Facts In Brief
The first Israeli passport was issued in 1948 to Golda Meir, who became Israel’s fourth prime minister twenty years later.
The United Nations estimates that 726,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes during the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948 to become refugees.
Israel was created in 1948.
Yasser Arafat’s younger brother, Dr. Fathi Arafat, founded the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) in 1968 to provide medical services among the Palestinian Arab population like the Canadian Red Cross. The PRC is an observer member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. See: http://www.palestinercs.org/
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964.
Jericho is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth.
Although the official seat of Israel’s government is in Jerusalem, most foreign countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv.
Waves of immigration of Jews to Palestine were called aliyot (plural form), from the Hebrew word meaning “ascent.” The last aliyah (singular form) occurred in the 1930s until the outbreak of the Second World War.
Yasser Arafat was the chair of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the first democratically elected president to the Palestine National Council.
The Legislative Council of the Palestine National
Authority (PNA) was elected on 20 January 1996 and was
made up of eighty-eight seats.
