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Zionism, a new movement created to establish a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland and escape persecution. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were migrating into Isreal which was mostly inhabited by Arabs and Muslims at the time.
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Francois Georges-Picot for France and Sir Mark Sykes for Britain negotiated for five months to divide the land that was previously under Ottoman rule. What is officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, new borders were created to divide the land into new countries as Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine under British control; and Syria and Lebanon under French control.
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After the war, the League of Nations gave Britain control of the area which included provisions to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British Foreign Minister Balfour pledged his support for establishing this Jewish homeland in the Balfour Declaration.
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As the Nazis rose to power in 1933, thousands of German Jews and those in nearby countries immigrated to Palestine. Between 1933 and 1936, the Jewish population in Palestine almost doubled.
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The main goals of the revolt were to limit or ending large-scale Jewish immigration, to cease land sales to Jews, and to enable Palestinians to establish their own national government. The riots were eventually suppressed by the British by exiling several Palestinian leaders, disbanding the Arab Higher Committee, and establishing military courts.
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By May 1945, Hitler's regime and Nazi Germany had murdered six million European Jews as part of a systematic plan of genocide.
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The United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states. One state for the Jews would consist of the Negev Desert, the coastal plain between Tel Aviv and Haifa, and parts of northern Galilee, and the other state for the Palestinian Arabs. The Arabs land would consist primarily of the West Bank of Jordan, the Gaza District, Jaffa, and the Arab sectors of the Galilee. The Palestinian and surrounding Arab countries rejected this proposal.
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In May of 1948, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel declared itself an independent state. Neighboring Arab armies from Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon swarmed in to prevent the establishment of the Israeli state.
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At the end of the Arab-Israeli War, Israel ended up with more territory than expected causing hundreds of thousands of Arab Palestinians to be expelled.
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The six-day war following Israel's surprise air attack ended with the Israeli army resulting in major territory land gains. The Gaza strip, the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, Syria's Golan Heights, and Jordan's West Bank were all acquired during this time.
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Palestinians angered over the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank resulted in Palestinian militia groups revolting and hundreds of people were killed.
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The Oslo accord agreement signed in1993, was witnessed by both the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The Oslo Accord created a Palestine Authority with limited self-governance but did not create a Palestine state.
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The Oslo Accords marked the start of an attempt at creating a Peace Treaty. The Accords signed between Israel and the PLO gave Palestinians control over Parts of the West Bank and Gaza.
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Riots, suicide bombings, and attacks broke out after Ariel Sharon visited the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which Palestinians took offense to. The violence continued for five years, and in August of 2005, Israel withdrew troops from Gaza.
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Israeli police blocked off the Damascus Gate, a frequent and common gathering place for Arabs during Ramadan, initially sparking the protests. Seen as an attempt by Jewish settlers to evict longtime Arab residents, the tensions lead to violent clashes with Israeli police. Violence continued to escalate taking the lives of many protestors and civilians.