We could say that the current situation has two key moments in history: one is under the British mandate, then between 1947-1948, when the partition of the Palestinian territory was imposed by force, and the creation of a state exclusively for Jews in a territory densely populated by Palestinians of Arab-Muslim majority with a significant Christian and Jewish minority, who also aspired to independence. ².

Through the controversial Partition Plan (UN Resolution 181 of 27 November 1947), the foreign powers gave the minority of Zionist settlers - mostly from Central Europe - 54% of Palestine and the most fertile land, while the native population, which constituted three-quarters of the total, had to settle for 46% of their land. Moreover, the new Israeli state continued, over the course of several wars, to expand its borders by gobbling up more land from the areas earmarked for the creation of a Palestinian state, so that today the Zionist state comprises 82% of the total historic territories of Palestine.

The remainder is made up of the so-called Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank, two small portions without territorial continuity where - especially in Gaza - 2.5 million Palestinians live in overcrowded conditions, the majority (70%) of whom are refugees expelled or fled from the annexed area.

Moreover, this 22% of divided historic Palestine is militarily occupied since 1967 and continuously colonised by Israeli settlers, while the territory is fragmented into incommunicado Bantustans, interrupted by dozens of Israeli settlements and hundreds of military checkpoints and roads for the exclusive use of Palestinians. settlers.

In 1948 the Zionist dream became a reality. The fledgling state of Israel launched an ethnic cleansing designed and executed by Zionist terrorist militias that became known as al-Nakba, or "the catastrophe", the moment when Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and move mainly to Gaza and the West Bank. It was an episode of enormous significance for the identity of today's Palestinians and involved the destruction of more than 600 villages and the expulsion of more than 750,000 people who today, more than 75 years later, have become more than 6 million refugees, the largest and longest-lived number of refugees in the world. The impact of this ethnic cleansing, physical fragmentation and psychological dislocation on the entire Palestinian people was devastating.