The birth of the Zionist Movement, coming in the wake of Jewish emancipation in Western Europe and at a time of intensified persecution of Jewry in Eastern Europe, meant that for the first time since Jewish dispersion, the possibility of the Jews discarding their minority status in the lands they inhabited and creating their own home in their ancestral homeland became a reality, however incomprehensible it may have appeared in these early years. The next half a century saw great strides in the economic, social and political life of the Yishuv that culminated in the creation of the State of Israel.
Zionism altered the relationship between Jews in Mandatory Palestime and the Jewish communities of the diaspora, between Jews and their Palestinian-Arab contemporaries and ultimately between Jewry and the British mandatory power. With contributions for scholars of Zionism and israeli history, this volume addresses the inellectual, social and political ramifications of Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel before the Creation of the State of Israel.
