GAZA, (PIC)
When the Palestinian scene is reduced to a round of aggression or breaking news, the most important element is lost: that the history of the Palestinian resistance is a long path shaped under British colonialism, deepened with the Nakba, and transformed with the Zionist occupation into an equation of survival, identity, and a political right that does not lapse by prescription. Therefore, reading the history of the Palestinian resistance is a restoration of a context that narratives of hegemony have deliberately tried to erase.
History of the Palestinian resistance before the Nakba
The Palestinian resistance did not begin in 1948, nor with the 1967 occupation, but rather preceded the establishment of the Zionist entity (Israel) itself. Since the late Ottoman era and then during the British Mandate, Palestinians faced an organized settlement project that enjoyed political, military, and financial protection. Here, the clash was early, because people in the villages and cities realized that the issue was not an administrative dispute, but rather a replacement project aiming to uproot them from the land.
The beginning of the Palestinian resistance to the Zionist presence dates back to more than 100 years, as in 1891, a large number of notables of Jerusalem presented a memorandum of protest to the Grand Vizier in Istanbul asking him to intervene to prevent Jewish immigration and prohibit Jewish ownership of Palestinian lands. In the following year, the residents of the village of al-Khudeira and Melbes (Petah Tikva) noticed the growing number of Jewish settlements on their lands, so they carried out an armed attack on them, which resulted in deaths on both sides. In the same period, Jewish writings appeared in European newspapers warning of an imminent Arab revolution because of the Jewish immigration operations that Arabs began to pay attention to.
In the 1920s and 1930s, popular uprisings, strikes, and local armed confrontations emerged. The Al-Buraq uprising in 1929 was not an isolated incident, but rather a sign of the fusion of the national dimension with the defense of the holy sites, a characteristic that remains present in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa until today. Then came the Great Palestinian Revolt between 1936 and 1939, which represented one of the most important chapters of the early Palestinian struggle. The general strike, the boycott, and the fedayeen action in the mountains and villages, all revealed that the Palestinians did not accept the settlement project as a fait accompli.
But this stage also reveals a harsh truth: the Palestinians did not face the Zionist gangs alone, but also faced the British power that suppressed the revolution harshly and destroyed the political, social, and leadership structure of the Palestinian people. This systematic dismantling left a significant impact on what happened later in the Nakba.
The Nakba and the reshaping of the resistance
The year 1948 was not just a military defeat, but a moment of collective uprooting and transforming an entire people into refugees and displaced persons inside and outside the homeland. At this moment, the form of resistance changed by virtue of the change in reality itself. Those who remained inside occupied Palestine in 1948 faced a system based on confiscation, discrimination, and oppression, and those who took refuge in Gaza, the West Bank, and Arab countries carried the memory of the destroyed villages and the right of return as an uncompromising core.
During the 1950s, infiltration and engagement operations across the borders appeared, many of which were linked to attempts to return to the land or recover what was stolen, and then took a more organized fedayeen character. It was clear that the Nakba did not end the cause, but rather moved it to a new phase. The resistance here was no longer just a defense of immediate existence, but a project to recover a usurped homeland.
At this stage, the Palestinian national identity did not fade as its opponents wanted. On the contrary, the refugee camps, exile, and deprivation reproduced a more solid collective consciousness. From the heart of loss emerged the idea that the Palestinian people are not just a refugee file, but the owner of a continuous political and historical cause.
The rise of fedayeen action and the organization of national identity
In the 1960s, the Palestinian resistance entered a more organized stage with the launch of Palestinian national movements and the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization, then the rise of fedayeen action after the 1967 defeat. The occupation of the remainder of historic Palestine, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, confirmed that the conflict had become comprehensive, and that relying on Arab regimes alone was not enough.
Palestinian factions emerged as political and military frameworks carrying the liberation project. The camps and the diaspora, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, turned into arenas of mobilization and organization. Fedayeen action was not just a military activity, but was also a tool to restore independent Palestinian decision-making after years of marginalization and guardianship.
This stage witnessed great momentum, but it was not free of challenges. The clash with regimes, the intellectual and organizational differences between factions, and the imbalance in the power scales, were all factors that affected the path of resistance. However, the impact of those years was decisive in establishing the Palestinian as a political actor and not just a victim waiting for solutions from the outside.
History of the Palestinian resistance under direct occupation
After 1967, the Israeli occupation became direct over Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, and this changed the nature of the engagement. The confrontation was no longer only from the borders or from exile, but from inside the refugee camps, universities, streets, and villages. Here, multiple forms of resistance emerged: armed action, popular organization, national education, preservation of the land, and confronting settlement and Judaization.
Jerusalem was and remains a central title. Every attempt to impose Israeli sovereignty on the city, or to divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially, generated new waves of Ribat and confrontation. In the West Bank, villages threatened with confiscation and settlement became arenas of daily engagement. As for Gaza, it carried a different equation by virtue of population density, siege, and repeated aggression, but it also remained one of the most steadfast and influential fields of resistance.
