Mandatory Palestine

The British Mandate of Palestine was a territory in the Middle East including the modern territories of Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.

Establishment of British League of Nations mandate

British interest in Zionism dates to the rise in importance of the British Empire's South Asian enterprises in the early 19th century, concurrent with the Great Game and planning for the Suez Canal. As early as 1840, Viscount Palmerston (later to become Prime Minister) wrote:

"There exists at the present time among the Jews dispersed over Europe a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine. It would be of manifest importance to the Sultan to encourage the Jews to return and settle in Palestine because the wealth that they would bring with them would increase the resources of the Sultan's dominions, and the Jewish people if returning under the sanction and protection at the invitation of the Sultan would be a check upon any future evil designs of Egypt or its neighbours. I wish to instruct your Excellency strongly to recommend to the Turkish government to hold out every just encouragement to the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine."[1]

Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The British, under General Allenby during the Arab Revolt stirred up by the British intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence, defeated the Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war. The British military administration ended starvation 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.

The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.

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 in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of San Remo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain. This territory at this time included all of what would later become the State of Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, a part of the Golan Heights, and the Kingdom of Jordan. 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 [2] 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.

In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including "secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine".

The document defining Britain's obligations as Mandate power copied the text of the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish homeland:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may 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. However, it was also stated that in the large, mostly arid, territory to the east of the Jordan River, then called Transjordan, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' application of the provisions dealing with the 'Jewish National Home'. At the Cairo Conference of 1921 a government under the Hashimite Emir Abdullah who had just been displaced from ruling the Hejaz was established in Transjordan. 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 11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine (which was 23% of the entire territory), and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan (constituting 77% of the mandated territories). Technically they remained one mandate but most official documents referred to them as if they were two separate mandates. Transjordan remained under British control until 1946.

In 1923 Britain transferred a part of the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria, in exchange for the Metula region.

Palestinian Arab opposition to Jewish immigration

File:Kibbutz Degania Alef.jpg

Kibbutz Degania Alef, during the 1930s

During the 1920s, 100,000 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine, and 6,000 non-Jewish immigrants did so as well. Jewish immigration was controlled by the Histadrut, which selected between applicants on the grounds of their political creed. Land purchased by Jewish agencies was leased on the conditions that it be worked only by Jewish labour and that the lease should not be held by non-Jews.

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.

There was violent incitement from the Palestine Muslim leadership that led to violent attacks against the Jewish population. In some cases, land purchases by the Jewish agencies from absentee landlords led to the eviction of the Palestinian Arab tenants, who were replaced by the Jews of the kibbutzim. The Arabic speakers before World War I had the status of peasants (felaheen), and did not own their land although they might own the trees that grew on that land. When Jews, who grew up with European laws, purchased land they did not always realise that the villagers on that land owned the trees. This was often a source of misunderstanding and conflict. The olive tree is particularly important as it can remain productive for more than one thousand years.

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 June 15, 1920. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances on several occasions, notably in 1921, 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews — see Hebron) 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 and Arab targets. This prompted the British government to label them both as terrorist organizations.

Great Uprising

Main article: Great Uprising

In 1937, the Peel Commission proposed a partition between Jewish and Arab areas that was rejected by both the Arabs and the Zionist Congress.

In 1936-1939 the mandate experienced an upsurge in militant Arab nationalism that became known as the Great Uprising and, "The Arab Revolt." The revolt was triggered by increased Jewish immigration, primarily Jews that were ejected by the Nazi regime in Germany as well as rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe. The revolt was led or co-opted by the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini and his Husseini family. The Arabs felt they were being marginalized in their own country, but in addition to non-violent strikes, they resorted to violence. Husseini's men killed more Arabs than Jews, using the revolt as an excuse to settle accounts with rival clans. The Jewish organization Etzel replied with its own terrorist campaign, with marketplace bombings and other violent acts that also killed hundreds. Eventually, the uprising was put down by the British using severe measures. After he was implicated in killing the British district commissioner for the Galilee, Haj Amin El Husseini fled first to Lebanon, then to Iraq, and finally to Germany in late 1941.

The British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in the remaining land, directly contradicting the provision of the Mandate which said "the Administration of Palestine... shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency... close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes." A similar proposal to limit immigration in 1931 had been termed a violation of the mandate by the League of Nations, but by 1939 the League of Nations was defunct. According to the Israeli side, the British had by 1949 allotted over 8500 acres (34 km²) to Arabs, and about 4100 acres (16 km²) to Jews.

