Nadene Goldfoot
Finally, at the end of WWI, on 2 November 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, pledging support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. This included Emir Feisal of Arabia.
At the same time, leaders of the Arab national movement were negotiating with Britain for the recognition of Arab national rights in the former territories of the Ottoman empire (the losers along with Germany) throughout the Middle East. The foremost of them, King Hussein of the Hejaz [is a region in the west of Saudi Arabia. It includes the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif, ...], wrote at that time:
"We saw the Jews...streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America...The cause of causes could not escape those who had the gift of deeper insight; they knew that the country was for its original sons, for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland." (23 March 1918, George Antonius{Lebanese writer}, Arab Awakening, p. 269). He was also a diplomat living in Jerusalem. As an aside, "Antonius graduated from Cambridge University and joined the newly formed British Mandate Administration in Palestine as the deputy in the Education Department. His wife, Katy, was a daughter of Faris Nimr Pasha, a wealthy Lebanese Christian and cultural activist. Antonius had a difficult relationship with the British. Despite his senior position he and his wife were refused membership to the Jerusalem sports club which had a "No Natives" policy.
Hussein was the namesake of his paternal great-grandfather, Hussein bin Ali (Sharif of Mecca), the leader of the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Hussein claimed to be an agnatic descendant of Muhammad's daughter Fatimah and her husband Ali, the fourth caliph, since Hussein belonged to the Hashemite family, which had ruled Mecca for over 700 years – until its 1925 conquest by the House of Saud – and has ruled Jordan since 1921.
The Palestine Mandate entrusted Britain with the Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922. It incorporated the text of the Balfour Declaration regarding the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, recognized the historical connection between the Jewish people and the Land and called upon Britain to facilitate the establishment of the national home. The Mandate extended over both sides of the river Jordan, but as early as 1922, Britain divided the Mandated territory in two, establishing an Arab emirate in Trans-Jordan, depriving the Jews of any rights to the Land east of the River. It was, moreover, even forbidden to Jews to purchase land or settle there.
Jews organized as a community between 1918 and 1948. Those living there since the year 70 and upward were reinforced by successive waves of immigration. The world Jewish community had been praying 3 times a day for a return to their homeland; Jerusalem, Israel.
In the 1920s, most of the immigrants came from Eastern Europe.
In the 1930s, many Jews escaped to Palestine from Nazi Germany.
GPO via Getty Images
By 1948, the Yishuv(Jews of Israel) numbered 650,000 persons. They organized themselves more each year with the Jewish Agency representing Jews the world over as the Yishuv vis-a-vis the British authorities and the League of Nations. Defense groups came into being out of necessity like the Haganah, etc, educational systems, bodies dealing with economic and social affairs, all these facilitate the transition to an independent State.
The Arab-Jewish conflict began. Arabs opposed the establishment of a Jewish national home because now they had a new leader, the Sherif of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. He whipped up riots where Jews were killed in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-1939. Germany's situation of begin taken over by Hitler also added to the eruption into violence. The outbreaks consisted mainly of terror attacks against Jewish villages and urban communities.
In 1929, the massacre of 67 Jews in Hebron, where Abraham, Sarah and family are buried in the Cave, and the destruction of their synagogues put an end to the existence of that city's Jewish community, with roots more than 2,000 years old. 517 Jews were killed by Arab attacks between 1936 and 1939. I don't think the Arabs would know a thing about Abraham if it weren't for the Jews and Moses writing the Torah with all the information. Hebron would mean nothing to them and still doesn't by this act.
Britain had partitioned the Mandate territory in 1922 now tried to step in to resolve the attacks by proposing, between 1936 and 1938 to repartition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State with a British enclave. The leadership of the Jewish community accepted it in principle; with the Palestine Arab leadership rejecting it.
The undisputed leader of the Palestine Arab community at that time was the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who, during the 2nd World War, joined the Nazis and spent the war years in Berlin.
The impact of the Jewish settlement on the Arab population depends on the position of the Arab involved. The land on which Jewish towns and villages were settled was bought and paid for with due regard for Arab rights. The Arab community grew during those years by reason both of the economic prosperity brought about by Jewish immigration, and of Arab immigration which, uncontrolled and unconditioned, was drawn to Palestine by its rapid development. Arabs had streamed into Tel Aviv, etc, to get jobs in the building industry.
The book by Joan Peters with its 601 pages including the index, From Time Immemorial-pocket-book size, tells all about it and the countries they had come from. Her investigative work has been lauded by our presidents as she had started off on the side of the Arabs, and with facts, changed.
The Holocaust, a massacre of Six Million Jews took place from 1939 to the end in 1945. First, Jews were denied equal right, then people were taught to hate Jews. All this culminated in the ovens with their deaths or by firing guns where masses were buried in huge ravines. Never before had a people been killed in such a quantity-elimination of the people who brought them their "Old" Testament. How could the new matter without the old?
Former king of England, Queen Elizabeth's uncle, who gave up his throne for a woman, hurried to Germany to "visit" his family. He was disgraced in England but loved in Germany.
German Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust, but were assisted in some European countries by local elements who helped to round up the Jews destined for the death camps. Britain and the USA might have helped to organize the escape of Jews from Europe but deliberately avoided doing anything until almost the end of the war. We know Britain sent back ships that made it to Palestine where the Jews died in the ovens.
At the end of the war in 1945, England was still holding the mandate though Jews and England fought against Germans in the war. Jews tried to end the mandate and to get Jewish refugees to Palestine. The Haganah took on this responsibility. IZL and Lehi acted on their own while Haganah took orders from Yishuv. By 1947, the British turned the problem over to the new United Nations.
United Nations made a decision that again was accepted by the Jews but not by the Arabs. A UN Special Committee on Palestine of statesmen (not Middle East Scholars) and jurists from 11 member states said to terminate the Mandate and partition Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized since it was the largest city (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947). Six months before the mandate would end, violence by Arabs against Jewish communities continued. Arabs tried to disrupt communications and isolate and conquer Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish soul. Brits acted on the Arab side by turning over their military bases and equipment to the Arabs. They had the audacity to lead the Arab Legion! Haganah's job was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem beat back Arab assaults.
In 1962, she went to Hollywood and worked with stars such as Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Richard Widmark, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Yul Brynner. She returned to Germany to accept an offer for a role in a series, which would have included an obligation of several years.
Finally, Britain withdrew its last forces from Palestine on 15 May 1948. This ended the spell of more than eighteen hundred years (1,800) during which the land had been governed by aliens. This is when Israel announced their birth, and the Arabs attacked 15 minutes later.
Resource;
Facts About Israel-Division of Information, Ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Antonius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haganah
https://www.un.org/unispal/history2/origins-and-evolution-of-the-palestine-problem/part-i-1917-1947/
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