answersLogoWhite

0

At the end of WW2, the United Nations gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people to be their homeland. After seeing the evidence of the Holocaust, the world was horrified at the death and torture that the Jews had endured. Even still, many nations were still prejudiced enough that they didn't what them "in my back yard", so the Jews and Allies agreed that the land of Israel would be given to the jews. Immediately the rest of the Middle East vowed that the Jews would not be welcome as neighbors and that Islam would drive the Jews into the Sea. They tried. Since that time, Islam has continuously tried different methods to destroy the Jews and since the Holocaust, the Jews have vowed, "Never again." The problem goes back to well before the Holocaust. In 1917 the British government promised the Jews a "national home" in Palestine, which was under Ottoman (Turkish) rule. British forces were advancing into the region at the time. There were problems.

  • It was unclear what "national home" meant.
  • The area was already inhabited by Arabs.
  • There was a widespread view among Arabs that they had been promised independence by Britain.

So when Britain gained control of Palestine/Israel there were all the ingredients for serious trouble. After all Britain seemed to have promised the same territory to two groups of people!

Having said this, one needs to remember that in 1917, with the collapse of Tsarist rule in Russia, it was widely (but mistakenly) assumed that there would be a sharp fall in antisemitism and that therefore relatively few Jews would want to settle in Palestine/Israel.

The trigger for the UN establishing the state of Israel in 1948 was that the area had been under British rule since 1918 and had been in a state of civil war (Arabs versus Jews) from 1936-1939 and again from the end of WW2. In 1948 Britain informed the UN that it just couldn't cope with the situation any more.

It is misleading to say that the UN gave Israel to the Jews as some kind of present or consolation for the Holocaust. The point was that Britain just could not cope with the problems in Palestine/Israel and in effect handed the territory to the UN, which then split it into two parts, which fought one another.

This mess was largely of Britain's own making. As the author Arthur Koestler, a Jew who spent some years in the area, once remarked of the 1917 Balfour Declaration:

  • "One nation promised another the land of a third nation".

[Please see the Discussion Section to see other views as to what started the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian people as well as the Related Questions below.]

User Avatar

Wiki User

11y ago

What else can I help you with?