ABSTRACT
In an area formerly part of the Turkish empire, Syria and Lebanon were taken over by France, and Palestine and Transjordan by Britain, after the 1914-18 war – under League of Nations mandates. The Palestine mandate provided for the creation of a Jewish ‘national home’, without prejudice to other communities’ rights – a difficult aim. Since the 1890s the Zionist movement had promoted Jewish settlement in Palestine. The persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany increased their migration, and the Arabs began to attack their settlements. The Nazis’ massacre of millions of Jews during the 1939-45 war brought Zionism wider support, particularly in America; ‘Holocaust’ survivors struggled to reach Palestine; the British, unable to stop Arab-Jewish fighting, took the problem to the United Nations.
