THE BRITISH MANDATE OF PALESTINE, 1922 Term Ppaer

Palestine, the land from which the modern state of Israel later emerged, had been under Turkish control since the sixteenth century. In the course of World War I (1914–1918), Great Britain, an enemy of Turkey, sponsored the dashing T. E. Lawrence’s guerrilla-style raids against Turkish military installations in Palestine. In 1917, hoping to gain support from the international Jewish community, Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, publicly pledged (the Balfour Declaration) that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

The Balfour Declaration was of special interest to those Jews who had supported the call of Theodor Herzl’s World Zionist Congress (1897) for an independent Jewish state. After the defeat of Turkey in World War I, France and Britain stripped Turkey of its possessions in the Middle East. France took control of Syria and Lebanon while Britain took control of Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine. In 1920 Sir Herbert Samuel was appointed British High Commissioner for Palestine, and in 1922 the League of Nations gave Great Britain the mandate to rule Palestine. Under terms of the mandate Great Britain was not to view Palestine as a British colony but was to prepare it for independence and self-governance.

In exercising its mandate Britain moved cautiously, especially because it was quite difficult to know precisely how many people lived in Palestine. In 1922 Britain estimated that 620,00 Arab Muslims, 70,000 Arab Christians, and 60,000 Jews lived in Palestine. During the 1920s few Jews immigrated to Palestine, but by the 1930s, particularly after Hitler came to power in Germany, Jewish immigration and land ownership in Palestine accelerated. Tensions between Palestinians and the growing Jewish community came to a flash point in 1936 when anti-Jewish riots broke out. In the wake of the riots Lord Robert Peel, who headed a commission of inquiry charged with investigating the riots, issued a report concluding that the only way to prevent further bloodshed was to divide Palestine into three parts: a Jewish state, a Palestinian state, and the holy cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem under British control. Both the Jewish and Palestinian communities rejected the Peel Commission’s recommendations. As war threatened in Europe, Britain, fearful of losing access to its oil supplies, sought to strengthen ties with the Arab world. In May 1939 it issued a new policy severely limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine and announced that it would withdraw from Palestine in 1949, thereby assuring that the Arab majority would govern an independent Palestine. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, Britain’s mandate in Palestine came under increasing attack from Jews who felt that Britain was not doing enough to assist Jews fleeing Germany. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, Britain continued to rule Palestine and to limit immigration of Jewish refugees of the Holocaust. In 1947 Britain requested that the United Nations devise a settlement for Palestine because Britain intended to give up its mandate on 15 May 1948.
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate the Gallipoli campaign in World War I (see Suggested Sources) and write a paper on the ways in which it influenced British strategy in the Middle East.
2. How did the Arab inhabitants of Palestine view the British mandate? What were their views on the Balfour Declaration and Zionism?
3. Explore the situation in Palestine between 1936 and 1939 and draft a script for a short documentary presenting the perspectives of Arabs, Jews, and British officials.
4. Discuss Britain’s reasons for limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine before, during, and after World War II and the efforts of the Jewish community to reverse the restrictions.
5. Do a research project on the career of Chaim Weizmann (see Suggested Sources) and his influence on British policy in Palestine.
6. Examine the role of the United Nations in attempting to find a solution to the Palestinian problem in 1947–1948.

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The Paris Peace Conference, 1919” (#11), “The Holocaust, 1941–1945” (#34), “The Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948” (#43), “Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Suez Crisis, 1956” (#52), “The Six-Day War, 1967” (#66), and “Terrorism in the 1970s” (#78). Search under Menachem Begin, Exodus, Haganah, Irgun, Jewish Agency, League of Arab States, and Sykes-Picot Treaty.

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Esco Foundation for Palestine. Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947. An eclectic collection of materials focused on the mandate period.

Khalidi, Walid, ed. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971. Excellent documentation from the Palestinian perspective.

Laqueur, Walter, and Barry Rubin, eds. The Israeli-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. More than thirty key documents on the British mandate are in this collection.

Moore, John N., ed. The Arab Israeli Conflict. 3 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. A wide-ranging collection of government documents and personal accounts of the mandate period.

Weizmann, Chaim. Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. New York: Harper, 1949. Autobiography of the key Zionist leader and drafter of the Balfour Declaration.

Secondary Sources

Abu-Lughon, Ibrahim, ed. The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of Arab-Israel Conflict. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1971. Sixteen essays on the mandate period.

Cohen, Michael J. The Origins and Evolution of the Arab-Zionist Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. A solid treatment of conflict during the period of the British mandate.

Lesch, Ann Mosely, and Dan Tschirgi. Origins and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Analysis, biographical profiles, and primary documents for the entire period.

Ovendale, Ritchie. The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Wars. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1992. A good account of the tensions between Arabs and Jews during the mandate years.

Stein, Kenneth W. “A Historiographic Review of Literature on the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1450–1465. A most useful summary of interpretations of the mandate period.