The Historical Timeline for the Nation of Israel and the Jewish people as they relate to Britain.
c. 2000 B.C. God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham, which continues through Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. They would become a great nation. Those who bless Abraham and his descendants will be blessed and those who curse Abraham and his descendants will be cursed. All the nations of the Earth will be blessed through them. The Land of Canaan will be their everlasting inheritance. Gen ch 12 v 3. Gen ch 13 v 14-17. Gen ch 15 v 18-21. Gen ch 17 v 7-8. Exodus ch 32 v 13. Psalm 105 v 8-11.
c. 1350 B.C. The Israelites entered the Promised Land. Prior to that they had been delivered from the Egyptians and then spent 40 years wandering the desert because of unbelief. Through the Mosaic Covenant they had been given the Torah and separated unto God as a holy nation. Exodus ch 19 v 5-6. The 12 tribes of Israel were allotted their portion of territory.
c. 1000 B.C. King David conquered Jerusalem and made it the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. God covenanted with David that his dynasty would be an everlasting one. 1 Chron ch 17 v 3-15. David’s son Solomon was commissioned by the Lord to build the House of the Lord. The Lord declared that His eyes and His heart would dwell there perpetually. 2 Chron ch 7 v 16.
c. 920 B.C. Israel was divided into 2 Kingdoms. The 10 northern tribes rebelled against the Lord and set up an alternative religious system. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained faithful to the Lord for a while. A remnant from the 10 northern tribes joined the 2 southern tribes (known as Judah) to worship the Lord in Jerusalem.
c. 720 B.C. The 10 northern tribes were taken into captivity in Assyria. By this time judgement had been prophesied against Judah for their rebellion against the Lord.
c. 586 B.C. The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon on 9th Av in the Hebrew calendar. The third wave of captives was taken into exile. The first one was in 606 B.C. A 70 year exile had been prophesied by Jeremiah. Jer ch 29 v 10.
c. 536 B.C. The first wave of Jewish exiles returns to Jerusalem and with the permission of King Cyrus of Persia begins to rebuild the Temple.
c. 445 B.C. The third wave of Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem under Nehemiah and the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. However a significant number chose to stay in exile.
c. 167 B.C. The temple was defiled by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who sacrificially sacrificed a sow on the altar and halted the temple worship. Three years later Judas Maccabees liberated and cleansed the Temple. This was commemorated by the Feast of Chanukkah. The Hasmoneans ruled Israel until the Roman invasion.
c. 4 B.C.- c. 30 A.D. The earthly life and ministry of Yeshua HaMaschiach (Jesus the Messiah) fulfilling more than 300 Old Testament prophesies. Through His death on the cross the New Covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah was ratified. Jer ch 31 v 31-34, Heb ch 8 v 8-12 and Mat ch 26 v 26-28. Shortly before His crucifixion Jesus prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the people until “the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” Luke ch 21 v 24.
70 A.D. The second Temple was destroyed by the Romans, again on 9th Av in the Hebrew calendar. Approximately one million Jewish people were killed and most of the survivors were sold into slavery or scattered into the nations. However, a small remnant of the Jewish people remained in the Land throughout the dispersion.
135 A.D. The Bar Kokhba uprising was quashed by the Romans. Jewish people were barred from Jerusalem for several centuries. On 9th Av the Romans ploughed over Jerusalem, renamed the city “Aelia Capitolina” and the Land of Judah “Syria Palestina” to eradicate the memory of the Jewish presence there. Over the next 19 centuries the religious Jews in exile included the amidah prayer in their daily devotions – a heart-cry to God for their restoration to their beloved Jerusalem.
1066 A.D. The first known Jewish people arrived in England from Normandy with William the Conqueror.
1144 A.D. The first “Blood Libel” against the Jewish people took place in Norwich. According to the Libel Jewish people showed their hatred of Christianity by re-enacting the crucifixion by sacrificing a Christina child and using his blood in the unleavened bread for Passover. The concept Blood Libel subsequently spread from England across Europe and continues to this day.
1212 A.D. A large contingent of Jewish people arrived in Jerusalem, including 300 rabbis from England and France.
1299 A.D. On 9th Av King Edward I of England issued an edict that all Jewish people must be expelled from the country within 3 months. England remained ”Juden-rein” until on 1656 Oliver Cromwell decreed that they could return.
