Economic Largesse to Palestine During WW I Generated New Realities During World War I, a large amount of humanitarian aid flowed to Palestine mainly from the American Jewish Committee. The organization’s intent was to help ease hunger and poverty in the areas affected by the war. In actuality, under the umbrella of war, the Yishuv was able to utilize this assistance to organize, expand and position itself as a separate Jewish state-within-a-state by 1920. According to Jewish historical accounts, the Yishuv was a decimated, depopulated, and unorganized community by the war’s end. This historical description suppressed the political, social and economic developments that occurred within the Yishuv through the largesse of humanitarian aid transferred through the American Jewish Committee (American Jewish Distribution Committee) and fueled by propaganda of the Zionist Organization. Ultimately, this monetary bonanza brought about considerable economic, financial, social, and organizational a-symmetry between Jews and Arabs by the end of the war that obstructed meaningful gains for the Arab population of Palestine through the 1920s. The fellahin, small businessmen, East European ultra-Orthodox and traditional Sephardic (Spanish) Orthodox populations were marginalized through minimum nutrition and absence of funding necessary to build their future. In contrast, Yishuv leaders transferred money to strengthen and expand Jewish National institutions, feed the colonists, build new Jewish urban quarters, establish industries and further Jewish agricultural production. Collaboration and daily points of contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who had lived together in mahallas (quarters) were disrupted. Humanitarian donations, doled out within the Yishuv, brought about critical changes in employment patterns, decline of inter-communal business partnerships, and diminished personal contacts through new rules and regulations enacted by Yishuv leadership. Thus, the dynamics of inter-communal relations were being replaced by means of communal separation and more independent Jewish communal jurisdiction vis-à-vis the government. As new political and economic realities emerged by the end of the war with the Yishuv able to establish its goal of a state-within-a-state, a stronger Palestinian Arab response was verbally and physically articulated in opposition to Jewish Zionist settlement, fearing more land loss and dispossession. Hence, the extensive financial humanitarian aid transferred to Palestine, which by 1917 was controlled by Yishuv leaders in Palestine with increased public support, exacerbated an already uneasy situation between Jews and Arabs to the point of outright physical attacks and the formation of a more united Palestinian Arab National Movement in the 1920s and 1930s.