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Prior to and during World War I, the area of Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman regime, since late 19th century, imposed many harsh demands on the Yishuv, and was ended in 1918 when Britain occupied the territory, followed by the establishment of the British Mandate in 1922.
Upon the eruption of World War I, the regime severed supply lines to Palestine and caused a severe food shortage. This severing of supply lines also caused economic difficulty and prevented the arrival of donations. On top of these problems, the regime piled up additional difficulties such as war taxes and the confiscation of work animals, tools and food. Other difficulties (either unrelated or not in direct relation to the regime) arose in the form of a locust attack (which the settlers were not equipped to deal with), famine and poverty (the result of donations ceasing), epidemics such as typhus, bank closures and inflation.
The attitude of the Ottoman administration toward the Jews hardened as their situation in the war deteriorated and it made the functioning of the Yishuv much harder. This situation lasted almost four years. First the Ottoman authorities canceled the regime of capitulation (immunity to foreign citizens) and as a result those that arrived from Allied countries (including the majority of the immigrants who originated from Russia) were now considered enemies. There started a sort of a war between the Ottoman authorities and the Zionist movement in Israel. The Ottoman authorities violated the freedom rights of the Jewish population. The Jewish population was not permitted to carry any weapons, to hold any stamps of the Jewish National Fund and to write letters in Yiddish or Hebrew. It became mandatory to learn Turkish in the schools of the Jewish population and the Zionist flag was banned. The peak of the friction was when the Ottoman authorities demanded that some of the people enlist in the Turkish army or leave the country.
The Ottoman authorities even made a number of deportations from the country. In 1915 the Ottomans collected people walking the streets of Tel Aviv and Jaffa and deported them by ship to Egypt. In 1917 the Ottoman deported the Jewish population of Tel Aviv and Jaffa as a result of the progress of the British front in the south of the country. (The Ottomans feared that the Jewish population in Tel Aviv would assist the British in taking control over the country.) The Ottoman authorities also deported the leaders of the Jewish population in the Land of Israel—David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were deported from the empire in spite of the Zionist leadership officially declaring their support to the Ottoman Empire.
The relation of the authorities evoke divisions of many opinions among Yishuv leadership. Ben-Gurion, leader of the labor party Poale Zion, said that the enlistment might lead to the sympathy from the Turks. Jewish soldiers were recruited commissions—working battalions performing degrading difficult service jobs. At the end of the war, the Yishuv was at its lowest ebb. Its number fell from 84,000 to 56,000 and it suffered considerable economic difficulties.
Jewish Americans in the United States and even the American government began fundraising and accumulating food which they shipped by boat in order to help the Jewish population in the Land of Israel. They confronted two major problems. First, they needed an agreement from the president of the United States in sending the aid—this was the first time in which the American government operated a pro-Zionist policy. Second, they needed to receive agreement from the Ottomans that the food and the money would be passed on to the Jewish population. The Ottoman authority agreed to this eventually, in exchange for about 45% of the aid shipment.
The United States and Germany (which was a partner of Turkey during the war) pressured Turkey against the deportation of the Jewish population from the country.
Three possibilities came upon the Jewish settlers:
The position of the World Zionist Organization was divided. The majority of the Zionist leaders supported and identified with Germany—it would be able to release Russian Jews from the burden of the czar, and Turkey which was a partner of Germany during the war would hopefully change its mind about the Jewish population in Israel. In contrast with that, supporting the Allies of World War I might give a reason for the Ottomans to eliminate the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. Still, identification with Germany during the war might have endangered the millions of Jews in Russia and Poland, and as the Allies of World War I would not agree to the national demands of the Jews. Due to these considerations eventually it was decided on a more neutral policy. This position required the moving of the central offices of the World Zionist Organization out of Berlin, but because this might have been seen by Germany as a betrayal, the offices remained in Berlin, though new offices were built in Denmark, which was a neutral country during the war.
Chaim Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky supported political activism rather than neutralism. They believed that the Ottoman Empire was weakening and Britain would occupy the Land of Israel and therefore they invested their efforts in finding ways of collaboration with Britain. Ze'ev Jabotinsky offered to establish Jewish fighting units that would be a part of the British army. In return they recognized the moral right of the Jews to live in Israel. In contrast to Jabotinsky, Weizmann requested a political declaration on the rights of the Jewish population in Israel, in the assertion that British have a strategic interest to help to Jewish population, in order to have a hold of that area. He tried to arouse a humane emotion among the British to the suffering Jews. Weitzman tried to convince that it was in the good of Britain to help the Jews, in contrast with Jabotinsky who tried to use cold facts to convince the British. Eventually Weitzman's method worked with the Balfour Declaration, whereas the method of Jabotinsky only worked partially by the establishment of the Jewish Legion. France, unlike Britain, supported the Christians of Lebanon and not the Jews.
