The Palestine Liberation Organization is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Founded in 1964, it initially sought to establish an Arab state over the entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine, advocating the elimination of the State of Israel. However, in 1993, the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty with the Oslo I Accord, and now only seeks Arab statehood in the Palestinian territories that have been militarily occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.
The member states of the United Nations comprise 193 sovereign states. The United Nations (UN) is the world's largest intergovernmental organization. All members have equal representation in the UN General Assembly.
The history of the State of Palestine describes the creation and evolution of the State of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Arab League, formally the League of Arab States, is a regional organization in the Arab world. The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945, initially with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members.
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.
The Jordanian administration of the West Bank officially began on April 24, 1950, and ended with the decision to sever ties on July 31, 1988. The period started during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the portion of Mandatory Palestine that became known as the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The territory remained under Jordanian control until it was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War and eventually Jordan renounced its claim to the territory in 1988.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by delineating the Green Line as the legal boundary between Israel and the Arab countries, left the Kingdom of Egypt in control of a small swath of territory that it had captured and occupied in the former British Mandate for Palestine: the Gaza Strip. This period saw the creation of the All-Palestine Government within the All-Palestine Protectorate, an Egyptian client state that would last until 1959, a year after the Republic of Egypt and the Second Syrian Republic merged to form a single sovereign state known as the United Arab Republic. The Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip was briefly subsumed by Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis and ended entirely during the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, after which the Israeli Military Governorate was established in the territory and succeeded by the Israeli Civil Administration in 1981; the direct Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip ended with the 2005 disengagement plan.
The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined on 5 May 1945. Since its formation the Arab League has promoted the Palestinian Arab cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including by imposing the Arab League boycott of Israel. The Arab League opposed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. On 15 May 1948, the then seven Arab League members coordinated an invasion of what was by then the former British Mandate, marking the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
The International law bearing on issues of Arab–Israeli conflict, which became a major arena of regional and international tension since the birth of Israel in 1948, resulting in several disputes between a number of Arab countries and Israel.
The modern borders of Israel exist as the result both of past wars and of diplomatic agreements between the State of Israel and its neighbours, as well as an effect of the agreements among colonial powers ruling in the region before Israel's creation. Only two of Israel's five total potential land borders are internationally recognized and uncontested, while the other three remain disputed; the majority of its border disputes are rooted in territorial changes that came about as a result of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which saw Israel occupy large swathes of territory from its rivals. Israel's two formally recognized and confirmed borders exist with Egypt and Jordan since the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty and the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, while its borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories remain internationally defined as contested.
The Arab League is a political organization aiming to help integrate its members economically, and solve in-between conflicts without asking for foreign aid. It possesses elements of a state representative parliament, while issues of foreign affairs are usually dealt under the United Nations supervision.
The 2007 Arab League Summit, also called the 2007 Riyadh Summit, refers to a convention of leaders from 21 members of the Arab League who gathered in Riyadh for the 19th Arab summit in March 2007. The summit convened on the 28 March 2007 and was preceded by a set of preparatory meetings starting on 24 March 2007. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana also attended the summit. The main goal of the conference was to re-launch the Arab Peace Initiative.
Annexation, in international law, is the forcible acquisition and assertion of legal title over one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. In current international law, it is generally held to be an illegal act. Annexation is a unilateral act where territory is seized and held by one state, as distinct from conquest, and differs from cession, in which territory is given or sold through treaty.
The Israeli Peace Initiative is a compromise plan given by the political left within Israel in response to the Arab Peace Initiative issued by the Arab League in 2002 and again in 2007. It was released on April 6, 2011. It compromises with the Palestinians in an effort to establish peace in Israel. One of the key differences from other peace plans is that the Israeli Peace Initiative proposes a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It also calls for the establishment of the Temple Mount as neutral ground between Palestine and Israel, and the retention of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City within Israel. Additionally, the peace plan addresses Israel's relations with its Arab neighbors, including settling the dispute over the Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria in the Six-Day War.
United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19 is a resolution upgrading Palestine to non-member observer state status in the United Nations General Assembly. It was adopted by the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly on 29 November 2012, the date of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and the 65th anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of resolution 181(II) on the Future Government of Palestine. The draft resolution was proposed by Palestine's representative at the United Nations. It, however, maintains the status of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian people within the United Nations system. Though strongly contested by the United States and the government of Israel, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed support for the measure. The motion was seen as largely symbolic, though it could allow Palestine to start proceedings at the International Criminal Court against Israel. Its timing, following a year in which Palestine obtained membership of UNESCO and the UN Security Council was unable "to make a unanimous recommendation" on their application for full UN membership, and coming several days after the completion of Operation Pillar of Defense, was also noted. The new status equates Palestine with that of the Holy See within the United Nations system and implicitly recognises Palestinian sovereignty.
The All-Palestine Government was established on 22 September 1948, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, to govern the Egyptian-controlled territory in Gaza, which Egypt had on the same day declared as the All-Palestine Protectorate. It was confirmed by the Arab League and recognised by six of the then seven Arab League members, with Transjordan being the exception. Though it claimed jurisdiction over the whole of the former Mandatory Palestine, its effective jurisdiction was limited to the All-Palestine Protectorate, which came to be called the Gaza Strip. The President of the protectorate was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, former chairman of the Arab Higher Committee, and the Prime Minister was Ahmed Hilmi Pasha. The legislative body was the All-Palestine National Council.
Since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, a number of countries and individuals have challenged the country's political legitimacy. Under international law, Israel has always met the standards for recognition as a sovereign state. However, over the course of the Arab–Israeli conflict, the country's authority has been questioned on a number of fronts. Critics of Israel may be motivated by their opposition to the country's right to exist or, since the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, their disapproval of the established power structure within the Israeli-occupied territories. Some have called for Israel's destruction.
The Arab Higher Committee or the Higher National Committee was the central political organ of Palestinian Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Haj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans and political parties under the mufti's chairmanship. The committee was outlawed by the British Mandatory administration in September 1937 after the assassination of a British official.
There are a wide variety of views regarding the legal status of the State of Palestine, both among the states of the international community and among legal scholars. The existence of a state of Palestine, although controversial, is a reality in the opinions of the states that have established bilateral diplomatic relations. It is a non-member observer state at the United Nations since November 2012. As of 2 June 2023, a total of 139 countries recognize it.
The Trump peace plan, officially titled "Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People", was a proposal by the Trump administration to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. President Donald Trump formally unveiled the plan in a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 28 January 2020. The plan had been delayed by two years and previously rejected by the Palestinians, who were not invited to the meeting.
