Zionism In Mandatory Palestine

Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Jewish tradition as the Land of Israel, which corresponds in other terms to the region of Palestine, Canaan, or the Holy Land, on the basis of a long Jewish connection and attachment to that land.

Modern Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment. Soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired homeland in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

From 1897 to 1948, the primary goal of the Zionist Movement was to establish the basis for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and thereafter to consolidate it. In a unique variation of the principle of self-determination, the Zionist Movement viewed this process as an ' ingathering of exiles' (''kibbutz galuyot'') whereby Jews everywhere would have the right to emigrate to historical Palestine, as a haven from persecution, an area which Moses in the Bible stated was the land of their forefathers. Zionist ideology also included negation of Jewish life in the Diaspora. The Lovers of Zion united in 1884 and in 1897 the first Zionist congress was organized.

A variety of Zionism, called cultural Zionism, founded and represented most prominently by Ahad Ha'am, fostered a secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel. Unlike Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ahad Ha'am strived for Israel to be "a Jewish State, and not merely a State of Jews". Others have theorized it as the realization of a socialist utopia (Moses Hess), as a need for survival in the face of social prejudices by the affirmation of self-determination (Leon Pinsker), as the fulfillment of individual rights and freedoms (Max Nordau) or as the foundation of a Hebrew humanism (Martin Buber). A religious Zionist supports Jews upholding their Jewish identity (defined as adherence to religious Judaism) and has advocated the return of the Jewish people to Israel. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has continued primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security.

Advocates of Zionism view it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of a persecuted people to its ancestral homeland.''Israel Affairs'' - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2007 – Special Issue: ''Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict – De-Judaizing the Homeland: Academic Politics in Rewriting the History of Palestine'' - S. Ilan Troen"Zionism and British imperialism II: Imperial financing in Palestine", ''Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture''. Volume 30, Issue 2, 2011 - pages 115–139 - Michael J. Cohen Anti-Zionists view it as a colonialist, racist or exceptionalist ideology or movement.

Terminology

The term "Zionism" is derived from the word ''Zion'' ( he, ציון, ''Tzi-yon''), a hill in Jerusalem, widely symbolizing the Land of Israel. Throughout eastern Europe in the late 19th century, numerous grassroots groups promoted the national resettlement of the Jews in their homeland, as well as the revitalization and cultivation of the Hebrew language. These groups were collectively called the " Lovers of Zion" and were seen as countering a growing Jewish movement toward assimilation. The first use of the term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum, founder of the Kadimah nationalist Jewish students' movement; he used the term in 1890 in his journal ''Selbstemanzipation!'' (''Self-Emancipation''), itself named almost identically to Leon Pinsker's 1882 book ''Auto-Emancipation''.

Overview

The common denominator among all Zionists has been a claim to Palestine, a land traditionally known in Jewish writings as the Land of Israel ("''Eretz Israel''") as a national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for Jewish national self-determination. It is based on historical ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism, etc.

After almost two millennia of the Jewish diaspora residing in various countries without a national state, the Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book ''Der Judenstaat'' (''The Jewish State''). At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine particularly among those Jewish communities who were poor, unassimilated and whose 'floating' presence caused disquiet, in Herzl's view, among assimilated Jews and stirred anti-Semitism among Christians.

Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to Jewish assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the historic territory of Palestine. After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, it became dominant in the thinking about a Jewish national state.

Creating an alliance with Great Britain and securing support for some years for Jewish emigration to Palestine, Zionists also recruited European Jews to immigrate there, especially Jews who lived in areas of the Russian Empire where anti-semitism was raging. The alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine, but the Zionists persisted. The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), as the homeland for the Jewish people. The proportion of the world's Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged. By the early 21st century, more than 40% of the world's Jews lived in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the historical success of Zionism and are unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the larger context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation movements.

Zionism also sought the assimilation of Jews into the modern world. As a result of the diaspora, many of the Jewish people remained outsiders within their adopted countries and became detached from modern ideas. So-called "assimilationist" Jews desired complete integration into European society. They were willing to downplay their Jewish identity and in some cases to abandon traditional views and opinions in an attempt at modernization and assimilation into the modern world. A less extreme form of assimilation was called cultural synthesis. Those in favor of cultural synthesis desired continuity and only moderate evolution, and were concerned that Jews should not lose their identity as a people. "Cultural synthesists" emphasized both a need to maintain traditional Jewish values and faith and a need to conform to a modernist society, for instance, in complying with work days and rules.

