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The Palestine Mandate, sometimes referred to as the The Mandate for Palestine, the British Mandate for Palestine, or the British Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate that had been drafted by the principal Allied and associated powers, after the First World War, and that was formally approved by the League of Nations, in 1922. By the power granted under the mandate, Britain ruled Palestine in the years 1920-1948, and that period in the history of the area is also referred to as the British Mandate.
The preamble of the Palestine mandate declared:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The Ottoman Empire was split up by the Treaty of Sèvres.
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The Palestine Mandate, sometimes referred to as the The Mandate for Palestine, the British Mandate for Palestine, or the British Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate that had been drafted by the principal Allied and associated powers, after the First World War, and that was formally approved by the League of Nations, in 1922. By the power granted under the mandate, Britain ruled Palestine in the years 1920-1948, and that period in the history of the area is also referred to as the British Mandate.
The preamble of the Palestine mandate declared:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The Ottoman Empire was split up by the Treaty of Sèvres. That treaty never officially entered into force. The terms of the original settlements were significantly remodeled by the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne, after the Chanak Crisis.
The purported objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the recently defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone."
Early History
Ancient to modern history
This territory was inhabited by the Israelites and other ancient peoples at the beginning of the iron age, and then it became part of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman Empires with periods of independence (Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel) or autonomy for the Jews. When the Roman Empire split, the region was ruled by the Eastern Roman Empire, also called the Byzantine Empire and for a short period by the Sassanians. In the period 629-641 CE the emerging Arab Empire managed to occupy Palestine and it was ruled by the successive Caliphates of the Umayyads, Abbasids and Fatimids. It was then occupied Crusaders (Kingdom of Jerusalem) who were finally defeated by the Mamelukes.
In 1517 the Ottoman Empire gained control of the Middle East and ruled it until the end of World War I in 1918.
The Ottomans gained their control under Selim I (1465–1520), and incorporated the region into an administrative unit, the eyalet of Syria. The name "Palestine" disappeared as the official name of an administrative unit, and much of the region became part of the vilayet (province) of Damascus-Syria until 1660. Then it became part of the vilayet of Saida (Sidon), briefly interrupted by the 7 March 1799–July 1799 French occupation of Jaffa, Haifa, and Caesarea. On 10 May 1832 it became one of the Turkish provinces which was annexed by Muhammad Ali. His was a briefly imperialistic Egyptian empire which was still nominally Ottoman. In November 1840 direct Ottoman rule was restored.
World War I
As Great Britain moved toward war, the need to secure the Suez Canal while safeguarding the people and territories of the empire became evident. The canal was a vital means of transport. The Turkish Caliph of Islam was expected to call for a military jihad. If left unchecked, the Muslim subjects of India and the Far East might join the war on the side of the Central Powers.
During World War I, the British waged the Sinai and Palestine Campaign under General Allenby. At the same time, the intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") was stirring up the Arab Revolt in the region. The British defeated Ottoman Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was under British military administration for the remainder of the war.
The British military administration helped end the starvation imposed by Ottoman rulers with the aid of food supplies from Egypt, successfully fought typhus and cholera epidemics and significantly improved the water supply to Jerusalem. They reduced corruption by paying the Arab and Jewish judges higher salaries. Communications were improved by new railway and telegraph lines.
In the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, Britain, France, and Russia had proposed to divide the Middle East between them into spheres of influence, with "Palestine" as an international enclave.
After Sykes-Picot, the British had made two promises regarding the territory in the Middle East it was expecting to acquire. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their support of the British; and in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support.
On 23 November 1918, a military edict was issued dividing Ottoman territories into occupied enemy territories (OET). The Middle East would be divided into three OETs, and OET-South extended from the Egyptian border of Sinai into Palestine and Lebanon as far north as Acre and Nablus and as far east as the River Jordan. A temporary British military governor (General Moony) would administer this sector. At that time General Allenby assured Amir Faisal "that the Allies were in honour bound to endeavour to reach a settlement in accordance with the wishes of the peoples concerned and urged him to place his trust whole-heartedly in their good faith."
In October 1919, British forces in Syria and the last British soldiers stationed east of the Jordan were withdrawn and the region came under exclusive control of Faisal bin Hussein from Damascus.
