After the revolt of Bar Kokhba against the Roman Empire (132-135 C.E.), the Judea province was renamed Syria Palaestina by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to detach the Judean province from Jewish identity. In recent history, the area called Palestine includes the territories of the present-day Israel and Jordan (see the map). From 1517 to 1917 most of this area remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, in 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. On November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration for "the establishment in Palestine of a...