In 1896 following the appearance of anti-Semitism in Europe, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism tried to find a political solution for the problem in his book, 'The Jewish State'. He advocated the creation of a Jewish state in Argentina or Palestine.

In 1897 the first Zionist Congress was held in Switzerland, which issued the Basle programme on the colonization of Palestine and the establishment of the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

In 1904 the Fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.

In 1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

In 1914 With the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.

The number of Jews in Palestine was small in the early 20th century; it increased from 12,000 in 1845 to nearly 85,000 by 1914. Most people in Palestine were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians. Support for the Zionist movement came largely from Jews in Europe and North America.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 16, 1916 was a secret understanding between the governments of Britain and France defining their respective spheres of post-World War I influence and control in the Middle East. The boundaries of this agreement still remain in much of the common border between Syria and Iraq. The agreement was negotiated in November 1915 by the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and Briton Mark Sykes.

Britain was allocated control of areas roughly comprising Jordan, Iraq and a small area around Haifa. France was allocated control of South-eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The controlling powers were left free to decide on state boundaries within these areas. The area which subsequently came to be called Palestine was for international administration pending consultations with Russia and other powers.

This agreement is seen by many as conflicting with the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence of 1915–1916. The conflicting agreements are the result of changing progress during the war, switching in the earlier correspondence from needing Arab help to subsequently trying to enlist the help of Jews in the United States in getting the US to join the First World War, in conjunction with the Balfour Declaration, 1917. The agreement had been made in secret. Sykes was also not affiliated with the Cairo office that had been corresponding with Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, and was not fully aware of what had been promised the Arabs.

The agreement was later expanded to include Italy and Russia. Russia was to receive Armenia and parts of Kurdistan while the Italians would get certain Aegean islands and a sphere of influence around Izmir in southwest Anatolia. The Italian presence in Anatolia as well as the division of the Arab lands was later formalized in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 led to Russia being denied its claims in the Ottoman Empire. At the same time Lenin released a copy of the confidential Sykes-Picot Agreement as well as other treaties causing great embarrassment among the allies and growing distrust among the Arabs.

Attempts to resolve the conflict were made at the Sanremo conference and in the Churchill White Paper of 1922, which stated the British position that Palestine was part of the excluded areas of "Syria lying to the west of the District of Damascus".

The agreement is seen by many as a turning point in Western/Arab relations, as it negated the promises made to Arabs through T.E. Lawrence for a national homeland in the Syrian territory in exchange for their siding with British forces against the Ottoman Empire.

The agreement's principal terms were reaffirmed by the inter-Allied Sanremo conference of 19–26 April 1920 and the ratification of the resulting League of Nations mandates by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.

The British government therefore issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

After World War I ended in 1918, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set aside as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922.

After World War I the terms of the Balfour Declaration were included in the mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922. The mandate entrusted Great Britain with administering Palestine and with assisting the Jewish people in “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Large-scale Jewish settlement and development of extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948. The Jewish community, or Yishuv, increased tenfold during this era, especially during the 1930s, when large numbers of Jews fled Europe to escape persecution by the Nazis. Tel Aviv became the country's largest all-Jewish city, dozens of other towns and villages were founded, and hundreds of Jewish agricultural collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperatives were established.

Many Jewish political parties founded in Eastern Europe as part of the world Zionist movement developed bases in mandatory Palestine. They included labor, orthodox religious, and nationalist groups whose leaders emigrated from Europe and after 1948 became political leaders and officials in the new Jewish state.

The Yishuv extended its institutions after World War I. Among these institutions was an assembly with a National Council that managed the community's day-to-day affairs in education, health, social welfare, and other services. Jewish religious life was supervised by a Rabbinical Council that controlled marriage, divorce, and other family matters. Local government institutions were also developed to run the city of Tel Aviv and many smaller Jewish settlements. The educational system, cultivating Hebrew language and culture, expanded, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was founded.

The World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Palestine assisted the Yishuv by raising funds abroad, recruiting Jewish immigrants, and seeking political support from Western governments.

The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.

The Sanremo conference was an international meeting held in Sanremo, Italy, from 19-26 April 1920. In it, the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East by the victorious powers. The decisions of the conference mainly just confirmed (e.g. concerning Palestine) those of the First Conference of London (February 1920). Britain received the mandate for Palestine and Iraq, while France gained control of Syria including present-day Lebanon. The boundaries of all these territories were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" [1] subsequently, and was in fact not completely finalized until four years later. To enforce its mandate, France subsequently intervened militarily at the Battle of Maysalun to depose the nationalist Arab government which King Faisal had meanwhile established in Damascus.

The conference broadly reaffirmed the terms of the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 16 May 1916 for the region's partition and the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, under which the British government had undertaken to favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The conference's decisions were embodied in the stillborn Treaty of Sèvres (Section VII, Art 94-97). As Turkey rejected this treaty, the conference's decisions were only finally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 and the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne.

The Mandate for Palestine, also known as the Mandate of Palestine or British Mandate of Palestine, was a territory in the Middle East comprising modern Jordan and Israel with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.

Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The British, under General Allenby during the Arab Revolt stirred up by the British intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence, defeated the Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war. The British military administration ended starvation with the aid of food supplies from Egypt, successfully fought typhus and cholera epidemics and significantly improved the water supply to Jerusalem. They reduced corruption by paying the Arab and Jewish judges higher salaries. Communications were improved by new railway and telegraph lines.

The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.

The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of Sanremo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain.

In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including "securing the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine".

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.

The Great Uprising, Great Revolt, or Great Arab Revolt was an uprising during the British mandate by Palestinian Arabs in Palestine which lasted from 1936 to 1939. In April 1936, the Arab leadership in Palestine, led by Hajj Amin al-Husayni, declared a general strike to protest against, and put an end to Jewish immigration to Palestine. The revolt was driven primarily by Arab hostility to Britain's permission of restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases which Palestinian Arabs believed was leading them to becoming a minority in the territory and future nation-state. They demanded immediate elections which, based on their demographic majority, would have resulted in a democratic Arab government.

