During the British rule in Mandatory Palestine, there was civil, political and armed struggle among Palestinian Arabs, the Jewish Yishuv, and British colonial forces, beginning from the violent spillover of the Franco-Syrian War in 1920 and until the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The conflict shifted from sectarian clashes in the 1920s and early 1930s to an armed Arab Revolt against British rule in 1936, armed Jewish Revolt primarily against the British in mid-1940s and finally open war in November 1947 between Arabs and Jews.
Background
Zionist movement during Ottoman period
Zionist leaders and advocates followed conditions in the land of Israel closely and travelled there regularly. In their correspondence early Zionist negotiators did not discuss the future of the land's Arab inhabitants, who numbered just under half a million during the late 19th century.
According to Anita Shapira, among 19th and early 20th century Zionists:
The Arabs in Palestine were viewed as one more of the many misfortunes present in Palestine, like the Ottoman authorities, the climate, difficulties of adjustment, ... [T]he Zionist organization did not discuss this issue during that period and did not formulate a political line on it. Yet at that particular juncture in the movement such deliberations ... had about the same importance as the learned disputations customarily held in the courtyards of Hassidic rebbes regarding what would happen after the coming of the messiah.
Early Zionists viewed the Arab residents of Palestine as part of a larger Arab nation. Israel Zangwill, writing just after the First World War, said: 'The Arabs should recognize that the road of renewed national glory lies through Baghdad, Damascus and Mecca, and all the vast territories freed for them from the Turks and be content. ... The powers that freed them have surely the right to ask them not to begrudge the petty strip (Israel) necessary for the renaissance of a still more down-trodden people.'
Menachem Ussishkin and Ber Borochov, Zionist leaders in the Diaspora and, according to Anita Shapira, unfamiliar with true Arab attitudes, expressed their belief that the Palestinian Arabs would be assimilated by the Jews. Since the Jews were further developed they would take the lead in the development of the country and the Arabs would subject themselves to Jewish cultural influence and assimilate. Borochov also said that the Arabs were a "people akin to us in blood and spirit", and embraced the concept of the brotherhood between all the descendants of Shem as the basis of his outlook. According to Shapira, this approach was part of a campaign of self-persuasion that the Arabs would not threaten the realisation of Zionist aims.
According to Jonah Frankel, the immigrants of the Second Aliyah had a strong secular and nationalist ethos. The attitude towards the Arabs took many forms, however. On one pole there were those like Yitshak Epstein and Rabi Binyamin, who held that Zionism should not antagonise the Arabs. Epstein advocated settlement only in areas not worked by the Arabs. Rabi Binyamin held that modern education, full equality and modernisation would bring the Arabs to accept massive Jewish immigration. On the other pole there were those who assumed that in order to reach their goal the Zionists would have to defeat violent Arab resistance. According to Shapira, Yosef Haim Brenner wrote "There is now, (and) there is bound to be hatred between [Jews and Arabs], and it will exist in the future too." A mythology connecting descent to land was often a theme for them. For instance K.L. Silman wrote:
We shed our blood and we live here. Our life is the continuation of the past and so too is the spilt blood. A nation does not build its life except on the foundations of its past and blood is joined to blood.
According to Frankel, this kind of mythology was an important part of the Second Aliyah's political legacy.
In response to Arab attacks under the Turks, the Zionists in Palestine established Hashomer (the Guardian), a self-defence organisation.
Arab nationalism and Arab response to Zionism
In 1856, the Ottomans issued the Hatt-i Humayun, guaranteeing equal rights for all Ottoman subjects. Despite this, Muslims still viewed Jews as dhimmis: people protected by, but subordinate to Muslims. Jews remained second-class citizens of the Ottoman Empire until its collapse in World War I. This changed when, due to Jewish immigration and land purchase in the late 19th century, they realised that Zionism wanted to make a Jewish state in Palestine. Both Palestinian Christians and Muslims were worried.
According to historian Benny Morris, traditional contemptuous Muslim attitudes towards Jews affected the Zionist colonists in Palestine in the late 19th century. They drove the Zionists to "occasional overassertiveness" in an effort to wipe out their traditional image. On the other hand, the view of the Jews as "unassertive and subservient" initially placated the Arabs towards the Zionism movement, but later added to the humiliation of being "humbled."
In 1897, an Arab commission was formed in Jerusalem, headed by the mufti, to investigate land sales to Jews. Its protests led to the cessation of these sales for a number of years. Arab peasants usually protested if Jewish landowners ousted them from their homes, and violence and armed resistance did occur. However Jewish landownership was accepted if the peasants were permitted to stay.
Yusuf al-Khalidi, the Mayor of Jerusalem, wrote to the chief rabbi of France in 1899 that "historically, this is really [a Jewish] country" and that the Zionist idea was, in principle, "completely natural, fine and just." However, he also recognized that the implementation of Zionism would require "brute force" and implored that "Palestine be left in peace."
