resolve the hardest questions: borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, and security. In nineteen ninety-five, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist showed how fragile the peace process was. In two thousand, the Second Intifada brought new years of attacks, military operations, closures, and deaths.

In two thousand and five, Israel withdrew its settlements and permanent military installations from inside Gaza. In two thousand and six, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. In two thousand and seven, after an armed conflict with Fatah, it took de facto control of Gaza. The Palestinian Authority retained limited control over parts of the West Bank. Palestinian politics fractured, while Israel and Egypt imposed restrictions on Gaza, which became a densely populated and isolated enclave.

The international community continues to consider the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza occupied Palestinian territories, although the legal and political debate has many dimensions. In its two thousand and four advisory opinion on the wall, the International Court of Justice found that construction inside the occupied Palestinian territory violated international law. Israel challenged the process and the legal assessment, arguing that the wall and security measures were necessary to protect its population from attacks.

On October seventh, two thousand and twenty-three, Hamas and other armed groups attacked southern Israel, killing around twelve hundred people, mostly civilians, and taking hostages. Israel responded with a large-scale military campaign in Gaza, stating that its goals were to destroy Hamas and bring the hostages home. The campaign caused enormous civilian casualties, mass displacement, destruction of infrastructure, and a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Exact figures change constantly, but the scale of the destruction is not in doubt.

By August two thousand and twenty-six, the conflict remains unresolved. Gaza has passed through successive phases of war, displacement, and humanitarian dependence. In the West Bank, occupation, military operations, settler violence, demolitions, and the expansion or entrenchment of Israeli settlements continue, while Israel continues to treat security as an existential need. The two societies do not share the same experience or the same power. They do share one reality: neither can erase the other from the land.

So what does history tell us?

It tells us that ancient Israelite kingdoms existed, but that modern Israel is not simply the same state continuing uninterrupted through the centuries. It tells us that the Jewish connection to the land is ancient and profound, but that antiquity alone cannot decide modern political rights. It tells us that Arab-speaking Palestinian communities are not a recent invention, but part of the region's long social history. And it tells us that the Nakba, occupation, attacks on Israeli civilians, terrorism, settlements, and humanitarian destruction are not abstract words. They are people's experiences.

History does not offer an easy court ruling on who “was first.” It does not work like a property deed passed from hand to hand. But it offers something more demanding: it forces us to see more than one truth at the same time.

Jerusalem is not only an ancient title. It is a living city. Palestine is not only a word on the maps of the British Mandate. It is families, villages, refugees, and a claim to self-determination. Israel is not only a military power. It is also a people carrying the memory of exile, pogroms, and the Holocaust, together with the enduring fear that its security can be lost.

But recognizing one people's fear does not require erasing the rights of the other. And recognizing the Palestinian catastrophe does not require denying Jewish history. The difficult task is not to decide which memory will win. It is to build a future in which neither memory has to eliminate the other in order to exist.