Establishment
Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire
As early as 1915, France, Italy and Great Britain secretly began the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. In 1916 the British and the French reached an agreement on their spheres of influence in the Middle East after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In a meeting at Deauville in 1919, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau finalized a the Anglo-French Settlement of 1-4 December 1918. The new agreement allocated Palestine and the Vilayet of Mosul to the British sphere in exchange for British support of French influence in Syria and Lebanon.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Prime Minister Lloyd George told Georges Clemenceau and the other allies that the McMahon-Hussein Notes were a treaty obligation. He explained that the agreement with Hussein had actually been the basis for the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and that the French could not use the proposed League Of Nations Mandate System to break the terms of the agreement. He pointed out that the French had agreed not to occupy the area of the independent Arab state, or confederation of states, with their military forces including the areas of Damascus, Homs, Homa, and Allepo. Lord Balfour and President Wilson were present at the meeting.
The open negotiations began at the Paris Peace Conference, continued at the Conference of London and took definite shape only after the San Remo conference in April 1920. There the Allied Supreme Council granted the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia to Britain, and those for Syria and Lebanon to France. In August 1920 this was officially acknowledged in the Treaty of Sèvres.
Practical and legal basis
United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris in 1919. He viewed the system of mandates as a device created by the Great Powers to conceal their division of the spoils of war, under the colour of international law. If the territories had been ceded directly, the value of the former German and Ottoman territories would have been applied to offset the Allies claims for war reparations .
The US Senate refused to ratify the Covenant of the League of Nations, in part over a dispute regarding the legality of the mandates. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee had attached a reservation which read: 'No mandate shall be accepted by the United States under Article 22, Part 1, or any other provision of the treaty of peace with Germany, except by action of the Congress of the United States.' Senator Borah, speaking on behalf on the 'Irreconcilables' completely rejected the proposed system of Mandates as an illegitimate rule by brute force. Before the Palestine Mandate was finally terminated those same sentiments had been expressed by both the Arab and Jewish leaders of Palestine. The US government subsequently entered into individual treaties to secure legal rights for its citizens, and to protect property rights and businesses interests in the mandates. In the case of the Palestine Mandate Convention, it subjected the terms of the League of Nations mandate to eight amendments.
The Official Journal of the League of Nations, dated June 1922, contained an interview with Lord Balfour in which he explained that the League's authority was strictly limited. The article related that
“[the] Mandates were not the creation of the League, and they could not in substance be altered by the League. The League's duties were confined to seeing that the specific and detailed terms of the mandates were in accordance with the decisions taken by the Allied and Associated Powers, and that in carrying out these mandates the Mandatory Powers should be under the supervision—not under the control—of the League.”
Each of the Principal Allied Powers had a hand in drafting the proposed mandate—although some, including the United States, had not declared war on the Ottoman Empire and did not become members of the League of Nations.
The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement did not call for Arab sovereignty, but the French and British agreement did call for 'suzerainty of an Arab chief' and 'an international administration, the form of which is to be decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently in consultation with the other allies, and the representatives of the Sherif of Mecca. Under the terms of that agreement, the Zionist Organization needed to secure an agreement along the lines of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement with the Sherif of Mecca.
At the Peace Conference in 1919, Emir Faisal, speaking on behalf of King Hussein, asked for Arab independence, or at minimum the right to pick the Mandatory. In the end he recommended an Arab State under a British Mandate.
The World Zionist Organization also asked for a British mandate, and asserted the 'historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine'.
A Confidential Appendix to the report of the King-Crane Commission observed that 'The Jews are distinctly for Britain as mandatory power, because of the Balfour declaration' and that the French 'resent the payment by the English to the Emir Feisal of a large monthly subsidy, which they claim covers a multitude of bribes, and enables the British to stand off and show clean hands while Arab agents do dirty work in their interest.' The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement called for British mediation of any disputes. It also called for the establishment of borders, after the Peace Conference, along the lines of a map the World Zionist Organization had submitted at Versailles. The area east of the Hedjaz Railway, including most of Transjordan, was not included in that the Zionists had originally requested at Versailles.
The Zionist Organization's claim of title and their request for a strictly British mandate undermined the plans of the French and Italian delegations. They had aimed to establish their own control over Palestine under the justification of the pre-War Protectorate of the Holy See and the French Religious Protectorate of Jerusalem.
At the 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, the Mandates were assigned. The precise boundaries of all territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine, were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" and were not completely finalized until four years later. During that time, His Majesty's government had power and jurisdiction within Palestine and the other Occupied Enemy Territories either by capitulation, grant, usage, sufferance or other lawful means recognized under the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907).
The mandate was a set of protocols or articles that formed a multilateral legal and administrative agreement. They were part of the Laws of Nations, and thus were not a mere geographical territory or area. The territorial jurisdiction of the mandate was subject to change by treaty, capitulation, grant, usage, sufferance or other lawful means.