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which designated Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was repealed in 1991 by replacing Resolution 3379 with Resolution 46/86. Opposition to Zionism (being against a Jewish state), according to historian Geoffrey Alderman, can be legitimately described as racist.

Beliefs

In 1896, Theodor Herzl expressed in ''Der Judenstaat'' his views on "the restoration of the Jewish state". Herzl considered Antisemitism to be an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and that only a sovereignty could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution : "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!" he proclaimed exposing his plan.

Aliyah (migration, literally "ascent") to the Land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers. Rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism. Some supporters of Zionism believed that Jews in the Diaspora were prevented from their full growth in Jewish individual and national life.

Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language which flourished as a spoken language in the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE, and was largely preserved throughout history as the main liturgical language of Judaism. Zionists worked to modernize Hebrew and adapt it for everyday use. They sometimes refused to speak Yiddish, a language they thought had developed in the context of European persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and adopted new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed all citizens of the new state to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds among Zionists.

Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence:

History

Historical and religious background

The Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation "The Jews are a nation and were so before there was a Jewish state of Israel" "Jews are a people, a nation (in the original sense of the word), an ethnos" originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The people of the Kingdom of Israel and the ethnic and religious group known as the Jewish people that descended from them have been subjected to a number of forced migrations in their history" and Hebrews of historical Israel and Judah, two Israelite kingdoms that emerged in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Jews are named after the Kingdom of Judah, the southern of the two kingdoms, which was centered in Judea with its capital in Jerusalem. The Kingdom of Judah was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, which was at the center of ancient Judean worship. The Judeans were subsequently exiled to Babylon, in what is regarded as the first Jewish diaspora.

Seventy years later, after the conquest of Babylon by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. This event came to be known as the Return to Zion. Under Persian rule, Judah became a self-governing Jewish province. After centuries of Persian and Hellenistic rule, the Jews regained their independence in the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire, which led to the establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. It later expanded over much of modern Israel, and into some parts of Jordan and Lebanon. The Hasmonean Kingdom became a client state of the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, and in 6 CE, was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea.

During the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Second Temple. Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery. The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE) led to the destruction of large parts of Judea, and many Jews were killed, exiled, or sold into slavery. The province of Judaea was renamed ''Syria Palaestina.'' These actions are seen by many scholars as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland.''H.H. Ben-Sasson, ''A History of the Jewish People'', Harvard University Press, 1976, , page 334: "In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Iudaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature."'' In the following centuries, many Jews emigrated to thriving centers in the diaspora. Others continued living in the region, especially in the Galilee, the coastal plain, and on the edges of Judea, and some converted.David Goodblatt, 'The political and social history of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel,' in William David Davies, Louis Finkelstein, Steven T. Katz (eds.) ''The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4, The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period'', Cambridge University Press, 2006 pp.404-430, p.406. By the fourth century CE, the Jews, who had previously constituted the majority of Palestine, had become a minority. A small presence of Jews has been attested for almost all of the period. For example, according to tradition, the Jewish community of Peki'in has maintained a Jewish presence since the Second Temple period.'

Jewish religious belief holds that the Land of Israel is a God-given inheritance of the Children of Israel based on the Torah, particularly the books of Genesis and Exodus, as well as on the later Prophets. According to the Book of Genesis, Canaan was first promised to Abraham's descendants; the text is explicit that this is a covenant between God and Abraham for his descendants. The belief that God had assigned Canaan to the Israelites as a Promised Land is also conserved also in Christian and Islamic traditions.

Among Jews in the Diaspora, the Land of Israel was revered in a cultural, national, ethnic, historical, and religious sense. They thought of a return to it in a future messianic age. Return to Zion remained a recurring theme among generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers, which traditionally concluded with "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer). The biblical prophecy of ''Kibbutz Galuyot'', the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel as foretold by the Prophets, became a central idea in Zionism.

