The history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict has its roots in the events that began during World War 1. At the turn of the twentieth century, Palestine was a province of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. During the course of World War 1, the British promised to support Arab independence in exchange for Arab assistance against the Turkish Army. These British promises are clearly documented in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915-1916) which largely focused on the borders of a post-war independent Arab State that included Palestine

Although the Arabs rallied behind the infamous Lawrence of Arabia, fulfilling their part of the bargain, the British and the French repaid them with imperial plots that ran contrary to the letter and spirit of the promises made to the leaders of what came to be known as the 'Arab Revolt'. In the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), the British and French secretly agreed to colonize the Eastern Arab world after the war. Almost on a whim, the British also issued the Balfour Decleration of 1917.

The Balfour Declaration was an agreement between European and American Zionists and the British Government to create a 'Jewish' national home in Palestine. The text read:

The 'existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' were the Palestinian Arab Muslims and Christians, who comprised over 90% of the population. Both the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement were secret agreements between England, France and the Zionist interest groups. In drafting both agreements, no attempts were made to consult the Arab inhabitants of these lands. In fact, the existence of the two agreements were successfully kept under wraps until they were disclosed by the Bolsheviks in Moscow after the Russian Revolution. They were then widely publicized by the Turkish Government as a way of demonstrating British betrayal of assurances given to the leaders of the 'Arab Revolt'.

In response to the revelation of these secret agreements, The Anglo-French allies gave the Sherif of Mecca more assurances in the form of the Anglo-French Declaration of November 9, 1918. This promise was that "France and Great Britain agree to further and assist in setting up indigenous governments and administrations in Syria (which included Palestine) and Mesopotamia."

The end result of British promises and counter-promises was the implementation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the division of the Eastern Arab World into British and French Mandates. These mandates were given international sanction by the League of Nations. Legally, a mandate was a 'pet colony' where the colonizing power's sole mission was to prepare the natives population for eventual self-governance.

Once the Sykes-Picot double cross was completed, the British moved on to another, more sinister, act of duplicity. Instead of preparing the natives of Palestine for self-rule, they prepared them for eventual exile.

To get an idea of the magnitude of this most heinous of British Colonial crimes, one only has to take a look at the demographics of the Palestine mandate in 1922. The area was inhabited by a population of 650,000 Palestinians and a little over 50,000 Jews. By the end of the Mandate in 1948, the population had increased to 1,380,000 Arabs and 650,000 Jews. The unnatural growth of the Jewish population was facilitated by a heavy influx of European Zionist immigrants who came with the explicit ideological intent of displacing the native Palestinian Arabs.

During the period the Palestine Mandate, the British conducted themselves in a manner that amounted to sanctioning the creation of a Jewish 'government' for the Zionist immigrants. In 1936, the Palestinians revolted against the British. Their major demand was that Jewish immigration be curtailed. By then, the Palestinians, at all social and political levels, were acutely aware of the Zionist program and its ultimate goals of dispossessing the Palestinians. It took three years for Great Britain to put down the revolt. It was a revolt that decimated the leadership of the Palestinians and further paved the road to the political and military domination of Palestine by the Zionists.

In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly, made up mostly of European and Latin American countries, approved the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The partition plan provided for the establishment of a Jewish State on 56% of the total area of Palestine, This 'Jewish State' had an Arab population of almost 50%. It took blatant gerrymandering to carve out the borders of the 'Jewish' state in a manner that would give the minority Jewish population over half of the land.

The Partition Plan, although grossly unfair to the native Palestinian majority, contained many provisions to safeguard their rights. The text of the Partition Plan had provisions "Guaranteeing to all persons equal and non-discriminatory rights in civil, political, economic and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech, publication, education, assembly and association". These were lofty words that the architects of the plan knew would not be honored by a Zionist movement determined to create a state as "Jewish as England is English".

The Partition Plan resolution had a whole chapter on religious and minority rights. The provisions of the plan included the following choice legalisms:

The provisions were principally directed at the government of the proposed Jewish State. Which was accorded 56% of the land area of Palestine. This area contained a population of 498,000 Jews and 497,000 Arabs. The remaining 44% of the land had a population that consisted of 10,000 Jews and 725,000 Arabs. These figures can be confirmed by referring to the original Resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations on the Palestine Question.

While the Partition Plan provided for all kind of legal protection for the native Palestinians, it did not provide any mechanism for enforcing these rights. Instead, it relied on the unlikely good will of the British and the Zionists. Not long after the Partition plan was adopted in 1947, the Zionists initiated a campaign of terror aimed at expelling the Arab inhabitants, confiscating their property and occupying as much of Palestine as they could before the British left.

The massacre of 250 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948 was one of many methods the Zionist forces resorted to in their efforts to induce the Arabs to flee. Menachem Begin, the leader of the attack, later declared that "The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the 'victory' at Deir Yasin."

Before the British left, the Zionists had already occupied territory reserved for the Arab State and International Zone in Jerusalem. This was in addition to controlling the 56% that had been allotted to the Jewish State in the Partition Plan.

One of the greatest canards that the Israelis disseminate is that the Palestinians fled of their own free will to make way for the invading Arab armies from neighboring states. By the time the Arab armies entered the fray on May 15,1948 the Zionist forces had already penetrated deep into the area allotted to the Palestinian 'Arab' state and 650,000 of the natives of Palestine had become refugees.

Ben Gurion, a Polish immigrant and Israel's first Prime Minister, said of this offensive that was initiated six weeks before the British Mandate ended,