The Roman general Titus subdued the Jewish people and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. A few decades after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Roman emperor Hadrian wanted to make Jerusalem a Roman metropolis and banned all Jewish traditions. Many Jews then revolted under the leadership of Bar Kokhba.

In 135 Bar Kokhba’s rebellion was finally put down, and Hadrian decided to expel the Jews from Jerusalem and exterminate their religion. He sold all Jewish prisoners into slavery, banned the teaching of the Torah, renamed the province “Syria Palaestina”, and replaced synagogues with Roman temples.

Hadrian’s actions contributed to the Jewish people not regaining control of their homeland for over 1,800 years.
The UN Partition Plan of 1947 stipulated that the British Mandate of Palestine would be divided into a Jewish and an Arab state, which was rejected by the Arabs. When the State of Israel was proclaimed in accordance with this UN decision in 1948, Egypt occupied Gaza, while Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria, an area today known as the West Bank. Until the Six Day War in 1967, there were no strong international demands for a Palestinian state.

When Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini proclaimed an independent Palestine in the Gaza Strip in 1948, it was annulled by Egypt, while Transjordan’s King Abdullah I, named himself “King of Arab Palestine” and annexed the West Bank.
King Abdullah was assassinated by followers of Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini in July 1951 while visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Since the six-day war of 1967, the Palestinian movement, with massive support from the international community, has established itself in the West Bank and Gaza.

Only in 1988 did Jordan renounce all demands on the West Bank, the same year that the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO proclaimed the independence of the Arab state of Palestine. The state was immediately recognized by the Arab world and by the communist vassal states of the Soviet Union. (No Western European country has so far recognized the Palestinian state, except for Sweden and Iceland).
Israel withdrew from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in 2005. Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority’s governing party Fatah in the West Bank have conflicted with each other since 2008, and President Mahmoud Abbas currently has no political control over Gaza. No free elections have been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006.