Here, a distinction must be made between forms of resistance without separating them arbitrarily. The Palestinian people have never worked within a single mold. When political doors are closed, field action escalates. When the occupation becomes brutal in its incursions and arrests, popular resistance turns into a daily necessity. This is not a duality, but a response to a colonial reality with multiple tools.
The first Intifada: The people enter the forefront
In 1987, the first Intifada exploded, and it was a turning point in the history of the Palestinian resistance. This Intifada moved the center of gravity to the occupied interior, and showed that the masses of the people are capable of producing their tools in confrontation: the strike, the boycott, popular committees, pelting the occupation with stones, and building local solidarity networks in the face of oppression.
The strength of the first Intifada was not only in its simplicity, but in its ability to expose the structure of the occupation to the world. A child facing a heavily armed soldier was more eloquent than dozens of speeches. It also restored consideration to the idea that resistance is not exclusive to military organizations, but is a collective act in which women, students, workers, prisoners, and entire neighborhoods participate.
But the occupation responded with extreme violence, through killing, arrest, breaking bones, and siege. However, the Intifada established a historical equation: the Palestinian people, when moving from within, confuse the colonial project no matter how great the tools of oppression are.
Oslo and beyond: Between settlement and resistance
The Oslo Accords opened a complex stage. For many Palestinians, the agreement did not end the occupation, but rather restructured it and gave the enemy wider time for settlement expansion and imposing facts on the ground. The Palestinian Authority arose under heavy restrictions, while Israel continued to control borders, resources, Jerusalem, and vast areas of the West Bank.
Here a great paradox appeared: at the time when peace slogans were raised, bulldozers were swallowing the land, prisoners were filling prisons, and settlement was doubling. Therefore, the resistance did not disappear, but took new forms. With the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, armed and popular engagement returned strongly, especially after the storming of Al-Aqsa and the escalation of Israeli crimes.
The second Intifada was more violent and had a higher human cost, and witnessed incursions, assassinations, and widespread destruction, but it confirmed once again that any political path that bypasses the basic rights of the Palestinian people is doomed to failure. People cannot accept limited self-rule in exchange for giving up Jerusalem, refugees, and real sovereignty.
Gaza and the equation of armed steadfastness
Since the withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and the subsequent imposition of the siege, Gaza has emerged as a central arena in the history of contemporary Palestinian resistance. The occupation tried to turn the Strip into an isolated, exhausted area, but Palestinian factions developed their capabilities despite the siege, bombardment, and repeated destruction.
The successive wars on Gaza revealed something fundamental: that the resistance is no longer just a symbolic case, but a party capable of imposing a cost on the occupation and confusing its calculations. It is true that the military gap is huge, and that Palestinians pay a heavy price with their blood, homes, and infrastructure, but this does not negate that Gaza imposed its political and field presence on the conflict equation.
At the same time, it is not permissible to reduce the entire resistance to its military dimension. Gaza itself also presented other images of steadfastness: remaining under bombardment, restoring life, protecting memory, and refusing to break despite the massacres. This civil aspect of steadfastness is no less important than the armed engagement, because it faces the deepest goal of the occupation: breaking the will of society.
Prisoners, Jerusalem, and the West Bank: Connected, not separate arenas
The history of the Palestinian resistance cannot be understood without the issue of prisoners. Israeli prisons were not only a place for punishment, but an arena for producing awareness, organization, and steadfastness. Hunger strikes, organizational experiences inside detention centers, and the national symbolism of prisoners, all made the prisoner movement an authentic part of the path of resistance.
In Jerusalem, the confrontation is constantly renewed because the occupation wants to control the city demographically, politically, and religiously. Every uprising in Al-Aqsa, and every clash in the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah, or Silwan, confirms that Jerusalem is not a negotiating file but the center of the conflict. As for the West Bank, despite security coordination and heavy restrictions, it kept producing successive waves of resistance, from individual operations to armed formations in Jenin, Nablus, and the northern refugee camps.
This interconnection between Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, 1948 occupied Palestine, and the diaspora is one of the most important lessons of the Palestinian experience. The occupation always tries to fragment geography and identity, while the resistance, in its various forms, shows that the unity of the cause is deeper than all borders and barriers.
Why does this history remain open?
Whoever reads the history of the Palestinian resistance honestly realizes that this history arose because there is an ongoing settler colonialism, and because an entire people refused to turn into a memory or a silent minority in their homeland.
Therefore, the question is not why the Palestinians resisted, but how it was possible for a people subjected to uprooting, siege, killing, and Judaization to abandon resistance in the first place. Tools may change, leaderships may shift, and a stage may escalate and another calm down, but the essence of the cause remains one: a people defending their land, rights, and narrative in the face of a project that wants to erase them.
The idea that deserves to be held onto today is that understanding this history gives the present its meaning, and prevents the occupation from monopolizing the narrative. When Palestine is told by its people, the future becomes less susceptible to falsification.