To many observers it seemed as though the boundary of Britain's Mandate for Palestine was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia. However, the area east of a line from Damascus, Homs, Hamma, and Aleppo - including most of Transjordan - had been pledged in 1915 as part of an undertaking between Great Britain and the Sharif Hussein of Mecca. The area east of the Jordan river 'was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future'. At the 1919 Peace Conference the Zionist Organization's claims did not include any territory east of the Hedjaz Railway. The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement provided that the boundaries between the Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
The proposed Arab State and Jewish National Home called for separate boundaries and administrative regimes in the sub-districts of historical Cisjordan (Western Palestine) and Transjordan (Eastern Palestine). The Palestine Order in Council provided that:'The High Commissioner may, with the approval of a Secretary of State, by Proclamation divide Palestine into administrative divisions or districts in such manner and with such subdivisions as may be convenient for purposes of administration describing the boundaries thereof and assigning names thereto.'
Transjordan
Under the terms of the McMahon-Hussein and Sykes-Picot agreements, the land east of the Jordan was to be part of an Arab state or confederation of Arab states. Article 25 of the San Remo Convention recognized that treaty obligation. It permitted the mandatory to 'postpone or withhold application of such provisions of the mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions' in that region. The future Transjordan, had been part of the Syrian administrative unit under the Ottomans. It was part of the captured territory placed under the Allied Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA).
At the Battle of Maysalun on 23 July 1920 the French removed the newly-proclaimed nationalist government of Hashim al-Atassi and expelled King Faisal from Syria. British Foreign Secretary Earl Curzon wrote to the High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, in August 1920, stating, "I suggest that you should let it be known forthwith that in the area south of the Sykes-Picot line, we will not admit French authority and that our policy for this area to be independent but in closest relations with Palestine." Samuel replied to Curzon, "After the fall of Damascus a fortnight ago...Sheiks and tribes east of Jordan utterly dissatisfied with Shareefian Government most unlikely would accept revival" and subsequently announced that Transjordan was under British Mandate. Without authority from London, Samuel then visited Transjordan and at a meeting with 600 leaders in Salt announced the independence of the area from Damascus and its absorption into the mandate, quadrupling the area under his control by tacit capitulation. Samuel assured his audience that Transjordan would not be merged with Palestine. The foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, repudiated Samuel's action.
The Cairo Conference was convened by Winston Churchill, then Britain's Colonial Secretary, to resolve the problem. With the mandates of Palestine and Iraq awarded to Britain, Churchill wished to consult with Middle East experts. At his request, Gertrude Bell, Sir Percy Cox, T. E. Lawrence, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Sir Arnold T. Wilson, Iraqi minister of war Ja?far alAskari, Iraqi minister of finance Sasun Effendi (Sasson Heskayl), and others gathered in Cairo, Egypt, in March 1921. The outstanding question was the policy to be adopted in Transjordan to prevent anti-French military actions from being launched within the allied British zone of influence. The Hashemites were Associated Powers during the war, and a peaceful solution was urgently needed.
The two most significant decisions of the conference were to offer the throne of Iraq to Emir Faisal ibn Hussein (who became Faisal I of Iraq) and an emirate of Transjordan (now Jordan) to his brother Abdullah ibn Hussein (who became Abdullah I of Jordan). Transjordan was to be constituted as an Arab province of Palestine. The conference provided the political blueprint for British administration in both Iraq and Transjordan, and in offering these two regions to the sons of Sharif Husssein ibn Ali of the Hedjaz, Churchill believed that the spirit, if not the letter, of Britain's wartime promises to the Arabs might be fulfilled.
After further discussions between Churchill and Abdullah in Jerusalem, it was mutually agreed that Transjordan was accepted into the mandatory area with the proviso that it would be, initially for six months, under the nominal rule of the Emir Abdullah and would not form part of the Jewish national home to be established west of the River Jordan.
That agreement was formalized before the mandate officially went into effect. In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved on 23 September. A clause was added to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine which allowed Great Britain to postpone or permanently withhold all of the provisions which related to the 'Jewish National Home' on lands which lay to the east of the Jordan River.
From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan, 23% of the entire territory, as "Palestine", and the part east of the Jordan, 77% of the entire territory, as "Transjordan." Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. Transfer of authority to an Arab government took place gradually in Transjordan, starting with the recognition of a local administration in 1923 and transfer of most administrative functions in 1928. Britain retained mandatory authority over the region until it became fully independent as the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan in 1946.
Borders
The precise geographical boundaries of the Mandate have historically been disputed, with conflicting and shifting British promises to Jewish and Arab interests made in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, and the Churchill White Paper of 1922. The San Remo conference did not precisely define the boundaries of the mandated territories.
