Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - British Mandate of Palestine
The British Mandate of
Palestine was a swathe of territory in the Middle East, 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 the planning for the Suez Canal. As
early as 1840, Viscount Palmerston (later to become Prime Minister)
wrote to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire:
"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."
Later, in 1907, a commission convened by Prime Minister
Campbell-Bannerman issued a report declaring:
"There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest
and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes.
Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These
people have one faith, one language, one history and the same
aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate these people from one
another ... if, per chance, this nation were to be unified into one
state, it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and would
separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations
seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation
to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could
exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a
springboard for the West to gain its coveted objects."
Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman
Empire. The British, under General Allenby, 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 held at 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 population of this area was approx.
750,000 (11% Jewish). It was multi-ethnic but spoke mainly Arabic and
was largely Muslim in faith. Because of their European origin most Jews
spoke Yiddish rather than Hebrew. It contained a significant Bedouin
population (approx. 270,000), and substantial groups of Druze, Syrians,
Sudanese, Circassians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs (many of them
were of the 1,000,000 refugees who fled west after the Hashemite Hejaz -
Saudi Nejd war).
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'. A government
under the Hashimite Emir Abdullah who had just been displaced from
ruling the Hejaz was soon 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, and the part east of the
Jordan as Transjordan. 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
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 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.
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 fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany as well as rising
antisemitism in Eastern Europe. The revolt was led or coopted by the
Grand Mufti, Haj Amin Al-Husseini and his Husseini family, and is
strongly suspected to have been financed by the Fascist government of
Italy. The Arabs felt they were being marginalized in their own country,
but in addition to non-violent strikes, they resorted to terrorism,
leaving hundreds of Jews dead. 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
draconian measures. After he was implicated in killing the British
district commissioner for the Galilee, Haj Amin El Husseini fled to Iraq
where he instigated a pro-axis coup.
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 km˛) to Arabs, and
about 4000 acres (16 km˛) to Jews.
The 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
their best hope of wresting Palestine back from the Zionists and (as
they saw it) their British protectors. 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 and spent much time thereafter
in what was then Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, recruiting Bosnia's Muslims
and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians into Nazi SS-run volunteer units. About
20,000 Bosnian Muslim served in the 13th Armed SS Mountain Division
"Handzhar" and several thousand in the 23rd Armed SS Mountain Division
"Kama". In post-war testimony, Husseini was named as a friend of Adolf
Eichmann and an architect of the "Final Solution" by Otto Wisliceny.
Husseini was imprisoned after the war and was to have been tried as a
war criminal at Nuremburg, but he escaped with the help of French
collaborators.
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.
Arabs who opposed the persecution of the Jews by the hands 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 joined, a very
significant disparity given the larger Arab population.
The Holocaust—the killing of approximately six million European Jews by
the Nazis—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
other places such as Mauritius. Avraham Stern, the leader of the Jewish
Lehi terrorist gang and other Zionists tried without success to convince
the Nazis that immigration to Palestine could be a "solution" for their
"Jewish problem." Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann visited Palestine
briefly in 1939 and concluded, possibly from conversations with Haj Amin
El-Husseini, that it would not serve Nazi policy to allow Jewish
immigration to Palestine.
The Zionists organized an illegal immigration effort, 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 and some were sunk with great loss of life.
The efforts began in 1939. The last immigrant boat to try to enter
Palestine before the end of the war was the Struma, torpedoed in the
Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 as part of Soviet -
British collaboration. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives.
Illegal immigration resumed after WW II.
Members of the Jewish Lehi underground, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet
Zuri assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944. Moyne was the
British Minister of State for the Middle East, responsible for
implementing the ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The
assassination is said to have turned 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.
During the war, the moderate Haganah underground helped the British to
ferret out Irgun and Lehi members whom they felt were hurting the war
effort against the Nazis.
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
The United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to
solve the dispute between the Palestinian Jews and Arabs. The UN
appointed a committee, the 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 Palestinian Arabs,
although much of the land reserved for the Jewish state had already been
acquired by Jews, had a Jewish majority, or was under state control.
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 November 29 (the date of this session) as the most important
date in Israel's acquisition of independence.
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.
Palestinians consider a far more accurate statement of the intention of
the founders of Israel to be that of Chaim Weizmann, who reportedly
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.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Palestine
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