About one month after the general strike started the leadership group declared a general non-payment of taxes in explicit opposition to Jewish immigration. In the countryside, armed insurrection started sporadically, becoming more organised with time. One particular target of the rebels was the major TAP oil pipeline constructed only a few years earlier from Kirkuk to Haifa.

The strike was called off in October 1936 and the violence abated for about a year while the Peel Commission deliberated and eventually recommended partition of Palestine. With the rejection of this proposal, the revolt resumed during the autumn of 1937, marked by the assassination of Commissioner Andrews in Nazareth. Violence continued throughout 1938 and eventually petered out in 1939. The decision of the French to crack down on Arab leaders in Damascus may have been a significant factor in stopping the conflict.

The British responded to the violence by greatly expanding their military forces and clamping down on Arab dissent. "Administrative detention" (imprisonment without charges or trial), curfews, and house demolitions were among British practices during this period. More than 120 Arabs were sentenced to death and about 40 hanged. The main Arab leaders were arrested or expelled. Amin al-Husayni fled from Palestine to escape arrest.

The mainstream Jewish military organization, the Haganah actively supported British efforts to quell the largely peasant insurgency, which reached 10,000 Arab fighters at their peak during the summer and fall of 1938. Although the British administration didn't officially recognize the Haganah, the British security forces cooperated with it by forming the Jewish Settlement Police, Jewish Auxiliary Forces and Special Night Squads. A smaller Haganah splinter group, the Irgun organization adopted a policy of revenge including against civilians.

Despite the assistance of 20,000 additional British troops and 14,500 well trained and well armed Haganah men, the Great Uprising continued for over three years. By the time order was restored in March of 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons were killed.

Another outcome of the hostilities was the disengagement of the Jewish and Arab economies in Palestine, which were more or less intertwined until that time. For example, whereas the Jewish city of Tel Aviv relied on the nearby Arab seaport of Jaffa, hostilities dictated building a separate Jewish-run seaport for Tel-Aviv. Historians later pointed to the uprising as a pivotal point at which the Jewish population in Palestine became independent and self-sustaining. During the revolt, British authorities attempted to confiscate all weapons from the Arab population. This, and the destruction of the main Arab political leadership in the revolt, greatly hindered their military efforts in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

Since the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (which endorsed the idea of a Jewish state within Palestine), the British government had been struggling to reconcile the conflicting aspirations of Jews and Arabs in Palestine, which Britain administered under a League of Nations mandate . Those who still believed in the possibility of peaceful coexistence between the two groups got a grim comeuppance in July 1937 when the Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, issued its report. Basically, the commission concluded, the mandate in Palestine was unworkable There was no hope of any cooperative national entity there that included both Arabs and Jews, . The impetus for the commission's formation had been the most recent spark of Palestinian violence. Riots and Arab protests against the Jews in Palestine had been escalating throughout the 1920s and '30s. In the mid-1930s, in response to the thousands of Jews who'd arrived from Europe, Palestinian Arabs formed the Arab High Committee to defend themselves against what they perceived as a Jewish takeover A general strike exploded into a revolt. Desperate for a solution, the British appointed Lord Peel to study the situation. The Arab leadership boycotted the study.

After dismissing the possibility of Arab-Jewish amity, the commission went on to recommend the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral sacred-site state to be administered by Britain. Within two years, Britain found itself in a no-win situation, and on the eve of World War II issued the infamous "White Paper" severely curtailing Jewish immigration into Palestine.

The Woodhead Commission was established in 1938 in the British Mandate of Palestine after the Peel Commission failed to achieve resolution to the Arab Revolt and the rejection of its recommendations by the three major parties in the conflict: Zionist Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and the British government.

The Commission was intended to "examine the Peel Commission plan in detail and to recommend an actual partition plan" [1]; in some views, its purpose was to absolve Great Britain of its responsibilities in Palestine so that it could focus its attention to the growing threat in Europe.

The Commission was headed by Sir John Woodhead, who was charged with identifying the circumstances leading to the failure of the Peel Commission. He was instructed to reject the Peel Commission's findings and to attempt to placate the Arab side in the argument, since they constituted a majority in the country.

The members of the Commission arrived in Palestine in 1938 to research the problems there. In their report, they proposed two separate plans for partition of Palestine into two states and a British Mandatory Zone, "Plan B" and "Plan C" ("Plan A" having been that of the Peel Commission). The majority of the commission supported Plan C, which recommended:

A Jewish state of only 1,250 sq. km., less than 5% of the area of Palestine, which would consist of just a coastal strip of land, no more than twenty kilometers in width. It would extend from the town of Rehovot to Kibbutz Nachsholim, adjacent to the town of Zichron Yaakov.

An Arab state to occupy most of the remaining territory of central Palestine, south of a line extending across from the northern edge of the Jewish state, and north of a line running approximately from the south end of the Dead Sea to Gaza.

The remainder of the territory of Palestine (south of the Gaza-Dead Sea line; north of the Jewish and Arab states; and an enclave around Jerusalem) was to remain a British Mandatory Zone

The Jews of Palestine were sharply opposed to the findings, leading to the Commission's failure.In consequence, Britain invited the parties to London in 1939 to participate in a third attempt to resolve the crisis, the St. James Conference (also known as the Round Table Conference of 1939), to investigate the results of the Peel Commission of 1936. The recommendations were eventually rejected by both Zionists and Palestinian Arabs.

The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine was abandoned in favor of an independent Palestine governed jointly by Arabs and Jews.

Previous White Papers had stated that the 1917 Balfour Declaration was not a British endorsement of actual Jewish statehood in Palestine.

In January 1938, the Woodhead Commission had been established to explore ways to implement the recommendations made by the Peel Commission (1936). The report of the Woodhead Commission was published on November 9, 1938. The idea of partition was upheld, but the proposed Jewish state was to be substantially smaller, receiving only the coastal plain.

