Arab-Israeli Conflict The Arab-Israeli conflict came about from the notion of Political Zionism. Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation (or a people) and that they deserve the right to return to what they consider to be their ancestral home, land of Israel (or Palestine). Political Zionism, the belief that Jews should establish a state for themselves in Palestine, was a revolutionary idea for the 19th Century. During World War I, Jews supported countries that constituted the Central Powers because they detested the tyranny of czarist Russia. Both the Allies and Central Powers needed Jewish support, but Germany could not espouse Zionism due to its ties with the Ottoman Empire, which still controlled Palestine. British Prime Minister Lloyd George & Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour, favored Zionism and supported their cause in a letter that became known as the Balfour Declaration, ensuring that the British government would control Palestine after the war with a commitment to build the Jewish national home there, promising only to work for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and not harm the civil and religious rights of Palestine's "existing non-Jewish communities". After the Great War, Britain's Forces jointly occupied the area known as Palestine with Faysal's (Iraq) Arab army. The British set up a provisional military government in Jerusalem that soon became a struggle between Jewish settlers and the Arab inhabitants. In April 1920, the Palestinian Arabs revolted, killing Jews and damaging property, opening the Arab nationalist revolution in Palestine. The League of Nations awarded the Palestine mandate in 1922, charging Britain with carrying out the Balfour Declaration, encouraging Jewish migration to Palestine and help create the Jewish "national home". But the Arabs suspected the British mandate would hold them in colonial bondage until the Jews achieved a majority in Palestine. Winston Churchill issued a white pa...
