The Yishuv (), HaYishuv Ha'ivri (), or HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el () was the community of Jews residing in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Yishuv was also referred to as the Palestinian Jewish community. The term Yishuv came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living in that region, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there.Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Stephen Sharo, Ethnicity, Religion and Class in Israeli Society, Cambridge University Press, pages 26–27. The term is still in use to denote the pre-1948 Jewish residents in Palestine, corresponding to the southern part of Ottoman Syria until 1918, OETA South in 1917–1920, and Mandatory Palestine in 1920–1948.
A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv. 'Old Yishuv' refers to all the Jews living in Palestine before the first Zionist immigration wave (aliyah) of 1882, and to their descendants until 1948. The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews, living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. There were smaller communities in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram, and until 1799 in Gaza. In the final centuries before modern Zionism, a large part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off charity (halukka), donated by Jews in the diaspora.Abigail Jacobson (2011), From Empire To Empire: Jerusalem Between Ottoman and British Rule, Syracuse University Press, p. 51
The term 'New Yishuv' refers to those who adopted a new approach, based on economic independence and various national ideologies, rather than strictly religious reasons for settling in the "Holy Land". The precursors began building homes outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem in the 1860s, followed soon after by the founders of the moshava of Petah Tikva, with growth in full swing during the First Aliyah of 1882, followed by the founding of neighbourhoods and villages until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Ottoman rule
Old Yishuv
The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of southern Ottoman Syria in the Ottoman Empire,Destruction and Reconstruction – the Jewish Quarter. For the 400 years of Ottoman rule in Jerusalem there was a Jewish community living inside the walls of the Old City. The community, which we call the "Old Yishuv", was not a single, cohesive unit. Until the early 19th century the community consisted mainly of Sephardic Jews, descendants of the exiles from Spain with Ashkenazi (Hassidic and Mitnagdim) and Mizrahi Jews in minority representation. Beginning with the mid-18th century Ashkenazi Jews begin to settle in the city, but not for extended periods. up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I in 1918 and the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Old Yishuv had continuously resided in Palestine and was largely made up of ultra-Orthodox Jews dependent on external donations (Halukka) for living, as opposed to the later Zionist aliyah and the New Yishuv, who were more socialist-leaning and secular, emphasizing labor and self-sufficiency.
The Old Yishuv developed after a period of severe decline in Jewish communities of the Southern Levant during the early Middle Ages, and was composed of three clusters. The oldest group consisted of the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish communities in Galilee and the Judeo-Arabic speaking Musta'arabi Jews who settled in Eretz Yisrael in the Ottoman and late Mamluk period. A second group was composed of Ashkenazi and Hasidic Jews who had emigrated from Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. A third wave was constituted by Yishuv members who arrived in the late 19th century.Gudrun Krämer, A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel, Princeton University Press, 2008 p.104 The Old Yishuv was thus generally divided into two independent communities – the Sephardi Jews (including Musta'arabim), mainly constituting the remains of Jewish communities of Galilee and the Four Holy Cities of Judaism, which had flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries; and the Ashkenazi Jews, whose immigration from Europe was primarily since the 18th century.Abraham P. Bloch, One a day: an anthology of Jewish historical anniversaries for every day of the year, KTAV Publishing House, 1987, , M1 p. 278.
The Old Yishuv term was coined by members of the 'New Yishuv' in the late 19th century to distinguish themselves from the economically dependent and generally earlier Jewish communities, who mainly resided in the four holy cities, and unlike the New Yishuv, had not embraced land ownership and agriculture. Apart from the Old Yishuv centres in the four holy cities of Judaism, namely Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias and Safed, smaller communities also existed in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus and Shfaram. Petah Tikva, although established in 1878 by the Old Yishuv, nevertheless was also supported by the arriving Zionists. Rishon LeZion, the first settlement founded by the Hovevei Zion in 1882, could be considered the true beginning of the New Yishuv.
Beginning of modern Aliyah (New Yishuv)
The Ottoman government was not supportive of the new settlers from the First and Second Aliyah, as the Ottoman government officially restricted Jewish immigration. The Yishuv relied on money from abroad to support their settlements.
In 1908, the Zionist Organization founded the , under Arthur Ruppin, for land acquisition, agricultural settlement and training,Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism, p. 153 and later for urban expansion. The first Hebrew high schools were opened in Palestine as well as the Technion, the first institution for higher learning. Hashomer, a Zionist self-defence group, was created to protect the Jewish settlements. Labor organizations were created along with health and cultural services, all later coordinated by the Jewish National Council. By 1914, the old Yishuv was a minority, and the New Yishuv began to express itself and its Zionist goals.