In February 1939, the St. James Conference (also known as the Round Table Conference of 1939) convened in London; since the Arab delegation refused to formally meet with its Jewish counterpart or to recognize them, proposals were put by the government separately to the two parties, who however were not able to agree to any of them. The Conference ended on March 17 without making any progress.

The White Paper was bitterly opposed by the Jews in Palestine. In terms of the status quo, the White Paper was a significant defeat for the Jewish side. The White Paper inevitably brought tensions over immigration, escalating in the years at the end of World War II.

The Arab Higher Committee, which represented the Palestinian Arabs, also rejected the White Paper. They argued that the independence of the new Palestine Government was illusory, as the Jews could prevent its functioning by withholding participation, and in any case real authority would still be in the hands of British officials. The limitations on Jewish immigration were also held to be insufficient, as there was no guarantee immigration would not resume after five years. In place of the policy enunciated in the White Paper, the Arab Higher Committee called for "a complete and final prohibition" of Jewish immigration and a repudiation of the Jewish national home policy altogether.

With World War II over and the Nazi death camps open for the world to see, Zionists redoubled their demands that Britain open its Palestine mandate to unlimited Jewish immigration.

Jewish terrorist groups the Irgun Zvei Lumi and the Stern Gang escalated their campaign to force Britain's hand.

Arabs in the region opposed a Jewish influx, but in Palestine itself they lacked unified leadership. So in March 1945, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Yemen, and Egypt organized the League of Arab States to pressure Britain from the other side. Britain's new labour government (unlike its predecessor) strongly sympathized with Zionism's goal, yet it hoped to remain friendly with the Arabs. Adding to the British quandary was President Truman. whose Zionist leanings were clear. In April 1946, yielding to U. S. pressure, Britain sent yet another commission to study the issue. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommended that 100,000 European Jewish refugees be admitted immediately, that restrictions on Jewish land purchases in Palestine be lifted, and that a binational Jewish-Arab state be established under United Nations trusteeship. Faced with the political and economic costs of policing Palestine, the British gladly turned the matter over to the UN. In 1947 the UN sent its own commission to seek answers to the Palestine problem. The result, the following year, was the founding of Israel and a war between the Jewish and Arab.

Following an argument which broke out between Palestinian workers and Jewish workers in the Haifa Petroleum Refinery, leading to the deaths of a number of Palestinians and wounding and killing approximately sixty Jews. The Zionest ganges planned to take revenge on behalf of fellow Jews who had been killed by attacking Baldat al-Shaikh and Hawasa where most of the workers live.

On the night of January 30-31, 1947, a mixed force composed of the First Battalion of Palmakh and the Carmelie brigade (estimated at approximately 150 to 200 terrorists) launched a raid against the two towns under the leadership of Hayim Afinuam. Taking the homes by surprise as their inhabitants slept, they pelted them with hand grenades, then went inside, firing their machine guns. The terrorist attack led to the deaths of approximately sixty citizens inside their homes, most of them women, elderly and children.

The attack lasted for an hour, after which the Zionists withdrew at 2:00 A.M. after attacking a large number of homes.

According to a report written by the leader of the terrorist operation, " the attacking units slipped into the town and began working on the houses. And due to the fact that gunfire was directed inside the rooms, it was not possible to avoid injuring women and children. "

On 29 November 1947 the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, a plan to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine, was approved by the United Nations General Assembly, at the UN World Headquarters in New York. The plan would have partitioned the territory of Western Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area, encompassing Bethlehem, coming under international control. The failure of the British government and the United Nations to implement this plan and its rejection by the Arabs resulted with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

The majority of the Jews and Jewish groups accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation. A minority of extreme nationalist Jewish groups like Menachem Begin's Irgun Tsvai Leumi and Yitzhak Shamir's Lehi, (known as the Stern Gang) which had been fighting the British, rejected it. Begin warned that the partition won't bring peace because the Arabs will also attack the small state and that "in the war ahead we'll have to stand on our own, it will be a war on our existence and future".

The Arab leadership (in and out of Palestine) opposed the plan, arguing that it violated the rights of the majority of the people in Palestine, which at the time was 67% non-Jewish (1,237,000) and 33% Jewish (608,000). Arab leaders also argued a large number of Arabs would be trapped in the Jewish State as a minority. While some Arab leaders opposed the right of the Jews for self-determination in the region, others criticised the amount and quality of land given to Israel.

The United Kingdom refused to implement the plan arguing it was not acceptable to both sides. It also refused to share with the UN Palestine Commission the administration of Palestine during the transitional period, and decided to terminate the British mandate of Palestine on May 15th, 1948.

Fighting began almost as soon as the plan was approved, beginning with the Arab Jerusalem Riots of 1947. The fighting would have an effect on the Arab population of Palestine, as well the Jewish populations of neighboring Arab countries.

Exhausted by seven years of war and eager to withdraw from overseas colonial commitments, Great Britain in 1947 decided to leave Palestine and called on the United Nations (UN) to make recommendations.

The map on the left shows the lands which was owned by Jewish and Jewish agencies and also lands owned by Arab before British withdraw from Palestine.

On the night of April 9, 1948, the Irgun Zvei Leumi surrounded the village of Deir Yasin, located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. After giving the sleeping residents a 15 minute warning to evacuated, Menachem Begin's terrorists attacked the village of 700 people, killing 254 mostly old men, women and children and wounding 300 others. Begin's terrorists tossed many of the bodies in the village well, and paraded 150 captured women and children through the Jewish sectors of Jerusalem.

The Haganah and the Jewish Agency, which publicly denounced the atrocity after the details had become public several days later, did all they could to prevent the Red Cross from investigating the attack. It wasn't until three days after the attack that the Zionist armies permitted Jacques de Reynier, chief representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem, to visit the village by the surrounding Zionist armies.

