History of the Arab–Israeli conflict

The Arab–Israeli conflict is a modern phenomenon, which has its roots in the end of the 19th century. The conflict became a major international issue with the birth of Israel in 1948. The Arab–Israeli conflict has resulted in at least five major wars and a number of minor conflicts. It has also been the source of two major Palestinian uprisings (intifadas).

Tensions between the Zionist movements and the Arab residents of Palestine started to emerge after the 1880s, when immigration of European Jews to Palestine increased. This immigration increased the Jewish communities in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire by the acquisition of land from Ottoman and individual Arab landholders, known as effendis, and establishment of Jewish agricultural settlements. At the time, Arabs lived in an almost feudal existence on the effendis' land. Demographer Justin McCarthy estimated from Ottoman census data that the population of Palestine in 1882–3 was about 468,000, consisting of 408,000 Muslims, 44,000 Christians and 15,000 Jews. By the eve of World War I, these numbers had increased to 602,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christians and 39,000 Jews, plus a similar but uncertain number of Jews who were not Ottoman citizens. The first Statistician General of Israel, Roberto Bachi, give similar numbers except for a lower count (525,000) of Muslims in 1914.

During the time of the Mandatory Palestine, the Balfour Declaration signed in 1917, stated that the government of Great Britain supported the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine. This exacerbated tensions between the Arabs living in Mandate Palestine and the Jews who emigrated there during the Ottoman period. Signed in January 1919, the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East, though this event had little to no effect on the conflict.

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