The First Aliyah was the very beginning of the creation of the New Yishuv. More than 25,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. The immigrants were inspired by the notion of creating a national home for Jews. Most of the Jewish immigrants came from Russia, escaping the pogroms, while some arrived from Yemen. Many of the immigrants were affiliated with Hovevei Zion. Hovevei Zion purchased land from Arabs and other Ottoman subjects and created various settlements such as Yesud HaMa'ala, Rosh Pinna, Gedera, Rishon LeZion, Nes Tziona and Rechovot. These agricultural settlements were supported by philanthropists from abroad, chiefly Edmond James de Rothschild. and Alphonse James de Rothschild.Baron Edmond De Rothschild 86. August 20, 1931. JTA Archive, The Global Jewish News Source.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda also immigrated during the first Aliyah. Ben-Yehuda took it upon himself to revive the Hebrew language, and along with Nissim Bechar started a school for teaching Hebrew, later on founding the first Hebrew newspaper.
During the Second Aliyah, between 1903 and 1914, there were 35,000 new immigrants, primarily from the Russian Empire.
During World War I, the conditions for the Jews in the Ottoman Empire worsened. All those Jews who were of an enemy nationality were exiled and others were drafted into the Ottoman army. Many of those exiled fled to Egypt and the United States. Those who remained in the Ottoman ruled Palestine faced hard economic times. There was disagreement whether to support the British or the Turks. A clandestine group, Nili, was established to pass information to the British in the hope of defeating the Ottomans and ending their rule over Palestine. The purpose and members of the Nili were discovered. All involved were executed by the Ottomans except its founder, Aaron Aaronsohn, who escaped to Egypt. During World War I, the Jewish population in Palestine diminished by a third due to deportations, immigration, economic trouble and disease. In 1915, the British Army recruited Yishuv Jews who had been exiled to Egypt into the Zion Mule Corps, which provided logistical support during the Gallipoli campaign. Subsequently, the British established the Jewish Legion, which participated in the British conquest of Ottoman Syria (including Palestine), leading to the Turkish surrender. The Jewish Legion's soldiers were predominantly diaspora Jews, but after British forces entered Palestine, a battalion of local Jews was recruited, which carried out support roles and guarded prisoners.
Paramilitary forces See Bar-Giora, Hamagen, Hanoter, and Hashomer.
During the British Mandate
World War I saw the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the division of its territory. The Sykes–Picot Agreement led to a division of Ottoman territory between British and French rule, and the McMahon–Hussein correspondence "ambiguously omitted" the region of Palestine from what was promised to become an Arab state to the Hashemite sharif. The British then worked to follow through on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, that announced British support for the Zionist aspiration to establish "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. The Jewish population was variously estimated at less than 10% of the population of Palestine before the beginning of British Mandatory rule (1920–1948) to slightly more at the beginning.
Under British rule Jewish immigration, the majority from Europe, led to the rapid growth of the Yishuv. It referred to this immigration in Hebrew as aliyah, meaning "going up", giving it an ideological and religious connotation unlike immigration to other places. Additional Jewish land purchases in Palestine enabled the establishment of more farming communities known as moshavim and kibbutzim. The League of Nations codified support for the eventual "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" into the foundational document of the British Mandate in Palestine, thereby facilitating what detractors later regarded not as aliyah, or the flight of refugees from Nazi and Fascist atrocities, but as the Zionist colonization of Palestine. The Yishuv had a level of international recognition that the Arab Higher Committee, the governing body of the Arab majority in Mandatory Palestine did not have. At times the British referred to the Arabs only as "non-Jewish communities".
Parliamentary representation and self-government
A department of the World Zionist Organization became the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later the Jewish Agency for Israel. The agency and representative bodies were set up to enable self government.Central Office of the Zionist Organisation, "Resolutions of the 16th Zionist Congress, Zurich, 28 July – 11 August 1929, with a Summary Report of the Proceedings", London, 1930. Retrieved 19 November 2014. The Assembly of Representatives was the elected parliamentary assembly of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine. It was established on 19 April 1920,"Palestine Through History: A Chronology (I)". . The Palestine Chronicle. and functioned until 13 February 1949, the day before the first Knesset, elected on 25 January, was sworn in. The Assembly met once a year to elect the executive body, the Jewish National Council,"Assembly of Representatives (Assefat Hanivharim)". Knesset website which was responsible for education, local government, welfare, security and defense.Avineri, Shlomo (3 October 2014). "The origins and challenges of Israeli democracy". Haaretz. Accessed 15 May 2026. It also voted on the budgets proposed by the Jewish National Council and the Rabbinical Council. The Jewish National Council ( ) was also known as the General Council of the Jewish Community of Palestine.