1858 A.D. the British Parliament passed an Act allowing Jewish people to be elected to Parliament without restriction. Benjamin Disraeli later became the first Jewish Prime Minister of Great Britain.
c. 1881. The first major wave of aliyah (Jewish immigration) into Eretz from Russia began in the wake of ongoing pogroms against Jewish people.
Sept 1897. The first Zionist Congress took place in Basel, Switzerland. At the conclusion Theordore Herzl wrote in his diary: “In Basel I founded the Jewish State. Maybe in 5 years, certainly in 50 years everyone will see it.”
1914. At the outbreak of World War I the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the power, which ruled over the whole of the Middle East, outlawed Zionism and expelled 11,000 of the 60,000 Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.
Oct 1917. The British and ANZAC military forces captured Beersheba from the Turks and the Germans. This paved the way for the British conquest of Palestine. On the same day the British Cabinet decided to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The decision was published by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour 2 days later in what became known as the Balfour Declaration.
Dec 1917. The British and ANZAC forces conquered Jerusalem, bringing to an end 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule. Two days later, on the eve of the Feast of Chanukkah, the British General Allenby ceremonially entered Jerusalem, declaring British rule over Palestine.
April 1920. Haj El-Amin, later to become the Mufti of Jerusalem, led riots against the Jewish population of Jerusalem as Britain and France participated in a League of Nations conference in San Remo, Italy to issue a mandate for British and French rule over the Middle East. France was awarded a Mandate to rule Syria and Lebanon while Britain was given a Mandate to rule over Palestine, which included all of modern-day Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the British Mandate, giving it international-legal status.
1922. Sir Herbert Samuel took his position as the first British High Commissioner if Palestine. The Churchill White Paper divided Palestine along the Jordan River creating an Arab Homeland on Palestine known as Transjordan (later Jordan).
Aug 1929. Arab riots broke out across Palestine, including Gaza and Hebron. In Hebron, the oldest continuously inhabited Jewish city in the World, 69 Jewish people were brutally murdered. The British authorities responded by evacuating the Jewish people from both places and forbidding them to return. Serious unrest and riots continued through the 1930s as Arabs pressurised Britain to halt Jewish immigration and abandon the Balfour Declaration.
Jan 1933. Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany creating a dark cloud for German Jewry. Within a year he instigated a programme of anti-Semitism across Germany in accordance with Mein Kampf, which he had written a decade earlier. Over the next few years Hitler successfully mobilised almost the entire German nation against the Jewish people.
July 1938. Representatives of 32 nations met at Evian in France to discuss the rapidly worsening refugee problem resulting from Hitler’s ruthless persecution and murder of the Jewish people in Germany and Austria. Britain only agreed to attend on condition that the Jewish immigration into Palestine was not on the agenda. The Jewish people were affectively abandoned by the Evian Conference.
May 1939. A White Paper was published, which severely restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. And outlawed land sales to Jewish people altogether. Only 75,000 Jewish immigrants would be allowed over the following 5 years. All further immigration beyond that would be subject to the agreement of the Arabs. The 1939 White Paper effectively annulled the Balfour Declaration.
1939-1945. Six million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis under the leadership of Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust of World War II.
1945 – 1948. The British policy of restricted immigration into Palestine continued. Calls for mass immigration into Palestine in the wake of the Holocaust were ignored as at least 60,000 Holocaust survivors were imprisoned in Cyprus or returned to Europe. The British policy resulted in escalating violence across Palestine and the Mandate became increasingly unmanageable.
July 1947. One refugee ship – called the Exodus – was captured by the British in international waters off Palestine. Its cargo of 4,500 Holocaust survivors was eventually returned to German prison camps. The ensuing media coverage shamed the British government, which had decided to commit the fate of the mandate to the United Nations.
Nov 1947. The General Assembly of the United Nations voted in favour of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Resolution 181. The Jewish people accepted the Partition Plan and the Arabs rejected it. Jerusalem would become an international city. Violence escalated further across Palestine as the British prepared to withdraw.
14th May 1948. The last High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, left Palestine and the British Mandate ended. At 4 p.m. David Bengurion, the recognised leader of the Jewish people, declared the existence of the sovereign State of Israel, according to U.N. Resolution 181.
