Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
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50 free Israeli-Palestinian Conflict trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few disputes have run as long, or been followed as closely around the world, as the one between Israelis and Palestinians. Its story covers more than a century: the collapse of an old imperial order, a British mandate, a partition vote, several wars and repeated attempts at peace. Its names and places still turn up in the news almost every week. This quiz keeps to the checkable facts of that history: who signed what and where, which leaders shaped each decade, what the key terms mean, and where the disputed places sit on the map. You will meet prime ministers and presidents, diplomats and poets, holy sites and border crossings, and a few symbols from street art and everyday life. It is written for students revising the modern Middle East, for news readers who want the background, and for quiz players who like their history with context. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something whichever way a question goes.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fruit became a symbol of Palestinian identity because its colours match those of the Palestinian flag?
Watermelon
Watermelon stood in for the flag after its display was suppressed following the 1967 war; in 1980 an officer closing a West Bank gallery told artists even a painted one could be confiscated.
Q 02Which anonymous street artist designed the Walled Off Hotel beside the West Bank barrier in Bethlehem?
Banksy
Banksy set the hotel up in March 2017, at first only as a temporary exhibition; its name is a pun on the Waldorf chain.
Q 03Israel's 1949 armistice boundary takes which name from the ink used to draw it on the map?
Green Line
The Green Line was drawn in green ink during the 1949 armistice talks, and the agreements said it was not a permanent border; it is still widely cited as the 'pre-1967 borders'.
Q 04At which city's 1972 Olympics did Palestinian militants take members of the Israeli team hostage?
Munich
Munich's Olympic Village was infiltrated by eight members of the group Black September; two Israelis were killed at once and the nine hostages died during a failed rescue attempt.
Q 05Which Israeli prime minister was shot dead in 1995 by an extremist opposed to his peace deals with the PLO?
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin was leaving a rally held in support of the peace process when law student Yigal Amir shot him; he remains the only Israeli prime minister to be assassinated.
Q 06Which 1993 agreements, signed in Washington after secret talks, created the Palestinian Authority?
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords are named after the Norwegian capital, where a research institute hosted months of secret negotiations before the public signing ceremony in the United States.
Q 07Which 1917 British statement, a letter to Lord Rothschild, backed a Jewish national home in Palestine?
Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration, signed by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, added that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Palestine's existing non-Jewish communities.
Q 08In which June 1967 war did Israel capture the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem?
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War opened with Israeli air strikes that destroyed nearly all of Egypt's air force, and ended with Israel occupying some 70,000 square kilometres of territory.
Q 09Which Palestinian leader wore an empty holster while addressing the UN General Assembly in 1974?
Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat told delegates he came bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun; he was the first head of a non-governmental organisation to address a plenary session.
Q 10Which Arabic word meaning 'catastrophe' do Palestinians use for their mass displacement in the 1948 war?
Nakba
Nakba Day is commemorated each 15 May, the day after the date of Israel's 1948 declaration of independence; more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled during the war.
Q 11Which Arabic word, literally 'a shaking off', names the Palestinian uprising that began in December 1987?
Intifada
The Intifada erupted after an Israeli truck crashed into cars carrying Palestinian workers home, killing four; funerals that evening drew 10,000 people and became a mass demonstration.
Q 12Israeli commandos flew over 4,000 km in 1976 to free hijacked passengers held at which African airport?
Entebbe
Entebbe, in Idi Amin's Uganda, was where hijackers from a Palestinian faction and a German cell had taken an Air France jet; 100 commandos stormed its disused terminal after nightfall.
Q 13Which US president hosted the leaders of Egypt and Israel at Camp David for nearly two weeks in 1978?
Jimmy Carter
Q 21Which neighbouring country occupied the West Bank in 1948 and governed it until the 1967 war?
Jordan
Jordan gave the territory its name: it lies on the western bank of the river that separates it from the rest of the kingdom, which formally annexed it in 1950.
