The roots of the current Arab-Israeli conflict go back more than a century, to the rise of modern Zionism and mass migrations to the Jewish ancestral home. Here are some key historical events in this complex and crucial conflict, from 1881 to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49. We'll cover more recent events next week.
1881 - Beginning of mass migrations of Jews to Palestine, at that time part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Most of the first Jews come from Russia, fleeing pogroms and harsh discrimination. They join a small and politically inactive Jewish population already in Palestine.
1897 - First Zionist Congress meets in Basle, Switzerland, to discuss Theodor Herzl's 1896 book The Jewish State. The congress calls for "a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law." Herzl, the father of Zionism, writes in his diary, "At Basle I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it."
1914 - World War I begins. The Ottoman Turks ally with Germany and Austria-Hungary against Britain, France, and Russia.
1916 - Arab nationalists, backed by the British, revolt against Ottoman rule in Palestine. The British suggest they'll recognize an independent Arab state if the revolt succeeds. Yet at the same time, Britain signs a secret agreement with France to carve the region into colonial zones of influence.
1917 - Britain's foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, tells leading British Zionist Lord Lionel Rothschild that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object." Zionists hail the Balfour Declaration as a crucial step forward. Yet the statement also says that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
1918 - British forces gain military control of Palestine. World War I ends.
1920 - Arabs in Syria declare independence, but French troops quickly occupy Damascus. As part of the resolution of World War I, France assumes a mandate to govern modern-day Syria and Lebanon. Britain gets a mandate for Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. Tension increases between Arab nationalists, whose hopes have been dashed by these events, and Zionists, buoyed by the Balfour Declaration. Zionists cooperate with British authorities yet organize independent armed militias. Arab nationalists reject the legitimacy of British rule and any Zionist claim to a home in Palestine. Violent anti-Zionist riots erupt.
1922 - The League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations, confirms Britain's mandate over Palestine, charging Britain with the establishment of a "Jewish national home," "the development of self-governing institutions," and the facilitation of Jewish immigration, "while ensuring that the rights and position of other sectors of the population are not prejudiced." A British census shows that Jews account for 11 percent of Palestine's 750,000 inhabitants.
1929 - More anti-Zionist violence erupts, triggered by disputes over Jewish and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and by increasing land sales to Jews.
1933 - Hitler comes to power in Germany. Jewish immigration increases. By 1936, almost 400,000 Jews live in Palestine, about 30 percent of the population.
1936 - Arab nationalists in Palestine revolt against British rule, demanding an end to Jewish immigration, a ban on land sales to Jews, and national independence. The revolt continues until 1939, with a six-month-long general strike, bombings of British installations, arson, assassinations, and violence against Jewish settlements. The British impose martial law, seal borders, demolish homes, and arrest, kill, or exile the rebellion's leaders. Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion notes that the Arabs are "fighting dispossession. . . . We and they both want the same thing: We both want Palestine. . . . By our very presence and progress here, [we] have nurtured the [Arab] movement." In response to the violence, radical Zionists begin bombing Arab buses and crowds. Eventually, even mainstream Jewish militia groups begin a strategy of "aggressive defense," coordinating retaliatory strikes.
1937 - A royal British commission headed by Lord William Peel calls the conflicting Jewish-Arab interests "irrepressible." Confronted with "right against right," the Peel Commission recommends that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab zones.
1939 - World War II begins. Britain attempts to regain crucial Arab support in the region. Rejecting the Peel Commission's recommendation, a British white paper proposes a 10-year plan to limit further Jewish immigration, curtail land sales, and create a Jewish national home within a much larger independent Palestinian state. The paper, rejected by Arab nationalists as insufficient, ends Anglo-Zionist goodwill. Despite dire events in Germany, Britain works to prevent Jewish immigration to Palestine. Radical Zionists begin attacks on British installations.
1942 - A Zionist conference in New York garners increasing U.S. support for a "Jewish commonwealth" in Palestine and unrestricted Jewish immigration to it.
1944 - Radical Zionists declare war on British authorities in Palestine and assassinate a British minister in Cairo.
1945 - World War II ends. Nazi death camps liberated. U.S. President Harry Truman urges Britain to accept 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Arab nationalists protest that solving the problem of the Holocaust survivors should not come at the expense of Palestinian Arabs.
1946 - Radical Zionists blow up British government and military offices at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
1947 - Britain turns its mandate in Palestine over to the newly formed United Nations, which votes in favor of partitioning the region into two independent states: one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under international control. Zionists accept the partition, which grants them 56 percent of Palestine, including fertile coastal regions. Arab nationalists reject the authority of the UN to partition a country against the wishes of a majority of its inhabitants. Civil war between the roughly 678,000 Jews and 1,269,000 Arabs in Palestine begins. Soon, Zionists control most of the territory allocated to them under the UN plan.
1948 - Britain pulls out of Palestine. Zionists, led by David Ben-Gurion, immediately declare the independent State of Israel. And Arab armies from Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon immediately attack. First Arab-Israeli war begins. Intense fighting early on leaves the war's outcome in doubt. But after arms from Czechoslovakia reach Israel, the Jewish state establishes military superiority and conquers territory beyond that of the UN partition, including the western part of Jerusalem.
1949 - Negotiations at the Greek island of Rhodes lead to an armistice between Israel and the Arab states. By war's end, the new state of Israel controls 77 percent of the territory in the former British mandate of Palestine. Jordan controls the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank, which it formally annexes. Egypt controls the area around Gaza now known as the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian state envisioned by the UN partition plan never comes to be. As a result of the conflict, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs flee or are expelled from their homes. Israel refuses to permit these refugees to return to their homes inside the new Israeli borders. For their part, the Arab states refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state, and they organize an economic and political boycott of the country.
Michael Himick
The roots of the current Arab-Israeli conflict go back more than a century, to the rise of modern Zionism and mass migrations to the Jewish ancestral home. Here are some key historical events in this complex and crucial conflict, from 1881 to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49. We'll cover more recent events next week.
