BRITAIN IN PALESTINE
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The biggest impediment to self-government for Palestine was the immigration of tens of thousand of Jews to the country, as part of a programme whose ultimate aim was to increase the Jewish population to such high levels that it could legitimately claim to become a Jewish state. The new immigrants took land and jobs from the indigenous inhabitants, and sought to control aspects of the administration of Palestine by being granted special favours by the government. Attempts were made to make it easier for immigrant Jews to become citizens – and therefore vote – than immigrant Arabs. And the growing demands of religious Jews for privileges they had not had under the Turks began to alarm Moslems.
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There had always been some Jewish immigration into Palestine, since the late 19th century. Jewish pioneers from Russia and other European countries travelled to the Holy Land to set up farms and other communities. Their only aim was to live in ‘the Land of Israel’, to be near the source of the traditions and culture of Jewish life and thought, and they made no attempt to claim that Palestine should be a Jewish state.
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