A big coalition of dozens of activists inside of the land of Israel decided to go against the decision of the World Zionist Organization on being neutral and they established the underground Nili organization. The leaders of Nili were Aaron and Sarah Aaronsohn, Avshalom Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. The underground acted within the land of Israel and in Syria between 1915 and 1917. The interconnection between the Nili and the British intelligence took place during visits British ships in Atlit, through messengers in Egypt, and pigeon post (when they needed to send announcements fast). Nili was exposed in 1917, and the Turkish authorities started a retaliation against the underground network and against the whole Jewish settlement.
The Irgun, or Etzel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine and then Israel between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.
Haganah was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky, was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. With Joseph Trumpeldor, he co-founded the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War I. Later he established several Jewish organizations in Palestine, including Betar, Hatzohar, and the Irgun.
Yishuv, Ha-Yishuv, or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri, is the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across the Land of Israel and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there. The term is still in use to denote the pre-1948 Jewish residents in the Land of Israel.
The 1920 Nebi Musa riots or 1920 Jerusalem riots took place in British-controlled part of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration between Sunday, 4 April, and Wednesday, 7 April 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Five Jews and four Arabs were killed, and several hundred were injured. The riots coincided with and are named after the Nebi Musa festival, which was held every year on Easter Sunday, and followed rising tensions in Arab-Jewish relations. The events came shortly after the Battle of Tel Hai and the increasing pressure on Arab nationalists in Syria in the course of the Franco-Syrian War.
The Jewish Legion (1917–1921) is an unofficial name used to refer to five battalions of Jewish volunteers, the 38th to 42nd (Service) Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers in the British Army, raised to fight against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
Meir Dizengoff was a Zionist leader and politician and the founder and first mayor of Tel Aviv. Dizengoff's actions in Ottoman Palestine and the British Mandate for Palestine helped lead to the creation of the State of Israel. David Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence in 1948 at Dizengoff's residence in Tel Aviv. Dizengoff House is now Israel's Independence Hall.
Haim Arlosoroff was a Socialist Zionist leader of the Yishuv during the British Mandate for Palestine, prior to the establishment of Israel, and head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. In 1933, Arlosoroff was assassinated while walking on the beach in Tel Aviv.
Al-Shaykh Muwannis, also Sheikh Munis, was a small Palestinian Arab village in the Jaffa Subdistrict of Mandatory Palestine, located approximately 8.5 kilometers from the center of Jaffa city in territory earmarked for Jewish statehood under the UN Partition Plan. The village was abandoned in March 1948 due to the threats of Jewish militias, two months before the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. Today, Tel Aviv University lies on part of the village land.
The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Syria between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.
Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is related to Judaism and Jewish history. The Hovevei Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
Yosef Eliyahu Chelouche was one of the founders of Tel Aviv, an entrepreneur, businessman, and industrialist.
The Jaffa–Jerusalem railway is a railway that connected Jaffa and Jerusalem. The line was built in the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem by the French company Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements and inaugurated in 1892. The project was headed by Joseph Navon, an Ottoman Jewish entrepreneur from Jerusalem, after previous attempts by the British-Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore failed. While the first rail track in the Middle East was laid elsewhere, the line is considered to be the first Middle Eastern railway.
Alexander Ezer (Yevzerov) (1894–1973) was a leader of the Zionist movement in Siberia and a proponent of expanding commerce, tourism and industry in both the pre-state Yishuv and the then-newly established State of Israel. Ezer was elected in 1931 to the 3rd Assembly of Representatives representing the Revisionist Party of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and later served as chief adviser on tourism for the first government of Israel.
Socialist Workers Party was a political party in the British Mandate of Palestine from 1919–1922. Its followers were known as Mopsim.
Following are timelines of the history of Ottoman Syria, taken as the parts of Ottoman Syria provinces under Ottoman rule.
Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportation was the evacuation on April 6, 1917, of 10,000 people from Jaffa, including Tel Aviv, by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine. Two-thirds of the evacuees were Muslim and Christian, and one third were Jewish. Neither Jaffa-Tel Aviv, nor its Jewish population, had been singled out – the evacuation followed a similar event in Gaza a few months prior ahead of the advance of British forces. However, pro-Zionist propaganda subsequently turned the event into "a cause célèbre".
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
This is a timeline of intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine.
Arthur Menachem Hantke was a jurist, lawyer and economist, one of the leaders of Zionist movement in Germany and one of the leaders of the Zionist fundraising organization Keren Hayesod.