During the movement's formative stages, Zionist negotiators with stronger political powers (such as the British) corresponded enthusiastically while remaining silent about the inhabitants of Palestine, who numbered just under half a million during the late 19th century.

Yet at that particular juncture in the movement such deliberations ... had about the same importance as the learned disputations customarily held in the courtyards of Hassidic rebbes regarding what would happen after the coming of the messiah.

A nation does not build its life except on the foundations of its past and blood is joined to blood.According to Frankel, this kind of mythology was an important part of the Second Aliyah's political legacy.

[10] Yusuf al-Khalidi, the Mayor of Jerusalem, wrote to the chief rabbi of France in 1899 that "historically, this is really [a Jewish] country" and that the Zionist idea was, in principle, "completely natural, fine and just."

[24] Israel's Declaration of Independence states "In [1897] the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country."

and further on, "we, [the signatories] by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel."

[citation needed] He says that Golda Meir's widely published pronouncement that "There was no such thing as Palestinians", was the cornerstone of Zionist policy, initiated by Weizmann and faithfully carried out by Ben-Gurion and his successors.

[45]In a discussion in the Jewish Agency he said that he wanted a Jewish–Arab agreement "on the assumption that after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.

He wrote that he had "no doubt that our army will be among the world's outstanding—and so I am certain that we won't be constrained from settling in the rest of the country, either by nutual agreement and understanding with our Arab neighbours, or by some other way.

According to Teveth, "through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a 'Hebrew army', and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in the struggle to establish a Jewish state.

"[66] Israeli historian and former diplomat Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote: "The philosophy of transfer was not a marginal, esoteric article in the mindset and thinking of the main leaders of the Yishuv.

He says the Zionist claim of a prevalent right to all of Palestine, combined with its desire to establish a society that "belonged" to the Jews resulted in "a radically exclusivist ideology, which renders non-Jews at best a redundant presence and easily lends itself to schemes favoring population transfer—and expulsion."

[83]In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the German Consul-General in Palestine, Heinrich Wolff,[84][85] sent a telegram to Berlin reporting al-Husseini's belief that Palestinian Muslims were enthusiastic about the new regime and looked forward to the spread of Fascism throughout the region.

[citation needed] The Italian Fascists envisaged a project to establish him as head of an intelligence centre in North Africa, and he agreed to act as commander of both regular and irregular forces in a future unit flanking Axis troops to carry out sabotage operations behind enemy lines.

Similarly, the Nashashibi also favoured Arab participation in the Legislative Council proposed by the British mandate, which would feature representatives of the various religious groups in Palestine at the time.

In 1920, the pro-Zionist Muslim National Associations was established by the mayor of Haifa, Hassan Bey Shukri and Sheikh Musa Hadeib, head of the farmers' party of Mt.

[93]As'ad Shukeiri, a pro-Zionist Muslim scholar (‘alim) of the Acre area widely known for his opposition to the Palestinian Arab national movement, followed the same tendency.

He met routinely with Zionist officials and had a part in pro-Zionist Arab organizations, publicly rejecting Haj Amin al-Husseini's use of Islam against Zionism.

[115] In 1947, the UN Special Commission on Palestine summarized the situation: The economic life presents the complex phenomenon of two distinctive economies—one Jewish and one Arab, closely involved with one another and yet in essential features separate.

[118] According to Flapan, one of the basic concepts of mainstream Zionism with regard to the Arab Palestinians was economic, social and cultural segregation as a means to create a Jewish national life.

However both Muslim and Christian Arabs decided to boycott the elections because the council was specifically denied the right to discuss matters pertaining to Jewish immigration.

"[125] The organization was founded in 1930 and led until the death of Syrian-born Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in 1935,[126] whose preaching was instrumental in laying the foundations for the formation of the Black Hand, which he used to proclaim jihad and attack Jewish settlers.

[130] By October 1936, these efforts had been quashed by the British administration using a combination of political concessions, international diplomacy (involving the rulers of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen[131]) and the threat of martial law.

[130] In response, the second phase of the revolt started to emerge late in 1937, in which Arab guerillas operating primarily from the countryside increasingly targeted British forces.

Punishments were liberally meted out to rebels and suspected accomplices, with the British utilizing a combination of house demolitions, crop burnings and mass imprisonment.

[140] David Ben-Gurion accepted it 'on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state, we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel'[141] At the twentieth Zionist Congress, held in Zurich in August 1937, the plan was discussed and rejected on the ground that a larger part of Palestine should be assigned to them.

Reporting in 1938, the Commission rejected the Peel plan primarily on the grounds that it could not be implemented without a massive forced transfer of Arabs (an option that the British government had already ruled out).

[143] With dissent from some of its members, the Commission instead recommended a plan that would leave the Galilee under British mandate, but emphasised serious problems with it that included a lack of financial self-sufficiency of the proposed Arab State.

[143] The British Government accompanied the publication of the Woodhead Report by a statement of policy rejecting partition as impracticable due to "political, administrative and financial difficulties".

[156] Some peace bands also sprang up in the Nablus area, on Mount Carmel (a stronghold of the Druze who largely opposed the rebellion after 1937), and around Nazareth without connection to the Nashashibi-Husayni power struggle.