The British mandate for Palestine was specifically designed to allow a Jewish homeland to be created. This was at the expense of Palestinians who owned, lived and worked in this land. It was taken from them. This action is not sanctioned by ANY religious script in my opinion.
@justfedupofthis, the UN in 1947, building on from the U.K. 1917 Balfour Declaration and a 1939 white paper by the British, proposed dividing the area that is now the State of Israel and occupied territories into a Jewish state and a separate Arab state. The Jewish population in Palestine as you say grew rapidly from from around 5-8% in the 1880s whilst under Ottoman rule to 32% by 1947 under the British Mandate, according to various sources.
This was due to the emergence of modern Zionism in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to persecution (pogroms) and as I read ‘a response to Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment.’ I imagine awful persecution was the driving force. In Zionist history, the different waves of Jewish settlement since 1880s are known as "aliyah".
On 14 May 1948, on the day the last British forces left from Haifa the Jewish population recognised the UN partition plan and proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state to be known as the State of Israel. However, citing from wiki, ‘the Arab League members Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. The Arab states marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, starting the first Arab–Israeli War.’ Israel successfully pushed the Arab armies out and conquered some of the territory that had been included in the proposed Arab state. Egyptians retained the Gaza strip and Jordanian forces remained in the West Bank, where the British had stationed them before the war. Jordan annexed the areas it occupied while Egypt kept Gaza as an occupied zone. So surrounding Arab countries did not serve the Palestinian Arabs well either. I read a Palestinian author say hindsight showed Palestinian Arabs would’ve been best served by accepting the partition but surrounding Arab countries didn’t want them to.
In the 1967 war Israel won and occupied the West Bank and Gaza. Due to surrounding Arab countries not accepting a Jewish state and the rise of Palestinian nationalism I think Israel became too scared to allow a separate Arab state that may turn on them. Decades of strife have followed with the population of the Palestinian occupied terroritries suffering the most by far though Israelis have had their share of suffering. It’s all a mess and v sad. As I wrote earlier whilst Israeli prime minister Netanhayu is in power and Hamas in Gaza there will be no chance of working towards peace.
I would be interested in seeing the source for the 5% figure you quote, and if correct, the composition of the remaining 95%.
@anemona, this wiki page outlines the demographic history of Palestine.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region) and www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present