Ironically, the Deir Yasin villagers had signed a non aggression pact with the leaders of the adjacent Jewish Quarter, Giv'at Shaul and had even refused military personnel from the Arab Liberation Army from using the village as a base.

The Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel was publicly read in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, before the expiration of the British Mandate of Palestine at midnight. It was drafted during the preceding months, and the final version was a result of a compromise between the various parts of the Israeli public of that time. On May 14, 1948, the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council) gathered at the first site of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art - a site today called "Independance Hall", and approved the proclamation.

The new state and its government was recognized de facto minutes later by the United States and three days later de jure by the Soviet Union (Stalin thought a communist or communist-oriented Jewish state could be a useful "thorn in the back" of his capitalist rivals in the Middle East). It was however opposed by many others, particularly Arabs (both the surrounding Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs), who felt it was being established at their expense.

The declaration is written in a style reminiscent of UN resolutions, beginning with preambulatory sentences explaining the causes for the declaration and the right of Jews to an independent country, and then operative sentences detailing the attributes of the forthcoming State of Israel.

"Battle of the Roads". The Arab League sponsored Arab Liberation Army, composed of Palestinian Arabs and Arabs from other Middle Eastern countries, attacked Jewish communities in Palestine, and Jewish traffic on major roads. The Arab forces mainly concentrated on major roadways in an attempt to cut off Jewish communities from each other. Arab forces at that time had engaged in sporadic and unorganized ambushes since the riots of December 1947, and began to make organized attempts to cut off the highway linking Tel Aviv with Jerusalem, the city's only supply route. The Arab Army cut off supplies and controlled several strategic vantage points overlooking the sole highway linking Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, enabling them to fire at convoys going to the city. By late March 1948, the vital road that connected Tel Aviv to western Jerusalem, where about 16% of all Jews in the Palestinian region lived, was cut off and under siege.

April 6-12, 1948 : Operation Nachshon. The Haganah decided to launch a major military counteroffensive to break the siege of Jerusalem. On 6 April the Haganah and its strike force, the Palmach, in an offensive to secure strategic points, took al-Qastal, an important roadside town 2 kilometers west of Deir Yassin. But intense fighting lasted for days more as control of that key village remained contested.

April 9, 1948 : Throughout the siege on Jerusalem, Jewish convoys tried to reach the city to alleviate the food shortage, which, by April, had become critical. On 9 April 1948, IZL-Lehi forces attacked Deir Yassin, as part of Operation Nachshon to break the siege of western Jerusalem. On Deir Yassin massacre, Irgun and Lehi members attack the Arab village of Deir Yassin, killing between 100 and 120 Arabs civilians.

May 15, 1948 : Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Transjordan, Holy War Army, Arab Liberation Army, and local Arabs attack the new Jewish state with the intent of destroying it. The resulting 1948 Arab-Israeli War lasts for 13 months. By the end of the war, about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs leave as refugees for a variety of reasons among them, including: avoidance of crossfire, anticipation of war, expulsion, and the Jews massacre against number of Arab villages.

June 1948 : Violent confrontation between the Israel Defense Forces under the command of David Ben-Gurion, and the paramilitary Jewish group Irgun known as The Altalena Affair results in the dismantlement of the Irgun, Lehi, and all Israeli paramilitary organizations operating outside the IDF.

April 1949 : Israel concludes Armistice Agreements with neighbouring countries. The territory of the British Mandate of Palestine is divided between the State of Israel, the Kingdom of the Jordan (changed from Transjordan) and Egypt.

In the period from 1917 to 1949, Israel had occupied 78% of the land of Palestine and evicted or caused to flee more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees to Gaza Strip , West Bank and other Arab countries like Syria , Lebanon, Jordan and others.. It is the plight of the Palestinian refugees, who now number 1.5 millions, and the fate of the Palestinians, who now number 2.5 millions, as a people, which have remained the most pressing problems.

The following are the main reasons of this refugee crisis

1. The British mandate

The mandate charter stated, “the British mandate government should encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, the mobilization of Jews on state - owned lands throughout Palestine”. Accordingly, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, Mr. Herbert Samo’yel, issued the transfer of property law along with a number of annexes. By this law, the High Commissioner issued a decree on July 1,1920 confiscating 3390 square dunums at Karm Abu Hussein area in Jerusalem. In August 1924, the British mandate government confiscated large areas of Palestinian land, and it has been given to Jewish Agency. The British mandate government donated to the Jewish Potach Company 75,000 dunums and to the jewish Electric company 18.000 dunums free of charge to build up their Jewish projects. The British High Commissioners confiscate more Palestinian land for the construction of new roads for jewish settlements. Palestinian villages were completely ignored and the roads leading to these villages were themselves confiscated under various British codes and regulations.

2 . The Partition Plan

The 1947 resolution on the partition of Palestine came only to complement the unjust laws and military orders enacted by the British mandate government. The partition of Palestine was unfair and illegal because it failed to consult the majority of the Palestinians estimated at that time at 90% of the total population of Palestine. The resolution lacked justice and equality because it gave the Jewish minority about 56% of the land, most of which was located at the fertile coastal areas and 43% to the Palestinian majority, land lying in rugged mountainous areas.

As from 29th November 1947, a state of tension had been created between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The British Government announced its plans to withdraw from Palestine on 15th May 1948.

The State of Israel had been all but born and it now only remained for the Zionists to make sure that when it came into official being, on 15th May 1948, it should be as Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first President, promised in 1921 that "Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English."

3. The economical situation

Since 1920, the British mandate government has put Palestine in a difficult economic, administrative, and political situation, facilitating the establishment of a Jewish state and the displacement of Palestinians to seek jobs in the adjusting Arab countries .

