Wikipedia
The Yishuv (, literally "settlement") or Ha-Yishuv (the Yishuv, ) is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in the land of Israel (corresponding to Southern Syria 1882-1917, OETA South 1917-1920 and later Mandatory Palestine 1920-1948) prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living across Land of Israel, then comprising the southern part of Ottoman Syria, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were about 700,000 Jews there. The term is used in Hebrew even nowadays to denote the Pre-State Jewish residents in the Land of Israel.
A distinction is sometimes drawn between the Old Yishuv and the New Yishuv: The Old Yishuv refers to all the Jews living there before the aliyah (immigration wave) of 1882 by the Zionist movement. The Old Yishuv residents were religious Jews, living mainly in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Smaller communities were in Jaffa, Haifa, Peki'in, Acre, Nablus, Shfaram and until 1779 also in Gaza. In the final centuries before modern Zionism, a large part of the Old Yishuv spent their time studying the Torah and lived off Ma'amodot (stipends), donated by Jews in the Diaspora.
The New Yishuv refers to those who began building homes outside the Old City walls of Jerusalem in the 1860s, to the establishers of Petah Tikva and the First Aliyah of 1882, followed by the founding of neighbourhoods and villages until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.