Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, declared independence in May 1948 and comprises a stretch of land at the east of the Mediterranean Sea.

Jewish people only recently began living in the area as a majority in the last century or so; although Jewish people have lived in the land that comprises Israel for centuries, many of those who live there now are descended from immigrants who arrived there as settlers in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many Jewish people see Israel as their rightful homeland dating back to biblical times. Historically, it is the place where Jewish identity was formed before their expulsion after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans during the first century CE.

The land was previously the homeland of the Arab people known as Palestinians, who refer to the territory as Palestine.

Official Palestinian territory comprises two non-contiguous areas: the West Bank, a parcel of land west of the Jordan River which is occupied by Israel to its north east; and the Gaza Strip, a coastal enclave that borders Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea to Israel’s southwest.

Politically, the Palestinian side was led by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, better known as the political group Fatah. In the mid-2000s, a rival group called Hamas - which had been carrying out terrorist attacks for years beforehand- emerged as a political force in the Gaza Strip, causing a split in the leaders of Palestinian territories. Since then, Hamas has ruled over Gaza while Fatah has controlled the West Bank.

The direct conflict between Israel and Palestine dates to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, but clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinians had been a feature of the region long before that.

Jews began emigrating to Palestine as far back as the late 19th century, when the Zionist movement emerged in central and eastern Europe with the aim of establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the area that corresponded to the historic Land of Israel.

Zionists were particularly concerned with the ongoing persecution of the Jewish people in countries where they lived, especially in Europe where they were subjected to growing hatred and antisemitism.

A series of pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th century - particularly the Kishinev massacre in 1903 - catalysed the movement into considering the need for a resettlement of all Jews to their own nation, where they believed they would be safer.

• Definition of pogrom: a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

During World War I, the British - who were fighting the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over Palestine - expressed support for the aims of Zionism in the form of the Balfour Declaration, a public statement which announced backing for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine - which was overwhelmingly inhabited by native Arabs at the time.

At the time, Palestine was inhabited by a significant Arab majority, though a small Jewish minority also lived there alongside smaller ethnic groups.

The Ottoman Empire broke up after the war and Britain was given a mandate to temporarily rule Palestine by the newly formed League of Nations, until a point when a Jewish state could be created there. It encouraged Jews to move to the area and adopted new immigration policies that led to significant levels of migration to Palestine.

By the 1930s, antisemitism in Europe was reaching fever pitch with the rise of fascism and Jewish people were being persecuted in huge numbers in Nazi Germany. Immigration to Palestine by Jews increased even quicker, which began to result in local tensions and violence between Palestinian groups and British troops, as well as from Zionist terrorists.

• Definition of fascism: Experts disagree about the exact meaning of the term fascism. However, the governments that have been called fascist in the past had certain characteristics in common. Under these governments, the people had few freedoms. They had no voice in the government. Instead, a strong leader controlled everything and became a symbol of the country. The leader built up the police force to punish people who disobeyed. The leader also built up the army and threatened other countries. The leader blamed minority groups for the country’s problems.

In response to the rising number of Jewish people arriving in Palestine, the British Government introduced quotas on the number of Jews allowed to emigrate there, which remained in place during World War II. But in the aftermath of the war, Holocaust survivors from Europe - many of them with nothing to return to in their home countries - continued to arrive.

The British Government, unable and unwilling to control the violence between the new arrivals and Arabs who saw the Zionists as a settling force, eventually opted to withdraw from Palestine.

In response, the United Nations passed resolution 181 (II) in 1947 to divide Palestine into two states: one for Arabs and another for Jews, with Jerusalem - a prominent city for both people - to be placed under the rule of a special international regime.

The plan was welcomed by Jewish leaders but rejected by Arabs, and was never implemented.

On foot of the UN’s vote and Britain’s decision to withdraw from Palestine, Israel formally declared its independence on 14 May 1948. 

However, the decision was not taken well by Arabs living in Palestine or their neighbours and the declaration of independence prompted Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria to invade the country, sparking the First Arab-Israeli war.

The war resulted in a resounding victory for Israel and, along with militia attacks in the years beforehand, it killed around 15,000 Palestinians and forced more than 700,000 others to flee in an event that is known in Arabic as the “Nakba”, which means “catastrophe”.

By the time the war ended in 1949, Israel controlled most of the territory that had been Palestine, with the exception of land west of the Jordan river known as the West Bank (which was occupied by Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (which was occupied by Egypt); control of Jerusalem was also divided between Israel (in the west), and Jordan (in the east).

There were other international tensions throughout the 1950s, but the next significant moment came during the Six Day War in 1967, which saw Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria defeated by Israel in less than a week.

The war saw Israel expand its territory even more, and afterwards it occupied East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank, most of Syria’s Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula; the episode also established Israel as a major military power in the region, and it managed to defeat its neighbours with almost no outside assistance.

Seven years later, Egypt and Syria began a surprise war against Israel on 6 October 1973 known as the Yom Kippur War (which commenced on the holiest day in Judaism) with the aim of getting Israel to cede control of the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

The conflict became something of a proxy war between the US, who helped supply Israel with arms, and the USSR, who were re-supplying Egypt and Syria. It came as a major shock for Israel, which had so resoundingly defeated their Arab neighbours just a few years previously.

• Definition of proxy war: a war fought between groups or smaller countries that each represent the interests of other larger powers, and may have help and support from these.

