Palestine

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Palestine, awarded by the League of Nations to Britain as a mandate in 1922, proved an uncomfortable responsibility. Balfour's declaration in 1917 tried to square the circle by insisting that Britain would support a national home for the Jewish people while doing nothing to prejudice the position of the non-Jewish peoples of Palestine. Persistent Jewish immigration provoked fierce Arab resistance. The advent of the Nazis to power in Germany in the 1930s gave a strong boost to greater Jewish immigration which, in turn, led to Arab armed resistance. After the war, British control was shaken by her economic difficulties, by Zionist terror groups, and by international sympathy towards Jewish settlement. The United Nations' scheme for a partition of Palestine had little chance of acceptance and civil war had broken out before the British left in May 1948. A Jewish state of Israel was declared at once and immediately recognized by the USA.

J. A. Cannon

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