Palestine 1914–1948 

Key issues 
  • Status and causes of Zionist-Palestinian problem by 1914;
  • The First World War and the Balfour Declaration;
  • The British Mandate and issues in the interwar period including uprisings and immigration and their consequences;
  • Reasons for and immediate consequences of partition in 1948
As this case study relates to the origin of the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, please be particularly careful when using resources listed here, which are produced by different parties and interest groups.
Check this teaching material on Israel-Palestine conflict (including history) for examples dealing with bias, perspectives, and conflicting ideas.
By the 19th century, Palestine was an Arab majority, multi-ethnic and multi-faith land, a holy place for three major world religions.
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Due to the waning power of the Ottoman Empire and increasing influences of the Europeans, non-Muslim residents, especially Christians and Jews, received favourable treatment at the price of their Arab neighbours. The tension on the ground was mounting, in line with the increasing Jewish presence in Palestine.

Modern Zionism is a secular, nationalist activists movement originated in Europe. 
  • West Europe: increasing legal and social equality and assimilation of the Jews up to the early 20th century.
  • East Europe: With little hope for equality or assimilation, Jewish community faced severe restriction, especially in Russia (Pale of Settlement), and attacks (pogroms). It is from here the idea of Zionism started. 
  • From late 19th century, more Jews migrated to Palestine to establish agriculture settlement, some insisting self-help and using Jewish labour only. This was particularly advocated by Russian-based Hibbat Zion group. A second wave (1900s and 1910s) further carried over egalitarian and socialists ideas.
  • The leadership of Theodor Herzl, and the foundation of the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) in 1897, greatly boosted the Zionist movement. WZO also established banks, allocating funds for purchasing land in Palestine.
Internet Resources

Background summary  
Writings from notable Zionists
  • Leo Pinsker (influential in the Hibbat Zion), Auto-Emancipation (1882). 
  • Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat (1896) [The Jewish State]. Full English version from the Project Gutenberg.
Internet Resources
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​The Balfour Project is a UK-based resource site focusing on the British involvement in Palestine. Britain in Palestine 1917-1948, a film made by this project, is particularly relevant to this depth study.
 
The Jewish Virtual Library is another resource site with extremely rich information, especially in sections of 'History', 'Israel Education', 'Myth and Facts'. It is maintained by US-based AICE. 
Understand the Balfour Declaration in the context of a series of war-time and post-war negotiations:
  1. Husayn-McMahon correspondence (1915-16): British promising an Arab independence.
  2. Skyes-Picot Agreement (1916): Anglo-French division of sphere of influence.
  3. Balfour Declaration (1917): British backing to a Jewish home land in Palestine.
  4. ​US President Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918): foundation of the mandate system, promoting self-determination.
  5. Faisal-Weizmann agreement (1919): short-lived, Jewish-Arab agreement at the end of WW1.
  6. King-Crane Commission (1919): an American endeavour to collect local opinions in the Middle East. 
  7. Cairo Conference (1921): King Faisal installed in Iraq, and his brother in newly created Transjordan, both supported by Britain.
  8. Mandate for Palestine (1922): establish British mandatory by the League of Nations​ (French interests were secured in Syria)​.
This showcases the great-power relation of the time that seeks to balance imperial interests in a non-Western region, with little concern for or consent from local residents, and challenged by US's advocacy on self-determination.
In this case (the East Front of WW1), the key imperial actors were France/Britain/Russia (later withdrawing from the war due to the Revolution) vs the Ottoman and Germany.
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Internet Resources
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A recollection about Leopold Amery, who was involved in drafting the Balfour Declaration. ​

UNISPAL (United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine) lists timeline and important official documents, including all treaties mentioned above (except Wilson's 14 points) and annul reports of Palestine submitted by Britain.
Askelon
David Roberts, Askelon, 1841. SOAS Library.
Two interwoven issues accelerated the Arab-Jewish tension in the interwar years: Jewish immigration, mainly from East Europe and since the 1930s, from Germany; and Jewish land purchase by Zionist organisations and private investors that made Palestinian Arab peasants and small landowners landless. Underlying these were economic advantages of the Jews with access to worldwide resources, and Jewish political privileges incorporated into the mandatory government. Violent conflicts broke out in two significant cases: 1) the control of the Western Wall (Wailing Wall) in 1929, and 2) the Arab Revolt in the late 1930s.
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Factional struggles prevailed both among the Arabs and the Zionists. In the latter case, Zionists in Palestine were under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion (later the first PM of Israel), while the international Zionism (represented by WZO) focused on maintaining considerable influences over British policymakers. 

While British authorities in Palestine were sympathetic to the Arabs, London consistently and firmly backed the Zionist movement throughout this period. However, on the eve of the WW2, when the British imperial interests were threatened in the Middle East, and resources were needed in Europe, the British government acknowledged the importance of Arab support, and started to give more consideration to the Palestine Arabs and nearby Arab states. By then, both the Arabs and Jews realised the mutual exclusiveness of their respective causes, and further confirmed their common hostility to the British mandatory regime.  
By the end of WW2, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and other refugees from Europe were seeking for a safe heaven in Palestine, while global Zionist lobbyists shifted their focus from Britain to US.
In Palestine,  Zionists started military assistance, including assassinations of British officials and smuggling of weapons, against the mandatory administration. Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs continued to reject a Jewish national home. Britain, despite hoping for a reduced presence in the Middle East, was not able to maintain its pre-war influence and had to allow the US dominate post-war Palestine.
In 1947, Britain ended the mandate and handed the matter to the U.N., which approved a partition under the pressure from the US. After a short, fierce battle between the Jews and the Arabs on the ground (and the British quiet withdrawal), Israel proclaimed independence in 1948. Yet the Arab-Israeli conflict continued, ended with a decisive Arab defeat and more Israeli territories than the partition allocated (this boundary remained till 1967).
Internet Resources
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  • This 2-part article is on the 1929 Western Wall riots, and the conflicting interpretations of the event .
  • This article from NY Times Learning Network looks at the U.N. partition of Palestine in 1947. 
  • This Youtube video shows the bombing of the King David Hotel, Jerusalem by a Zionist military force in 1946.
Internet Resources
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Multimedia collections by individuals and organisations, including textual and visual materials
  • Diary of Ronald Baldwin, British Constable in the Palestine Police Force from 1946 to the termination of the British Mandate in 1948.
  • Writings of T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).
  • Travelers in the Middle East Archive, a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
  • Collections at the Palestine Exploration Fund.
  • Palestinian Journeys, an online project of the Palestinian Museum, in collaboration with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Visualizing Palestinean. It combines many wonderful visual and textual resources along 'Timeline' and 'Stories'.
 
Maps
Eran Laor Cartographic Collection at the Israel National Library: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/NLI/English/digitallibrary/Laor-Collection/Pages/maps.aspx
BBC. Maps tracing the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 

Newspaper
Palestine Post (1932-50): http://web.nli.org.il/sites/jpress/english/Pages/palestine-post.aspx

Oral history
The Middle East Centre Archive in Oxford carried out an oral history project in 2006-2007, interviewing former members of the British Mandate Palestine Police

Images
Royal Geographic Society's Picture Library, search by key words (eg. Palestine, Jerusalem, Israel).

Films
Colonial Film (search by country), http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/search-content?terms4=Palestine&rpp=48
British Pathe, Israel and the Palestinian Territories (it covers a wider range of periods).
 
Literature
https://lithub.com/10-must-read-histories-of-the-palestine-israel-conflict

Header image: David Roberts, Askelon, 1841, SOAS Library.