4 . The zionist massacres

In order to push the unarmed defenseless Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes. Jewish terrorist groups such as Irgun Zwei Leumi were brought in when other methods failed. On 9th April 1948, the Irgun Zwei Leumi led by Menachem Beigin, a former Israeli Cabinet Minister and former leader of the Opposition in the Israeli Parliament, attacked the small Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. An account of this barbaric massacre was given by Jacques de Reynier, the Chief Delegate of the International Red Cross , who was able to reach the village and witness the aftermath of the massacre: "Three hundred persons" he said, "were massacred ... without any military reason or provocation of any kind; old men women, children, newly-born were savagely murdered with grenades and knives by Jewish troops of the Irgun, entirely under the control of their chiefs."

The objective behind the Deir Yassin massacre was to terrify the Arab civilian population, and force them to flee to secure for the Zionists the land without the people. The plan succeeded and they fled in terror, to save their lives. Before May 15th, 1948, while the British Government was still responsible, the Jews had occupied many purely Arab cities like Jaffa and Acre and scores of villages that were in the territory assigned by the U.N. Resolution for the Arab State and evicted more than 300,000 inhabitants from their homes. In an attempt to stem this tide, the neighboring Arab states sent their armies on 15th May 1948 into Palestine. On 15th July 1948 the U.N. imposed a final truce between Israel and the Arabs, by which time Israel had occupied an even larger part of the territory allotted to the Arab State in Palestine.

5. Israeli Army

In view of the Israeli army hostilities which continued after the 1948 war, more Palestinians were forced to move to the Gaza Strip.

On the night of October 14-15, 1953, this village was the object of an Israeli attack which was carried out by units from the regular army and in which a variety of weapon types were used. On the evening of October 14, an Israeli military force estimated at about 600 soldiers moved toward the village. Upon arrival, it surrounded it and cordoned it off from all of the other Arab villages. The attack began with concentrated, indiscriminate artillery fire on the homes in the village. This continued until the main force reached the outskirts of the village. Meanwhile, other forces headed for nearby Arab towns such as Shuqba, Badrus and Na'lin in order to distract them and prevent any aid from reaching the people in Qibya. They also planted mines on various roads so as to isolate the village completely. As units of the Israeli army were attacking the village residents, units of military engineers were placing explosives around some of the houses in the village and blowing them up with everyone in them. This attack continued until 4:00 A.M., October 15, 1953, at which time the Israeli forces withdrew to the bases from which they had begun.

This terrorist attack resulted in the destruction of 56 houses, the village mosque, the village school and the water tank . Moreover, 67 citizens lost their lives, both men and women, with many others wounded.

Terrorist Ariel Sharon, the commander of the "101" unit which undertook the terrorist aggression, stated that his leaders' orders had been clear with regard to how the residents of the village were to be dealt with. He says, "The orders were utterly clear: Qibya was to be an example to everyone."

The government of Israel claimed that the massacre was carried out by “civilian Jewish settlers”. But records showed that it was sanctioned by acting Prime Minister Moshe Sharrett, and was planned by Defence Minister Pin Has Lavon, the Chief of General Staff Mordacai Maklet, and Chief of Operations, General Moshe Dayan. On October 26, General Van Bennike testified before the UN Security Council. He gave irrefutable evidence that the attack on Qibya was undertaken by regular army units of Israel and not by irregulars as claimed by official Israeli sources.

For almost two years, Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser had quietly directed Egypt's revolution from above, while General Muhammad Naguib served as president and prime minister.

February 1954, the colonel stepped to the fore. Citing Naguib's ties to the banned Muslim Brotherhood and his intention to restore the old system of government, Nasser forced him to resign. In April, Nasser took over the premiership.

At 4:30 P.M., October 29, 1956, a sergeant from the border guard informed the mayor of Kufr Qasim Wadi Ahmad Sarsour, that a curfew would be imposed on the village, and asked him to inform village residents. Only 30 minutes before the new curfew time, the mayor tried to convince the officer that about 400 villagers whose work took them outside the village would not be able to able to receive the warning in time. The officer told him that his soldiers would take care of that. The villagers who were home complied. Meanwhile the officers posted themselves at the village gates. Before long the first batch of villagers back home on bicycles, came into sight unaware of the curfew. They were met by the soldiers who shot them at a close range. Others, unaware of the danger awaiting them, started to reach the village entrance. They were met with the same fate.

After this terrorist massacre was over, border guard policemen gathered together the corpses of the 49 victims, took them in a truck and threw them into a thicket located near the police station in the Israeli settlement in Ra's al-'Ayn, where the bodies were buried temporarily. However, two days later they decided to bury them in the village cemetery.

Attempts to convert the Israeli - Arab armistice agreements into peace treaties failed . The Arabs insisted that the refugees be permitted to return to their homes, that Jerusalem be internationalized, and that Israel make territorial concessions before they entered peace talks. Israel charged that these demands would undermine its security and refused them.

Frequent incursions by refugee guerrilla bands and attacks by Arab military units were made, which Israel answered with forceful retaliation. Egypt refused to permit Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal and blockaded the Straits of Tiran (Israel's access to the Red Sea), which was seen as an act of war. Border incidents along the frontiers with Egypt escalated until they erupted in the second Arab-Israeli War in October and November of 1956.

Great Britain and France ostensibly joined the attack because of their dispute with Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had just nationalized the Suez Canal. Nasser took over the canal after Great Britain and France withdrew offers to finance the construction of the Aswân High Dam. Israel scored a quick victory, seizing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula within a few days. As Israeli forces reached the banks of the Suez Canal, the British and French started their attack. The fighting was halted by the UN after a few days, and a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) was sent to supervise the cease-fire in the Canal zone. In a rare instance of cooperation, the United States and the Soviet Union supported the UN resolution forcing the three invading countries to leave Egypt and Gaza. By the end of the year their forces withdrew from Egypt, but Israel refused to leave Gaza until early 1957, and only after the United States had promised to help resolve the conflict and keep the Straits of Tiran open.

