Israel/Palestine Part 2

This is the 2nd installment in the Israel/Palestine series. We left the story in part 1 just after the Romans destroyed the second temple, kicked many Jews out of Jerusalem and renamed the area Syria Palaestina.

The Roman General did allow a centre of learning and Jewish council to be established in Yavneh, which provided a focal point for the Jewish faith. The Jews did try to establish the state of Israel but the revolt was put down by the Romans. By about 400 years later, the whole area was part of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) empire, and had been split into three units. In 425BC, the Romans (with Christianity now the dominant faith) forced the Jewish council (Sanhedrin) to disband in Yavneh.

As the Roman empire declined, the Persians managed to take over the area in about 614. The Romans never managed to get it back, and it ended up under Arab control. It changed hands through various Arab caliphs (interrupted briefly when the Crusaders took over) until about 1500 when it became part of the Ottoman empire. The Jews seemed to have lived there relatively peacefully under Muslim rule - it was the Crusaders who tried to drive them out and kill them.

Meanwhile, all the Jews who had been expelled or who fled were scattered around Europe. There was also considerable antisemitism in the Christian nations of France, Germany and Britain, so the Jewish population was particularly high in Muslim Spain. However, during the reconquista - the Christian reconquest of Spain - both Muslims and Jews fled (or were expelled) from the area, many going to Ottoman Palestine, moving in alongside the Jews and Arabs who had been there for centuries.

Faced with institutionalised anti-semitism throughout (now mainly Christian) Europe, a Zionist movement began to grow amongst the Jews still scattered around Europe who wanted to return to Israel and make it a Jewish state and rebuild their temple. Most people in Palestine were happy, and things seemed quite peaceful. Most of the people living there (Jews, Christians and Arabs) were living where their families had lived for hundreds of years.

Then, World War 1 happened. The Ottoman empire had been pretty much declining for a while, and they ended up on the Kaiser's side. When Germany was defeated, the winners carved up the losers' land. Most of the middle east was split between Britain & France. Out of this was eventually born the states we now know, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and so on. Around this time, the Zionists in Europe did some serious lobbying and managed to convinced the British Foreign Secretary that now was a good time for them to regain a Jewish state.

Now, under the Sykes-Picot agreement (the secret arrangement between Britain and France about who was to get what part of the middle east), Palestine wasn't actually allocated to either - it was marked for international administration pending consultation with Russia and others. Palestine really wasn't Britain's to give away.

The text of the Balfour Declaration reads:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

It seems that 'His Majesty's Government' was telling different stories to different sides. They were essentially telling the Zionists that they could have Palestine for a Jewish state, but telling the Palestinians that they were just agreeing to a give the Jews a national home, not a state, in Palestine, not the whole of Palestine.

Some of the wording in the declaration was added and modified by groups representing the (large number) of non-Zionist Jews in Europe. They were worried about the people in the area being expelled (after all, their ancestors weren't happy when it happened to them, so why would they do that to others), so they included the bit about doing nothing to prejudice the rights of existing non-Jewish communities. They were also worried that if there was a Jewish state, that they would be forced to go there by the European states, so they added the bits about not prejudicing the rights and political status of Jews in any other country.

Stay tuned for the next installment.