Origins of the Conflict and the Creation of Israel

The modern conflict over Palestine grew out of the collapse of empires, two rival nationalisms laying claim to the same land, and the shadow of the Holocaust. Understanding 1948 means understanding the forces that converged on it.

From Ottoman province to British Mandate

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed in World War I, Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate. Britain had made overlapping and arguably contradictory wartime promises — to Arab leaders, and, in the Balfour Declaration (1917), support for "a national home for the Jewish people" — sowing competing expectations.

Two nationalisms, one land

• Zionism — the movement for a Jewish homeland, gathering urgency through the early 20th century and especially after the Holocaust.
• Arab (Palestinian) nationalism — the aspiration of the Arab majority of Palestine for self-determination in their own land.

Both were legitimate national movements; their claims to the same territory are the root of the conflict.

1947–48: Partition, statehood and war

• The Holocaust intensified international sympathy for a Jewish state and Jewish migration to Palestine.
• The 1947 UN Partition Plan proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; it was accepted by Jewish leaders and rejected by Arab states and Palestinians.
• In 1948 Israel declared independence; neighbouring Arab states invaded. Israel survived and expanded its territory.
• The war created the enduring Palestinian refugee question — remembered by Israelis as the War of Independence and by Palestinians as the Nakba ("catastrophe").

Let's map the forces converging on 1948, and then set the two narratives side by side.

Then, as a class, list how an Israeli and a Palestinian account of 1948 would each describe the same events — without adjudicating between them.