The 1958 merger of Syria and Egypt into the United Arab Republic was the first of a series of dramatic realignments throughout the Middle East, inspired by the vision of Gamal Abdal Nasser. Syria had been moving in the Egyptian dictator's ideological direction since the fall of a rightist military regime in 1954: the new junta , dominated by the socialist Ba'ath party , had followed Egypt in recognizing Mao's China and acquiring Soviet arms, Squeezed between Washington ( which backed anti-Soviet Arab governments against their nonaligned neighbors ) and a growing domestic Communist movement, Syria's leaders decided to put their pan-Arabist notions to the test.National borders, after all,were a Western invention: Syria would lose nothing and gain untold strength by melding with dynamic Egypt.

More changes followed quickly. Yemen, though ruled by a conservative monarch, sought security by affiliating itself with the U.A.R. in a confederation called the United Arab States, The Western oriented kingdom of Iraq and Jordan formed a rival union. In Saudi Arabia, King Saud was forced to cede authority to his relatively pro-Egyptian brother Faisal after being implicated in a plot on Nasser's life. In Lebanon, civil war erupted between Syrian-backed Arab nationalists and supporters of pro-Western president Camille Chamoun. In Iraq, when Premier Nuri al-Said decided to aid Chamoun, pro-Egyptian officers revolted-killing Said along with King Faisal II and most of the royal family. The Iraqi-Jordanian federation was no more.

Fearing the spread of Nasserism to Lebanon, the United States sent 10,000 troops and sponsored talks between the warring factions. A compromise led to elections, and General Fuad Chehab less enthusiastically pro-Western and friendlier to Nasser than Chamoun became president.

Except for Jordan, all the Arab nations had now fallen more or less into Cairo's camp. But they soon fell out again. Iraq's strongman, Abdul Karim Kassem, developed a bitter personal rivalry with his Egyptian counterpart . The Syrians came to resent Nasser's authoritarianism, while the Saudis and Yemen resisted his socialism . And by 1961 , when Syria seceded from the U.A.R. , Arab unity lay in ruins.

February 3, 1964

The Palestine Liberation Organization is founded in Cairo with Ahmad Shuqeiri as its leader. Even though Ahmad Shuqeiri is the official leader, the organization is more or less controlled by the Egyptian government.

After the Suez-Sinai war Arab nationalism increased dramatically, as did demands for revenge led by Egypt's president Nasser. The formation of a united Arab military command that massed troops along the borders, together with Egypt's closing of the Straits of Tiran and Nasser's insistence in 1967 that the UNEF leave Egypt, led Israel to attack Egypt, Jordan, and Syria simultaneously on June 5 of that year.

The war ended six days later with an Israeli victory. Israel's French-equipped air force wiped out the air power of its antagonists and was the chief instrument in the destruction of the Arab armies.

The Six Days War left Israel in possession of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, which it took from Egypt; Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which it took from Jordan; and the Golan Heights, taken from Syria. Land under Israel's jurisdiction after the 1967 war was about four times the size of the area within its 1949 armistice frontiers. The occupied territories included an Arab population of about 1.5 million.

The occupied territories became a major political issue in Israel after 1967. The right and leaders of the country's orthodox religious parties opposed withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, which they considered part of Israel. In the Labor Alignment, opinion was divided; some Laborites favored outright annexation of the occupied territories, others favored withdrawal, and some advocated retaining only those areas vital to Israel's military security. Several smaller parties, including the Communists, also opposed annexation. The majority of Israelis, however, supported the annexation of East Jerusalem and its unification with the Jewish sectors of the city, and the Labor-led government formally united both parts of Jerusalem a few days after the 1967 war ended. In 1980 the Knesset passed another law, declaring Jerusalem “complete and united,” Israel's eternal capital.

The 1967 war was followed by an upsurge of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Several guerrilla organizations within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) carried out guerrillas attacks on Israeli targets, with the stated objective of “redeeming Palestine.” guerrillas attacks on Israelis targets at home and abroad unified public opinion against recognition of and negotiation with PLO, but the group nevertheless succeeded in gaining widespread international support, including UN recognition as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians.”.

The Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967 was issued at the conclusion of a meeting between the leaders of eight Arab countries in the wake of the Six-Day War. The resolution, which formed a basis of the policies of these governments toward Israel until October War of 1973 called for:

Continued war against Israel
Ending the Arab oil boycott declared during the Six-Day War
An end to the war in Yemen
Economic assistance for Egypt and Jordan

The resolution contains in paragraph 3 what became known as "the three nos" of Arab-Israel relations at that time.

No peace with Israel
No recognition of Israel
No negotiations with Israel

In 1967 war, Israel launched air strikes against Palestinian cities and towns in Gaza strip and the West Bank, the air raids pushed thousands of Palestinians to flee their villages and towns to seek shelter out of the range of Israeli artillery bombardment. The war resulted in the displacement of more Palestinians. 350,000 people were forced out by terror, expelled or left from fear. More camps were constructed to absorb this large number of refugees.

The Security Council and the General Assembly called on Israel on 14th June 1967 and 14th July 1967 to facilitate the return of these refugees. Israel pretended to comply. The Palestinians, having waited for 20 years in their miserable refugee camps hoping to move world conscience and trusting in the U.N. to allow them to return to their homes and restore their legitimate rights in their homeland, found it all in vain. The U.N. passed resolutions but did not enforce them, when they conflicted with the wishes of Israel and her guardian the U.S. world public opinion was deaf to the Palestinian cries while it was all ears to Zionist propaganda and demands to import 3,000,000 Russian Jews. Israel argued that the return of the Palestinian refugees will create more security problems for Israel. The Israeli attitude also applied to all Palestinians who left the country to seek jobs in the Gulf states, USA or Europe.

The Palestinians, finding all their country under Israeli occupation and its entire people either expelled or under alien rule, lost faith in the world community and came to realise that, even in this era of so-called civilization, International Law and U.N. Charter, might is right and what is lost by force can be regained only by force. They intensified, therefore, their resistance by guerrilla attacks against Israeli military personnel and objectives. The Israelis retaliated by ruthless bombardment using Phantom jets and napalm against the defenseless men, women and children in their refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The Palestinian resistance was vilified by Zionist propaganda and their captured members were savagely tortured in Israeli hands.