Q 22Which West Bank city, 10 km north of Jerusalem, serves as the Palestinian Authority's de facto capital?
Ramallah
Ramallah, whose name means 'God's Height', sits nearly 900 metres up in the Judaean Mountains; it was chosen as an interim seat of government only.
Q 23Which Palestinian politician, also known as Abu Mazen, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in 2005?
Mahmoud Abbas
Jimmy Carter's summit produced two framework agreements and a shared Nobel Peace Prize for his two guests; the full Egypt–Israel peace treaty followed in 1979.
Q 14Which Egyptian president flew to Jerusalem in 1977 to address the Knesset, a first for an Arab leader?
Anwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat's visit led to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, the first by an Arab state; Islamist soldiers enraged by it assassinated him at a Cairo military parade in 1981.
Q 15Which leader proclaimed the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 and became its first prime minister?
David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion helped to write the declaration and was the first to sign it; he later retired to a modest hut on a kibbutz in the Negev desert.
Q 16Which Viennese journalist wrote the 1896 pamphlet 'The Jewish State' and then convened a congress in Basel?
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl had been the Paris correspondent of a Vienna newspaper; the Basel congress of 1897 elected him president of the organisation it founded.
Q 17Which power ruled Palestine for four centuries until British forces drove its armies out in 1917 and 1918?
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire took the region from Egypt's Mamluks in 1516; after its defeat in the First World War, Britain governed Palestine under a mandate until 1948.
Q 18Which Israeli air-defence system, operational since 2011, shoots down short-range rockets fired from Gaza?
Iron Dome
Iron Dome tracks each incoming rocket and fires only at those heading for populated areas; its interceptor missile is called Tamir, a Hebrew acronym.
Q 19With Jerusalem's status disputed, most countries keep their embassies to Israel in or near which coastal city?
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv was where Israel's independence was proclaimed in 1948 and its temporary seat of government; 13 embassies moved there from Jerusalem in the early 1980s.
Q 20Which Islamist movement, founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1987, won the 2006 Palestinian election?
Hamas
Hamas grew out of an Islamic charity linked to the Muslim Brotherhood; a year after its election win it took control of the Gaza Strip from its rival Fatah.
Mahmoud Abbas was born in Safed in the Galilee and had served for six months in 2003 as the first Palestinian prime minister before resigning.
Q 24Which Israeli prime minister, raised in Milwaukee, resigned after the 1973 war caught Israel off guard?
Golda Meir
Golda Meir, born in Kyiv, taught school in Wisconsin before emigrating; in 1948 she was one of only two women among the signatories of Israel's declaration of independence.
Q 25Which Israeli prime minister, long a champion of settlement building, dismantled all 21 settlements in Gaza in 2005?
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon met such resistance inside his own Likud party that he quit it months later to found a new one, Kadima; a stroke in January 2006 ended his career.
Q 26Which UN agency, established in 1949, provides schooling and health care to Palestinian refugees?
UNRWA
UNRWA is the only UN agency dedicated to refugees from one specific conflict; every other refugee population comes under UNHCR, which was set up a year later.
Q 27Which international body, founded after the First World War, gave Britain its mandate to govern Palestine?
League of Nations
The League of Nations supervised how Britain treated the territory's inhabitants, the feature that set a mandate apart from an old-style protectorate.
Q 28Which US president recognised Israel eleven minutes after the new state came into being?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman overruled his secretary of state, George Marshall, and later said the decisive advice came from Eddie Jacobson, his former business partner.
Q 29Which US president hosted the White House ceremony where Israel and the PLO signed their first accord?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton returned to the role in July 2000, hosting Israeli and Palestinian leaders for a two-week summit at Camp David that ended without an agreement.
Q 30Which movement, named after a hill in Jerusalem, arose in 19th-century Europe to seek a Jewish homeland in Palestine?
Zionism
Zionism was named in 1890 by the writer Nathan Birnbaum, who left the movement within a decade and ended his life staunchly opposed to it.