British Foundation .
1917-1947 .
Balfour Declaration .
British Mandate .
1917-1947 .
Massive immigration .
Balfour Declaration .
British Mandate .
1917-1947 .
British Foundation .
Massive immigration .
When homes were destroyed, land was taken, and everyday life became exile, loss, and memory carried through generations.
In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, a letter from the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, formally committing Britain to supporting a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. The declaration was drafted with input from Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, but with no representation from the local Palestinian population. The letter was politically motivated: Britain hoped to rally Jewish opinion to the Allied side in WWI and believed that a pro-British Jewish population in Palestine could help protect access to the Suez Canal
Britain captured Jerusalem in December 1917 and completed the occupation of the entire country by October 1918, immediately imposing military government and beginning the implementation of the Balfour policy.
An avowed Zionist, Sir Herbert Samuel, became Palestine's first High Commissioner, and in August 1920, the first immigration ordinance was passed, opening Palestine to Jewish immigration.
The Mandate's preamble referred to the Arab majority, which was nearly 90% of the population by the 1922 British census, as simply "the non-Jewish communities in Palestine," a framing that denied their political identity and national rights.
Between 1919 and 1948, approximately 450,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, with the largest influx in the 1930s as Jews fled persecution in Europe.
This led to land disputes, resource competition, and escalating violence. The Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 was a direct response. Britain suppressed it, which severely weakened Palestinian political and military leadership heading into 1948.
While Britain granted nominal independence to its other mandates (Iraq in 1932, Jordan in 1946), the Palestine Mandate actively built structures that gave the Zionist movement the upper hand over the indigenous population.
In February 1947, facing a deteriorating situation including a terrorist campaign by the Irgun and Lehi against British targets, Britain announced it would end the Mandate and hand the question of Palestine to the newly-created United Nations.
The UN passed Resolution 181 in November 1947, partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Palestinians, who were the majority and held more land, rejected the partition. Britain set a withdrawal date of May 15, 1948.
As Britain prepared to leave, ethnic cleansing and violent atrocities were already taking place across areas Britain was vacating. Zionist armed groups, allowed to flourish in Palestine by the British over three decades and trained and armed by the colonial power, were sweeping across Palestinian towns and villages.
Classified cables show the British knew of mass killings and displacement of Palestinians in May 1948, but downplayed them and refused to intervene. One British official explicitly wrote that any loss of prestige was insignificant compared to the political cost of British casualties.
In March 1948, the Haganah executed Plan Dalet, a military plan for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for a Jewish state. Tactics included laying siege to Palestinian villages, bombing city neighborhoods, forced expulsion of inhabitants, setting fields and houses on fire, and detonating TNT in the rubble to prevent return. Zionist military units had detailed lists of neighborhoods and villages to be destroyed.
Critically, the ethnic cleansing began before the 1948 war and before a single regular Arab soldier entered Palestine. Approximately 300,000 Palestinians had been expelled through ethnic cleansing campaigns before the onset of war or the end of the Mandate. These campaigns included massacres against villages that had non-aggression pacts with the Zionist Yishuv.
On April 9, 1948, Zionist paramilitaries attacked the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, killing at least 107 Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children.
The village had a non-aggression pact with the Haganah, but was slated for destruction under Plan Dalet. The massacre spread mass panic, accelerating the flight of Palestinians across the region.
During the Nakba, the catastrophe, Zionist militias forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians, committed up to 155 massacres, and destroyed or depopulated 531 Palestinian cities, towns, and villages. On May 14, 1948, Israel declared statehood. Arab armies entered the following day, but inter-Arab rivalries, disunity, and separate political agendas meant they never mounted a coordinated defense.
What is happening there today carries the same structure as what Britain enabled and Zionist militias executed in 1948: forced displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and the systematic elimination of a people's ability to survive on their own land. By April 2026, 72,315 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza and another 172,137 injured
A UN Human Rights Council analysis found that 83 percent of those killed were civilians.
More children were killed in the first four months of the assault than had been killed across all of the world's conflicts combined over the prior four years.
