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A century ago, only a few zealots believed that the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East was a possibility.
At the time, the entire region was a part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Ottoman Turks. Their empire had at one time covered the entire Middle East and had stretched all along the coast of North Africa and into Europe. By the beginning of the 20th century they were in decline, but their presence in the Balkans was a contributing factor that led to World War I.
By the end of the First World War, the empire was in a state of collapse. At the Paris peace talks, the victorious Western powers divided up its territory. This was aptly described by Archibald Wavell, later to command British army forces in the Middle East in World War II, as "a peace to end all peace."
In 1917 the British had marched into Palestine. The postwar treaty gave them administration of the territory under a mandate from the League of Nations. They were also given Iraq and Jordan. The foundations of today's Middle East had been laid, and the consequences are with us to this day.
Birth of a new Jewish homeland
Between the two world wars Palestine continued under British rule. Increasing numbers of Jews were arriving from Europe with the expectation of a Jewish nation, promised to them by the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, in 1917. At the same time, the Palestinian Arabs had their own expectation of a homeland. As both peoples wanted the same land, a major problem was brewing.
Following the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews died, Jewish demands for a homeland intensified. These were finally realized in late 1947 when the British announced they were leaving and handed the problem of Palestine to the United Nations, the post–World War II successor to the League of Nations. Six months later, with UN approval, the Jewish nation-state of Israel came into being on May 14, 1948.
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