Outcome Palestine - English version

Recorded: 7 November 2026 - Version 2, with timeline and source list. The question and the original answer are unchanged below; dates and sources are in appendices A and B. Translated from Dutch original.

Question (literal)

Do an iterative search into who started it, the Palestinians or the Jews.

Answer (literal)

Brief preface

The question cannot be answered as posed, and that is not evasive diplomacy but a real problem with the question itself. "Who started" assumes one starting point and one act. The conflict has at least three, and depending on which you choose, you get a different answer. What the sources do show is quite clear - so let me give it per layer and then say where the balance lies.

First two terminological corrections that are not details:

1. "The Jews" is the wrong category. The conflict is not about Jews as a religious group but about Zionism as a political project. Around 1900 the majority of Jews were not Zionist, and part was fiercely anti-Zionist.
2. "The Palestinians" as one actor did not yet exist in 1880. A Palestinian national identity forms largely in reaction to Zionism, from about 1900-1920. That is not an argument that they were not there - it is an argument that the causal arrow is more complex than "A hit B".

Layer 1: the structural beginning (1882-1917)

The Zionist movement takes the initiative here: Hibbat Zion and the First Aliyah from 1882, Herzl's Der Judenstaat in 1896, the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 with the explicit objective of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and then the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the mandate. The Arab-Palestinian national movement emerges in the decades after as a reaction to this.

That is the core of the matter: the political project that caused the struggle came from the Zionist side. Without that project there would have been no conflict in the form we know it.

But that is an answer about a structural act - immigration, land purchase, colonization - not about a violent act. And the Palestinian population was no passive recipient: there was resistance, and that resistance was sometimes violent first.

Layer 2: the first physical violence (1883-1939)

Here the picture becomes much more unambiguous, to the disadvantage of the "Palestinians did not start" narrative:

1. 1883, Rosh Pinna and March 1886, Petah Tikva count in the literature as the earliest violent clashes - Palestinian farmers attacking Jewish settlements.
2. 1920, Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem, 1921, Jaffa - here the perpetrators are clearly Arab, with fatal outcome among Jews.
3. 1929, Hebron and Safed - the clearest case of one-sided Arab violence: dozens of Jews murdered.
4. 1936-39, the Arab Revolt - a multi-year revolt against both the British mandate and Jewish immigration, with massive violence against Jews. Here Jewish counter-violence also emerges: Irgun and later Lehi commit bomb attacks on Arab markets and civilians.

So: until 1939 the first and most deadly violence in this series is from the Arab-Palestinian side.

Layer 3: 1947-48, where it is really disputed

1. Arab side rejected the UN partition plan of 29 November 1947 and violence began almost immediately - from 30 November 1947 with attacks on Jewish traffic and Jewish quarters.
2. But the Zionist side went militarily on the offensive in April 1948 with Plan Dalet, before the British withdrawal and before the Arab invasion of May. Operations like Nachshon, Deir Yassin (9 April 1948) and subsequent expulsions were offensive, not defensive.
3. The pan-Arab invasion of 15 May 1948 is the clear-cut act of aggression on which the Israeli reading rests: five Arab armies invaded the new state.

The honest summary of 1947-48: the Arab side opened hostilities and rejected partition; the Zionist side then carried out an offensive that largely destroyed Palestinian society. Both are true.

Where the balance lies

If you define "started" as the first physical act of violence between the two communities: Palestinian farmers, 1883-1886.

If you define it as the first act that made the conflict inevitable: the Zionist decision to colonize Palestine and establish a Jewish majority state there, 1882-1917.

If you define it as the first conscious choice for war instead of partition: the Arab rejection of resolution 181 and the violence from 30 November 1947.

My answer, short

To the question as posed: the Palestinians, if you look at the first acts of violence - 1883/1886, and then 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and November 1947. But the Zionist movement started the conflict as a political project, and from April 1948 it carried out the decisive offensive that destroyed Palestinian society.

See original Dutch gist for full Appendix A timeline and Appendix B source list.

Original: https://devplace.net/gists/0263b381cd75-iterative-converge-search