Pre-Zionist initiatives

In the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese Sephardi Joseph Nasi, with the support of the Ottoman Empire, tried to gather the Portuguese Jews, first to migrate to Cyprus, then owned by the Republic of Venice, and later to resettle in Tiberias. Nasi – who never converted to IslamMarc David Baer
''Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe,'
Oxford University Press 2011 p.137:'Hatice Turhan’s insistence on conversion mitigated any educational edge Jewish physicians had over others. In contrast to the mid-sixteenth century, when Jews such as Joseph Nasi rose to the highest medical post in the empire and played an active role at the Ottoman court while remaining practicing Jews, and even convinced Suleiman to intervene with the pope on behalf of Portuguese Jews who were Ottoman subjects imprisoned in Ancona, the leading physicians at court in the mid-to late seventeenth century such as Hayatizade and Nuh Efendi had to be converted Jews.’ eventually obtained the highest medical position in the empire, and actively participated in court life. He convinced Suleiman I to intervene with the Pope on behalf of Ottoman-subject Portuguese Jews imprisoned in Ancona. Between the 4th and 19th centuries, Nasi's was the only practical attempt to establish some sort of Jewish political center in Palestine.

In the 17th century Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messiah and gained many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonika. He first tried to establish a settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna. After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa in the spring of 1666, the Jewish community of Avignon, France prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom. The readiness of the Jews of the time to believe the messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi may be largely explained by the desperate state of Central European Jewry in the mid-17th century. The bloody pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky had wiped out one-third of the Jewish population and destroyed many centers of Jewish learning and communal life.

In the early 19th century, a group of Jews known as the ''perushim'' left Lithuania to settle in Ottoman Palestine.

Establishment of the Zionist movement

In the 19th century, a current in Judaism supporting a return to Zion grew in popularity, particularly in Europe, where antisemitism and hostility toward Jews were growing. The idea of returning to Palestine was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah, even before 1897, the year considered as the start of practical Zionism.

The Reformed Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis, at Frankfurt am Main, July 15–28, 1845, deleted from the ritual all prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of a Jewish state. The Philadelphia Conference, 1869, followed the lead of the German rabbis and decreed that the Messianic hope of Israel is "the union of all the children of God in the confession of the unity of God". The Pittsburgh Conference, 1885, reiterated this Messianic idea of reformed Judaism, expressing in a resolution that "we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state".Jewish settlements were proposed for establishment in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819. Others were developed near Jerusalem in 1850, by the American Consul Warder Cresson, a convert to Judaism. Cresson was tried and condemned for lunacy in a suit filed by his wife and son. They asserted that only a lunatic would convert to Judaism from Christianity. After a second trial, based on the centrality of American 'freedom of faith' issues and antisemitism, Cresson won the bitterly contested suit. He emigrated to Ottoman Palestine and established an agricultural colony in the Valley of Rephaim of Jerusalem. He hoped to "prevent any attempts being made to take advantage of the necessities of our poor brethren ... (that would) ... FORCE them into a pretended conversion."

Moral but not practical efforts were made in Prague to organize a Jewish emigration, by Abraham Benisch and Moritz Steinschneider in 1835. In the United States, Mordecai Noah attempted to establish a Jewish refuge opposite Buffalo, New York, on Grand Isle, 1825. These early Jewish nation building efforts of Cresson, Benisch, Steinschneider and Noah failed.

Sir Moses Montefiore, famous for his intervention in favor of Jews around the world, including the attempt to rescue Edgardo Mortara, established a colony for Jews in Palestine. In 1854, his friend Judah Touro bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects, including building in 1860 the first Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem—today known as ''Mishkenot Sha'ananim.'' Laurence Oliphant failed in a like attempt to bring to Palestine the Jewish proletariat of Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and the Turkish Empire (1879 and 1882).

The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated to the arrival of the Bilu group in 1882, who commenced the First Aliyah. In the following years, Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants came from the Russian Empire, escaping the frequent pogroms and state-led persecution in what are now Ukraine and Poland. They founded a number of agricultural settlements with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europe. Additional Aliyahs followed the Russian Revolution and its eruption of violent pogroms. At the end of the 19th century, Jews were a small minority in Palestine.

In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) infused Zionism with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Herzl's aim was to initiate necessary preparatory steps for the development of a Jewish state. Herzl's attempts to reach a political agreement with the Ottoman rulers of Palestine were unsuccessful and he sought the support of other governments. The World Zionist Organization supported small-scale settlement in Palestine; it focused on strengthening Jewish feeling and consciousness and on building a worldwide federation.

