Colonial occupier? Perhaps of Ottoman land, yes. But remember Zionism hardly at any following at all until Herzl in the late 19th century and if it hadn’t been for the Balfour Declaration, the whole dream would have died.
Of course the British had to juggle the difficult realities on the ground and the wide geopolitical situation (not least when Britain faced the Nazi threat alone between 1939 and 1941).
Whatever you want to believe, even the early Zionists who went to Palestine acknowledged that this was not “a land without a people for a people without a land” — remember the report back to the first Zionist conference: “The bride is beautiful, but she is already married to another man”.
Uprooting an entire population and dumping them East of the Jordan river would have amounted to ethnic cleansing. WHile some Zionists acknowledged the inceredibly tricky position in which Britain found herself, a bunch of extremists didn’t. I would call them cowardly, rather than courageous.
Of course the British had to juggle the difficult realities on the ground ...Yes, and if "juggle" is a euphemism for suppress, divide, contain, and use force of arms to prevent Jewish refugees from arriving in Palestine, then I agree with you without hedge or qualification.
No one was uprooting anyone. Except the British.
It was only the British that forbade ONLY JEWS from living east of the Jordan River.
Comment after comment, I don't know if you are outright lying or are just remarkably ignorant of history.
Britain ended Jewish migration in steps after 1929, while encouraging Arab migration. In 1947, they disarmed JEws and armed Arabs. Try again.
We don't know that, do we? You are arguing against something hypothetical. At so many turning points of Jewish history it looked like Jews themselves, and not just a dream, would have died. There are no reasons to believe that this particular dream would've died as well.
Israel did not arise full grown from Lord Balfour’s head. Jews during WW I performed great services for the UK, and in exchange a promise of a Jewish homeland in the only logical place for it was made. The promise was empty. The “trickiness” of which you speak was planned from the outset as follows: Incite the Arabs against the Jews. Then the Jews will stay away in droves, and those already in this nominal homeland will come to the British for protection, just as the Arabs will come to the British to keep the Jews out. It worked perfectly, except the Jews refused to take the bait. There was this little brouhaha in Europe called the Holocaust, and the Jews living in the homeland got wind of it and revolted against this cynical and bloody manipulation by the British. “Tricky situation,” was it? Sure. It’s always tricky convincing an entire people to let themselves either be annihilated wholesale, or else let the Arabs kill them retail.