The boundary between the British and French mandates was defined in broad terms by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920 . That agreement placed the bulk of the Golan Heights in the French sphere. The treaty also established a joint commission to settle the precise border and mark it on the ground. The commission submitted its final report on 3 February 1922, and it was approved with some caveats by the British and French governments on 7 March 1923, several months before Britain and France assumed their Mandatory responsibilities on 29 September 1923. Under the treaty, Syrian and Lebanese residents would have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lake Huleh, Lake Tiberias, and the Jordan River as citizens of the Palestine Mandate, but the government of Palestine would be responsible for policing of the lakes. In accordance with the same process, a nearby parcel of land that included the ancient site of Dan and its water resources was transferred from Syria to Palestine early in 1924. The Golan Heights thus became part of the French Mandate of Syria. When the French Mandate of Syria ended in 1944, the Golan Heights became part of the newly independent state of Syria.
Drafting of the mandate
The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, together with the Italian and French governments rejected early drafts of the mandate because it had contained a passage which read: 'Recognizing, moreover, the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the claim which this gives them to reconstitute it their national home...' The Palestine Committee set up by the Foreign Office recommended that the reference to 'the claim' be omitted. The Allies had already noted the historical connection in the Treaty of Sèvres, but they had recognized no legal claim. They felt that whatever might be done for the Jewish people was based entirely on sentimental grounds. Further, they felt that all that was necessary was to make room for Zionists in Palestine, not that they should turn 'it', that is the whole country, into their home.
Lord Balfour suggested an alternative which was accepted:'Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the [sentimental] grounds for reconstituting their National Home in that country ...'
The Vatican, the Italian, and the French governments continued to press their own legal claims on the basis of the former Protectorate of the Holy See and the French Protectorate of Jerusalem. The idea of an International Commission to resolve claims on the Holy Places had been formalized in Article 95 of the Treaty of Sèvres, and taken up again in article 14 of the Palestinian Mandate. Negotiations concerning the formation and the role of the commission were partly responsible for the delay in ratifying the mandate. Great Britain assumed responsibility for the Holy Places under Article 13 of the mandate. However, it never created the Commission on Holy Places to resolve the other claims in accordance with Article 14 of the mandate.
Under the Ottoman Empire matters of a religious nature, including personal legal status, were within the jurisdiction of Muslim courts and the courts of other recognized religions, called confessional communities. Capitulation Treaties also permitted the registration of marriages and divorces in the British, German, American and other consulates. Jewish religious matters were handled by the Hakham Bashi and the Jewish courts.
Article 14 of the British Mandate of Palestine required the mandatory administration to establish a commission to study, define, and determine the rights and claims relating to the different religious communities in Palestine. Article 15 required the mandatory administration to see to it that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship were permitted. Those mandates were never put into effect. The High Commissioner established the authority of the Orthodox Rabbinate over the members of the Jewish community and retained a modified version of the old Ottoman Millet system. Formal recognition was extended to eleven religious communities, which did not include the non-Orthodox Jewish or Protestant Christian denominations.
League of Nations ratification
The San Remo Convention assigned the mandate for Palestine to Great Britain under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Allies also decided to make Great Britain responsible for putting into effect its own Balfour Declaration of 1917. In June 1922, the League of Nations approved the terms of the , with the stipulation that they would not come into effect until a dispute between France and Italy over the Syria Mandate was settled. That issue was resolved in September 1923.
The was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine. It included the Balfour Declaration:
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country
Many articles of the document specified actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status. Although of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which referred to the rights of the indigenous population, was mentioned in the preamble, the further ignored the political rights of the Arabs.
Interwar period
Administration
Following its occupation by British troops in 1917–1918, Palestine had been controlled by the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration of the United Kingdom Government. Anticipating the establishment of the Mandate, in July 1920, the military administration was replaced by a civilian one, headed by a High Commissioner. The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920, and complied with a demand from the head of the military administration, General Sir Louis Bols, that he sign a receipt for ‘one Palestine, complete’: Samuel famously added the common commercial escape clause, ‘E&OE’ (errors and omissions excepted).
In October 1923, Britain provided the League with two reports on the administration of Palestine and Iraq for the period 1920–1922. The Secretary General's statement accepting the reports says: "The mandate for Palestine only came into force on 29 September 1923. The two reports cover periods previous to the application of the mandates."
Arab political status
The Arab leadership repeatedly pressed the British to grant them national and political rights, such as representative government, over Jewish national and political rights in the remaining 23% of the Mandate of Palestine which the British had set aside for a Jewish homeland. The Arabs reminded the British of president Wilson's Fourteen Points, the , and British promises during World War I.
