The rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th cent was influenced by nationalist in Europe, as well as by the secularization of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, which led many assimilated Jewish intellectuals to seek a new basis for a Jewish national life. One such individual was Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist who wrote The Jewish State, calling for the formation of a Jewish nation state as a solution to anti-Semitism. In 1897 Herzl called the first World Zionist Congress at Basel, which brought together diverse proto-Zionist groups into one movement. The meeting helped to form Zionist organizations in most countries with large Jewish populations. .
The first issue to split the Zionist movement was whether Palestine was essential to a Jewish state. A majority of the delegates to the 1903 congress felt that it was essential and rejected the British offer of a homeland in Uganda. Within the Zionist movement a broad range of perspectives developed, ranging from a synthesis of nationalism with traditional Jewish Orthodoxy to various combinations of Zionism with utopian and Marxist socialism. After Herzl's death, Chaim Weizmann took over the Zionist movement, and wanted to reconcile the political wing of the movement, which stressed the establishment of a Jewish state. In 1917, Great Britain at war with Turkey, issued the Balfour Declaration, which promised to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Great Britain was given a mandate of Palestine in 1920 by the League of Nations, in part to implement the Balfour Declaration. .
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Jewish colonization vastly increased in the early years of the mandate for the, but soon the British limited their interpretation of the declaration in the face of Arab pressure. There were disputes in the Zionist movement on how to counter the British position. The right-wing Revisionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky , favored large-scale immigration to Palestine to force the creation of a Jewish state.