Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين falasṭīn), officially the Republic of Palestine (جمهورية فلسطين jumhūriyat falasṭīn), is a country in the Middle East, straddling North Africa and Western Asia as well as the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Its territory consists of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, its seat of government, and Port Said, its main seaport and most populous city. The 1949 Armistice Agreement lines (the Green Line) separate Palestine proper from the territory of Israel (including West Jerusalem). Palestine also borders Egypt to the west along the Suez Canal, Jordan to the east across the Jordan River and Dead Sea, and Saudi Arabia to the southeast across the Gulf of Aqaba. Lebanon and Syria are located to the north and northeast, respectively, separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory. The country is geographically diverse: packed into Palestine's small area are snow-covered mountains, parched deserts, fertile fields, lush woodlands, and complex systems of wadis that feed into streams and rivers. No less than four different geographical zones are included in the territory of the country, and its climate ranges from arid to temperate to subtropical.
The First Palestinian Republic was proclaimed in the former British Mandate for Palestine shortly before the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which erupted between the recently declared State of Israel and the Palestinian republic supported by a coalition of five Arab states, and ended in early 1949 with an armistice that established the Green Line along the front separating Israeli- and Arab-controlled areas. Following the war, the Arab side of the Green Line became the de facto Palestinian republic; however, the Palestinian government de jure maintained its claim over the entire territory of the former mandate, a claim which persists to this day and is counted as one of the central issues of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The two decades of 1948–67 saw the Palestinian state develop its political life under the auspices of the Arab League, to which it was admitted in 1950, interspersed with a handful of regional confrontations, notably the Suez Crisis of 1956, which resulted in the transfer of the Sinai from Egyptian to Palestinian control and a joint Egyptian-Palestinian nationalisation agreement of the Suez Canal. During this time, the republic developed close ties with the Soviet Union as a bulwark against Western backing of Israel, reflected by a comprehensive economic and strategic relationship with Russia which lasts to this day.
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, which ended in Arab defeat, Palestine was occupied by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and its government exiled to Cairo. Under the occupation, Arabs were stripped of basic rights, and more and more Jewish settlements began to appear, often built atop demolished homes on stolen Palestinian land; the resulting indignation and popular anger soon led to the development of an insurgency. This culminated in the 1976–79 Sinai War, during which the Palestinian National Salvation Front (PNSF), led by Rifaf Khan and Yasser Arafat, confronted the occupation, eventually driving the IDF back into Israel proper and re-establishing the Palestinian republic. After the end of occupation, Khan and Arafat served as the fifth and sixth presidents of Palestine, respectively, both serving up to their deaths. The postwar Ba'athist administration established many social programs during the 1980s under Khan, including universal healthcare and a social security system. The late 1980s saw an exponential increase in the standard of living after the end of the reconstruction period; following increased military spending under Arafat in the early 1990s, confrontation with Israel re-erupted in two brief episodes in 1994 and 1996, respectively, which ended with the return of East Jerusalem to Palestinian control for the first time since 1967, and the establishment of a demilitarised zone encompassing the Old City of Jerusalem monitored by UN peacekeeping forces.
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