Balfour Declaration in the context of "Israeli–Palestinian conflict"

Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. Israel occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the southwest, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights in the northeast. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, the southern tip reaches the Red Sea, and the east includes the Earth's lowest point near the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is the government seat and proclaimed capital, while Tel Aviv is Israel's largest urban area and economic centre.

The Land of Israel is synonymous with Palestine or the Holy Land. In antiquity it was home to the Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Its location at a continental crossroads brought demographic shifts under various empires. Nineteenth-century European antisemitism fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland. Britain endorsed this goal in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1920. Jewish immigration and British policies intensified Arab-Jewish tensions, and the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan led to a civil war.

Mandatory Palestine was a British administrative territory that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. The British took the territory deeming it presently unfit for self-governance.

After an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in 1916, British Empire forces drove Ottoman forces out of the Levant. For the British, the United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue that later arose was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was then established in 1920, and the British obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922. Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate, based on its social, political, and economic development. This classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest capacity for self-governance. All Class A mandates other than Mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946.

Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi (Arabic: ٱلْحُسَيْن بِن عَلِي ٱلْهَاشِمِي, romanized: al-Ḥusayn bin 'Alī al-Hāshimī pronunciation; 1 May 1854 – 4 June 1931) was a Hejazi leader from the Banu Qatadah branch of the Banu Hashim clan who was the Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 and, after proclaiming the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, King of the Hejaz, even if he refused this title, from 1916 to 1924. He proclaimed himself Caliph after the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924 and stayed in power until 1925 when Hejaz was invaded by the Sultanate of Nejd. His Caliphate was opposed by the British and French empires, the Zionists and the Wahhabis alike. However, he received support from a large part of the Muslim population of that time and from Mehmed VI. He is usually considered as the father of modern pan-Arabism.

In 1908, in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution, Hussein was appointed Sharif of Mecca by the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II. His relationship with the Ottoman government deteriorated after the Committee of Union and Progress took power, particularly because of their policies of Turkification and persecution of ethnic minorities, including Arabs. In 1916, with the promise of British support for Arab independence, although it is debated as to what extent the British were influential in his choice, he proclaimed the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, accusing the Committee of Union and Progress of violating tenets of Islam and limiting the power of the sultan-caliph. While his armies, led by his sons, were engaged in fighting the Ottoman and German troops in the Middle East, Hussein supported the Armenians during the Armenian genocide and saved up to 4,000 of them. In the aftermath of World War I, Hussein refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, in protest of the Balfour Declaration, a document supporting the Jewish settlers in Palestine, and the establishment of British and French mandates in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. His sons Faisal and Abdullah were made rulers of Iraq and Transjordan respectively in 1921.

Arab nationalism (Arabic: القومية العربية, romanized: al-qawmīya al-ʿarabīya) is a political ideology asserting that Arabs constitute a single nation. As a traditional nationalist ideology, it promotes Arab culture and civilization, celebrates Arab history, the Arabic language and Arabic literature. It often also calls for unification of Arab society. It bases itself on the premise that the people of the Arab world—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea—constitute one nation bound together by a common identity — ethnicity, language, culture, history, geography, and politics.

Rooted in the 19th-century Nahda under Ottoman rule, Arab nationalism emerged in the early 20th century as an opposition movement in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, later evolving into the overwhelmingly dominant ideological force in the Arab world. Initially focused on resisting Ottoman control, it later opposed Western imperialism after World War I due to the undesirable outcome of the Arab Revolt — in successfully achieving their primary goal of dissolving the Ottoman Empire, the Arab rebels simultaneously enabled the partitioning of their would-be unified Arab state by Britain and France. Anti-Western sentiment grew as Arab nationalists rallied around the Palestinian cause, viewing Zionism as a threat to the region's integrity and linking the Arab–Israeli conflict to Western imperialism due to the Balfour Declaration. Arab unity was considered a necessary instrument to "restoring this lost part" of the nation, which in turn meant eliminating the "relics" of foreign colonialism. Its influence steadily expanded over subsequent years. By the 1950s and 1960s, the charismatic Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser championed Arab nationalism following his seizure and nationalization of the Suez Canal and his "victory" over British–French–Israeli forces in the 1956 Suez Crisis, and political parties like the Ba'ath Party and the Arab Nationalist Movement demonstrated remarkable capabilities for mobilization, organization, and clandestine activities. This ideology seemed to be on the rise across the Arab states, with independent Arab governments such as Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Egypt adopting Arab nationalism as official state policy.

The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captureds e territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War. The West Bank is part of the state of Palestine, and its status as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court. The West Bank, excepting East Jerusalem, is administered by the Israeli Civil Administration, a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable conflict", Israel's occupation is now the longest in modern history. Though its occupation is illegal, Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: historic rights stemming from the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, both internal and external; and the area's symbolic value for Jews.

Israel has controversially, and in contravention of international law, established numerous Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank. The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly affirmed that settlements in that territory are a "flagrant violation of international law", most recently in 2016 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. The International Court of Justice has also found that the establishment of Israeli settlements is illegal under international law. The creation and ongoing expansion of the settlements have led to Israel's policies being criticized as an example of settler colonialism.

The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has been under military occupation by Israel since 7 June 1967, when Israeli forces captured the territory, then ruled by Jordan, during the Six-Day War. The West Bank is part of the state of Palestine, and its status as a militarily occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court. The West Bank, excepting East Jerusalem, is administered by the Israeli Civil Administration, a branch of the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable conflict", Israel's occupation is now the longest in modern history. Though its occupation is illegal, Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: historic rights stemming from the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, both internal and external; and the area's symbolic value for Jews.

Israel has controversially, and in contravention of international law, established numerous Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank. The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly affirmed that settlements in that territory are a "flagrant violation of international law", most recently in 2016 with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334. The International Court of Justice has also found that the establishment of Israeli settlements is illegal under international law. The creation and ongoing expansion of the settlements have led to Israel's policies being criticized as an example of settler colonialism.

The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.

Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1920 creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, and in the context of Zionism and the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine, there had been tension and conflict between Arabs, Jews, and the British in Palestine. The conflict escalated into a civil war 30 November 1947, the day after the United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine proposing to divide the territory into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an internationally administered corpus separatum for the cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.