Zionism

National liberation movement advocating the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland (the Eretz Israel) in Palestine. Here, in the ‘Promised Land’ of the Bible, its adherents called for the Jewish people to be granted a sovereign state with its capital at Jerusalem, the ‘city of Zion’. The movement was founded by the Hungarian writer Theodor Herzl, who in 1897 convened the First Zionist Congress in the Swiss city of Basel. Zionism was the driving force behind the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

In 1917, the Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow gained from Great Britain (which controlled Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in World War I) a promise of support for a Jewish homeland. This was enshrined in the Balfour Declaration. Before and during World War II, escalating persecution in Europe led many Jews to embrace Zionism and emigrate. After the war, the United Nations sanctioned the establishment of a Jewish state alongside a homeland for the Arab Palestinian people.