“Whose land is it?” This question lies at the heart of the Palestinian nationalist struggle. It’s a question tangled in the collapse of empires, the drawing of borders by foreign entities and the establishment of Jewish settlements by Zionist immigrants with a vision of a Jewish homeland. For Palestinians, nationalism is not an abstract ideal. Palestinian nationalism emerged in response to the loss of land, autonomy and recognition—and has evolved into a fight for political self-determination.
From the early 16th century until the end of World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, a vast and powerful Islamic state that extended across northern Africa, Asia minor, to the borders of Persia (Iran) and India. Though formally governed from Istanbul, Ottoman authority in the region was often indirect. Administrative control shifted over time—from Damascus to Sidon and Acre—until 1887, when the area was reorganized into the districts of Nablus and Acre under the province of Beirut. Jerusalem remained an autonomous district reporting directly to the capital. In practice, local elites held real power. Leaders like Dahir al-Umar and Ahmed al-Jazzar operated as semi-independent rulers in Northern Palestine and Acre, consolidating authority through trade monopolies, taxation and military control. Their rule brought a degree of stability and even earned recognition from Istanbul, but it also reinforced elite dominance, curbed local political autonomy and increased dependence on European markets.
In the 19th century, Ottoman reformers sought to modernize their weakening empire. During Egypt’s brief occupation of the region of Palestine (1831–1840), Egyptian authorities implemented policies of increased taxation, land registration and the encouragement of foreign missionary activity. These reforms continued under Ottoman rule after the region was restored to their control, which was accompanied by a growing presence of European consulates, commercial missions and general influence. A key policy during this period, the 1858 Land Law, was designed to formalize private land ownership; instead, it inadvertently facilitated land acquisition by non-Ottomans. Following the anti-Jewish pogroms of the 1880s in Russia and the anti-Semitism unleashed by the Dreyfus Affair in France and throughout Western Europe in the late 1890s, backed by European Zionist organizations, early Jewish immigrants and settler groups began purchasing land in the Palestinian region. Although Jewish settlers were considered Ottoman subjects and lived under the millet system—a framework used to govern primarily non-muslim religious communities, requiring them to pay taxes and granting them some religious autonomy—their growing presence began to displace Palestinian farmers. These land purchases, often made from absentee landlords, some of whom were Arabs themselves, contributed to growing unease in Palestinians about their futures.
By the turn of the 20th century, Arab nationalism was growing across the Ottoman Empire. Palestinians took part in this movement, serving in the Ottoman parliament and participating in the Arab cultural revival known as the Nahda. But as Zionist immigration accelerated, a distinct Palestinian national identity began to take shape—not just as part of the broader Arab awakening taking place in the many Arab states created in the wake of the Ottoman collapse (Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Arabia, and Yemen), but as a direct response to demographic, political and territorial change.
After World War I, Britain took control of the region under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. It was a promise wrapped in contradiction: the British pledged to create a “national home for the Jewish people,” as stated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, while also ensuring “that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities…” Historians recognize, though, that British policy increasingly favored the Zionist project, granting it institutional support and legal recognition. Palestinian political aspirations often faced substantial obstacles, and their leadership felt that Mandate authorities failed to address Arab concerns. For many Palestinians, these obstacles created the impression that they were subjects, not citizens, in a persisting British-colonial system that prioritized Zionist political aspirations.
As Jewish immigration grew—18,000 newcomers between 1919 and 1921, swelling to over 400,000 by the mid-1930s—Palestinian political organizing intensified. The Arab Higher Committee, led by Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini, demanded an end to immigration and land transfers. When petitions failed, resistance turned militant.
The Arab Revolt (1936–1939) was a defining moment in the realization of Palestinian nationalist identity. It was a mass uprising against both British rule and Zionist expansion, combining armed attacks and political boycotts. Britain responded with aerial bombardments, mass arrests and public executions. Though British forces ultimately suppressed the revolt, it demonstrated the extent of Palestinian opposition to British policies and the un-enforced regulations on Zionist immigration, exposing the significant military measures the British employed to maintain control.
World War II brought new urgency. With the Holocaust devastating the European Jewish community, the push for a Jewish state intensified. Zionist militias, including Irgun and LEHI, carried out attacks on British targets in varying locations. In 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. In 1944, Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo. In 1939, the British government issued the White Paper aiming to cap Jewish immigration into Palestine; however, Zionist groups largely ignored these restrictions and continued to facilitate immigration. Following World War II, U.S. President Harry S. Truman persuaded Britain to admit 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Palestinian leaders, many of whom had supported the Allies under the promise of fair treatment—beginning with the Hussein-McMahon correspondence (1915-16)—perceived this shift in British policy as a betrayal.
The Arab League tried to intervene diplomatically, calling for a democratic resolution that respected all residents of Palestine. The Arab League advocated for a unified Palestine with protections for minorities but rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which proposed dividing British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Under this plan, the Jewish state
would receive 56.% of the land, despite Jews comprising less than a third of the population and owning less than 7% of the land at the time. The subsequent UN vote in favor of partition was met with rejection by Palestinian Arab leaders and Arab states, further fueling Palestinian nationalism and contributing to the radicalization of segments of the movement. War followed.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion—Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine—proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv. This declaration, known as the Israeli Declaration of Independence, marked the end of the British Mandate over Palestine and the beginning of Israel as an independent nation. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which followed Israel’s declaration of independence and the subsequent invasion by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes amid the fighting. This mass displacement is known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or ‘Catastrophe’. Israeli forces depopulated and destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Refugees poured into Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank, many never to return to their homes. For Palestinians, the Nakba was not just a humanitarian disaster—it was a foundational trauma that both redefined and unified their collective identity around dispossession and exile.
Nearly twenty years later, Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War further altered the region. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, displacing over 300,000 more Palestinians. Under Israeli military administration, Palestinians in these areas faced land confiscations cited as military necessity, the expansion of Zionist settlements—often considered illegal under international law—and restrictions on movement beyond the enforced borders of these occupied territories. Palestinians also endured violence from some Zionist settlers, compounded by ongoing military conflict.
Post-war, these events pushed the Palestinian nationalist movement into a new phase—less reliant on the Arab states, and more defined by its own political institutions. The PLO, founded in 1964, emerged as the central body of resistance. After the war, it came under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement, which emphasized armed struggle and refugee mobilization. Militant groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also took shape, reflecting a turn toward what some Palestinians considered radical, self-directed resistance, but, conversely, what Israel and the international community considered terrorism. In 1974, the United Nations recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. At this point, Palestinian national identity had emerged as a distinct and independent movement. While it remains connected to the wider Arab world culturally and historically, the identity of Palestinians—one shaped by collective memory—has evolved into a separate and more focused expression of nationhood.
Though fragmented and often contested both from within and without, Palestinian nationalism continues to endure—not as a relic of past conflict but as a living movement, still defined by unanswered questions of land, rights and self-determination. Despite ongoing occupation and geopolitical pressure, Palestinian identity—not yet fully realized—remains anchored in a shared history of loss, an assertion of existence amidst ongoing conflict over land and rights. The fractured legacy of the British Mandate, along with the subsequent wars and inflammatory politics across the region, have contributed to the Palestinians’ continuing quest for statehood and self-determination. The failure to uphold the promises put forth in the original Mandate for Palestine condemned Palestinians to an inescapable condition—as a nation without a state.
