THE SHRINKING MAP OF PALESTINE
1920
One country, one territory
670,000
Palestinians in the 1922 census, against 84,000 Jewish residents
Land under Palestinian control
100 percent
Full figures for this stage
Britain administered Palestine as a single unit after the First World War. The Zionist movement had been working since the 1880s to displace Palestinians and appropriate their land, but the demographic picture was not close.
Between 1918 and 1948, 480,000 Jewish people settled in Palestine. In 1948 Zionist militias emptied hundreds of towns and villages. What remained was the West Bank and Gaza, filled largely with refugees from the land now shaded white.
The 1967 war brought the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli military control. The outline did not change. Its legal status did. Between 1948 and 1967 a further 1.3 million Jewish people settled, and 440,000 Palestinians were displaced during the war itself.
The green patches are what Palestinian civil administration now covers. Area C, under near-exclusive Israeli control, accounts for roughly 60 percent of the West Bank, and more than 99 percent of it is off limits or heavily restricted for Palestinians. The dashed red line marks a boundary that no longer describes a governable space.
Sources, method and limitations
Silhouettes are schematic vector drawings based on the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine, the 1949 armistice lines and the Oslo-era area divisions. They convey proportion and direction of change, not cadastral boundaries.
Population and displacement figures for 1922, 1948 and 1967 follow the compilation published by Visualizing Palestine in May 2013, drawing on the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, Badil, Haaretz, the Levy Institute and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. The 1920 stage is labeled by the year the Mandate took effect; its population figures come from the 1922 census, the first conducted.
Current figures verified 19 July 2026 against the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics 2026 refugee release, UNRWA registration data, and B'Tselem on settlements and Area C.
The four stages do not measure an identical quantity. 1920 reflects territorial extent and demographic majority; 1948 and 1967 reflect territory outside Israeli sovereign control; 2026 reflects Palestinian civil administration. Percentages are approximate and vary with the treatment of East Jerusalem, the Dead Sea surface and no-man's-land areas.
The Gaza outline does not attempt to represent current access restrictions, displacement orders or militarized zones. For present conditions consult live UN OCHA reporting.