ABSTRACT
The origins of Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back to the 1890s and the formal establishment of the Zionist Organization, the Jewish national movement seeking the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland in Palestine, a geographic area that includes both present-day Israel and Jordan. Both of these territories had been part of the vast possessions of the Ottoman Empire since 1516. From this time until the end of the First World War Palestine did not exist as a unified geopolitical entity. It was divided between the Ottoman province of Beirut in the north and the district of Jerusalem in the south. The Muslim inhabitants of Palestine, the vast majority of the population, were subjects of the Ottoman sultan-caliph, the religious and temporal head of the Islamic world, and local governors were appointed by the Ottoman court in Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey).
