Padraig OMalley - The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine – A Tale of Two Narratives

15161918 Ottoman rule over Palestine

18821902 First aliyah: 25,00035,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine

1897 Theodor Herzl convenes First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland; World Zionist Organization (WZO) is founded and announces goal of establishing a home for the Jewish people in Palestine

1901 Jewish National Fund is established

190414 Second aliyah: 40,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine, account for 12 percent of Palestines population; HaShomer (the first Jewish defense organization in Palestine) is founded

1908 Palestine Office is founded in Jaffa

1914 World War I begins

191516 Husayn ibn AliMcMahon correspondence between Britain and Transjordan

1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France

1917 Balfour Declaration

191923 Third aliyah: 40,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine

1920 San Remo conference assigns mandate for Palestine to Great Britain

192021 Arab attacks on Jewish areas of Jerusalem and Jaffa; the Haganah is formed (and in 1948 is absorbed into the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF); Histadrut is founded

1922 British White Paper reaffirms Balfour Declaration and limits Jewish immigration to absorptive capacity of Palestine; British Mandate ratified by League of Nations includes Balfour Declaration

1923 Paulet-Newcombe Agreement, or Paulet-Newcombe Line, defines boundaries of Palestine

192429 Fourth aliyah: more than 80,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine

1925 Hebrew University of Jerusalem opens

192939 Fifth aliyah: more than a quarter of a million Jews immigrate to Palestine

1929 Palestine Office, renamed the Jewish Agency, is designated to represent the Jewish people provided for in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine; riots at Western Wall, Jerusalem, Safed, and Hebron

1930 Shaw Commission investigates causes of riots and produces Hope Simpson Report to address immigration, land-settlement, and development issues; report recommends limiting Jewish immigration based on economic absorptive capacity of Palestine; Passfield White Paper halts Jewish immigration and land sales

1931 British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald letter negates the Passfield White Paper

193345 Holocaust

1936 Arab Higher Committee is formed

193639 Arab revolt: seven years after Hope Simpson Report, Jewish population has risen by more than 150 percent, an additional sixty-two settlements have been created, and Arab and Jewish clashes in Jaffa trigger uprising

1937 Peel Commission recommends partition

1939 British White Paper rejects Peel recommendations, proposes unitary state and majority rule; Jewish immigration is restricted; World War II begins

1942 Zionist conference is held in New York City; Biltmore Declaration calls for Jewish state throughout Palestine

1945 Arab League is formed in Cairo; Germany surrenders; World War II ends; United Nations is created

1946 Menachem Begins Stern Gang bombs British headquarters at King David Hotel, Jerusalem, aiming to evict British authorities from Palestine; U.S. president Harry Truman announces support for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states

1947 British cabinet decides to refer question of Palestine to UN General Assembly; UN establishes special committee on Palestine (UNSCOP); UNSCOP recommends partition of Palestine; UN General Assembly votes to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and a Palestinian state and to internationalize city of Jerusalem; Jewish Agency welcomes report; Palestinians reject it

1947 Israeli-Palestinian intercommunal war; Nakba catastrophe begins, creating Palestinian refugees

1948 British Mandate in Palestine ends; Chaim Weizmann meets with Truman; United States proposes UN trusteeship in Palestine; Jewish attack on Deir Yassin; Arab attack on bus convoy to Mt. Scopus; Haganah captures Haifa; Israel declares independence; United States extends de facto recognition; Arab armies invade; UN Resolution 194 calls for repatriation of 750,000 refugees who were expelled or fled from Palestine (the Nakba ) and the internationalization of Jerusalem

1949 Israel signs armistice agreements with Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt; conflict ends

1950 West Bank and East Jerusalem annexed by Transjordan; Israel becomes member state of UN

1956 Suez Crisis

1959 Fatah, Palestinian nationalist organization, is founded

1964 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is founded in Cairo by Arab League Palestinian National Council (PNC); legislative body of PLO is formed

1965 Fatah undertakes first guerrilla attack on Israel

1967 Six-Day War: Israel defeats Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, annexes East Jerusalem, and occupies West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and Golan Heights; Khartoum Conference reaffirms Arab efforts to eliminate effects of Israeli aggression on grounds that lands occupied are Arab lands and the task of regaining these lands is on Arab states; United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passes Resolution 242, calling for withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in Six-Day War and for states in region to recognize one anothers sovereignty; Fatah joins PLO