| 1840s |
Jews dream of settling in Palestine, where 12,000 Jews still live.
|
| 1881 |
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a Russian-Jewish
educator, moves to Palestine and promotes Hebrew, a dead language used only for prayer, as an everyday language for Jews. Within 40 years, the country speaks Hebrew; within 60, the accent is recognizable as Israeli. |
| 1882 |
12,000 refugees from
Russian pogroms
go to Palestine in the First Aliyah (Hebrew for ascending).
|
| 1895 |
Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist, writes łThe Jewish State,˛ pro-posing a Jewish homeland as the solution to persecution in Europe.
|
| 1897 |
At Zionist
conference in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl writes, łToday I founded the Jewish state.˛ |
|
| 1901 |
Uganda, Argentina, Cyprus and the Congo are
suggested and rejected sites for a Jewish state. Jewish National Fund is founded to buy land in Palestine for Zionists.
|
| 1904 |
Jews
escaping pogroms in
Russia and
Poland form
Second Aliyah. |
| 1909 |
Tel Aviv, the first modern Jewish city, is founded.
|
|
| 1914 |
World War I begins
|
| 1916 |
Britain and France, victors in the war, urge an independent Arab state or confederation of Arab states, with a capital in Palestine.
|
| 1917 |
Britain issues the Balfour
Declaration, endorsing a
Jewish state in Palestine. The wording is so vague both Arabs and Jews use it to
bolster claims tothe country.
|
| 1918 |
World War I ends. About 60,000 Jews live in Palestine,
10 percent of the total population.
|
| 1919-1921 |
In the Third Aliyah, 20,000 immigrants from Russia and Poland come, creating labor unions and the Haganah, an underground Jewish resistance army.
|
|
| 1920 |
League of Nations grants Britain mandate to govern Palestine, comprised of Israel and Transjordan.
|
| 1921 |
Britain divides its mandate, creating Transjordan east of the River Jordan and leaving the land west of the river as Palestine. The division angers Zionist settlers. Hitler becomes president of the National Socialist Party in Germany. British take first census of Palestine ‹ 84,000 Jews make up 12.9 percent of the population.
|
| 1924-1930 |
The Fourth Aliyah brings 80,000 more Jews to Palestine. Arabs number about 700,000. |
| 1929 |
The Irgun, a guerrilla army, is formed; one leader is Menachem Begin, later a prime minister and defense minister.
|
