Studying the Creation of Israel

The Birth of the Idea ; http://countrystudies.us/israel/9.htm

Whilst the Balfour Declaration of 1917, following the expelling of the Ottoman (Turks) from the region, set up the principle for a national Homeland for the Jewish people, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917
nobody at that time could have foreseen the levels of persecution to occur in Post-Revolutionary Russia and National Socialist Germany during the 1930s. Palestine by international agreement would become a British Mandate in 1920 but by the 1930s the flow of Jewish immigrants was already giving cause for concern. An Arab revolt against the new arrivals required the commitment of Two British Divisions (One of which incidentally was commanded by a certain Bernard Law Montgomery) to maintain order, and in 1939 Great Britain was forced to place a limitation of the numbers of new Jewish immigrants and their land purchases.




At the end of the Second World War the flow of new immigrants (often illegal) became a flood as hundreds of thousands of displaced Jews from across Europe attempted to enter Palestine. The British government attempted to continue the pre-war quota limits (even going to the point of turning away boats crowded with new immigrants), however this only served to fuel Jewish violence against the Authorities.



In 1947, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevan, UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE UNITED STATES (who clearly didn’t want all these people to suddenly descend on their own shore with their “Commie” ideas) and faced with open conflict with the settlers, was forced to rescind the immigration controls which had been set in place by the British. The UNITED NATIONS recommended that Palestine be partitioned (a recommendation that was rejected by the Arabs) and in 1948 Great Britain surrendered her Mandate.