In June 1967 Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. For Palestinians, this was a second catastrophe: the remainder of historic Palestine now fell under direct Israeli military control. The occupation has continued for more than fifty-five years and has been accompanied by a large-scale settlement enterprise designed to make withdrawal politically and demographically impossible.
Military Occupation and Annexation
East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in a move never recognized by the international community. The rest of the West Bank and Gaza were placed under military government. A dense network of checkpoints, permits, military orders, and administrative regulations came to regulate every aspect of Palestinian life — movement, construction, family reunification, economic activity, and political expression. Collective punishment, house demolitions, and administrative detention became routine tools of control.
The Settlement Project
From the beginning of the occupation, Israeli governments facilitated the construction of civilian settlements on occupied land. These settlements, illegal under international humanitarian law, were designed to create irreversible facts on the ground. Today hundreds of thousands of settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, controlling large areas of land, water resources, and strategic hilltops while Palestinians face home demolitions, movement restrictions, and settler violence. Area C, under full Israeli civil and military control, comprises the majority of the West Bank and is the primary zone of settlement expansion and land confiscation.
The First Intifada
In December 1987 a mass popular uprising — the First Intifada — erupted across the occupied territories. It was characterized by strikes, demonstrations, commercial shutdowns, stone-throwing, and the creation of parallel popular committees that attempted to organize daily life outside the structures of the occupation. The uprising demonstrated that military occupation could not extinguish Palestinian national aspiration. It forced the international community to confront the reality of the occupation more directly and contributed to the diplomatic opening that eventually produced the Oslo Accords. The First Intifada remains a central reference point for Palestinian popular resistance and collective agency under conditions of overwhelming military disparity.