The British however made acceptance of the terms of the Mandate a precondition for any change in the constitutional position of the Arabs. A Legislative Council was proposed in which implemented the terms of the mandate. It stated that:No Ordinance shall be passed which shall be in any way repugnant to or inconsistent with the provisions of the Mandate. For the Arabs this was unacceptable, as they felt that this would be "self murder". During the whole interwar period the British, appealing to the terms of the Mandate, which they had designed themselves, rejected the principle of majority rule or any other measure that would give an Arab majority control over the government of Palestine.
The Yishuv
During the Mandate the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, grew from one-sixth to almost one-third of the population.
Immigration
According to official records, 367,845 Jews and 33,304 non-Jews immigrated legally between 1920 and 1945. It was estimated that another 50–60,000 Jews and a small number of non-Jews immigrated illegally during this period. Immigration accounts for most of the increase of Jewish population, while the non-Jewish population increase was largely natural. These figures have been supported by later studies, though estimates of Arab immigration have been disputed.
Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase markedly, creating much Arab resentment.
The British government placed limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial, particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and Jews disliked the policy, each side for its own reasons. In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization, was formed on 15 June 1920 to defend Jewish residents. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921, 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews — see 1929 Hebron massacre) and 1936–1939. Beginning in 1936, several Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted their own campaigns of violence against British military and Arab targets. This prompted the British government to label them both as terrorist organizations.
Infrastructure and development
Rashid Khalidi made a comparison between the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and the Palestinian Arabs on the one hand, and between the Palestinian Arabs and other Arabs on the other hand. Between 1922 and 1947 the annual growth rate of the Jewish sector of the economy was 13.2 %, mainly due to immigration and foreign capital, while that of the Arab was 6.5 %. Per capita these figures were 4.8 % and 3.6 % respectively. By 1936 the Jewish sector had eclipsed the Arab one, and Jewish individuals earned 2.6 times as much as Arabs. Compared to other Arab countries the Palestinian Arab individuals earned slightly better. In terms of human capital there was a huge difference. For instance the literacy rates in 1932 were 86 % for the Jews against 22 % for the Palestinian Arabs, but Arab literacy was steadily increasing. In this respect the Palestinian Arabs compared favorably to Egypt and Turkey, but unfavorably to Lebanon. On the scale of the UN Human Development Index determined for around 1939, of 36 countries, Palestinian Jews were placed 15th, Palestinian Arabs 30th, Egypt 33rd and Turkey 35th. The Jews in Palestine were mainly urban, 76.2 % in 1942, while the Arabs were mainly rural, 68.3 % in 1942. Overall Khalidi concludes that the Palestinian Arab society, while being overmatched by the Yishuv, was as advanced as any other Arab society in the region and considerably more as several.
From the 1920s to the start of the Second World War, the Mandate territory underwent enormous economic and cultural development. The institutions founded in this period included an elected assembly, the Asefat Hanivharim, the National Council for welfare, education, and religious service Vaad Leumi in 1920, a centralized Hebrew school system in 1919, the Histadrut labor federation in 1920, the Technion university in 1924, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925.
Palestinian Arab leadership
The British granted the Palestinian Arabs a religious leadership, but they always kept it dependent. The office of “Mufti of Jerusalem”, traditionally limited in authority and geographical scope, was refashioned into that of “Grand Mufti of Palestine”. Furthermore a Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) was established and given various duties like the administration of religious endowments and the appointment of religious judges and local muftis. In Ottoman times these duties had been fulfilled by the bureaucracy in Istanbul.
In ruling the Palestinian Arabs the British preferred to deal with elites, rather than with political formations rooted in the middle or lower classes. For instance they ignored the Palestine Arab Congress. The British also tried to create divisions among these elites. For instance they chose Hajj Amin al-Husayni to become Grand Mufti, although he was young and had received the fewest votes from Jerusalem’s Islamic leaders. Hajj Amin was a distant cousin of Musa Kazim al-Husainy, the leader of the Palestine Arab Congress. According to Khalidi, by appointing a younger relative, the British hoped to undermine the position of Musa Kazim. Indeed they stayed rivals until the death of Musa Kazim in 1934. Another of the mufti's rivals, Raghib Bey al-Nashashibi, had already been appointed mayor of Jerusalem in 1920, replacing Musa Kazim whom the British removed after the Nabi Musa riots of 1920, during which he exhorted the crowd to give their blood for Palestine. During the entire Mandate period, but especially during the latter half the rivalry between the mufti and al-Nashashibi dominated Palestinian politics.
