Palestine was occupied by the British army in 1917 – 1918, in World War I. On November 2, 1917 the Balfour Declaration was issued, in which the British Foreign Minister declared Britain support of the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. After the war the League of Nation granted Britain a mandate to rule the country, which it did for a generation.
During the mandatory period, the Jewish Yishuv faced constant attacks of local Arabs who refused to accept the establishment of the Jewish national home. The Yishuv had also to confront the British rulers who tended more and more to approve Arab demands with the sole consequence of arresting the development of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
The Peel Commission's recommendations – following the Arab Revolt – to divide the country into a Jewish and an Arab states were wholly rejected by the Arabs. The Second World War put the confrontation on hold, however David Ben Gurion was not deterred from declaring that the goal of the Jewish People is the establishment of a Jewish sovereign state in Palestine.
Following the war, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, the need for a Jewish state was acutely urgent. But the British mandatory authorities refused to open the gates of the country to the Jews coming from Europe.