How did Israel become a country in the first place?

European Jews arrived at Zionism partly because of rising antisemitic persecution.

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchamp May 14, 2018, 10:20am EDT

An outside view of the rotunda of Church of Holy Sepulcher, which was closed to protest Israeli authorities’ plan on the taxation of churches in Eastern Jerusalem.

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. Before coming to Vox in 2014, he edited TP Ideas, a section of Think Progress devoted to the ideas shaping our political world.

Part of Everything you need to know about Israel-Palestine

Editor’s note, October 8, 2023: This story was last updated on May 14, 2018, and some information in it may no longer be accurate. For all of Vox’s latest coverage on Israel and Palestine, see our storystream.

Social and political developments in Europe convinced Jews they needed their own country, and their ancestral homeland seemed like the right place to establish it. European Jews — 90 percent of all Jews at the time — arrived at Zionism partly because of rising antisemitic persecution and partly because the Enlightenment introduced Jews to secular nationalism. Between 1896 and 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews resettled from Europe to what was then British-controlled Palestine, including large numbers forced out of Europe during the Holocaust.

Many Arabs saw the influx of Jews as a European colonial movement, and the two peoples fought bitterly. The British couldn’t control the violence, and in 1947 the United Nations voted to split the land into two countries. Almost all of the roughly 650,000 Jews went to the blue territory on the map to the right, and a majority of the Arab population (roughly twice the size of the Jewish community) went to the orange.

The Jewish residents accepted the deal. The Palestinians, who saw the plan as an extension of a long-running Jewish attempt to push them out of the land, fought it. The Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria all later declared war on Israel, as well (albeit not to defend the Palestinians).

Israeli forces defeated the Palestinian militias and Arab armies in a vicious conflict that turned 700,000 Palestinian civilians into refugees. The UN partition promised 56 percent of British Palestine for the Jewish state; by the end of the war, Israel possessed 77 percent — everything except the West Bank and the eastern quarter of Jerusalem (controlled by Jordan), as well as the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). It left Israelis with a state, but not Palestinians.

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