III.

The British Mandate

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I (1914-1918), control of Palestine shifted from Muslim to Western powers. In return for their help in the war Britain had promised autonomy to both Zionists and Arabs. In a series of letters known as the Husein-McMahon Correspondence (between Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, who ruled Arabs in the Al Ḩijāz on the Arabian Peninsula, and Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt), the Arabs were promised the right to a new Arab nation in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire. The promise to the Jews came in the form of the Balfour Declaration (named for the British foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, who communicated the declaration). Issued by the British in 1917, it read:

The British were not troubled by potential contradictions between the Husein-McMahon Correspondence and the Balfour Declaration. They explained that they had not promised all the land of the Ottomans to either the Arabs or the Jews; they had merely promised parts of it to each group. The British did not elaborate on what would happen if both groups wanted the same land. Following the war, Britain sought and received a mandate from the League of Nations to rule Palestine and develop it according to the premise of the Balfour Declaration.

In 1922 the British separated Palestine into two territories: land east of the Jordan River became the Emirate of Transjordan (now Jordan); land to the west, from Lebanon and Syria in the north to Egypt in the south, remained Palestine. It was in this limited territory that Zionists clashed with Palestinian Arab nationalists. Both Jews and Arabs conducted terrorist attacks and intermittent, low-level warfare. Both groups resisted the British, particularly when a British policy was believed to benefit one side over the other. The struggle was reflected in political efforts to control land, institutions, and the economy.

Initially, Britain took several steps to aid the Arab side. For example, before World War II (1939-1945) the British did not allow large numbers of Jews to come to Palestine from Europe, where they were often persecuted. Nonetheless, Zionists gradually gained the upper hand through steady land purchases, slow but continual immigration, and community organization. After World War II the world became aware of the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust, and opinion began to favor creating an independent Jewish state. Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere continued to resist the idea, but on November 29, 1947, the United Nations (UN) passed Resolution 181, which called for a partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The Jews accepted the resolution, but the Arabs opposed it. On May 14, 1948, the British mandate was terminated and at midnight the Jewish state of Israel declared its independence. The new state came under immediate attack from the Palestinian population and Arabs of the surrounding countries, including Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.