Situation 1947

When the Ottoman Empire fell after World War I, the region known as Palestine became a mandate (similar to a colony) of Britain. Jewish nationalists, called Zionists, planned to settle in Palestine and to eventually create a Jewish state there. In 1917, the British issued the Balfour Declaration, which supported the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine. Palestinian Arabs, who constituted over 90 percent of the population in 1916, strongly opposed the plan. As Jewish immigration increased, Palestinian Arabs feared Jews were an extension of European colonialism and come to rule Palestine with British support. In 1939, after three years of intense fighting among Arabs, Jews, and British soldiers, the British withdrew support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and planned to make further Jewish immigration subject to approval by the Arab majority by 1944. 

Zionists were outraged, and Arab leaders were upset that Jewish immigration was allowed to continue at all. After World War II, fighting among Arabs, Jews, and British soldiers escalated in the mandate. In 1947, the British, recognizing that they had lost control of the conflict that they helped to create, decided to turn over the mandate to the newly created United Nations. A United Nations committee found that Arabs outnumbered Jews two to one (1,269,000 to 608,000), though Jews owned 20 percent of the cultivable land.