100 years ago on 2nd November 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent Lord Rothschild, a prominent figure in the British Jewish Community, a message to be passed along to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, in which the British government officially proclaimed support for a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Federation received the message and published it in the press on 9th of November.
This declaration incensed the native Arabs who were promised a united Arab nation stretching from modern day Syria to Yemen and led to the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, which became the site of extreme (and in some cases, violent) friction between the Arabs and the Jews, especially those that came from Nazi-occupied Europe. The British overseers proposed several solutions to resolve the tensions, all of which were turned down by one side or the other, most of which included partitioning Palestine between a Arab state and a Jewish state.
After the Holocaust, it became explicitly clear that the Jews needed a country of their own and on 14th May 1948, the State of Israel declared it's independence.
But what if the United Kingdom refused to have anything to do with the Zionists and refused to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine?
This declaration incensed the native Arabs who were promised a united Arab nation stretching from modern day Syria to Yemen and led to the creation of the British Mandate of Palestine, which became the site of extreme (and in some cases, violent) friction between the Arabs and the Jews, especially those that came from Nazi-occupied Europe. The British overseers proposed several solutions to resolve the tensions, all of which were turned down by one side or the other, most of which included partitioning Palestine between a Arab state and a Jewish state.
After the Holocaust, it became explicitly clear that the Jews needed a country of their own and on 14th May 1948, the State of Israel declared it's independence.
But what if the United Kingdom refused to have anything to do with the Zionists and refused to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine?