The end of World War I saw the issuance of the Balfour Declaration and the real beginning of the implementation of the Zionist project in Palestine with the imposition of British mandate on it. Consequently, steps were taken to translate the Balfour Declaration on an organizational level. The organization completed its financial apparatus by establishing the Palestinian Foundation Fund "Keren Hayesod" in 1921, specializing in funding migration and settlement activities. The Zionist Committee in Palestine was transformed into a government in the process of formation, overseeing all settlement, economic, and cultural affairs of the Jewish settlement in Palestine.
Executive Arm
Additionally, the organization established its executive arm known as the "Jewish Agency" in 1922. The British mandate deed for Palestine recognized an appropriate Jewish agency to advise the mandate authorities on all matters related to establishing a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine, acknowledging that the Zionist Organization was this agency. In 1929, Weizmann, the then President of the Zionist Organization, succeeded in convincing the members of the 16th Zionist Congress of the necessity to expand the Jewish Agency so that its council is composed of members of the organization and an equal number of non-members. This was aimed at attracting wealthy Zionist supporters to fund the Zionist project without obligating them to join the organization, while also implying that the agency represents all Jews worldwide and is not limited to members of the organization.
Providing a strong boost to the Zionist
This move was intended to provide a strong boost to the Zionist movement and support the negotiating position of the Zionist Organization with the British government, which was concerned about the growing voices rejecting Zionism among British Jews.
Until 1971, the organization and its executive arm were known by the same name: the Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency. However, in that year, a purported and formal reorganization took place, separating the two legally. Each now operates under a separate leadership (one of them called it the "two-headed organization"), and we can use the first part of the name (i.e., "World Zionist Organization") to refer to the organization's activity among Jewish communities worldwide in terms of enlisting their support financially and politically for settlement activities, deepening their sense of Jewish identity (which is the primary activity of Zionist territorialism).
Settlements
When referring to the executive or settlement aspect, only the term "Jewish Agency" is used. Until 1948, the Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency was responsible for the Zionist project in both its settlement (related to the Jewish settlement in Palestine and its economic and military activities) and territorial (related to Jewish communities worldwide and their support for settlement activities in Palestine politically and financially, ensuring the continuity of imperial support for it).
Secular vs. Religious Zionist
The organization remained representative of the secular Zionist current and also of the religious Zionist current. Despite fundamental contradictions between the settler Zionists and the territorialists, as well as between religious and secular trends (apart from the sub-contradictions within each group), these contradictions remained limited in scope due to the settlers' desperate need for support from Jews around the world and their inability to move freely in the Western region as settlers in Palestine did not have the necessary communications to carry out this process.
Settler and Territorialist Zionists
In the years leading up to the declaration of the state, the settler and territorialist Zionists felt the necessity of having an entity that represented all Zionists and was the sole axis for the mandated state and the United Nations, a role that the organization fulfilled. With the increasing influence of the United States within the imperialist camp, the influence of American Zionists escalated, and they became almost dominant in the Zionist organization.
Long before that, Weizmann had been keen on building strong ties with the Zionist movement in the United States, until an emergency Zionist conference was held in New York in 1914, forming the temporary executive committee for general Zionist affairs under the leadership of Judge Louis Brandeis, the leader of American Zionists at the time. Following World War II, the organization shifted its center of gravity from London to Washington, holding an extraordinary conference in Biltmore in 1942, which issued the famous Biltmore Zionist program calling for replacing the British mandate in Palestine with a Jewish commonwealth to achieve the national homeland for the Jews promised in the Balfour Declaration. The organization pressed within the United Nations for the issuance of the partition resolution in 1947 and later established a national council to serve as a parliament for the imminent Zionist state and a national administration for the expected government of the state.
In May 1948, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Zionist Organization/ Jewish Agency executive and national administration, announced the establishment of the Zionist state. However, the establishment of the Zionist state ignited the underlying contradictions between the settler Zionists and the territorialists, and the relationship between the state and the organization entered a long and escalating crisis that did not diminish until 1968, as the crisis began to unfold with the approaching establishment of the Zionist state.