It eventually led to peace between Egypt and Israel; in 1979, Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt opened the Suez Canal to Israeli ships, which had previously been blocked from using the vital waterway.

However, Palestinian frustrations continued to mount, in part because of the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory and mistreatment by Israeli security forces.

In response, Palestinians staged an uprising beginning in 1987 known as the first intifada (“shaking off” in Arabic). They engaged in years of non-violent demonstrations, which sometimes became violent as protesters clashed with Israeli forces. Around 2,000 people were killed before the end of the uprising in the 1990s, when both sides attempted to bring about an end to the wider conflict.

Talks between the two sides ultimately brought about the 1993 Oslo Accords, historic interim agreements that paved the way for a resolution signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian resistance leader Yasser Arafat.

Under the agreements, Palestinians would be allowed to self-govern in the West Bank and Gaza under the rule of the Palestinian Authority; in return, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation officially recognised the state of Israel and the right of its citizens to live in peace.

But the objective of the accords were never realised, in part because Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist who opposed the accords in 1995. The Palestinian militant group Hamas, a rival of Arafat’s group Fatah, also opposed the accords and sought to position themselves as the ‘legitimate’ resistance movement soon afterwards, targeting Israeli civilians in a series of suicide bombings.

Tensions rose again in the years that followed and in 2000, the Palestinians began the second intifada after the right-wing leader of the Israeli party Likud (and future prime minister) Ariel Sharon visited the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site for both Muslims and Jews (who know it as the Temple Mount).

As with the first intifada, events started as peaceful protests by Palestinians but became violent after Israeli forces fired at protesters and deployed to Palestinian areas. Eventually there was more violence between both sides, including suicide bombings and shootings in Israel. Among Israel’s responses was the construction of a 700km security barrier in the West Bank.

The second intifada ended in 2005, the same year that Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip as part of a “disengagement plan”. More than 8,000 Israeli settlers - many of whom were against the move - were ordered to leave their homes and control of the strip was handed to the Palestinian Authority, which was at this stage led by Mahmoud Abbas following Arafat’s death the previous year.

In 2006, however, the PA held legislative elections across the West Bank and Gaza, which resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas. But because of the group’s violent history and designation as a terrorist organisation, both Israel and the international community refused to recognise a Hamas-led government. After failed attempts between Fatah and Hamas to reach a power-sharing agreement and a subsequent internal conflict, Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip and Fatah took control of the West Bank. Israel also imposed a blockade on Gaza.

The following years were marked by a series of conflicts between Israel and Gaza, starting later in 2006, when Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit; in response, Israel launched a series of airstrikes against Gaza. In late 2008, Israel launched an assault on Gaza called Operation Cast Lead, which left at least 1,000 Palestinians and 12 Israelis dead and which severely damaged parts of the Gaza Strip.

There was more violence in 2012, when rocket attacks by Hamas into Israel led to further airstrikes by Israel on Gaza, which killed almost 200 people. And in 2014, the kidnap and killing of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas led to seven weeks of airstrikes and a ground operation in Gaza, which killed thousands of Palestinians.

On 7 October 2023, groups of Hamas militants succeeded in breaking out of Gaza and attacking civilians inside Israeli territory, in an event which Israel has called its own 9/11. It’s believed that almost 700 Israelis lost their lives, while dozens of others were taken hostage into Gaza. The attack prompted Israel to launch airstrikes and a ground operation into Gaza with the aim of defeating Hamas. 

The war came at a time when Israel was seeking to normalise relationships with other Arab countries, but that aim was significantly hampered by events in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians lost their lives and much of the territory was destroyed.

The next stages of the conflict and any moves towards a possible resolution will be defined in the short-term by the war in Gaza and what happens in the years after it ends.

But as one of the world’s longest conflicts, a host of other issues have built up over the preceding decades which also define the relationship between Israel and Palestine.

The most pressing of these is the roadmap to Palestinian statehood, which was initially set out by the Oslo Accords but momentum on which has stalled in recent decades. Progress was impeded by a lack of effort from various Israeli governments to help Palestine achieve statehood, splits among Palestinian factions, and a general lack of international support for the idea.

There are symbolic questions, like how to split the city of Jerusalem, which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Israel has said that Jerusalem is its capital, but this has almost no international support, with most countries recognising Tel Aviv instead. There are also geographic questions about how to form a state around the non-contiguous territories of the West Bank and Gaza (land swaps with Israel have been proposed, but whether these are feasible remains up in the air). 

The latter problem has been compounded by another big issue: settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law but which have grown significantly in the last number of decades. More than 200 settlements have been constructed in the occupied West Bank since 1967, covering more than 10% of its territory. More than 100 of these have legal status under Israeli law.

The official boundaries of settlements are off limits to Palestinians because they are declared by Israel as ‘closed military areas’, even though they are home to more than 600,000 people.

Settlements are also illegal under international law, specifically Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits the transfer of people from an occupying power – in this case Israel – into occupied territory. 

The takeover of land by settlers not only deprives Palestinians of property rights and freedom of movement, but also impacts their ability to live and sustain their livelihoods by denying them access to water needed for things like livestock, irrigation and domestic consumption.

One of the biggest issues is what Palestinians call their ‘right of return’, the idea that tens of thousands of refugees and millions of their relatives have a right to go back to their homes and property from which they were forced to leave in 1948 and in the 1967 Six Day War. Proponents of the view also say that those who choose not to return, or who can’t, should receive compensation. The view that this is a right is not accepted by Israel’s Government.