That Famous Arab Hospitality
The formerly powerful Ottoman (Turkish, Muslim) empire had become the "sick man of Europe" by the 19th century. It was menaced by Russia which extended its power further south and began to carve up the European part of Turkey. England and France demanded that Russia cease and desist and declared war. In my day, Australian school rooms often resounded to the recitations of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" presumably to get us ready to fight and die for the Empire. No thank you.
The Ottomans were not stupid and understood their rigidly controlled medieval society could not compete with European military and economic power and tried in a halting manner to update and modernise. The 'Tanzimat' reforms included creating private property rights, selling state land to private owners and removing the 'dhimmi' restrictions on Christian and Jewish citizens to give them equal rights to Muslims. Its uncertain how many of the Southern Syrian (now mostly known as Palestinian) fellaheen even knew of, or understood, these changes. Those that did were not happy about them. The effendi elites took advantage of the new laws and the fellaheen as best they could. European travellers in the 19th century mostly reported the Holy Land as desolate, rocky, miserable, barren, squalid and bandit-ridden with some fertile places. This was mostly still a tribal society but it was growing and changing.
In the 19th century Europe, the legal restrictions against Jews were removed in most countries but certainly not in in Russia. Jews began leaving Eastern Europe and migrating mostly to the USA. A small number began migrating back to their ancient homeland of Judea and Israel, now part of the Ottoman Empire, in the belief that, without an actual Jewish state, anti-Semitism, oppression, persecution and the terrible pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia would never end. This movement was called 'Zionism.' This migration began small, was legal and the early immigrants bought land and settled in towns and began farming settlements. Their presence was unwanted but tolerated by the authorities who accepted baksheesh in the time honoured Eastern way. Effendis (the Notables) secretly sold land that no-one else wanted for outrageous sums while publicly demanding land sales to Jews be prohibited.
The typical response of the Muslim fellaheen to the new Jews was crime: cheating, violence, theft, arson, murder … The Jews had endured 2,000 years of oppression by powerful states against which they could not defend themselves. The were so hopeless at self-defence that they often hired Arab guards to protect them from the same villages from which the Arabs were harassing them. The Ottoman officials could provide no protection, even if they wanted to. Eventually, the Jews realised that they would have to defend themselves and so began the evolution of Jewish defences. Over 150 years, the Arabs relenteless refusal to leave the Jews in peace would create and evolve the monster that has continued to defeat them, the IDF.
In 1917 the British government released the Balfour Declaration: "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" shortly before the British conquered Palestine. Thy also promised to make members of the Hashemite family kings of various Middle Eastern countries if they aided in the war effort against the Ottomans. As more Jews migrated after the First World War the local Muslims began attacking them. The Brits realised they might have created a problem promising the same land to more than one group. In 1922 the Poms cut off the eastern 80% of the mandated land of Palestine, called it Transjordan and made one of their Muslim flunkies (a Sharif or descendant of Muhammad's family) the emir.
For simplicity I will refer to the local Muslim inhabitants as 'Arabs.' A significant minority of the Arab population was Christian but Christian mobs did not leave churches, gather weapons and attack the Jews, or at least, this has not been reported.