In August 1929, the century's first large-scale attack on Jews by Arabs rocked Jerusalem. The riots, in which Palestinians killed 133 Jews and suffered 116 deaths.

Mostly inflicted by British troops were sparked by a dispute over use of the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the site is sacred to Muslims,but Jews claimed it is the remaining of old jews temple ( all studies shows clearly that the wall is from the Islamic ages and it is part of al-Aqsa Mosque). But the roots of the violence lay deeper in Arab fears of the burgeoning Zionist movement, which aimed to make at least part of British-administered Palestine a Jewish state.

The British had made promises to both Arabs and Zionists. The 1917 Balfour Declaration supported the establishment of a "national home" for the Jews, while pledging that nothing would be done to " prejudice the civil and religious rights" of the Arabs. But the very presence of a Jewish homeland would, Arabs insisted, infringe on those rights.