braham that modern day Israel was founded.
Starting a little closer to the present day, the genesis of the Israeli Palestinian conflict is often traced to events which occurred during the World War I era. It began in Britain with Lloyd George's war strategy in which he saw the eastern front as an important strategic center. Jewish people within the empire, and Jewish Palestinians contributed to the war effort against the Ottomans. Zionism had already made a positive impact on British leaders, including Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Milner. The result of all of this was the eventual promulgation of the Balfour Declaration which supported the concept of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was not intended to usurp the rights of the current inhabitants of that land, but to ensure that Jewish immigrants also had rights to settlement. It was at least partially a reward for Jewish contributions to the war effort. At the time, it was also not seen as a problem for Arab leaders in the region who were also allied to Britain, such as King Hussein and Prince Feisal. However, the Palestinian Arabs were themselves fighting against Britain and clearly were not consulted in the matter (Fromkin, 1989).
They did revolt later, but this was put down harshly by the British. During the revolt of 1936 38, as many as 5,000 Palestianian Arabs were killed in response to their attempts to claim their own nationhood and deny national rights to Jewish immigrants (Glass, 1990).
During World War II, the split between the Arab world and the British world became even more pronounced when many of the Arab leaders followed the example of Hitler and Mussolini, expressing themselves as sympathetic to their aims. For the Jewish people, Zionist philosophy became even more important, since it was apparent that none of the na
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