The idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, though present in Jewish hearts since the start of the exile all those centuries earlier, really took hold of Christian minds at the start of the 19th Century. It all started (probably) with the Frenchman, Napoleon Bonaparte, who promised Palestine to the Jews. The trouble was that he failed to conquer the land, so it wasn't his to give away! Since then, particularly in Britain, we then start to see many prominent people, writers, artists, statesmen, all with one mind on the Jewish issue - the need for a Jewish homeland. Among these people were Lord Lindsay, Lord Palmerston, Disraeli, Lord Manchester, Holman Hunt, George Eliot and Lord Shaftesbury.

Lord Shaftesbury was the most loved politician and one of the most effective social reformers in nineteenth century England. He became interested in the Jews through his study of Biblical prophecy - he was so keen to understand the Old Testament that he forced himself to learn Hebrew for that very purpose. He became convinced that the Jews should be encouraged to return to Palestine, their God-given home and encouraged Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary to do something about it, politically. Such was the might of the British Empire in those days that it seems the British were free to do what they liked because, as a result of Shaftesbury's prompting, Michael Alexander, a Jewish Christian, was sent to the Holy Land as the first Bishop of Jerusalem in modern times. Although this man only lived for another couple of years, and the scheme only lasted for fifty years, it represented solid achievement in the desire for an eventual Jewish homeland in Palestine.

And what of Palestine at that time? It was a poor country, ruled by absentee Turkish landlords, as part of the Ottoman Empire. By all accounts the land was largely barren and uninhabited, its population was either nomadic or largely involved with agriculture, despite the poor environment. Sir John William Dawson, writing in 1888, said, "no national union and no national spirit has prevailed there. The motley impoverished tribes which have occupied it have held it as mere tenants at will, temporary landowners, evidently waiting for those entitled to the permanent possession of the soil" (Modern Science in Bible Lands - New York 1890 - pp. 449-450). In 1835, Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence …" (Recollections of the East, Vol I (London 1845) pp 268). In 1867, Mark Twain (he of 'Tom Sawyer' fame), after a visit to Palestine, wrote, "There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country … Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Palestine is desolate and unlovely …" (The Innocents Abroad (New York 1966) pp. 351,375,401,441).

Thanks to the Turks, the land had been totally neglected. Hundreds of years of abuse had turned the country into a treeless waste, with malaria-ridden swamps, a sprinkling of towns and an unliveable desert in the south. In the middle of the 19th century the estimated population for the whole of Palestine (including Jews and Christians) was between 50,000 and 100,000 - although modern Palestinian historians would attach a far larger figure. So, despite popular perceptions propagated by the media, the situation in Palestine at that time was that 1) the land was poor and scarcely populated, 2) most of the land was ruled by Turkish absentee landlords and 3) the Arab population were largely either nomadic Bedouins or tenant labourers.

So what was the bridge between this situation and the thriving modern country that we see now? The answer is a single word - 'aliyah' - the Hebrew word for immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel (or Palestine, as it was called then). In Isaiah 11:11-12 we read, "In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant which is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. He will raise an ensign for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." And here it was, actually happening before the eyes of the world!

Although there has always been a significant Jewish presence in the land since the times of the Romans, there was a steady trickle of Jews returning, throughout the 1800s. The Turkish landowners were short of ready cash. They quickly found out that they could raise funds by selling off parcels of land in Palestine. Jewish money was as good as anyone else's, so they grabbed at the opportunity. The Turkish government soon caught on and banned it, though it still carried on - illegal Jewish money was also as good as anyone else's, and now there was more of it, as the black market rate was of course higher. Meanwhile, because of the state of the land, many non-Jews were leaving the land, only to be replaced by Jews zealous for the land and with a love for it that 1800 years of exile hadn't blunted.

The first major wave of aliyah was in 1882. This included the foundation of the Jewish settlement of Rishon-le-Zion, where 40 Jewish families settled - followed later by more than 400 Arab families from Egypt and elsewhere. This was a community that worked and was at peace. The Arabs saw the benefits of what the Jews were doing to the land and joined them. This became a recurring theme, repeated throughout the land - Arabs attracted to the Land from other Arab nations, motivated by the spirit and enthusiasm of the hard-working Jewish immigrants. How many of these Arab families will later claim to be long-standing settlers, when this would become a political issue in the 20th century?