The Israeli-Palestine conflict began with Jewish migration to Palestine, fueled by antisemitism and Zionism. In this article, you will learn about how Israel was born.
As the Israeli-Palestine conflict is well-known, Palestinians argue Israel was forcibly formed on their territory, and Israel says it has every right to exist on its Biblical homeland. But, how did Jewish migration to ‘Israel’ begin? What prepared Israel for its May 1948 declaration? What role did Britain and Arab nations play?Antisemitism, ZionismAccording to the Hebrew Bible, God named Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ‘Israel’. Abraham’s descendants settled in Canaan, now Israel.
In the late 19th century, Canaan was part of the Ottoman Sultanate after going through various civilizations (Greeks, Romans, Persians, Crusaders, Islamists). Jews lived in numerous nations as rich minorities but were subject to persecution, especially in Europe.
In 1880s Imperial Russia, Jews were pogrommed. The 1894 Dreyfus affair, in which a Jewish soldier was wrongfully convicted of conveying critical information to Germany, exposed French anti-Semitism. Jewish people began to believe they would not be safe without a homeland. This campaign to establish a Jewish homeland was called Zionism.
The Austrian-Hungarian Theodor Herzl wrote ‘Der Judenstaat’ in 1896 about his Jewish nation utopia. Herzl is considered the father of political Zionism because of this pamphlet.
Uganda and Argentina were initially considered for this homeland. Palestine, where the Jews’ biblical home and many holy places were, soon became popular.
Pre-World War I
Jewish Aliyah to Palestine began soon. The First Aliyah occurred from 1881 until 1903. Migrants bought and farmed enormous swaths of land. These influx rapidly caused losses for local Palestinians, but it took years to define the war this way.
Palestine was one of many provinces in the Ottoman empire, which was poorly administered. Residents identified as Ottoman subjects, Arabs, Muslims, or clan and family members, not ‘Palestinians’. Absentee landlordship was frequent. Thus, non-resident landowners and bribe-prone Ottoman officials sold land to Jews. Poor, illiterate, rural farmers had little voice in it.
As additional settlers arrived, it became evident they were not assimilationists. These immigrants spoke little Arabic and socialized only with themselves, unlike the Jews who had traditionally lived in Palestine. While Arab laborers were employed to work on farms, this became less common as Jews migrated. Tenants had worked for the new master when the farm changed hands. However, Arab tenants were often evicted and left homeless when Jews bought land.
Jews marked their differing and ‘superior’ position in various ways. Agriculture was mechanized and electrified. Their objective was to construct an ideal homeland, thus they ignored local customs. Tel Aviv, created in 1909, was a European-style town that stood out from Arab neighborhoods. The Rothschild family and other rich Jews sponsored the Israeli business.
Local anxiety and hatred against transplants grew. Ottoman rulers banned foreign Jews from buying land, although it was never enforced. After the Young Turks toppled the Ottoman Sultan in 1908, Jewish migration became increasingly organized.
Foreign Jews sought international backing for their cause.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration by Britain’s foreign secretary Arthur Balfour promised a Jewish national home in Palestine. A British Mandate permitted enormous Jewish immigration and protests from 1923 to 1948, raising worries about demographic changes and Palestinian property expropriation for Jewish settlement. The Palestinian National Committee protested British colonialism and Jewish immigration in the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt. British brutality ended the six-month strike with arrests and property destruction.
The Palestinian population was 33% in 1947, yet they owned only 6% of the land. The Palestinians opposed UN Resolution 181, which divided Palestine into Arab and Jewish states and handed the Jewish state 56% of Palestine, including much of the fertile coastal region. Palestinians owned 94% of historic Palestine and were 67% of its population.
Before the British Mandate ended in 1948, Zionist paramilitaries destroyed Palestinian cities and villages to expand the Zionist state. Between 1947 and 1949, 500 villages, towns, and cities were destroyed, killing 15,000 Palestinians. Zionism seized 78% of historic Palestine, leaving 22% for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. After 750,000 were expelled, six million Palestinian refugees resided in 58 depressing camps in Palestine and neighboring nations.
Forcible relocation occurred for a decade after Israel seized the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syrian Golan Heights, and Sinai Peninsula in 1967. Palestinians were oppressed by a military occupation that restricted political and civic expression, while Jewish settlers had all the rights and benefits of Israeli citizens.
In December 1987, an Israeli truck hit two Palestinian laborers’ vans, killing four and starting the Palestinian Intifada. Young Palestinians stoned Israeli tanks and soldiers in the West Bank, sparking riots and the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas. Summary executions, university closures, activist deportations, and home destruction were the Israeli army’s response.
The Intifada ended in 1993 when the Palestinian Authority (PA) was founded with limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel’s 1995 Gaza electronic barrier and concrete wall severed relations with Palestine.
