Palestine has been hard-hit by the war.…

Palestine has been hard-hit by the war.

In addition to the destruction caused by the fighting, the population has been devastated by famine, epidemics, and Ottoman punitive measures against Arab nationalists.

Palestinian Arabs believe that Great Britain had promised them independence in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, but the Balfour Declaration of government support for the establishment of "a Jewish national home in Palestine" conflicts with the Hussein-McMahon understandings.

The number of Zionist colonies, mostly subsidized by Lord Rothschild, has meanwhile risen from nineteen in 1900 to forty-seven in 1918, even though the majority of the Jews are town dwellers.