RAMALLAH, Palestine According to the bureau, Jews controlled only 6.2% of land in Palestine under British mandate (1920-1948). “Israel now controls around 27,000 cubic meters of land, accounting for 85% of historical Palestine,” the PCBS said.
BACKGROUND: Palestinian territory – encompassing the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem – has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Today, there are approximately 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, comprising about 20% of the total Israeli population. Though Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and participate in political life, they face a web of institutionalized discrimination and exclusion.
The UN partition promised 56 percent of British Palestine for the Jewish state; by the end of the war, Israel possessed 77 percent — everything except the West Bank and the eastern quarter of Jerusalem (controlled by Jordan), as well as the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt).
Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as claimed in the Balfour Declaration of 1917; security grounds, both internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.
Under the British Mandate (1920–1948), the whole region was known as 'Palestine' (Hebrew: פלשתינה [א״י], lit. 'Palestine [Eretz Israel]').
For 3500 years the land of Israel has belonged to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their seed forever by an everlasting and eternal blood covenant recorded in the Bible. Israel is the only nation on earth created by a sovereign act of God (Genesis 12:1-3; 13:16, 15:5, 17:7-8, 22:17-18).
Israel Lands Authority
About 80% of the land is directly owned by Israel, 13% is owned by the JNF, and only about 7% of Israeli land is privately owned. 93% of the land in Israel is government-owned and leased by the ILA to private individuals for periods of 49 to 98 years.
Palestine's Early Roots
Throughout history, Palestine has been ruled by numerous groups, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians and Mamelukes. From about 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire ruled much of the region.
Prior to dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the population of the area comprising modern Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip was not exclusively Muslim. Under the Empire's rule in the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews in Palestine, making up around 5% of the population.
Israeli citizens are not allowed to enter area A (fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority), and it is not recommended for them to enter area B. Israeli citizens are allowed freedom of movement in area C and along all main West Bank roads which connect Israeli settlements to each other and to Israel.
Therefore, if a given area of the West Bank is considered to have become part of Israel, most Palestinians subsequently born in such territory are plausibly entitled to receive Israeli citizenship as a matter of treaty law.
In short, the answer is yes. Whether you are Israeli, American, British, Jewish, or Non-Jewish, anyone can purchase property in Israel. However, being an Israeli citizen puts you in a different tax bracket. Israeli residents pay 0% tax up to a value of NIS 1.6 million, 5% up to the value of NIS 5 million.
Jewish religious belief defines the land as where Jewish religious law prevailed and excludes territory where it was not applied. It holds that the area is a God-given inheritance of the Jewish people based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as on the later Prophets.
The oldest fossils of anatomically modern humans found outside Africa are the Skhul and Qafzeh hominids, who lived in northern Israel 120,000 years ago. Around 10th millennium BCE, the Natufian culture existed in the area.
From 1517 to 1917, what is today Israel, along with much of the Middle East, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
The History of Jerusalem during the Kingdom of Jerusalem began with the siege of the city in 1099 as part of the First Crusade. This resulted in Jerusalem being conquered by Christian forces, after it had been under Muslim rule for nearly 450 years.
Indigenous Peoples in Israel
Israel's Arab Bedouin citizens are Indigenous to the Negev (Naqab, in Arabic) desert, where they have lived for centuries as a semi-nomadic people, long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The declaration of a State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين) took place in Algiers on November 15, 1988, by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Amnesty International demonstrates that Israeli authorities treat Palestinians as an inferior racial group who are defined by their non-Jewish, Arab status. This racial discrimination is cemented in laws which affect Palestinians across Israel and the OPT.
Read a brief summary of this topic. Jerusalem, Hebrew Yerushalayim, Arabic Bayt al-Muqaddas or Al-Quds, ancient city of the Middle East that since 1967 has been wholly under the rule of the State of Israel.