The Russian Empire, with its long record of anti-Jewish pogroms, was widely regarded as the historic enemy of the Jewish people. The Zionist movement's headquarters were located in Berlin, as many of its leaders were German Jews who spoke German.

Organization

Zionism developed from Proto-Zionist initiatives and movements, such as Hovevei Zion. It coalesced and became organized in the form of the Zionist Congress, which created nation-building institutions and acted in Ottoman and British Palestine as well as internationally.

=Pre-state institutions

=
*Zionist Organization (ZO), est. 1897
**Zionist Congress (est. 1897), the supreme organ of the ZO
**Palestine Office (est. 1908), the executive arm of the ZO in Palestine
**Jewish National Fund (JNF), est. 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine
**Keren Hayesod, est. 1920 to collect funds
**Jewish Agency, est. 1929 as the worldwide operative branch of the ZO

=Funding

=
The Zionist enterprise was mainly funded by major benefactors who made large contributions, sympathisers from Jewish communities across the world (see for instance the Jewish National Fund's collection boxes), and the settlers themselves. The movement established a bank for administering its finances, the Jewish Colonial Trust (est. 1888, incorporated in London in 1899). A local subsidiary was formed in 1902 in Palestine, the Anglo-Palestine Bank. 

A list of pre-state large contributors to Pre-Zionist and Zionist enterprises would include, alphabetically,
*Isaac Leib Goldberg (1860–1935), Zionist leader and philanthropist from Russia
*Maurice de Hirsch (1831–1896), German Jewish financier and philanthropist, founder of the Jewish Colonization Association
*Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), British Jewish banker and philanthropist in Britain and the Levant, initiator and financier of Proto-Zionism
*Edmond James de Rothschild (1845–1934), French Jewish banker and major donor of the Zionist project

=Pre-state self-defense

=
A list of Jewish pre-state self-defense organisations in Palestine would include
*Bar-Giora (organization) (1907-1909)
* HaMagen, "The Shield" (1915–17)Hemmingby, Cato
''Conflict and Military Terminology: The Language of the Israel Defense Forces''
Master's thesis, University of Oslo, 2011. Accessed January 8, 2021.
* HaNoter, "The Guard" (pre-WWI, distinct from the British Madate-period Notrim)
* Hashomer (1909-1920)
*Haganah (1920-1948)
**Palmach (1941-1948)

Territories considered

Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures supported a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as Uganda and Argentina. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state. Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch. It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan, however he later reaffirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jews with that area.

A major concern in considering other territories was the Russian pogroms, in particular the Kishinev massacre, and the resultant need for quick resettlement.
However, other Zionists emphasized the memory, emotion and tradition linking Jews to the Land of Israel. Zion became the name of the movement, after the place where King David established his kingdom, following his conquest of the Jebusite fortress there (II Samuel 5:7, I Kings 8:1). The name Zion was synonymous with Jerusalem. Palestine only became Herzl's main focus after his Zionist manifesto 'Der Judenstaat' was published in 1896, but even then he was hesitant to focus efforts solely on resettlement in Palestine when speed was of the essence.

In 1903, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered Herzl in the Uganda Protectorate for Jewish settlement in Great Britain's East African colonies. Herzl accepted to evaluate Joseph Chamberlain's proposal, and it was introduced the same year to the World Zionist Organization's Congress at its sixth meeting, where a fierce debate ensued. Some groups felt that accepting the scheme would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, the African land was described as an " ante-chamber to the Holy Land". It was decided to send a commission to investigate the proposed land by 295 to 177 votes, with 132 abstaining. The following year, Congress sent a delegation to inspect the plateau. A temperate climate due to its high elevation, was thought to be suitable for European settlement. However, the area was populated by a large number of Maasai, who did not seem to favour an influx of Europeans. Furthermore, the delegation found it to be filled with lions and other animals.

