First Attempts

The first real attempts to find a "diplomatic solution" to the budding Arab-Zionist conflict date back to 1913 and 1914. In order to understand the context of these moves, we must go back to the year 1882, which may be taken as a convenient starting point for any discussion of Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine. This year marked the beginning of the first of several modern waves of Jewish immigration ("aliya", literally meaning "ascent"; pi. "aliyot") to those provinces of the Ottoman Empire which later became Palestine of the British Mandate, and subsequently the Jewish state of Israel. The net result of the first two "aliyot" prior to 1914 more than tripled the number of Jews in the area, from an estimated 23,000 (1882) to 85,000 (1914). The Arab population during the same period grew less strikingly, from roughly 500,000 to 600,000, with emigration detracting from the natural increase. ¹