that never had a reason to exist other than officials at the end of WWII not knowing what the fuck to do with all the Jewish refugees and shoving them in Israel as an afterthought.
Jewish immigration to Palestine and Zionism in general started a fair bit before WWII. The massive wave of Jewish refugees after the Holocaust obviously accelerated things quite a lot, but the mess can arguably be traced back to the Sykes-Picot agreement, when the British that had promised the Hashemite Arabs an Arab state that would include Palestine betrayed them in a deal with France where they instead agreed to carve up the region amongst themselves and to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine; you can see this vague general plot unfold in the classic Lawrence of Arabia. This outraged the Hashemites, who eventually refused to continue working with the British. The British continued supporting their Arab allies in the east of Arabia, the House of Saud, and the Saudis eventually conquered all of Arabia, leading to the wonderful state of Saudi Arabia today. The other two Hashemite states, ruled by King Hussein’s sons Faisal and Abdullah, were respectively Iraq and Jordan. Iraq fell to a coup, while the family still rules Jordan to this day. If you know literally anything about Jordan at all, you’ll know it’s a politically and culturally much more tolerant and pleasant place than Saudi Arabia.
So, in what’s a massive shock to everyone I’m sure, Britain and France drew some stupid lines after betraying their allies and caused a hundred years of mess that’s still ongoing to this day. What a surprise.
Jewish immigration to Palestine and Zionism in general started a fair bit before WWII. The massive wave of Jewish refugees after the Holocaust obviously accelerated things quite a lot, but the mess can arguably be traced back to the Sykes-Picot agreement, when the British that had promised the Hashemite Arabs an Arab state that would include Palestine betrayed them in a deal with France where they instead agreed to carve up the region amongst themselves and to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine; you can see this vague general plot unfold in the classic Lawrence of Arabia. This outraged the Hashemites, who eventually refused to continue working with the British. The British continued supporting their Arab allies in the east of Arabia, the House of Saud, and the Saudis eventually conquered all of Arabia, leading to the wonderful state of Saudi Arabia today. The other two Hashemite states, ruled by King Hussein’s sons Faisal and Abdullah, were respectively Iraq and Jordan. Iraq fell to a coup, while the family still rules Jordan to this day. If you know literally anything about Jordan at all, you’ll know it’s a politically and culturally much more tolerant and pleasant place than Saudi Arabia.
So, in what’s a massive shock to everyone I’m sure, Britain and France drew some stupid lines after betraying their allies and caused a hundred years of mess that’s still ongoing to this day. What a surprise.