Palestinian Arab Republic

The Palestinian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية الفلسطينية al-jumhūriyah al-‘arabīyah al-falasṭīnīyah), informally known as Palestine (فلسطين falasṭīn), is one of the 20 federated Arab republics of the Arab Union, located in the Levant Region and bordering, clockwise from the north, the Lebanese Arab Republic, Syrian Arab Republic, Jordanian Arab Republic, and the Egyptian Arab Republic. Home to over 23 million people, the Palestinian Arab Republic is one of the most economically developed republics of the Arab Union and has the third highest standard of living average in the union. Its capital is Jerusalem, and its largest city is Port Said.

Palestine is one of the oldest and most diverse of the 20 Arab republics. The site of the ancient Land of Israel, many Biblical events are said to have taken place in the region over thousands of years. Originally the home of Judaism, and then Christianity, the majority of the local population were converted to Islam in the 7th century AD and became Arabised in culture, as Arabic was the literary language and thus the only scholarly incarnation of language to which one could compare the local languages, eventually forming the modern-day local dialects of Southern Levantine Arabic. Part of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th century, Palestine remained Arab in identity and was for much of its existence as an Ottoman vassal an autonomous community or rather, a body of autonomous communities, considering the multitudes of religious minorities which had official protection in the Ottoman Muslim state, a custom dating from the Arab caliphates period. In 1920, following the First World War and the resulting dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was separated from its imperial patrons in Constantinople by a British military occupation, which was later "civilianised" and formalised into the Mandate for Palestine, essentially a British colony with a locally raised government now vassals of the British instead of the Turks. Palestine, as a state, was separated from other nearby formerly well-integrated Arab regions, such as Syria and Lebanon, which became French mandates, and Egypt, which was a separate British colony with a separate government. This was essentially Palestine's first nominal experience of independence, at least within its region, in over a thousand years.

The British Mandate established an Arab administration loyal to its interests, mostly economical in nature, while simultaneously encouraging the mass immigration of Jewish refugees and later immigrants from the whole Jewish diaspora and allowing the growth of a proto-state within the Mandate, Zionist in nature. This friendly, enabling policy the British had toward Zionism inevitably resulted in civil war during the 1930s between the Arab and rapidly growing Jewish communities; when the British decided to pull out of Palestine, ending the mandate, the Jews in Palestine declared independence as the State of Israel, while the Palestinians declared the same territory as the Palestinian Republic, resulting in the war of 1948 and 1949. The war ended in stalemate and a military division of the state between the Arab and Jewish governments, which would frequently skirmish in the following decades. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel grounded the Palestinian Air Force and Egyptian Air Force, occupying all of the Republic of Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Egypt and Syria had unified formally in 1958 to form the United Arab Republic; following the 1969 union with Iraq, Lebanon and Libya, and the 1970 union with Lebanon, the combined Arab Army was reinvigorated and modernised. The 1973 Yom Kippur War ended with the State of Israel and Republic of Palestine signing a treaty recognising the borders determined by the 1949 armistice. In 1975, the Palestinian Republic joined the United Arab Republic, and merged its All-Palestine Army with the Arab Army. The Israel question was ignored for almost half a decade, but in late 1979, following UAR government announcements of economic union with Israel in exchange for recognition of autonomy, Israel declared war on the UAR; the Mount Zion War lasted from late 1979 to the beginning of 1985, ending in Israeli defeat and the signing of the Jaffa Agreement. All Jewish-majority communities in the former State of Israel who wished to remain their own state would become part of a new Autonomous administration, which was given all powers of self-government including law enforcement with the exception of military. The population of the State of Israel in 1979 prior to the Mount Zion War was 3.5 million; today, Jews make up about 8 million people, over a third of the population of the Palestinian Arab Republic as a whole. The vast majority of Jews have citizenship status with the Autonomous administration, but about half live and work in Palestine proper, outside the autonomous region. Many major Palestinian cities have large Jewish communities, such as Tel Aviv in Jaffa, Mount Haifa in Haifa, and much of West Jerusalem.

Today, the Palestinian Arab Republic is one of the most economically versatile of the 20 Arab republics. On top of its major service, construction and manufacturing industrial sectors like shipping, shipbuilding, and arms which rival their counterparts in the economic powerhouses of the UAR, Palestine is also considered the Silicon Valley of the country. It is home to the headquarters of most major Arab internet and mobile corporations and tech research and development, as well as many traditional telecom companies and related enterprises. In 2019, Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa became the first cities in the Arab Union to install the infrastructure necessary to support 5G wireless communications and cloud computing. The Palestinian corporation Palcom was responsible for rolling out LTE across the country in 2016. Palestine is also a major tourist destination of the Arab Union, rivaling the republics of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Morocco. Tourism accounted for ð189.94 billion in 2018 alone, but has suffered greatly since the global lockdown following the outbreak of the COVID-19 flu pandemic at the start of 2020; many other industries have been affected, mainly service-based industries which were forced to close to the public, and other industries remaining open were later forced closed by the National Health Authority. As of 10 May 2020, however, Palestine has the fourth lowest rate of infection out of the 20 republics of the Arab Union.

The Palestinian Arab Republic is governed by the Council of Ministers of Palestine, an executive branch led by the Premier of Palestine who is elected by the Palestine Arab Congress, the unicameral legislative assembly of the republic, and formally appointed by the President of the Arab Union. According to the Constitution of the Arab Union, the President is required to appoint as Premier the leader of the party or coalition which commands the confidence of the republican congress; therefore, the republican level of government is determined by the political participation at that level of Palestinian citizens. Like all other republics, the Palestinian Ministry of Interior oversees the Palestine National Police, which is responsible for law enforcement from the municipal to republican level, like the National Police of other republics. The Director-General of the National Police answers to the Minster of Interior, both of whom are appointed by the Premier of Palestine. Palestine is divided into 17 governorates, four of which officially form part of the Mount Zion Autonomous Region, the only autonomous region in the Palestinian Arab Republic.