Many notables were dependent on the British for their income. In return for their support of the notables the British required them to appease the population. According to Khalidi this worked admirably well until the mid-1930s, when the mufti was pushed into serious opposition by a popular explosion. After that the mufti became the deadly foe of the British and the Zionists.
According to Khalidi before the mid-1930s the notables from both the al-Husayni and the al-Nashashibi factions acted as though by simply continuing to negotiate with the British they could convince them to grant the Palestinians their political rights. The Arab population considered both factions as ineffective in their national struggle, and linked to and dependent on the British administration. Khalidi ascribes the failure of the Palestinian leaders to enroll mass support, because of their experiences during the Ottoman Empire period, as they were then part of the ruling elite and as such, were accustomed to their commands being obeyed. The idea of mobilising the masses was thoroughly alien to them.
There had already been rioting and attacks on and massacres of Jews in 1921 and 1929. During the 1930s Palestinian Arab popular discontent with Jewish immigration and increasing Arab landlessness grew. In the late 1920s and early 1930s several factions of Palestinian society, especially from the younger generation, became impatient with the internecine divisions and ineffectiveness of the Palestinian elite and engaged in grass-roots anti-British and anti-Zionist activism organized by groups such as the Young Men's Muslim Association. There was also support for the growth in influence of the radical nationalist Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal), which called for a boycott of the British in the manner of the Indian Congress Party. Some even took to the hills to fight the British and the Zionists. Most of these initiatives were contained and defeated by notables in the pay of the Mandatory Administration, particularly the mufti and his cousin Jamal al-Husayni. The younger generation also formed the backbone of the organisation of the six-month general strike of 1936, which marked the start of the great Palestinian Revolt. According to Khalidi this was a grass-roots uprising, which was eventually adopted by the old Palestinian leadership, whose 'inept leadership helped to doom these movements as well'.
The Arab Revolt (1936–1939)
The death of the Shaykh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam at the hands of British police near Jenin in November 1935 generated widespread outrage and huge crowds accompanied Qassam's body to his grave in Haifa. A few months later, in April 1936, a spontaneous Arab national general strike broke out. This lasted until October 1936. During the summer of that year thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed, Jewish civilians were attacked and killed and some Jewish communities, such as those in Beisan and Acre, fled to safer areas. After the strike, one of the longest ever anticolonial strikes, the violence abated for about a year while the British sent the Peel Commission to investigate.
In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed a partition between a small Jewish state, whose Arab population had to be transferred, and an Arab state to be attached to Jordan. The proposal was rejected by the Arabs and by the Zionist Congress (by 300 votes to 158) but accepted by the latter as a basis for negotiations between the Zionist Executive and the British Government.
In the wake of the Peel Commission recommendation, an armed uprising spread through the country. Over the next 18 months the British lost control of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police, suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. The British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons) organized Special Night Squads composed of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as Yigal Alon, which "scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley" by conducting raids on Arab villages. The squads used excessive and indiscriminate force. The Jewish militias the Stern Gang and Irgun used violence also against civilians, attacking marketplaces and buses.
The Revolt resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Palestinians and the wounding of 10,000. In total 10 percent of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. By the time it concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded. From 1936 to 1945, whilst establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated 13,200 firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.
The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting effects: First, they led to the formation and development of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah ("The Defense"), which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of World War II, even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper policy also radicalized segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer cooperate with the British.
The revolt had a negative effect on Palestinian national leadership, social cohesion and military capabilities and contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because "when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all".
World War II and post-war end of Mandate
Allied and Axis activity
As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the combatants in World War II. They were, by this point, tired of outside forces controlling their destiny. Most preferred to be neutral in what they perceived as 'other people's conflict'. However, while a few youth signed up for the British army (see below), primarily because Britain was the 'mother country', a number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, spent the rest of the war in Nazi Germany and the occupied areas, in particular encouraging Muslim Bosniaks to join the Waffen SS in German-conquered Bosnia.
Even though Arabs were not highly regarded by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support as much as possible as a counter to British hegemony throughout the Arab world.
Arabs who opposed the persecution of the Jews at the hand of the Nazis included Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia and Egyptian intellectuals such as Tawfiq al-Hakim and Abbas al-Akkad. The mandate recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 6,000 Palestinian Arabs and 30,000 Palestinian Jews joined the British forces.
On 10 June 1940, during early stages of World War II, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, the Italians attacked Palestine from the air, bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa.
In 1942, there was a period of anxiety for the Yishuv, when the forces of German General Erwin Rommel advanced east in North Africa towards the Suez Canal and there was fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the two hundred days of anxiety. This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach — a highly-trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (which was mostly made up of reserve troops).
