(Edited from a rant I posted in response to a comment on a friend's Facebook post.)
Even during the Diaspora, there were always Jews in Israel. Though the Romans banned them from Jerusalem (renamed Aelia Capitolina after the Second Jewish Revolt), the Byzantines waffled between toleration and attempts to ban the practice of the religion, and the requirement to pay the jizya and live as dhimmi under centuries of Muslim rule, the Jews remained.European Jews began emigrating to the Ottoman Empire in the 1850s, thanks to a bequest by a wealthy American Jew, Judah Touro, who specified that the majority of his fortune (half a million dollars in 1854 - pretty good!) be used to build a new settlement for Jews in "the Holy Land." Immigration was sparse at first, then an increase came as the Russian Empire began a program of persecution in Jews in Poland and Lithuania. These attempts had little central organization, though. The publication of Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat), which was partially a response to a perception of growing anti-Semitism in Europe in the aftermath of the Dreyfus case, led to the establishment of the World Zionist Organization in 1896, with a goal of establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
Chaim Weizman, a chemist, university lecturer, and president of the British Zionist Organization, lobbied the British Empire to provide official support for Jews returning to "Zion". In the early 1900s a counter-proposal was floated in the British Parliament to establish a Jewish homeland in Uganda (then South Kenya). During the debates over this proposal, Weizman befriended Arthur Balfour, then representing Manchester in the Commons. Weisman's continued lobbying eventually led to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared Britain's intent to aid the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in "Palestine". (A name given to the region by the Romans, by the way, in honor of the Philistines. Which is interesting, considering what Rome had done to the Philistines. Hint, Carthage was the capital of the Philistine Empire.)
So, after the war the Ottoman Empire was broken up (much to the surprise of the Turks) and parceled out between the Allied nations (well, the European ones, anyway - the United States didn't get involved in the Treaty of Sevres.) Britain was granted the "Mandate of Palestine", which at that time consisted of the lands now known as Israel and Jordan. Britain then opened up Palestine to Jewish immigration.
Round about the early 1930s, the British decided they really needed to be buddies with the former Sharif (governor) of Mecca, who was the chief of the Hashemite tribe. (They kind of owned him since he had helped them fight the Ottomans, and then they turned around and supported the Saud family in taking over what became "Saudi Arabia".) They also felt they needed a counterweight against the agitations of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was beginning to be a nationalist nuisance. So, they split the Mandate of Palestine at the Jordan River and handed over everything east of the Jordan (80% of the land area of the Mandate of Palestine) to the Hashemites, whose leader (the eldest son of the former Sharif) promptly declared himself king of the "Kingdom of Transjordan."
(In other British meddling, the second son of the former Sharif was induced to become the king of Iraq.) Jewish immigration was now restricted to the 20% of the land remaining in the Mandate of Palestine.
In the 1930s, as things were starting to go bad in Europe, more and more Jews were going to Palestine, and the local Arabs said "hey, wait a minute, they're buying up all the good land!" Under the leadership of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, they started agitating against Jewish immigration, including the odd terrorist act here and there. The upshot of which was that the British announced in 1939 that they would only accept 75,000 more Jewish immigrants into the Mandate, and all Jewish immigration must cease by 1944.
I think we all know what happened next.
So, the war's over, and the majority of the European Jewish population is either dead or displaced. The British still refused to re-open Palestine to Jewish immigration, though, which led to Operation Exodus, led by the Mossad. (Mossad means "operation" in Hebrew - the full name was "Mossad Aliyah Bet", the Operation to Return Home.) As the British operated under similar rules to those the United States operates under for refugees, those who made it to shore were allowed to stay in refugee camps while their cases were considered. Meanwhile, those Jews who had gotten there before the immigration cutoff continued to buy and develop land. The local Arabs got even more pissed off, and various atrocities were perpetrated by both sides. Additionally, a Jewish group called the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) which had been organized as a Palestinian militia during the war, began committing terrorist acts against British facilities to try to get the British to pack up and leave.
By 1947, the British Empire was falling apart fast. In that year, they announced their intention of leaving Palestine and dividing it between the Jewish and Arab residents. The United Nations established a special commission on Palestine, and came up with the following plan (link to full-sized map below image):
"UN Palestine Partition Versions 1947" by Zero0000A/RES/181(II) - m0103_1b.gif on PLAN OF PARTITION is from UNGA Resolution 181 (27 Nov 1947). Overdrawn UNSCOP boundary is from United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, Report to the General Assembly, 3 Sep 1947, Volume II, A/364, Add. 1.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Note that Jerusalem was to be under the control of neither the Jews nor the Arabs, but rather the U.N. as an international enclave.
So anyway... the Jewish Agency for Palestine accepted the partition plan in principle, even though it gave them a whole lot of desert and handed much land that they'd developed back to the Arabs. The Arabs basically said "no, we want all of it." The British banned weapons imports into the Mandate during their last year of overseeing it, which affected the Jews more than the Arabs who could simply bring them in across borders from friendly countries like Syria and Transjordan. What amounted to a civil war between the Arab and Jewish populations broke out in November 1947.
So anyway... The British had intended to remain in control until August 1948, but the rising levels of violence basically led them to say "screw this, we're out." They ended their administration of Palestine on May 14, 1948, which was immediately followed by the proclamation of the independent State of Israel in the areas allotted to Jews by the 1947 partition plan.The following day, Israel was invaded by Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and Transjordan. Pretty much everyone thought Israel would lose, and even the Israeli military (such as it was) only estimated their chances at 50-50.
But... after nine months of fighting, Israel won. Not only did they retain the land originally allotted them by the 1947 partition plan, they had captured 60% of the land allotted to the Arabs. Arab armies remained in control of the "Gaza Strip" (Egypt) and the "West Bank" (Transjordan, which since they now had land on both sides of the Jordan River, changed their name to Jordan.). Israel had half of Jerusalem, Jordan had the other half, which much to Israel's dismay included 90% of the Jewish holy sites. Israel booted out about 700,000 Arabs which were in areas now under their control, while the Arab states booted out a similar number of Jews.
As the Arab states were still in a "we want it all" mindset, rather than absorbing the 700,000 booted Arabs into their respective populations (as Israel did with their influx of 700,000 Jews), they declared them to be refugees and lobbied the UN to treat them as such. The UN bought it, somehow.
Jordan, rather than let the "West Bank" be an independent "Palestinian" state, annexed the territory into the Kingdom of Jordan. This state of affairs lasted until 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and the remainder of Jerusalem during the Six Day War. Arab residents of the West Bank were granted Jordanian citizenship... until September 1970, when the PLO decided to try to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy and make Jordan into Palestine. This didn't work out so well for them (and that's what "Black September" refers to - the crushing of the PLO uprising by the Jordanian army.) Jordan revoked the citizenship of the Palestinian Arabs within its borders, and they became refugees again.
Israel also captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula during the Six Day War.
The Sinai Peninsula was given back to Egypt following the 1978 Camp David accords.
The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 led to the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and the establishment of the "Palestinian National Authority" as an (intended to be) interim government over those regions.
In 2005, the Israeli settlement bloc known as Gush Katif was forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military, and the land handed over to the Palestinian National Authority.
In 2006, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym of Hamas, won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. A struggle for power began between Hamas and Fatah, the political party that had grown out of the PLO. This culminated in a five-day battle between the PNA's "Presidential Guard" and Hamas' "Executive Force" in June 2007, in Gaza. The Hamas forces decisively won, which resulted in the governance of the West Bank falling under Fatah and the governance of the Gaza Strip being taken over by Hamas.
And that's how we got to where we are today
