by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman
Turks in 1917-18. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because
the British had promised them, in correspondence (1915-16)
with Shareef Husein Ibn Ali of Mecca (1856-1931), the independence
of their countries after the war . Britain , however, also
made other, conflicting commitments in the secret Sykes -Picot
agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide
and rule the region with its allies . In a third agreement
, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews
a Jewish ";national home"; in Palestine.
This promise was subsequently incorporated
in the mandate conferred on Britain by the League of Nations
in 1922 . During their mandate (1922-48) the British found
their contradictory promises to the Jewish and Palestinian
communities difficult to reconcile. The Zionists envisaged
large-scale Jewish immigration , and some spoke of a Jewish
state constituting all of Palestine . Palestinians , however,
rejected Britain's right to promise their country to a third
party and feared dispossession by the Zionists; anti-Zionist
attacks occurred in Jerusalem (1920) and Jaffa (1921).
A 1922 statement of British policy denied
Zionist claims to all of Palestine and limited Jewish immigration,
but reaffirmed support for a Jewish national home. British
proposed establishing a legislative council, Palestinians
rejected this council as discriminatory.
After 1928, when Jewish immigration increased
somewhat, British policy on the subject seesawed under conflicting
Arab-Jewish pressures . Immigration rose sharply after the
installation (1933) of the Nazi regime in Germany; in 1935
nearly 62,000 Jews entered Palestine.
Fear of Jewish domination was the principal
cause of the Arab revolt that broke out in 1936 and continued
intermittently until 1939. By that time Britain had again
restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land.
The struggle for Palestine, which abated
during World War II, resumed in 1945 . The horrors of the
Holocaust produced world sympathy for European Jews and for
Zionism , and although Britain still refused to admit 100,000
Jewish to Palestine , many Jewish found their way there illegally.
Various plans for solving the Palestine problem
were rejected by one party or the other . Britain finally
declared the mandate unworkable and turned the problem over
to the UN in April 1947. The Jews and the Palestinians prepared
for a showdown . Although the Palestinians outnumbered the
Jews (1300000 to 600000), the latter were better prepared
. They had a semiautonomous government, led by David Ben-Gurion
, and their military, the Haganah, was well trained and experienced
. The Palestinians, on the other hand, had never recovered
from the Arab revolt , and most of their leaders were in exile.
The Mufti of Jerusalem , their principal spokesman, refused
to accept Jewish statehood . When UN proposed partition in
November 1947, he rejected the plan while the Jews accepted
it . In the military struggle that followed, the Palestinians
were defeated . Violence was used on both sides.
Israel was established on May 14, 1948. Five
Arab armies , coming to the aid of the Palestinians , immediately
attacked it. Uncoordinated and outnumbered, they were defeated
by Israeli forces. Israel enlarged its territory . Jordan
took the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Egypt took the
(Israel occupied these lands after the Six Day War of 1967.
The war produced 780,000 Palestinian refugees. About half
probably left out of fear and panic , while the rest were
forced out to make room for Jewish immigrants from Europe
and from the Arab world. The Palestinians spread throughout
the neighboring countries, where they have maintained their
Palestinian national identity and the desire to return to