On 3 July 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official communique by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The brigade fought in Europe, most notably against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the end of the war in May 1945. Members of the Brigade played a key role in the Berihah's efforts to help Jews escape Europe for Palestine. Later, veterans of the Jewish Brigade became key participants of the new State of Israel's Israel Defense Force.
The Holocaust, Illegal Immigration and The Jewish Revolt
In 1939, as a consequence of the MacDonald White Paper, the British reduced the number of immigrants allowed into Palestine. World War II and the Holocaust started shortly thereafter and once the 15,000 annual quota was exceeded, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were placed in detention camps or deported to places such as Mauritius.
Starting in 1939, the Zionists organized an illegal immigration effort, known as Aliya Beth, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet", that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted. The last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine during the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. Illegal immigration resumed after World War II.
Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri, members of the Jewish Lehi underground, assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East. The assassination is said by some to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. The ban on immigration continued.
After the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun and Lehi (the "The Hunting Season"). Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a civil war.
Following the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in particular the repeated requests of US President Harry S. Truman and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately granted entry to Palestine, the British maintained the ban on immigration. The Jewish underground forces then united and carried out several terrorist attacks and bombings against the British. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people.
Following the bombing, the British Government began imprisoning illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. Those imprisoned were held without trial and included women and children. Most were holocaust survivors.
The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine meant the mandate was widely unpopular in Britain, and caused the United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. At the same time, many European Jews were finding their way to the United States. An increasing growing influence in American politics, many Zionist backers won over sympathizers in the American and other Western governments. The Labour party had promised before its election to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine. Additionally the situation required maintenance of 100,000 British troops in the country. In response to these pressures the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and withdraw by May 1948.
United Nations Partition Plan
The British Peel Commission had proposed a Palestine divided between a Jewish and an Arab State, but in time changed their position and sought to limit Jewish immigration from Europe to a minimum. This was seen by Zionists and their sympathisers as betrayal of the terms of the mandate, especially in light of the increasing persecution in Europe.
In the prewar period it led to organization of illegal immigration. While the small Lehi group attacked the British, the Jewish Agency, which represented the mainstream Zionist leadership, still hoped to persuade the British to restore Jewish immigration rights and cooperated with the British in the war against Fascism.
When the British insisted on preventing immigration of Jewish Holocaust survivors to Palestine following World War II, the Jewish community began to wage an uprising and guerrilla war. This warfare and United States pressure to end the anti-immigration policy led to the establishment of The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946. It was a joint British and American attempt to agree on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision. The Committee approved the American condition of the immediate acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It also recommended that there be no Arab, and no Jewish State. The report explained that in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine. U.S. President Harry S.Truman angered the British Labour Party by issuing a statement supporting the 100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committees findings. The British government had asked for US assistance in implementing the recommendations. The US War Department had issued an earlier report which stated that an open-ended U.S. troop commitment of 300,000 personnel would be necessary to assist the British government in maintaining order against an Arab revolt. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants would almost certainly have provoked an Arab uprising.
These events were the decisive factors that forced the British to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the United Nations.
The UN, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute, creating the UNSCOP (UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947. After spending three months conducting hearings and general survey of the situation in Palestine, UNSCOP officially released its report on 31 August. A majority of nations (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. A minority (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained. On 29 November, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, in favour of the Partition Plan, while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. Both the United States and Soviet Union agreed on the resolution. In addition, pressure was exerted on some small countries by Zionist sympathizers in the United States. The five members of the Arab League who were voting members at the time voted against the Plan, as did the United Kingdom.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and by most of the Arab population. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation. Numerous records indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day, Israeli history books mention 29 November, the date of this session, as the most important date leading to the creation of the Israeli state.
Meeting in Cairo in November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of resolutions aimed at a military solution to the conflict. The United Kingdom refused to implement the plan arguing it was not acceptable to both sides. It also refused to share with the UN Palestine Commission the administration of Palestine during the transitional period, and decided to terminate the Mandate on 15 May 1948.
Several Jewish organizations also opposed the proposal. Menachem Begin, Irgun's leader, announced: "The partition of the homeland is illegal. It will never be recognized. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. The Land of Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever". His views were publicly rejected by the majority of the nascent Jewish state.
