In 1947, the United Nations proposed a partition plan to resolve the conflict by dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international city. The Jewish community, led by the Jewish Agency, accepted the plan, but the Arab leadership rejected it, seeing it as unfair. The plan allocated 55% of the land to the Jewish state, despite Jews making up only one-third of the population and owning less than 10% of the land.

On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared, and the following day, armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded, leading to the first Arab-Israeli War. By the end of the war in 1949, Israel had expanded its territory beyond the UN partition plan, controlling 78% of historic Palestine. This war led to the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” during which an estimated 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced or fled from their homes, many of whom became refugees in neighboring Arab countries.

For Palestinians, the creation of Israel was a devastating loss, leading to decades of displacement and statelessness. For Jews, it was the realization of a centuries-old dream to return to their ancestral homeland. The two narratives—one of triumph and one of tragedy—have defined the conflict ever since.