Editing Balfour Declaration (section)

=== Ottoman Palestine ===
{{further|Ottoman Syria|History of Palestine#Restoration of Ottoman control}}
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| caption=Published in 1732, this map by Ottoman geographer [[Kâtip Çelebi]] (1609–57) shows the term {{lang|ar|ارض فلسطين}} (''ʾarḍ Filasṭīn'', "Land of Palestine") extending vertically down the length of the [[Jordan River]].{{sfn|Tamari|2017|p=29}}
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The year 1916 marked four centuries since Palestine had [[Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–17)|become part of the Ottoman Empire]], also known as the Turkish Empire.{{sfn|Cleveland|Bunton|2016|p=38}} For most of this period, the Jewish population represented a small minority, approximately 3% of the total, with Muslims representing the largest segment of the population, and Christians the second.{{sfn|Quigley|1990|p=10}}{{sfn|Friedman|1973|p=282}}<ref>{{harvnb|Della Pergola|2001|p=5}} and {{harvnb|Bachi|1974|p=5}}</ref>{{efn|group=lower-roman|Yonathan Mendel writes: The exact percentage of Jews in Palestine prior to the rise of Zionism and waves of [[aliyah]] is unknown. However, it probably ranged from 2 to 5 per cent. According to Ottoman records, a total population of 462,465 resided in 1878 in what is today Israel/Palestine. Of this number, 403,795 (87 per cent) were Muslim, 43,659 (10 per cent) were Christian and 15,011 (3 per cent) were Jewish (quoted in Alan Dowty, Israel/Palestine, Cambridge: Polity, 2008, p. 13). See also Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 43 and 124.{{sfn|Mendel|2014|p=188}}}}

Ottoman government in [[Constantinople]] began to apply restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine in late 1882, in response to the start of the [[First Aliyah]] earlier that year.{{sfn|Friedman|1997|pp=39–40}} Although this immigration was creating a certain amount of tension with the local population, mainly among the merchant and [[Ayan (class)|notable]] classes, in 1901 the [[Sublime Porte]] (the Ottoman central government) gave Jews the same rights as Arabs to buy land in Palestine and the percentage of Jews in the population rose to 7% by 1914.{{sfn|Tessler|2009|p=144}} At the same time, with growing distrust of the [[Young Turks]] (Turkish nationalists who had [[Young Turk Revolution|taken control of the Empire]] in 1908) and the [[Second Aliyah]], [[Arab nationalism]] and [[Palestinian nationalism]] was on the rise; and in Palestine anti-Zionism was a characteristic that unified these forces.{{sfn|Tessler|2009|p=144}}{{sfn|Neff|1995|pp=159–164}} Historians do not know whether these strengthening forces would still have ultimately resulted in conflict in the absence of the Balfour Declaration.{{efn|group=lower-roman|Schneer noted that: "The Balfour Declaration was not, in and of itself, the source of trouble in a land that previously had been more or less at peace, but nor was it a mere signpost on a road heading undivertibly toward a cliff. No one can say what the course of events in Palestine might have been without it. What did come was the product of forces and factors entirely unforeseen."{{sfn|Schneer|2010|p=14}}}}