Homosexual relations were legalised in the state of Israel in 1988, and during the 1990s various forms of discrimination were prohibited. Debate has since centred on recognition of same-sex partnerships and the rights they confer, including inheritance, residency, and the adoption of children. The staging of LGBT pride parades has been controversial in some cases. 19th century In 1858, the Ottoman Empire ruled the area of modern-day Israel and Palestine as part of Ottoman Syria. It abolished its existing sodomy laws in its Penal Code (Article 198) so long as it was consensual and the consenting partner was above the age of consent. Beginning in 1882, Ashkenazi Jewish migrants from the Russian Empire fled to Ottoman Palestine in a series of waves to escape rising anti-Semitism, encouraged by Perez Smolenskin's suggestion that Jews make aliyah to Israel in large movements. Smolenskin's urging of European Jews could be seen as a precursor to Theodor Herzl's Zionism. It is not known if the growth in nuance for homosexuality began with any of the early Russian settlers, as the territory from which they had migrated had largely been populated with homophobic cultural traits; however, as Jewish Russians were only recently beginning to integrate into mainstream Russian society away from the Pale of Settlement , views on homosexuality likely sharply differed between Jewish intellectuals and religious clerics when migrating to, and establishing the agricultural settlements in the area. 20th century 1900–1950s The British Mandate of Palestine was given to Britain in 1923 after the disbandment of the Ottoman Empire following the events of WWI. Now governing a new territory, the British took some interest in the population of Palestine. In terms of sexuality and sexual rights, British involvement began in terms of questionnaires which would question the Palestinian population about their sexual practices and what they considered both unnatural and immoral. It was revealed that in Palestine there existed many ways of “unnatural” sexual expression including sodomy between school boys and acts of lesbian love which were blamed on influences from nearby countries such as Syria and Egypt. Though these acts were not considered horrible to Palestine, they were considered unnatural and immoral to their British colonizers. Thus, throughout British rule of the mandate, Britain would slowly incorporate their homophobic policies into the lives of the Palestinian population. Until 1948, when the British Mandate would be partitioned to give land to the Jewish people,