World War II revolutionized political relationships in the Middle East. The Zionists found themselves in the position of being forced to support Britain against the anti-Semitic Nazi Germans during the war, despite their opposition to British emigration policies. Egypt became a battleground in the war, but Turkey managed to remain neutral.
Most of the Arab governments favored the Germans in the war but were unable to act on their sentiments because of British domination. The war so weakened the French government that it was forever unable to impose its former influence in Syria and Lebanon. The war also weakened the British government to the point that the ten years following the war witnessed the dissolution of most of the former British Empire.
The war also resulted in the Holocaust, the murder of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. After the war, millions of European Jewish refugees longed to go somewhere else. Many of them opted for the Americas, but the Zionists encouraged many to go to Israel. The treatment of the Jews by the Nazis aroused much sympathy for them in the international community. Many Jews entered Palestine illegally, despite the British restrictions on emigration, provoking the native Palestinians to new rounds of violence against the Jews. The Jews retaliated.
The British finally declared the situation in Palestine to be insoluble, and on May 14,1948, the British high commissioner left the region. On the same day, the Zionists proclaimed the formation of a Jewish state they called Israel, citing biblical justification in that God gave the Israelites the land in covenant.
World History
