The origins of the Palestinian national movement can be found in the initial Arab opposition to the Zionist project in Palestine that emerged after the First World War. This section therefore starts with a description of Zionism and early contact and conflicts between Jews and Arabs before turning to an historical overview of the Palestinian movement: the evolution of the movement through the mid-1980s; the First Intifada and Oslo Process, the emergence of the Palestinian Authority, the Second Intifada, and recent developments in Gaza. The next chapter addresses the refugee problem.

The Evolution of the Zionist Movement

Zionism, the national revival movement of the Jewish people, originated in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century. Jews were first emancipated in France and later step-by-step in other parts of Europe. However, this did not mean that they enjoyed equal rights, as exemplified in the infamous Dreyfus Affair. Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer of Jewish descent in the French army, was unjustly accused of espionage because of his Jewish background. After a long legal battle, Dreyfus was exonerated and returned to his post in the army. However, his case became a symbol of the Jewish predicament in Europe: despite emancipation and acculturation, Jews faced continuing discrimination. In Eastern Europe, the situation was markedly worse as Jews still fell victim to periodic pogroms. For example, as late as 1903, the two-day long Pogrom of Kishinev in present day Moldova resulted in the deaths of 49 people and many more displaced.

Hungarian-born Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the father of political Zionism, saw the solution to the “Jewish question” (die Judenfrage), in the creation of a state for the Jewish people in their historical homeland, Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel).  In 1896, he outlined his vision in a pamphlet titled Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews). The First Zionist Congress (1897), which Herzl himself chaired, produced the so-called Basel Program, which declared that “Zionism aspires to create a publicly guaranteed homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.”

The main goals of Zionism were the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel; to stimulate, support and facilitate Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel; and to provide a safe haven from anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution that Jews experienced elsewhere living as minorities in the diaspora. Aside from these political goals, Zionism also promoted the self-expression of a modern Jewish culture, in particular the revival of the Hebrew language. Major aspects of Zionism are represented in Israel’s Declaration of Independence (see Appendix II at the end of this chapter).

From the beginning, political Zionism developed in different currents, the primary ones being:

1. Labor Zionism: This socialist, secular trend of Zionism was the most significant tendency among the Zionist movement in its early years and during the first two decades of the existence the State of Israel. Its adherents believed that Jews should redeem the Land of Israel by becoming farmers, workers and soldiers in their own land. Its main tenets were the establishment of a Jewish state through agricultural settlement, the increased immigration of the Jewish people, and the creation of an egalitarian socialist society. These ideas motivated the establishment of the kibbutzim, rural Jewish collective settlements, and the moshavim, cooperative agricultural communities. This trend of Zionism developed into various Labor oriented parties before and after the establishment of the state.
2. Revisionist Zionism: This movement was formed in 1925 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky with the goal of intensifying the political struggle for the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in the entire territory of British MandatePalestine, including east of the Jordan river. It focused on increasing pressure on Great Britain, demanded military training for youth, and promoted the establishment of a Jewish majority in Palestine. The revisionist movement was divided into three trends: the Centrists, who advocated liberal democracy, and the Irgun and the Lehi, which sought to accelerate British departure from Mandate Palestine through armed resistance. The Irgun engaged in military actions against the British and against Arabs. The Lehi was an offshoot from the Irgun, and concentrated its attacks mainly against British targets. Revisionist Zionism was the precursor of today’s Likud party.
3. Religious Zionism: Based on a fusion of Jewish religionand nationhood, this Zionist trend aimed to restore Jewish political freedom in light of the Torah and its commandments. Its adherents believed that God promised the Land of Israel to their Israelite forefathers, and considered the ingathering of the Jewish exiles as the beginning of the Redemption of the Jewish people that is one of numerous Biblical The movement’s platform concerned itself mostly with observance of the commandments, constructing a national-religious education system, and applying the Torah commandments to settling and working the Land of Israel.

By the 1880s, about 25,000 Jews lived throughout the Land of Israel in what was then Ottoman Palestine. After 1882, they were joined by waves of Jewish immigrants (aliyah) from Europe, inspired by the Zionist national movement. During the First Aliyah, which began in 1882 and continued intermittently until 1903, some 35,000 Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe, came to Palestine. In the Second Aliyah that took place between 1904 and 1914, 20,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. This wave was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

In November 1917 , the Balfour Declaration was published: a public letter from the British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour addressed to Lord Rothschild, in which he stated his government’s sympathy for the establishment of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The letter was considered the first public expression of support for Zionism by the British government, a major international power.

After World War I ended, aliyah continued with a third wave that lasted from 1919 to 1923, comprising approximately 40,000 Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe. These first three waves of Jewish immigration took place following a series of pogroms in Eastern Europe. The Fourth Aliyah, between 1926 and 1928 mainly consisted of Polish immigrants and brought about 82,000 Jews to Palestine. The Fifth Aliyah was stimulated by the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, and comprised nearly 250,000 Jews from German and Eastern Europe.

The Jewish communities living in the Land of Israel (Palestine) before the establishment of the state were referred to as the Yishuv. They set up a paramilitary organization, called the Hagana, between 1920 and 1948, to defend Jewish settlements from Arab attacks. After the establishment of the state, the Hagana evolved into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Arab Opposition

The Arabs of Palestine, however, had their own expectations from the British. In a series of letters exchanged in 1915–16 between Hussein Ibn Ali, the Emir of Mecca and the central figure of the Arab nationalist movement during the First World War, and Sir Arthur McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, the British declared their support for the creation of an independent Arab state as well. In exchange, the Arabs offered the British their assistance against the Ottoman Empire.

In the wake of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire was effectively dismantled. In the San Remo Conference of 1920, much of the former Ottoman-ruled territories in the Middle East were allocated to Britain and France as mandates. Britain received the mandate for Palestine and Iraq, while France gained control of Syria including present-day Lebanon. The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the British mandate for Palestine, thereby upgrading the British commitment to the Zionist enterprise, which now became an international commitment of Great Britain also to the League of Nations.

Although Arab opposition to the Zionist idea was apparent before the First World War, the first organized opposition came in the wake of the war in the form of Muslim-Christian Associations, a number of clubs established in almost every major city in Palestine. These associations organized a total of seven congresses between 1919 and 1928. These congresses opposed the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration and mass Jewish immigration. They sought Arab independence, initially as part of Greater Syria.

According to the League of Nations’ Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine, the population of Palestine was 700,000 in 1920, but four-fifths of the total population was Muslim, with the Jews numbering only 76,000.  Rising tension in Arab-Jewish relations resulted in riots in Jerusalem in 1920 and in Jaffa in 1921. A pinnacle of violence against the Jews came in 1929, as riots broke out in Jerusalem and Hebron, the worst that had taken place until that time in Palestine.

From the early phase of the British mandate, the leader of the Arabs in Palestine was Hajj Amin al-Husseini (1897–1974), a man of religion from a wealthy landowning family in Jerusalem. He was appointed by the British as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921. Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s political objective was specifically centered on blocking Jewish national aspirations in Mandatory Palestine.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini