An ancient civilisation.
Through each empire's rise and fall, an indigenous Palestinian Arab presence persisted — farming, trading, building, and calling this soil home.
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أرض قديمة
The Ancient Land
AN ANCIENT CIVILISATION
Palestine, early 20th century. · Library of Congress · Matson Photograph Collection.
Nº 01
10,000 YEARS
The crossroads of three continents.
Palestine is among the oldest continuously inhabited landscapes on earth. Nestled at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe, it gave birth to some of humanity's earliest urban centres — Jericho, with settlements dating back 10,000 years, is among the oldest known cities in recorded history.
Typical Palestinian village, c. 1898–1914. · Library of Congress · Matson Photograph Collection.
Nº 02
EMPIRES CAME AND WENT
Through each empire's rise and fall, an indigenous presence persisted.
Through the centuries, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottomans left their marks upon this land. Yet through each empire's rise and fall, an indigenous Palestinian Arab presence persisted — farming, trading, building, and calling this soil home.
Palestinian women in tatreez embroidery, c. 1896–1919. · Library of Congress · Photographs of Palestinian Life Collection.
Nº 03
A SOCIETY IN FULL
Living civilisations.
Palestinian society was rich in culture before any modern political border was drawn. It had poets and merchants, embroidery and architecture, sacred shrines shared across faiths. Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron — these were living civilisations, not empty terrain awaiting a destiny assigned elsewhere.
Olive oil soap factory, Nablus, c. 1903. · Library of Congress · Photographs of Palestinian Life Collection.
Nº 04
THE OLIVE TREE
Identity, inheritance, and root.
The olive tree is Palestine's enduring symbol. Ancient specimens, some over a thousand years old, were tended across generations by families who could trace their lineage to the same hillside for centuries. These trees were not merely agricultural; they were identity, inheritance, and root.
By the early 20th century, Palestinians — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Arabs — constituted the overwhelming majority of this land. They lived in over a thousand villages and towns, many with names stretching back millennia. This was not terra nullius — empty land. It was full, thriving, and alive.
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The hills of Palestine carry olive trees older than most nations. Their roots hold the memory of a people who have always been here.
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700,000 people. One footnote.
November 1917. The British government issued the Balfour Declaration, pledging a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. The 700,000 Arabs who made up 90% of its population were mentioned only as "non-Jewish communities," their existence reduced to a footnote in a letter that would reshape their world forever.
The Mandate Years
Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), Palestine was transformed. Zionist immigration — driven by a colonial-settler project backed by European powers — dramatically altered the demographic balance. Land was purchased, often through deals with absentee landlords, and Palestinian peasants who had farmed the same fields for generations were displaced.
Palestinians resisted. The Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 — a general strike followed by an armed uprising — was the Palestinian people's first mass revolt against colonialism. Britain crushed it with overwhelming force: mass arrests, executions, village demolitions, collective punishment. The tactics used would be familiar to later generations.
By 1947, Britain — unable to reconcile its competing promises and facing rising armed conflict — handed the problem to the newly formed United Nations. The UN's 1947 partition plan proposed giving 56% of Palestine to a Jewish state, despite Jews owning less than 7% of the land privately. Palestinians and the Arab world rejected it as a fundamental violation of self-determination.
The plan was not a compromise. It was a transfer of Palestinian land, conducted without Palestinian consent, by powers that had already betrayed them once before. The stage was set for catastrophe.