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BRITISH MANDATE |
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BRITISH MANDATE |
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Israel MFA |
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Gen. Allenby in Jerusalem, 1917 |
On December 9, 1917, as World War I neared its end, Jerusalem surrendered to the British forces. Two days later General Allenby entered the Jaffa Gate on foot, at the head of a victory procession. This act marked the end of four centuries of Ottoman-Turk rule and the beginning of thirty years of British rule.
The mandate system was established by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations as formulated at the Paris Peace Conference (January-June 1919). Under this article it was stated that the territories inhabited by peoples unable to stand by themselves would be entrusted to advanced nations until such time as the local population could handle their own affairs. This concept was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.
Representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, and Belgium met at San Remo, Italy, in April 1920, to discuss methods of executing the Treaty of Versailles. Members of the supreme council of the Allies took leading parts. The basic features of a peace treaty with Turkey (the Treaty of Sèvres) were adopted, and mandates in the Middle East were allotted.
In the case of Palestine, the administrative control, in the form of a Mandate, was given to the British. By naming this territory the "British Mandate for Palestine" the area that is today Israel and Jordan became the first and only geographic division with the name Palestine since before the Ottoman Empire controlled the area (beginning in 1517). In July 1920 the Mandate civil administration took over from the military. For the first time since Crusader days Jerusalem was again a capital city.
The terms of the British Mandate incorporated the language of the Balfour Declaration and were approved by the League of Nations Council on July 24, 1922, although they were technically not official until September 29, 1923. The United States was not a member of the League of Nations, but a joint resolution of the United States Congress on June 30, 1922, endorsed the concept of the Jewish National Home.
Like the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate recognized the "historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine," called upon the mandatory power to "secure establishment of the Jewish National Home," with "an appropriate Jewish agency" to be set up for advice and cooperation to that end. The World Zionist Organization, which was specifically recognized as the appropriate vehicle, formally established the Jewish Agency in 1929. Jewish immigration was to be facilitated, while ensuring that the "rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced." English, Arabic, and Hebrew were all to be official languages.
In March 1921, Winston Churchill, then British colonial secretary, convened a high-level conference in Cairo to consider Middle East policy. As a result of these deliberations, Britain subdivided the Palestine Mandate along the Jordan River-Gulf of Aqaba line. The eastern portion--called Transjordan--was to have a separate Arab administration operating under the general supervision of the commissioner for Palestine, with Abdullah appointed as emir. At a follow-up meeting in Jerusalem with Churchill, High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, and Lawrence, Abdullah agreed to abandon his Syrian project in return for the emirate and a substantial British subsidy.
A British government memorandum in September 1922 ("The Churchill White Paper"), approved by the League of Nations Council, specifically excluded Jewish settlement from the Transjordan area of the Palestine Mandate. The whole process was aimed at satisfying wartime pledges made to the Arabs and at carrying out British responsibilities under the Mandate. Unfortunately for the Zionists and counter to the whole expressed purpose of the Mandate in the first place, by this action more than three-quarters of the territory of the British Mandate was taken away from the potential Jewish Homeland without any corresponding action favoring the Palestinian Jews. The squeeky Arab wheel was greased with concessions at the sole expense of the Jewish population.
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