The War of Attrition (Al-Istinsaf) was a limited war fought between Egypt and Israel from 1968 to 1970. It was initiated by Egypt as a way to recapture the Sinai from Israel, which had controlled it since the Six-Day War. The war ended with a ceasefire signed between the countries in 1970 with frontiers at the same place as when the war started.

The war began in June 1968 with sparse Egyptian artillery bombardment of the Israeli front line on the east bank of the canal. More artillery bombardments in the following months killed some Israeli soldiers. IDF's retaliation came on the night of October 30 when heli-borne commandos destroyed Egypt's main electricity supply. The blackout caused Nasser to cease hostilities for a few months while fortifications around hundreds of important targets were built. Simultaneously Israel reinforced its position on the east bank of the Suez Canal by constructing the Bar Lev Line, a set of thirty-five small forts running north-south along the canal guarded by infantry.

In February 1969 Egypt was ready for the next round. President Nasser declared the cease-fire from November the previous year to be null and void. On March 8 Egyptian artillery began massive shelling of the Bar Lev Line causing many Israeli casualties. Soviet MiG-21 fighters were also employed in the attack. The IDF retaliated with deep raids into Egyptian territory causing severe damage. In May, June and July 1969, 47 IDF soldiers were killed and 157 wounded. Although Egypt suffered many times more casualties than Israel, Egypt continued with its aggressive stance. Israel managed to sustain the high casualty rate but was hard-pressed to find a definite solution to the conflict.

In July Israel escalated by attacking with the Israeli Air Force (IAF). On July 20 and July 24 almost the whole IAF bombed the northern canal sector destroying anti-aircraft positions, tanks and artillery. The aerial offensive continued until December and reduced Egypt's anti-aircraft defence to almost nothing. It managed to reduce the artillery bombardment somewhat but shelling with lighter weapons and especially mortars continued.

On October 17, 1969 talks between the Superpowers began. It led to the Rogers plan that was publicized on December 9. It called for Egyptian "commitment to peace" in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. Both parties strongly rejected the plan. President Nasser instead opted to plead for more sophisticated weaponry from the Soviet Union to withstand the IAF's bombings. The Soviets initially refused to deliver the requested weapons.

On January 22, 1970, President Nasser secretly flew to Moscow to discuss the situation. His request for new SAM batteries (including the 3M9 Kub and Strela-2) were approved. Their deployment would require qualified personnel along with squadrons of aircraft to protect them from Israeli attacks. In effect, he needed Soviet troops in large numbers, something Moscow could not allow. He then threatened to resign, implying that Egypt might turn to Washington for help in the future.

Despite these losses the Soviets and Egyptians managed to press the air defenses closer and closer to the canal. The Soviet operated SAMs shot down a number of Israeli aircraft. Israel could not respond effectively. The SAM batteries would allow Egypt to move in artillery which in turn could threaten the Bar Lev Line. In April 1970 negotiations resumed, this time with the U.S. being the primary negotiator. A cease-fire agreement was reached on August 7. It was to last for three months and neither side was allowed to change "the military status quo within zones extending 50 kilometers to the east and west of the cease-fire line."

In 1968, the city of Karameh served as the political and military headquarters of the Palestinian al-Fatah movement. Israeli military forces entered the city in search of the Palestinian leadership, which the Israelis labelled as terrorists. In this battle, the heavily armed and technologically advanced Israeli military was rebuffed and forced to retreat, suffering a blow to their reputation while heartening the Palestinian resistance to Israel.

The Battle of Karameh set up a series of events leading to Black September in Jordan, in which King Hussein ordered the Jordanian army to crush the emboldened Palestinian forces.

the Israel Defense Forces entered the village of Karameh on March 21, 1968. The Israelis, who aimed to destroy Fatah in their assault, were unsuccessful and quickly withdrew. Arafat managed to leave Karameh at night after being informed of the impending attack. King Hussein gave orders to the Jordanian forces to not intervene but the Jordanian general Mash'hor Haditha and some Jordanian offciers ignored their king's orders and engaged the battle. The arrival of Jordanian troops in full-force shifted the tide of the battle and managed to inflict serious damage on the IDF. In fact, the Jordanian Army's intervention was not expected at all. An estimated 28 Israeli soldiers were killed and 80 wounded; the IDF also lost four tanks. Although the Jordanian Army had been decisive, the incident was a public relations coup for the PLO and Arafat in particular. The Karameh battle boosted Palestinian morale and gave the PLO additional prestige within the Arab community.

February 2, 1969

Yasser Arafat, head of the Fatah party, is appointed chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, replacing Ahmad Shukeiri, after Fatah becomes the dominant force in the PLO.

September 1970 is known as the Black September in Arab history and sometimes is referred to as the "era of regrettable events." It was a month when Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan moved to quash an attempt by Palestinian organizations to overthrow his monarchy. The violence resulted in heavy civilian Palestinian casualties. Armed conflict lasted until July 1971 with the expulsion of the PLO and thousands of Palestinians to Lebanon.

On September 16, King Hussein declared martial law. The next day, Jordanian tanks (the 60th armored brigade) attacked the headquarters of Palestinian organizations in Amman; the army also attacked camps in Irbid, Salt, Sweileh and Zarqa. Then the head of Pakistani training mission to Jordan, Brigadier Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (later Chief of Army Staff and President of Pakistan), took command of the 2nd division. The armored troops were inefficient in narrow city streets and thus the Jordanian army conducted house to house sweeps for Palestinian fighters and got immersed in heavy urban warfare with the inexperienced and undisciplined Palestinian fighters.

