Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine

Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine

Fact sheet 181 from Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) does not do a bad job of discussing the background for the start of the modern Palestine/Israel problem.

That problem always was the idea of a partition. It was initially concocted, together, by anti-semitic Europeans along with Marxist political zionists (from the time it was a new movement in Russia in the 1830s onward) who wanted Palestine partitioned. However there was never any need for a "Jewish only" partition, because Jews, Christians, and Muslims had shared customs and lived together in Palestine for centuries, appreciating rather than marginalizing one another.

It must be noted that immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe was not the main problem. The intended partition of Palestine was the problem, and that was facilitated by WWI.

"The beginning of Zionism and immigration: The beginning of modern, national-minded Jewish immigration coincides with the foundation of the modern Zionist movement. Zionism as a political movement is conventionally dated to 1882. Small groups of Jews dispersed through Europe began to cooperate to establish agricultural colonies in historical Palestine. These groups met officially for the first time in 1897, for the first Zionist conference, in Basel, Switzerland."