After Herzl died in 1904, the Congress decided on the fourth day of its seventh session in July 1905 to decline the British offer and, according to Adam Rovner, "direct all future settlement efforts solely to Palestine". Israel Zangwill's Jewish Territorialist Organization aimed for a Jewish state anywhere, having been established in 1903 in response to the Uganda Scheme. It was supported by a number of the Congress's delegates. Following the vote, which had been proposed by Max Nordau, Zangwill charged Nordau that he "will be charged before the bar of history," and his supporters blamed the Russian voting bloc of Menachem Ussishkin for the outcome of the vote.

The subsequent departure of the JTO from the Zionist Organization had little impact. The Zionist Socialist Workers Party was also an organization that favored the idea of a Jewish territorial autonomy outside of Palestine.Ėstraĭkh, G. ''In Harness: Yiddish Writers' Romance with Communism. Judaic traditions in literature, music, and art.'' Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2005. p. 30

As an alternative to Zionism, Soviet authorities established a Jewish Autonomous Oblast in 1934, which remains extant as the only autonomous oblast of Russia.

According to Elaine Hagopian, in the early decades it foresaw the homeland of the Jews as extending not only over the region of Palestine, but into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, with its borders more or less coinciding with the major riverine and water-rich areas of the Levant.

Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine

Lobbying by Russian Jewish immigrant Chaim Weizmann, together with fear that American Jews would encourage the US to support Germany in the war against Russia, culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917.

It endorsed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, as follows:

In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration, and granted to Britain the Palestine Mandate:

Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the Zionist movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948, and then was elected as the first President of Israel after the nation gained independence.

A number of high-level representatives of the international Jewish women's community participated in the First World Congress of Jewish Women, which was held in Vienna, Austria, in May 1923. One of the main resolutions was: "It appears ... to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country."

In 1927, Ukrainian Jew Yitzhak Lamdan wrote an epic poem titled ''Masada'' to reflect the plight of the Jews, calling for a "last stand".

Rise of Nazism and the Holocaust

In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws made German Jews (and later Austrian and Czech Jews) stateless refugees. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration and the impact of Nazi propaganda aimed at the Arab world fostered to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission to investigate the situation. The commission called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations. The Arabs opposed the partition plan and Britain later rejected this solution and instead implemented the White Paper of 1939. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 additional Jewish migrants. At the end of the five-year period in 1944, only 51,000 of the 75,000 immigration certificates provided for had been utilized, and the British offered to allow immigration to continue beyond cutoff date of 1944, at a rate of 1500 per month, until the remaining quota was filled.Study (June 30, 1978)
The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem Part I: 1917-1947 - Study (30 June 1978)
, access-date: November 10, 2018 According to Arieh Kochavi, at the end of the war, the Mandatory Government had 10,938 certificates remaining and gives more details about government policy at the time. The British maintained the policies of the 1939 White Paper until the end of the Mandate.

The growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and the devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C., including via the highly effective American Palestine Committee.

During World War II, as the horrors of the Holocaust became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the One Million Plan, a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, many stateless refugees, mainly Holocaust survivors, began migrating to Palestine in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project. The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. The British, having faced Arab revolts, were now facing opposition by Zionist groups in Palestine for subsequent restrictions on Jewish immigration. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was a joint British and American committee was tasked to examine political, economic and social conditions in Mandatory Palestine and the well-being of the peoples now living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution. Following the failure of the 1946–47 London Conference on Palestine, at which the United States refused to support the British leading to both the Morrison–Grady Plan and the Bevin Plan being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947.

Post-World War II

With the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Stalin reversed his long-standing opposition to Zionism, and tried to mobilize worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet war effort. A Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in Moscow. Many thousands of Jewish refugees fled the Nazis and entered the Soviet Union during the war, where they reinvigorated Jewish religious activities and opened new synagogues. In May 1947 Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the United Nations that the USSR supported the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The USSR formally voted that way in the UN in November 1947. However once Israel was established, Stalin reversed positions, favoured the Arabs, arrested the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and launched attacks on Jews in the USSR.

In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, ''Corpus separatum'', around Jerusalem. This partition plan was adopted on November 29, 1947, with UN GA Resolution 181, 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. The vote led to celebrations in Jewish communities and protests in Arab communities throughout Palestine. Violence throughout the country, previously an Arab and Jewish insurgency against the British, Jewish-Arab communal violence, spiralled into the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Palestinian Arabs, outside of Israel's territories. More than a quarter had already fled prior to the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the start of the war. After the 1949 Armistice Agreements

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