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Zionist movement founded (in Europe)
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Chaim Weizmann lobbies British to support Zionist plans
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British census places population of Palestine at “689,272 persons, of whom no more (and perhaps less) than 60,000 were Jews”
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Sykes-Picot (British-French) agreement divides Arabian peninsula between British and French; Palestine left an international zone
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Balfour Declaration announces support of British government for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” while insisting also upon the rights of non-Jewish peoples
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Some migration of European Jews to Palestine: Jewish population rises from 83,790 in 1922 census (out of 752,048 total) to 174,606 by 1931 (out of 1,033,314 total); more violence in 1929
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First Palestinian uprisings against Zionist settlement (Jaffa)
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Major Palestinian uprising against Zionist settlements; British disarm Palestinian groups in aftermath
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Armed Zionist groups pressure British to allow Israeli statehood (1944 Stern Gang assassination of British Secretary of State Lord Moyne; 1946 bombing of King David Hotel, with at least 88 killed)
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US and Britain refuse to open doors to Jewish holocaust refugees, directing flow of migrants to Israel
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Deir Yassin massacre, 250 killed by Menachim Begin’s troops; flight of as many as 900,000 unarmed Palestinians to surrounding Arab states; Israeli statehood proclaimed, recognized by US and 32 other states at UN (13 against, 10 abstentions); Palestinians and surrounding Arab states reject Israeli statehood, war ensues; Yitzhak Shamir’s unit assassinates UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte
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Israel wins series of military conflicts with Arab states, solidifying position and laying permanent claim to former Palestinian lands
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Beginnings of officially-recognized Middle East terrorism problems, including airplane hijackings and bombings, first carried out by Israel, eventually by Palestinians and others; Ariel Sharon’s unit commits massacre at Qibya in 1953
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Zionist revisionists (Vladimir Jabotinsky and Stern Gang) begin negotiations with Nazis over support for Zionist settlement in Palestine; Jewish population increases more rapidly, reaching 528,702 by 1944 (out of 1,739,624 total)