Termination of the Mandate and 1948 War
The British had notified the U.N. of their intent to terminate the mandate not later than 1 August 1948., but Jewish Leadership led by future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared independence on 14 May. The State of Israel declared itself as an independent nation, and was quickly recognized by the Soviet Union, the United States, and many other countries, but not by the surrounding Arab states. Over the next few days, approximately 1,000 Lebanese, 5,000 Syrian, 5,000 Iraqi, 10,000 Egyptian troops invaded Israel. Four thousand Transjordanian troops, commanded by 38 British officers who had resigned their commissions in the British army only weeks earlier (commanded by General Glubb), invaded the Corpus separatum region encompassing Jerusalem and its environs, as well as areas designated as part of the Arab state by the UN partition plan. They were aided by corps of volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Yemen.
The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 14 May 1948 stated:
We appeal ... to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.
In an official cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948, the Arab states publicly proclaimed their aim of creating a "United State of Palestine" in place of the Jewish and Arab, two-state, UN Plan. They stated the UN plan was invalid, as it was opposed by Palestine's Arab majority, and maintained that the absence of legal authority made it necessary to intervene to protect Arab lives and property.
On the date of British withdrawal the Jewish provisional government declared the formation of the State of Israel, and the provisional government said that it would grant full civil rights to all within its borders, whether Arab, Jew, Bedouin or Druze.
Mandatory borders and 1949 Armistice
Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the State of Israel retained nearly all the territory that would have been assigned to it in the 1947 UN Partition Plan, as well as the conquered half of the land intended to become the Arab state of Palestine and a portion of the territory intended for international administration around Jerusalem. The remaining half of the land that had been intended to become Palestine along the West Bank of the Jordan River was annexed by Jordan, as was most of the Jerusalem enclave; the Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean coast, also included in the Arab state territory, was captured by Egypt.
Population
Demographics, 1920
In 1920, the majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who comprised some 11% of the total) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Circassians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs.
While British census reports are available from this time period, they cannot account at all for the illegal immigration of either Jews or Arabs, nor do they provide sufficient information to provide estimates for those numbers. Some scholars have used census data from surrounding regions and statistical models, combined with the British census reports, to estimate the sizes of the illegal immigrant populations during this time.
- 1922, First British census of Palestine shows population of 757,182, with 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish and 9.6% Christian.
- 1931, Second British census of Palestine shows total population of 1,035,154 with 73.4% Muslim, 16.9% Jewish and 8.6% Christian.
There were no further censuses but statistics were maintained by counting births, deaths and migration. Some components such as illegal immigration could only be estimated approximately. The White Paper of 1939, which placed immigration restrictions on Jews, stated that the Jewish population "has risen to some 450,000" and was "approaching a third of the entire population of the country". In 1945, a demographic study showed that the population had grown to 1,764,520, comprising 1,061,270 Muslims, 553,600 Jews, 135,550 Christians and 14,100 people of other groups.
| Year | Total | Muslim | Jewish | Christian | Other |
|---|
| 1922 | 752,048 | 589,177 (78%) | 83,790 (11%) | 71,464 (10%) | 7,617 (1%) | | 1931 | 1,036,339 | 761,922 (74%) | 175,138 (17%) | 89,134 (9%) | 10,145 (1%) | | 1945 | 1,764,520 | 1,061,270 (60%) | 553,600 (31%) | 135,550 (8%) | 14,100 (1%) | Average compounded population growth
rate per annum, 1922-45 | 3.8% | 2.6% | 8.6% | 2.8% | 2.7% |
By district
The following table gives the demographics of each of the 16 districts of the Mandate.
Land ownership
As of 1931, the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine was 26,625,600 dunums, of which 8,252,900 dunums or 33% were arable.Official statistics show that Jews privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunums of land in 1945. Estimates of the total volume of land that Jews had acquired by 15 May 1948 are complicated by illegal and unregistered land transfers, as well as by the lack of data on land concessions from the Palestine administration after 31 March 1936. According to Avneri, Jews held 1,850,000 dunums of land in 1947. Stein gives the estimate of 2,000,000 dunums as of May 1948.
Land ownership by district
The following table shows the land ownership of Palestine by district:
Land ownership by type
The land owned privately and collectively by Arabs and Jews can be classified as urban, rural built-on, cultivable (farmed), and uncultivable. The following chart shows the ownership by Arabs and Jews in each of the categories.
Land laws of Palestine
- Ottoman Land Code of 1858
- Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920
- 1926 Correction of Land Registers Ordinance
- Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928
- Land Transfer Regulations of 1940
British Chief Administrators of Palestine
British High Commissioners for Palestine
See also
External links
- The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- by Norman Finkelstein
- from the American Zionist Organisation
- at Jewish Virtual Library .org
- PBS Documentary Film focusing on the secret American involvement in "illegal" immigration to Palestine during the Mandate, narrated by Morley Safer
Primary sources
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