A Note on the Definition of "Palestine": Palestine as a conventional nation state does not yet exist, but Palestine is an entity with a distinct population, interests and culture, and it is recognized as such by the United Nations. This profile is presented from that perspective.
Basics:
Country name: Palestine
Total Area: 2,436 sq mi (6,309 sq km), broken down as follows: West Bank: 2,270 sq mi (5,879 sq km); East Jerusalem, 27 sq mi (70 sq km); Gaza Strip: 139 sq mi (360 sq km)
Population: 6.65 million (2007 est.), broken down as follows: West Bank, 2.5 million; Gaza Strip, 1.4 million; Syria, 442,000; Lebanon, 408,000; Jordan, 1.9 million. The total population of Palestinians, including worldwide migrants, is around 10 million.
Median age: 16.7
Ethnic Groups: Palestinians are predominantly Arab
GDP and GDP per capita: $3.45 billion and about $1,500 (2006 estimates)
Government and Politics: Israeli occupations aside, Palestinians are currently governed by two entities. The militant group Hamas won 76 of the Palestinian legislature’s 132 seats in 2006, against 43 seats for Fatah, the more moderate wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Hamas ousted Fatah members after they refused to hand over power. The Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank under the presidency of Mahmud Abbas, who was elected in Jan. 2005. Hamas officials there were ousted from power. Israel still controls maritime, airspace, and most access to the Gaza Strip, and maintains a heavy military presence in the West Bank.
Religion: Palestinians are predominantly Sunni Muslim. About 10 percent are Christian. In the Gaza Strip, the population is overwhelmingly Sunni. About 17 percent of the total population in the West Bank, including Israeli settlers, is Jewish.
Economy: The Gaza Strip’s borders with Israel and Egypt are sealed, reducing Gaza’s economy to a state of siege. “[W]ith a sustained closure on this current scale,” the World Bank said of Gaza’s economic pillars in July 2007, “they would be at risk of virtually irreversible collapse.” Unemployment is around 40 percent. The U.N. . The economy in the West Bank is not better, as it is considerably hampered by more than 500 checkpoints, roadblocks, dirt barriers and other obstacles. Unemployment in the West Bank, too, hovers around 40 percent and is sustained by foreign aid.
Military: There is no formal Palestinian military, but Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon were (and in Syria still are) conscripted into the Palestine Liberation Army, formerly the military arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLA in Syria is controlled by the Syrian military. The Palestinian Authority on the West Bank maintains a national guard made up in part of former members of the Palestine Liberation Army. Several militias, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Fatah Hawks and Hamas, operate either in the West Bank or Gaza, or both, and have launched suicide bombers against Israel.
Human Rights, Civil Rights and Media: The breakdown of Palestinian authority between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority led to the killing some 150 people in the past year, many of them civilians. Palestinian attacks on Israel killed 27 people in 2006, most of them civilians. Armed Palestinian groups fired homemade rockets from Gaza indiscriminately into civilian areas in Israel in 2006, causing two deaths and several injuries. Journalists and aid workers are frequently abducted by Palestinians. Gangs and criminals operate with near impunity. Education and public services are crippled by the violence and lack of funds. Media are not free.
Early History: Palestine has been inhabited continuously for 10,000 years, rarely as a unified entity, never as any single tribe’s or people’s absolute possession. For millennia, it’s been a place of semi-nomadic transience and city states. Jews and Arabs were among the region’s wandering tribes and conquerors, who included Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hittites, Aramaeans, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. A Jewish kingdom ruled Palestine until Babylonians, Greeks and Romans successively destroyed or deported Jews between 171 B.C. and 135 A.D. Jerusalem fell to Islam’s first conquest in 638, and to Ottomans in 1516.
Modern History: Rather than Palestine being part of Jordan, it was actually the other way around, as Jordan constituted two-thirds of Palestine until the British mandate created an autonomous Transjordan in 1920. At the time, Palestine numbered 600,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs and 85,000 Jews. Jewish immigration increased, violence, strikes and revolts exploded between the two groups. Arabs rejected the 1948 partition plan that created Israel and led to the first Arab-Israeli war and the dispossession of 700,000 Arabs’ lands as Israel expanded to its pre-1967 borders.
Current Issues: Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and in the West Bank and Gaza. Following the first “intifada,” or Palestinian uprising, the 1993 Oslo accord gave Palestinian limited autonomy in the occupied territories as a first step to statehood. A second intifada resulted following the breakdown of peace talks in 2000. A surge in Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel led Israel to build a separation wall inside the West Bank, in addition to a wall separating Gaza from Israel. The political situation is at a stalemate, the future uncertain.
Palestinians are wracked by conflict—the chronic, no-exit conflict with Israel, and the internal conflict that has developed between Hamas, the militant Islamic group that doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas controls Gaza. The PA controls the West Bank. The United States, the European Community and Israel don’t recognize Hamas as a legitimate representative of Palestinians despite Hamas’ legitimate parliamentary victory in 2006. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority clash frequently.
