Information Related to "Israel at 50: A Saga of War and Peace"
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Much of Israel's 50-year history
is a chronicle of wars and other conflicts
with her Arab neighbors. What does the future hold for this nation?
by John Meakin
Fifty years ago, on May 14, 1948, Jewish leaders in what was then called Palestine gathered in Tel Aviv to declare the rebirth of Israel.
This event captured newspaper headlines around the world. The Jewish people, scattered and persecuted for centuries, could finally look to a homeland again.
Israel did not form against a background of peace. During the latter 19th century, the hopes of many Jews were shattered by waves of anti-Semitism. In Eastern Europe especially, Jews repeatedly suffered in murderous pogroms often initiated by the authorities themselves.
These traumatic experiences helped to spawn the Zionist movement. Zionism rested on the conviction that Jewish problems could be solved only by the establishment of an independent Jewish nation.
In the late 19th century Palestine seemed eminently suitable for the purpose. It was a sparsely inhabited, marginal province of the fragile Ottoman Empire. To many Jews it seemed a motherland waiting for redemption from centuries of neglect.
Jews already living in Palestine experienced their own national renaissance and revival of the Hebrew language. Simultaneously, groups of Jewish settlers returned to Palestine as pioneers to establish modern Jewish villages. At the time Arabs constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine. At first there was cordiality, but over time much of the Arab population, alarmed by increasing Jewish immigration, land purchases and claims to the area, became adamantly opposed to Zionism. This tension set the scene for the conflicts, violence and wars that continue to this day.
The British mandate
Near the end of World War I, the British had captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. Jewish and Arab forces had supported the British. The Arabs had been promised the independence of their lands after the war. But the British had made other conflicting promises. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised the Jews a national home in Palestine.
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