Arab–Israeli conflict — origins and tensions to 1945

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A nationalist movement, founded by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s, calling for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

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A letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, promising British support for 'a national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, while also saying the rights of 'existing non-Jewish communities' must not be harmed.

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A secret British-French deal to divide Ottoman Middle Eastern territory into zones of influence after WWI; Palestine was marked for international/British administration.

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Letters in which Britain seemed to promise Sharif Hussein of Mecca an independent Arab state (in exchange for revolt against the Ottomans) in territory that many Arabs believed included Palestine.

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Britain made three conflicting promises (to Arabs via McMahon-Hussein, to the French via Sykes-Picot, and to Zionists via Balfour) about the same land, planting contradictions the Mandate could never resolve.

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The League of Nations gave Britain legal authority to govern Palestine from 1922, with instructions to both develop self-government and implement the Balfour Declaration.

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From roughly 11% to about 30% of the population, driven above all by the Fifth Aliyah (1929-1939) as Jews fled Nazi persecution in Europe.

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A British policy document capping Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years and envisaging an independent Palestine within ten years — a sharp reversal that angered Zionists but did not fully satisfy Arab demands either.

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A general strike began in April 1936 after Arab anger built over rising Jewish immigration, land sales to Jewish settlers, and the feeling that Britain was not delivering the independence promised to Arabs.

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With the Peel Commission (1937), which recommended partition into separate Arab and Jewish states — rejected by Arab leaders — followed by harsh military suppression that crushed the revolt by 1939.

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Jewish communities built strong institutions (the Jewish Agency, the Haganah defence force, the Histadrut labour federation) under fairly unified leadership; Arab Palestinian society was more fragmented, split between rival clans (notably the Husaynis and Nashashibis), which weakened its political effectiveness.

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It hardened Arab nationalism but left the Palestinian Arab leadership militarily and politically weakened just as WWII approached, while it accelerated Jewish paramilitary organisation and self-reliance — a mismatch that shaped the balance of power in 1947-48.