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In 1896, Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist worried about the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, published The State of the Jews, a book in which he advocated the foundation of a Jewish national home. Palestine, the destination definitively chosen by the Zionist movement in 1905, saw the first waves of immigrants arrive. They founded the first kibbutzim and cultivated the land they had bought from the Arabs. Initially peaceful, relations between the two communities became strained when the Palestinians realized that their territory was slipping away from them.

In the aftermath of the 1948 war, the priority for the new state was to welcome Jewish immigrants from all over the world. European Jews who had survived the World War II were succeeded by Sephardim, whose integration proved more difficult. In 1956, the crisis provoked by Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal revealed the permanent tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors while Palestinian nationalism developed.