Who has legal rights to the land of Israel? This video will explain:
During the years of 1920-1948, there was a geopolitical entity in the Middle East known as Mandatory Palestine, and this entity included the Land of Israel. During World War I, there was an uprising among the Arab people, and the British forces led by General and British Imperial Governor Edmund Allenby took on Turkish forces defending the Ottoman Empire during what would be known later as the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.
The issue of the Land of Israel was then confounded by three more issues over the next several years.
One, Britain agreed to the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence which was an agreement to respect Arab sovereignty in the land if they conquered the Ottoman Empire, and this led to other agreements and betrayals that made the whole issue further complicated, as is usual in Middle East politics where nothing is as straightforward as it ideally should be.
Two, the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. The Balfour Declaration was Great Britain’s way of expressing support of a Jewish home within Palestine. On November 2, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour sent his letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British Jew himself, stating that: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Three, the League of Nations was formed, and a mandate passed in 1922 set up different rules and regulations in the area, rendering a Jewish state impossible under British rule without being a quagmire of appeasing Arabs and international decrees with Britain civilly governing the land in ways that did not necessarily benefit Israel.
There were additional Arab uprisings in the 1930s, and after war with the Arabs in the late 1940s, a ceasefire was finally agreed upon in 1949 which would establish boundaries between the state of Israel who declared her sovereignty in 1948, the West Bank which would remain under Jordanian rule, and the Gaza Strip which would fall under Egyptian jurisdiction.
Written by Erin Parfet
