Before 1948, Palestine was a geographical region located in the Eastern Mediterranean, bordered by modern-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. It was part of the broader area known as the Levant, which has been a crossroads of various civilizations throughout history. The land was under the control of various empires, such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and eventually the Islamic Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire. Palestine was home to a diverse population of Arabs, Jews, and Christians, as all groups had religious ties to the area, especially the city of Jerusalem. During the British Mandate from 1922 to 1947, large-scale Jewish immigration, mainly from Eastern Europe, took place, swelling in the 1930s with the Nazi persecution. In 1947, the United Nations proposed the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an internationally administered city. While the Jewish community largely accepted this plan, the Arab community rejected it, leading to the outbreak of civil war.