Rashid Rida stated in 1902 that Zionism did not simply seek a safe haven for the Jews, but aimed at national sovereignty. Naguib Azoury, a Maronite Christian from Beirut, predicted violent clashes between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, Arab nationalism grew rapidly in the area and most Arab nationalists regarded Zionism as a threat, although a minority perceived Zionism as providing a path to modernity. According to C. D. Smith, this was due to the emergence of Labour Zionism, which openly opposed Jewish employment of Arabs, condemned leaving Arab peasants on land held by Jews, and aimed at a separate Jewish entity in Palestine. Since these issues were discussed in the Jewish press, they also became known to Palestinian Arabs, especially after a Palestinian Arab press had appeared. The two most anti-Zionist newspapers Al-Karmil, founded in 1908 in Haifa, and Filastin, founded in 1911 in Jaffa, were run by Orthodox Christians. In the Ottoman parliament in Istanbul, Palestinian representatives called for greater Ottoman vigilance against Zionism.
Anti-Semitic sentiments were also on the rise during this period. Imported antisemitic literature was translated into Arabic, such as The Protocols of the Elders Zion, parts of which were reprinted in Filastin in 1920, and a full translation published in Cairo in 1927. According to historian Bernard Lewis, Arabic literature pushing antisemitic sentiments exploded in the 1920s.
Yosef Gorny investigated the ideological characteristics of Zionism in the Jewish-Arab confrontation in his book Zionism and the Arabs, 1882–1948. He says two ideological questions were important. The first was whether the Palestinian Arabs were part of a greater Arab nation or constituted a separate Palestinian national entity. The second was to what extent Zionism could base its demands on historical rights. Zionism's aim "to construct in Palestine a distinct Jewish national society" meant that it also honoured certain principles that affected its attitude towards the Arabs. Gorny distinguishes the "desire for territorial concentration of the Jewish people in Palestine", the "desire to create a Jewish majority in Palestine", the "belief that exclusive employment of Jewish labour was the precondition for an independent Jewish society", and the "renaissance of Hebrew culture [as] a pre-condition for the rebirth of the nation".
Gorny also distinguishes several important developments that had their bearing on the confrontation and the Zionists' attitude. Up to 1917, Zionism was tolerated as a national movement in the Ottoman Empire. After 1917, Palestine became a Mandate administrated by the British, and the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland in Palestine was recognised by the British and the League of Nations. In 1948, the state of Israel was established. Simultaneously, the Palestine problem became an ever more important subject for Jews, Arabs and the international community. During this period the demographic balance changed from one Jew in every 23 inhabitants in 1880 to one Jew in every three inhabitants in 1947 (see table). Finally, Gorny says the uneven pace of Westernization gave the Jewish society a technological and organizational advantage. Jewish society was mainly urban, Arab society mainly rural.
In his book Zionism and the Palestinians, Shima Flapan distinguishes six basic concepts of Zionism's policy toward the Arabs:
(1) gradual build-up of an economic and military potential as the basis for achievement of political aims, (2) alliance with a great power external to the Middle East; (3) non-recognition of the existence of a Palestine national entity; (4) Zionism's civilising mission in an undeveloped area; (5) economic, social and cultural segregation as prerequisites for the renaissance of Jewish national life; (6) the concept of 'peace from strength'.
Norman Finkelstein says the "strategic consensus [in the Zionist movement] on the Arab Question was remarkable". This consensus was informed by three premises: (1) "the Zionist movement should neither expect, nor seek the acquiescence of the Palestinian Arabs"; (2) "the success of the Zionist enterprise was dependent on the support of one (or more) Great Power(s)"; (3) the Palestine conflict should be resolved within the framework of a regional alliance subordinate to the interests of the Great Power(s)".
In line with earlier promises by Ben-Gurion, Israel's Declaration of Independence states that "[Israel] will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex."
Under British occupation administration
Various factors increased Arab fears after World War I. Among these were the creation of Palestine in 1918 and the Balfour Declaration. The British also granted Zionist requests that Hebrew become a language with an equal status to Arab in official proclamations, that Jewish government employees earn more than Arab and that the Zionists were permitted to fly their flag, whereas Arabs were not. Many Jews in Palestine acted as if the achievement of a Jewish state was imminent. Furthermore, in 1919 some Jewish papers called for forced emigration of Palestinian Arabs.
For a while, the Muslim–Christian Association, founded in November 1918 and made up of leading notables, became the leading Palestinian nationalist forum. Younger Palestinian Arabs saw the inclusion of Palestine in a pan-Arab state as the best means to foil Zionist goals. Among them was the future mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. They wanted to join Palestine with Syria, ruled by King Faisal. They were suspicious of Faisal, though, because of his apparent collaboration with Chaim Weizmann, and identified more with the Syrian National Congress.
The Franco-Syrian War erupted in March 1920, as an attempt to establish an Arab Hashemite Kingdom in all of the Levant. In a number of notable incidents the war spilled into neighbouring Mandatory Palestine, including the Battle of Tel Hai in March 1920. Further, in April 1920, Amin al-Husseini and other Arab leaders initiated the 1920 Jerusalem riots where 10 people were killed and 250 others wounded. Several women were raped and two synagogues burned. Jews were particularly shocked by these events and viewed the events as a pogrom.
After the British had left Syria for the French, in July 1920, Faisal's rule in Syria collapsed and pan-Arab hopes in Palestine were dashed.