15th May 1948. Five Arab armies attacked the infant State of Israel and war raged for several months. Jordan captured the eastern part of Jerusalem and Israel’s historical heartland, Judea and Samaria. The Jordanians expelled or killed the Jewish people in the territory they conquered and desecrated the Jewish holy sites. They annexed the territory and renamed it “the West Bank of Jordan.” Their sovereignty over the territory was not recognised by any nation other than Britain and Pakistan.
Jan 1964. The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) was formed under the auspices of President Nasser of Egypt. The PLO drew up a Charter with the goal of liberating all of Palestine (i.e. Israel) and liquidating the Jewish State. Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat later became the PLO leader and embarked on a campaign of international terrorism against Jewish targets. The PLO Charter calling for the liquidation of Israel has never been rescinded.
June 1967. Israel made a pre-emptive strike against Egypt while president Nasser was preparing another war of annihilation against Israel in conjunction with Syria and Jordan. In defending herself against the invading armies Israel captured the Golan Heights, the Sinai peninsular, the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount – the holiest site to the Jewish people. Several years later the Golan Heights and the eastern part of Jerusalem were formally annexed to Israel.
Sept 1967. The Arab nations met in Khartoum, Sudan, for a conference. In a united front they declared that there would be “no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel, and no peace with Israel.” Since then only Egypt and Jordan have made peace treaties with Israel.
Oct 1973. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel once again. The surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, took Israel completely by surprise and almost resulted in her defeat. The war raged for more than a month and brought the Israeli forces within gunshot range of Cairo and Damascus.
Nov 1977. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt made an historic visit to Jerusalem. A Peace Treaty was subsequently signed in which Israel handed over the oil-rich Sinai peninsular, but was forced to keep the Gaza Strip. President Sadat was assassinated by Muslim extremists in 1981 for making peace with Israel.
July 1980. The Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, passed a law that Jerusalem would be “the eternal and invisible capital of Israel”. The PLO and Arab nations reacted with a threat to nations that their embassies in Jerusalem: “leave or your oil supplies will be cut off.” 13 countries moved their embassies to Tel Aviv.
Dec 1987. The first Palestinian intafada (uprising) began.
Sept 1993. In a surprise move Israel recognised the terrorist PLO as the official representatives of the Palestinian Arabs, ending Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres signed a Declaration of Principles for a Peace Treaty on the White House lawn in the presence of president Bill Clinton. Arafat announced that he had renounced terrorism and pledged to rescind the PLO Charter. Over the next 7 years under what became known as the “Oslo Accords” the PLO was given autonomy over 98% of the Palestinian population and 40% of territory in Judea and Samaria and 80% of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile Palestinian incitement to hatred and terrorism against Israel escalated.
July 2000. President Bill Clinton invited the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a summit at Camp David in U.S.A. for “Final Status” talks under the troubled “Oslo Accords.” Israeli P.M. Ehud Barak offered to recognise a Palestinian state in 97% of the territory Arafat was demanding, which embraced most of the Old City of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount – all in exchange for an end to hostilities. Arafat rejected the offer and 2 months later launched the second intafada against Israel.
March 2002. In a month, which proved to be the bloodiest of the intafada in which more than 100 Israelis were murdered, including 30 people in a single attack on a Passover Seder, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield in which they re-occupied most of the territory and cities ceded to the Palestinians. Yasser Arafat was held under house arrest in his Muqata compound in Ramallah where the IDF subsequently discovered concrete proof that he had been directing financing and co-ordinating terrorist attacks against Israel. US president Bush declared that Arafat was the main obstacle to achieving peace in the Middle East.
2003. A new peace initiative was launched by the U S, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations (collectively known as “the Quartet”) to replace the failed “Oslo Accords”. The new initiative – known as “The Roadmap” to peace – called for a ”performance based” path to peace in stages. The first stage required the Palestinian leadership to disarm and disband the terrorist organisation. Arafat agreed to ”The Roadmap” and pledged to take the necessary action, but failed to do so. The Roadmap faltered.
Nov 2004. Yasser Arafat died. In an election held in January 2005 Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s long-time right-hand man, was elected as the Palestinian president.
Feb 2005. In yet another ceremony as Sharm –el –Sheik in Egypt Mahmoud Abbas met with Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon to restart “the Roadmap”. In front of the Israeli PM and the Western media Abbas pledged to disarm and disband the terrorist groups, and in front of the Arab media he quickly renounced that pledge.