On September 18, Syria, through the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) branch, whose headquarters were located in Damascus and which was very close to the Syrian regime, tried to intervene on the behalf of the Palestinian guerrillas. The PLA size was equivalent to a division and was met by the 40th armored brigade of the Jordanian army. The Jordanian king asked for American support to prevent the Syrian-backed attack which could ultimately result in a victory of the Palestinians and an end to his pro-western government. In order to protect their vital Arab ally, the American government requested Israeli help. Israel Air Force planes made low overflights over the PLA tanks as a sign of warning. Soon the PLA began to withdraw.

Meanwhile, both Hussein and Arafat attended the meeting of leaders of Arab countries in Cairo and on September 27 Hussein signed an agreement that treated both sides as equals and acknowledged the right of the Palestinian organizations to operate in Jordan, but they should leave the cities and stay in the fronts. On September 28, Egypt's Nasser died of a sudden heart attack. Thus, the PLO became without Arabic protection, and King Hussein continued the attack.

On October 31, Arafat, whose position was weakened, had to sign another agreement (similar to one of November 1968) that returned control of Jordan to the King, requiring the dismantlement of Palestinian militant bases and banning their members from carrying unconcealed weapons. At a meeting of the Palestinian National Council that followed, both PFLP and DFLP groups refused to accept this agreement and instead, accepted the proposal that Jordan would be a part of a Palestinian state to replace both Jordan and Israel.

The violations continued and on November 9, Jordanian prime minister Wasfi al-Tal signed an order to confiscate illegal weapons. By January 1971, the army strengthened its control over the cities. Another agreement regarding surrendering weapons was signed and broken. After the discovery of illegal arms warehouse in Irbid in the Spring, the army placed a curfew and began arresting the rebels. On June 5, several leading Palestinian organizations including Arafat's Fatah, called on Radio Baghdad to overthrow King Hussein who was regarded as a "puppet separatist authority."

The army regained control over the remaining PLO strongholds, mountainous cities of Jerash and Ajloun. Palestinian militants were driven out to Lebanon as a result of the Cairo Agreement.

The stunning performances of the young Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut and the gold medals of American swimmer Mark Spitz and British athlete Mary Peters could not dispel the horror in Munich when the 20th Olympic Games became the setting for an guerrilla attacked which left 11 Israeli athletes dead.

The attacked began just before dawn on September 5th when eight hooded guerrillas scaled the fence around the Olympic Village. Bursting into the dormitory where the 11 Israeli athletes were sleeping, they shot two dead and took the other nine hostage, threatening to kill them unless 200 Arab guerrillas were released. The German authorities agreed to take the guerrillas to Furstentbldbruck military airfield where a Lufthansa airliner was waiting on the tarmac to fly them out of the country. There they were ambushed by German marksmen, but in the ensuing gun battle all nine hostages were killed in the cross-fire.

In 1973 Egypt joined Syria in a war on Israel to regain the territories lost in 1967. The two Arab states struck unexpectedly on October 6, which fell on Yom Kippur , Israel's holiest fast day . After crossing the suez channel the Arab forces gain a lot of advanced positions in Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights and manage to defeat the Israeli forces for more then three weeks . Israeli forces with a massive U.S. economic and military assistance managed to stop the arab forces after a three-week struggle and defeat with the cost of many casualties,and the Arabs strong showing won them support from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and most of the world's developing countries.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait financed the Arab forces, making it possible for Egypt and Syria to receive the most sophisticated Soviet weapons , and the Arab oil producing states cut off petroleum exports to the United States and other Western nations in retaliation for their aid to Israel.

Israel, forced to compete with the nearly unlimited Arab resources, was faced with a serious financial setback. Only massive U.S. economic and military assistance enabled it to redress the balance, but even American aid was unable to prevent a downward spiral of the economy.

In an effort to encourage a peace settlement, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon charged his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, with the task of negotiating agreements between Israel and Egypt and Syria. Kissinger managed to work out military disengagements between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai and between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights during 1974.

The Arab Summit in Rabat recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. At the United Nations General Assembly, the UN reaffirmed its commitment to an independent sovereign state in Palestine and gave the PLO observer status at the United Nations. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Begin, however, was the first Israeli leader to achieve a peace settlement with an Arab state.

It resulted from the surprise initiative of President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt, who in November 1977 flew to Jerusalem, where he addressed the Knesset and called on Begin to begin peace talks. After protracted negotiations sponsored by U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, Maryland, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1979. Although the treaty ended the prospects for war between Israel and Egypt, many issues remained between the two countries, including the problem of arranging for Arab autonomy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

The Jews of the Russian empire had been oppressed for centuries, and though the pogroms ended under Soviet rule, discrimination did not. Fearing international embarrassment and a "brain drain" of skilled workers, MOSCOW had long restricted emigration. But in the 1970s, detente brought a loosening of curbs. The exodus peaked in 1979 , when more then 51,000 exit visas were issued.

The sharp increase, coinciding with the conclusion of the second U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) , was widely seen as an attempt to influence treaty ratification. A second Soviet foreign policy goal to achieve most favored nation status with the United States was equally important: In 1979, US officials were considering repeal of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a 1974 law that tied trade grants to free emigration.

Even as emigration soared, the Kremlin cracked down on Jewish activism-reviling refuseniks (the term for those refused permission to leave) as "agents of world Zionism" and sentencing many to long terms in labor camps or psychiatric institutions. The 1977 arrest of Anatoly Shcharansky, a young mathematician who'd talked openly with Western reporters about his failure to gain an exit permit, generated international outrage. Charged with spying for the CIA, Shcharansky was convicted in a closed trial, and served nine years in prison before being released to Israel as part of a spy exchange. His case was extraordinary only in the attention it drew.

Watchdog groups estimated that by 1979, some 180,000 Soviet Jews had filed for visas, yet emigration plummeted the following year, when SALT II failed to be ratified and the Carter administration - reacting to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - imposed a grain embargo. By 1984, the number of emigres had slumped to 896.