Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين, romanized: Filasṭīn), recognized officially as the State of Palestine[i] (Arabic: دولة فلسطين, romanized: Dawlat Filasṭīn) by the United Nations and other entities, is a de jure sovereign state[20][21] in Western Asia claiming the West Bank (bordering Israel and Jordan) and Gaza Strip (bordering Israel and Egypt)[2] with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative center is currently located in Ramallah.[ii][3][4] The entirety of territory claimed by the State of Palestine has been occupied since 1948, first by Egypt and Jordan and then by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967.[7][22] Palestine has a population of 5,051,953 as of February 2020, ranked 121st in the world.[23]
After World War II, in 1947, the UN adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem.[24] This partition plan was accepted by the Jews but rejected by the Arabs. The day after the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel on 14 May 1948,[25][26][27] neighboring Arab armies invaded the former British mandate and fought the Israeli forces.[28][29] Later, the All-Palestine Government was established by the Arab League on 22 September 1948 to govern the Egyptian-controlled enclave in Gaza. It was soon recognized by all Arab League members except Transjordan. Though jurisdiction of the Government was declared to cover the whole of the former Mandatory Palestine, its effective jurisdiction was limited to the Gaza Strip.[30] Israel later captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria in June 1967 during the Six-Day War.
On 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), proclaimed the establishment of the State of Palestine. A year after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian National Authority was formed to govern the areas A and B in the West Bank, comprising 165 “islands”, and the Gaza Strip. Gaza would later be governed by Hamas in 2007, two years after the Israeli disengagement from Gaza.
The State of Palestine is recognized by 138 UN members and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state in the United Nations.[31][32][33] Palestine is a member of the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the G77, the International Olympic Committee, and other international bodies.
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