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General History

Palestine, located on the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, has a long and storied history dating back thousands of years. While some families and tribes living in Palestine maintained family lineages throughout that time, the first state-sponsored and comprehensive population registers were taken by the Ottoman Empire, which conquered Mamluk Palestine in 1516. Ottoman Palestine was part of an elayet, or administrative district, based in Damascus, and was further subdivided into five sanjaks: Safad, Nablus, Jerusalem, Lajjun, and Gaza. Although Ottoman control of Palestinian affairs was fairly decentralized and weak during much of this period (with the Empire even briefly losing control of Palestine to Mohammad Ali's Egyptian army in the early 1800's), imperial reforms beginning in the second half of the 19th century led to more direct Ottoman control of the territory. The Empire began taking censuses of its population, including in Palestine, with varying degrees of comprehensiveness up until its collapse in 1918. For more information on these censuses, see Palestine, Ottoman Census and Population Registers.

After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, control of Palestine passed to Great Britain, which formally established the Mandate of Palestine with the support of the League of Nations in 1922. In the decades that followed, tensions increased between native Arab Palestinians and Jewish immigrants to Palestine and their descendants. After World War II, the United Nations proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two distinct Jewish and Arab states, but this plan was never implemented. When Britain withdrew its forces in 1948, war ensued, leading to the establishment of Israel and the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians, many of whom fled to Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring states. Over time, and throughout subsequent conflicts, thousands of Palestinians left the Middle East for the United States, Latin America, and elsewhere. For more information on this migration, see State of Palestine Diaspora.

After 1948, the Kingdom of Transjordan (now Jordan) controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. This continued until the War of 1967, when Israel took control of these areas. After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, administration of Gaza and portions of the West Bank passed to the Palestinian Authority. Since 2007, the Palestinian Authority continues to govern much of the West Bank while Hamas governs the Gaza Strip.

Timeline

• 1516 Palestine is conquered by the Ottoman Empire and administered by the elayet of Greater Syria.
• 1831-1841 Control of Palestine passes briefly to Egypt under the regime of Muhammad Ali.
• 1918 World War I ends and the Ottoman Empire is defeated.
• 1920 Great Britain assumes control of Palestine and begins administering the Mandate of Palestine.
• 1948 British troops withdraw from Palestine, Israel declares its statehood, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are displaced. Israel takes control of many Palestinian territories, while the West Bank and Gaza are administered by Jordan and Egypt, respectively. For more information on Palestinian emigration and immigration, see State of Palestine Diaspora.
• 1967 Following an Arab defeat in the 1967 War, Israel takes control of the West Bank and Gaza.
• 1993 The Oslo Accords are signed and the Palestinian Authority is formed to govern Gaza and much of the West Bank.