The notion of the "Land of Israel" ("Eretz Yisrael" known in Hebrew) has been sacred to the Jewish people since Biblical times.
Various empires — including those of the Persians, Romans, Umayyads, and Ottomans — conquered the area until World War I when Britain took control of the area and subsequently declared it Mandatory Palestine in 1920.
Modern Jewish migration to the area (at the time Ottoman-ruled Palestine) began in 1881, and the movement to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel formally began with the birth of the World Zionist Organization in 1887.
On May 15th, 1948, the territory officially became an independent country: "Israel."
In 1917, during World War I, Zionist volunteers assisted Britain's conquest of Palestine. Jewish immigration to the area increased thereafter.
After World War II, Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees immigrated to "Mandatory Palestine," as the territory was called under British rule.
In the two years after 1946, more than 100,000 people arrived.
Source: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_judaism/summary/v016/16.1ofer.html
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