<P> In 1917, towards the end of World War I, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine was occupied by British forces . The United Kingdom was granted control of the area west of the River Jordan now comprising the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Mandatory Palestine), and on the east bank of what later became Jordan (as a separate mandate) by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 . Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration was appointed the first High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine, generally simply known as Palestine . During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East . Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917 . </P> <P> In 1947, following increasing levels of violence, the British government expressed a wish to withdraw from Palestine . The proposed plan of partition would have split Palestine into two states, an Arab state and a Jewish state, and the City of Jerusalem, giving slightly more than half the land area to the proposed Jewish state . Immediately following the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Partition Plan (Resolution 181 (II)), and the subsequent declaration of statehood by the Jewish National Council, civil war broke out between the Arab community and the Jewish community, as armies of the Arab League, which rejected the Partition Plan which Israel accepted, sought to squelch the new Jewish state . </P> <P> On 14 May 1948, one day before the end of the British Mandate, the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine led by the future prime minister David Ben - Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz - Israel, to be known as the State of Israel . </P> <P> The armies of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq marched into the territory of what had just ceased to be the British Mandate, thus starting the 1948 Arab--Israeli War . The nascent Israel Defense Forces repulsed the Arab armies, and extended Israel's borders beyond the original Resolution 181 (II) boundaries for the proposed Jewish state . By December 1948, Israel controlled most of the portion of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River . The remainder of the Mandate came to be called the West Bank (controlled by Jordan), and the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt). Prior to and during this conflict, 711,000 Palestinians Arabs were expelled or fled their homes to become Palestinian refugees . One third went to the West Bank and one third to the Gaza Strip, occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and the rest to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and other countries . </P>

When did most of the land called palestine became the country of israel