Modern History

Modern History

The nineteenth century brought an intensified yearning for a return to the Promised Land. The British government was the first to establish a consulate in Jerusalem, in 1838. In the nineteenth century, a number of British politicians were Christian Zionists- Palmerston, Lloyd George, T.E. Lawrence and Allenby. William Makepeace Thackeray, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Mark Twain all traveled to Palestine. The science of biblical archaeology began to develop, under British and American excavators of Jerusalem such as Charles Warren, Charles Wilson and Edward Robinson.

Jewish groups of the time worked to muster Jewish and international support for a return of the people of Israel to its land. Hovevei Zion, established in 1881-2, aimed to further Jewish settlement (particularly agricultural settlement) in the Land of Israel. Theodore Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basle, whose purpose was to lobby for the establishment of a Jewish home in the Land of Israel, secured by international law. Meanwhile, immigration to the Holy Land was gaining popularity.

In 1917, the British General Allenby captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans. The League of Nations awarded Great Britain the Palestine Mandate in 1922. Although the original Mandate was approximately 48,000 sq. miles, the British siphoned off about 78 percent to create the Emirate of Transjordan. The British had made promises both to world Jewry and to the Arabs about their rights in Palestine, and this was a cause of great conflict between the British Mandate Government and the inhabitants of Palestine. The United Nations voted to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947. War between the Arabs and the Jews broke out immediately.

Fifty years after the Basle conference, where Herzl declared in 1897, “At Basle I founded the Jewish State…Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will know it,” the State of Israel was established. The people of Israel had returned to the Land of Israel.