Today’s reality in Jerusalem is rooted in the historical developments of the not so distant past. Many people attribute the problem in Palestine to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, while those with a better understanding of the context might say it all started with the 1948 Nakba (see below). However, the story for the Palestinians starts long before that. It starts with the birth of the Zionist movement in Europe in the late 19th century. The Zionist movement’s project was to establish a “Jewish national home” in Palestine through colonization -- the occupation of Palestinian land and the expulsion of its owners, replacing one people with another.
