History
The Zionist Organisation (ZO) founded the Palestine Bureau (also known as "Eretz Yisrael Office") in Jaffa in 1908, under Arthur Ruppin, and began to adopt a systematic effort to buy and settle land in Ottoman Palestine.
Following the promulgation of the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration of 1917, Chaim Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation formed the Zionist Commission in March 1918 to go to Palestine and make recommendations to the British government. The Commission reached Palestine on 14 April 1918 and proceeded to study conditions and to report to the British government, and was active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine. Weizmann was instrumental in restructuring the ZO's Palestine office into departments for agriculture, settlement, education, land, finance, immigration, and statistics.
On 19 April 1920, elections were held for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community.
On 25 April 1920, the Principal Allied Powers agreed at the San Remo conference to allocate the Ottoman territories to the victorious powers and assigned Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq as Mandates to Britain, with the Balfour Declaration being incorporated into the Palestine Mandate. The League of Nations formally approved these mandates in 1922. Article 4 of the Mandate provided for "the recognition of an appropriate Jewish Agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine." The ZO leaders had contributed to the drafting of the Mandate. In 1921, the Zionist Commission became the Palestine Zionist Executive and was designated as the Jewish Agency for Palestine for the purpose of Article 4 of the Palestine Mandate.
The Palestine Zionist Executive was charged with facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine, land purchase and planning the general policies of the Zionist leadership. It ran schools and hospitals, and formed a defence force, the Haganah. Chaim Weizmann was the leader of both the Zionist Organisation and the Palestine Zionist Executive until 1929. The arrangement enabled the Zionist Organisation to issue entry permits to new immigrants.
Read more about this topic: Jewish Agency For Israel
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