How did the Israelis come to occupy what is now called Israel?

Answer 1

It is a leading question to suggest that Israelis "occupy" Israel and conveys bias in the phrasing of the question itself. Israel is occupied only in the same sense that Britain is occupied by the British. Jews and Arabs consisting of Moslems, Christians, Bahai and many others, LIVE in Israel now and have equal democractic rights and access to the welfare system. With that in mind, the following answer is provided to the question.

Jews had lived in the area of modern Israel for more than 3,000 years continously, but with the official persecution of Jews by the ruling conquerors from 132 AD to the demise of the Ottoman Empire, their numbers were often limited. Jews had prayed daily for their return to Zion since the expulsion by the Romans in 132 AD, and concluded Passover and other festivals with the exhortation, "Next Year in Jerusalem" during the 2 millennia. The end of the Ottoman Empire by 1922, together with the increase in violence against Jews in Europe which would eventually result in the Holocaust, and the greater ease of transport, allowed Jews to escape to the region. This exodus had began in the mid to late 19th century, and continued throughout the 20th century.

Britain was granted a mandate over the region of Palestine by the League of Nations after WWI. Britain, although supposedly committed to assisting the establishment of a Jewish homeland, prevented many Jews from accessing the area as a refuge during the Holocaust of WWII . This was under heavy Arab pressure on the British but even prior to this, Arab attacks on Jews was escalating and in 1929 a pogrom in Hebron murdered 67 Jews and forced the rest of the population from their homes. After WWII, thousands of Jews, no longer welcome or safe in Europe, migrated to Palestine. As mentioned previously, the U.N. voted for the partition of the land in 1947 and Britain then withdrew from the mandatory rule.

The modern state of Israel declared independence in 1948. At the time, in the whole area between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea which the UN wished to partition between Arabs and Jews, the Jewish population numbered approximately 650,000 and Arabs approximately 740,000.

The U.N voted in 1947 to split the land for both Jews and Arabs, with Jerusalem being an international city. Each new country would govern themselves. The Jews agreed but the Arabs did not, and 5 Arab armies launched an a war to destroy Israel upon its independence. The Jordanian Arab Legion commanded by the British General Glubb Pasha seized East Jerusalem and wiped out the Jewish Quarter of its Jews and synagogues. The Temple Mount, Hebron, Bethlehem, Gaza and other areas of Jewish historical interest were made Judenrein. Transjordan, as it was called then, seized the West Bank of the Jordan river consisting of Judea and Samaria, whilst Egypt occupied Gaza. Israel became a sliver of land, with a narrow waist of a mere 9 miles.

The best independent estimates are that approximately 550,000 Arabs fled what became Israel between November 1947 and December 1948, and that an estimated 50,000 returned thereafter to join the 140,000 Arabs who remained. Most of these Arabs resided in Transjordan and Gaza, although many returned to their original homes in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt from whence they had been attracted by the the creation of economic boom by the Jews who drained malarial swamps and established viable agricultural projects. At the same time, there were approximately 1,000,000 Jews living in Arab countries but expulsions immediately after 1948 reduced this number to 500,000 and by 1967, the Jews in Arab lands fell to under 100,000. Many of these people found their way to the only country that would take them in, Israel.

Israel is mentioned in The Bible many times as the home of Jews so it goes way back to 4,000 years ago.