World War II and the Nazi Holocaust

As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the combatants in WWII. Many signed up for the British army, but others saw an Axis victory as likely outcome and way of wresting Palestine back from the Zionists and the British. Some of the leadership went further, especially the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini (who had by then escaped to Iraq), who on November 25, 1941, formally declared jihad against the Allied Powers.

Even though Arabs were only marginally higher than Jews in Nazi racial theory, the Nazis naturally encouraged Arab support as much as possible as a counter to British hegemony throughout the Arab world.^[3]

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 Mahmoud al-Arkad. (Source: Yad Vashem). The mandate recruited soldiers in Palestine. About 6,000 Palestinian Arabs joined the British forces and about 26,000 Jews.

In World War II, Italy, which in 1940 declared war on the United Kingdom on Germany's side, attacked Palestine from the air. In 1942 there was a period of anxiety for the Yishuv, when the German forces of 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.

The Holocaust had a major effect on the situation in Palestine. During the war, the British forbade entry into Palestine of European Jews escaping Nazi persecution, placing them in detention camps or deporting them to places such as Mauritius. Avraham Stern, the leader of the Jewish Lehi terrorist gang, whose will to fight the British was so strong he offered to fight on the Nazi side, and other Zionists, tried to convince the Nazis to continue seeing emigration from Europe as the "solution" for their "Jewish problem", but the Nazis gradually abandoned this idea in favor of containment and physical extermination.

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 WW 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 to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. Fighting Jewish terrorists on one hand and the Germans in North Africa on the other did not endear the British to the Jews in Palestine at this critical stage of the war.

The British considered it more important to get Arab backing, because of their important interests in Egypt and other Arab lands, and especially to guarantee the friendship of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and therefore continued the ban on immigration.

As a result of the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun (ironically Lehi members were not harmed as a result of an understanding with Haganah, even though Lehi commited the assassination). This period is known as the 'Hunting Season'. Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a spiraling to 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, the British refused to lift the ban on immigration and admit 100,000 displaced persons to Palestine. The Jewish underground forces then united and carried out several attacks against the British. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people.

Seeing that the situation was quickly spiraling out of hand, the British announced their desire to terminate their mandate and to withdraw by May 1948.

Division of Palestine by United Nations

Main article: 1947 UN Partition Plan

The United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs. The UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), composed of representatives from several states. None of the Great Powers were represented, in order to make the committee more neutral.

UNSCOP considered two main proposals. The first called for the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. The second called for the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. A majority of UNSCOP favoured the first option, although several members supported the second option instead and one member (Australia) said it was unable to decide between them. As a result the first option was adopted and the UN General Assembly largely accepted UNSCOP's proposals, though they made some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.

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.

Several Jews, however, declined 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. Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, claim that this publicly expressed acceptance was mainly propaganda for the consumption of Western nations, and that Begin's statement more accurately reflected the real intentions of the founders of the State of Israel.

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. The declaration 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.

Thus, upon creating the state - any inhabitants inside the newly formed State of Israel, whether Palestinian Jews or Palestinian Arabs, became Israeli.

Obviously, this inclusive solution was not an exhaustive reflection of governmental opinion, Chaim Weizmann, for example, is reported in the Churchill White Paper, 1922 to have said:

[Our intention is to] finally establish such a society in Palestine that Palestine shall be as Jewish as England is English, or America is American.

Population of the British Mandate of Palestine

In 1922 the British undertook the first census of the mandate. The population was 752,048, comprising 589,177 Muslims, 83,790 Jews, 71,464 Christians and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The 1922 figures may refer to both banks of the Jordan river, at least for the non-Jews. After a second census in 1931, the population had grown to 1,036,339 in total, comprising 761,922 Muslims, 175,138 Jews, 89,134 Christians and 10,145 people belonging to other groups. 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. 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%)

British High Commissioners for Palestine

Name	Term
Sir Herbert Louis Samuel	1920–1925
Herbert Onslow Plumer	1925–1928
Sir Harry Charles Luke (acting)	1928
Sir John Chancellor	1928–1931
Arthur Grenfell Wauchope	1931–1938
Sir Harold MacMichael	1938–1944
John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort	1944–1945
Sir Alan G. Cunningham	1945–1948

For further reading

AJ Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948, Thames & Hudson, 1998, ISBN 0801866200
Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, Henry Holt and Co. 2000, ISBN 0805065873

Notes

^ Secret World War II documents released by the UK in July, 2001, include documents on an Operation Atlas (See References: KV 2/400-402. A joint German/Arab team, lead by Kurt Wieland, parachuted into Palestine in September 1944. This was one of the last German efforts in the region to attack the Jewish community in Palestine and undermine British rule by supplying local Arabs with cash, arms and sabotage equipment. The team was picked up shortly after landing.

External links