Jewish immigration was severely limited and Palestine was ruled out of bounds to Jews desperately seeking refuge from Hitler’s Europe.Towards the end of the Second World War, a new revolt broke out in Palestine This time the rebels were Jews, not Arabs. At one point 100,000 British troops were engaged, but an impoverished, war-weary Britain could not maintain such a commitment. She threw in the towel and announced that the mandate would be handed back to the United Nations.In November 1947 the UN General Assembly called for partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab. Jerusalem was to belong to neither but would be internationalised The Arabs rejected partition; the Zionists accepted it. In the chaotic last stages of British rule, civil war turned into regional war as the surrounding Arab states mobilised their armies.When the last British High Commissioner withdrew on 14 May 1948, the Zionists, led by David Ben Gurion, proclaimed the State of Israel He led the country to victory over the Arab armies.
The Palestinians, divided and disorganised, failed to establish their state, and 700,000 fled their homes, many expelled by the Israeli army. They and their descendants ended up in camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, dreaming of return. Israel expanded beyond the boundaries allotted to her by the UN, while Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip. The area now known as the West Bank was absorbed into what became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Israel and Jordan divided Jerusalem.Israel absorbed hundreds of thousands of survivors of Hitler’s camps and Jewish refugees from Arab lands. But she failed to secure acceptance by her neighbours who prepared for a “second round”.
Border skirmishes punctuated the early 1950s and Mr Ben Gurion and his gung-ho army chief, Moshe Dayan, decided on a pre-emptive strike. In October 1956, following a secret agreement with Britain and France, Israel invaded Egypt. While her allies were humiliated, Israel scored a smashing victory and occupied the Sinai peninsula and Gaza. But under strong US pressure Mr Ben Gurion decided to withdraw.Over the next decade Israel consolidated her institutions but Arab hostility did not abate. In 1967, after President Nasser blockaded Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat, Israel launched a lightning strike on Egypt Within six days, Israel trounced Jordan and Syria as well. Israel now occupied Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But these fruits of victory, with their large Arab populations, soon turned into a curse.