The Israeli–Palestinian conflict traces its origins to the imperial partition of the Middle East during World War I, most notably Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, which endorsed a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine while disregarding the rights of its Arab inhabitants. Incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate in 1922, Palestine emerged as the principal arena of Zionist immigration and Arab resistance. British governance—shaped by contradictory wartime pledges and strategic imperatives—entrenched antagonism that escalated with the creation of Israel in 1948. The founding of the Jewish state, accompanied by the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians (Nakba), constituted a decisive rupture that transformed fragile coexistence into protracted conflict. Israel’s establishment fulfilled long-standing Jewish aspirations yet simultaneously generated a lasting crisis of Palestinian dispossession. The unresolved legacy of this imperial border-making endures in contemporary disputes over territory, sovereignty, and security, rendering Israel–Palestine a paradigmatic case of colonial partition’s enduring volatility.