Mandatory Palestine

British Mandate of Palestine
1923–1948
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Palestine and Transjordan were incorporated (under different legal and administrative arrangements) into the British Mandate of Palestine, issued by the League of Nations to Great Britain on 29 September, 1923 Palestine and Transjordan were incorporated (under different legal and administrative arrangements) into the British Mandate of Palestine, issued by the League of Nations to Great Britain on 29 September, 1923
Status	Mandate of the United Kingdom
High Commissioner
• 1920 — 1925	Sir Herbert Louis Samuel
• 1945 — 1948	Sir Alan G. Cunningham
Historical era	Interwar Period
• Mandate issued	29 September 1923
• Transjordanian independence	25 May 1946
• Founding of Israel	14 May 1948
ISO 3166 code	PS
Preceded by Succeeded by Ottoman Empire Jordan Israel

The Mandate for Palestine, also known as the Mandate of Palestine or British Mandate of Palestine, was a territory in the Middle East comprising modern Jordan, Israel, and territories governed by the Palestinian Authority, 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. Eminent British figures such as Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, Lloyd George, Lord Palmerston and Arthur Balfour were among the enthusiastic proponents of Zionism.

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 Palestine Ensign, flown by ships registered in the Mandate territory, 1927-1948

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 Sanremo, 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.

A stamp from Palestine under the British Mandate

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 Hashemite 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. The territorial concessions that Britain made to the French did not pass without objection. President Woodrow Wilson cabled the following protest to the British Cabinet:

"The Zionist cause depends on rational northern and eastern boundaries for a self-maintaining, economic development of the country. This means, on the north, Palestine must include the Litani River and the watersheds of the Hermon, and on the east it must include the plains of the Jaulon and the Hauran. Narrower than this is a mutilation...I need not remind you that neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program, and to its realization the boundaries I have named are indispensable".

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 Zionism 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. Because most of these Jews were familiar with the European tradition of land-ownership, they did not realize that they were purchasing only the land, not the trees that grew on that land. 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: 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

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 also known as "the Great Uprising." 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. The Jewish organization Etzel replied with its own campaign, with marketplace bombings and other violent acts that also killed hundreds. Eventually, the uprising was put down by the British using severe measures. 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 provisions of the Mandate. A similar proposal to limit immigration in 1931 had been termed a violation of the mandate by the League of Nations. 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 a likely outcome and a 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.

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 British Commonwealth 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. 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).

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 underground group, 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 by some to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause, but for Lehi the priority was to allow Jewish refugees to enter the country and to establish the state on their own.

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 committed 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. In order to make the committee more neutral, none of the Great Powers were represented.

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.

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 of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 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.

Unfortunately, subsequent events would belie this inviation to the Arab peoples.

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. 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. 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%)

Population by district

The following table gives the demographics of each of the 16 districts of the Mandate.

Demographics of Palestine by district as of 1945
District	Muslim	Percentage	Jewish	Percentage	Christian	Percentage	Total
Acre	51,130	69%	3,030	4%	11,800	16%	73,600
Beersheba	6,270	90%	510	7%	210	3%	7,000
Beisan	16,660	67%	7,590	30%	680	3%	24,950
Gaza	145,700	97%	3,540	2%	1,300	1%	150,540
Haifa	95,970	38%	119,020	47%	33,710	13%	253,450
Hebron	92,640	99%	300	<1%	170	<1%	93,120
Jaffa	95,980	24%	295,160	72%	17,790	4%	409,290
Jenin	60,000	98%	Negligible	<1%	1,210	2%	61,210
Jerusalem	104,460	42%	102,520	40%	46,130	18%	253,270
Nablus	92,810	98%	Negligible	<1%	1,560	2%	94,600
Nazareth	30,160	60%	7,980	16%	11,770	24%	49,910
Ramallah	40,520	83%	Negligible	<1%	8,410	17%	48,930
Ramle	95,590	71%	31,590	24%	5,840	4%	134,030
Safad	47,310	83%	7,170	13%	1,630	3%	56,970
Tiberias	23,940	58%	13,640	33%	2,470	6%	41,470
Tulkarm	76,460	82%	16,180	17%	380	1%	93,220
Total	1,076,780	58%	608,230	33%	145,060	9%	1,845,560
Data from the Survey of Palestine

Land ownership of the British Mandate of Palestine

The Arabs, constituting no less than two thirds of Palestine's population, owned the vast majority of private property. The Survey of Palestine reported that Arabs ownered at 24,670,455 dunums (the total land of the Mandate was about 26,184,702 dunums). According to the MidEastWeb, however, Arabs owned only about half of the land [3].

Jews, making up about a third of Palestine's population, privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunums in 1945 (Khalaf, 1991, pp. 26-27) and 1,850,000 dunums in 1947 (Avneri p. 224). This constituted about 20% of cultivable, and 7% of the total land of Palestine.

Land Ownership by district

The following table shows the land ownership of Palestine by district:

Land ownership of Palestine by district as of 1945
District	Arab owned	Jewish owned	Public and other
Acre	87%	3%	10%
Beersheba	15%	<1%	85%
Beisan	44%	34%	22%
Gaza	75%	4%	21%
Haifa	42%	35%	23%
Hebron	96%	<1%	4%
Jaffa	47%	39%	14%
Jenin	84%	<1%	16%
Jerusalem	84%	2%	14%
Nablus	87%	<1%	13%
Nazareth	52%	28%	20%
Ramallah	99%	<1%	1%
Ramle	77%	14%	9%
Safad	68%	18%	14%
Tiberias	51%	38%	11%
Tulkarm	78%	17%	5%
Data from the Land Ownership of Palestine

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 ownership of Palestine (in dunums) as of April 1st, 1943
Category of land	Arab ownership	Jewish ownership	Total Land
Urban	76,662	70,111	146,773
Rural built-on	36,851	42,330	79,181
Cereal (taxable)	5,503,183	814,102	6,317,285
Cereal (not taxable)	900,294	51,049	951,343
Plantation	1,079,788	95,514	1,175,302
Citrus	145,572	141,188	286,760
Banana	2,300	1,430	3,730
Uncultivable	16,925,805	298,523	17,224,328
Total	24,670,455	1,514,247	26,184,702
Data is from Survey of Palestine.

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 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

See also

• Ottoman Empire
• Balfour Declaration 1917
• 1922 Text: League of Nations Palestine Mandate
• Italian bombings on Palestine in World War II
• 1947 UN Partition Plan
• Napoleon and a Jewish state in Palestine
• Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948
• 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• Palestinian
• Haganah
• Irgun
• Lehi (group)
• Middle East conflict
• Elon Peace Plan
• Herbert Dowbiggin
• Palestinian pound

For further reading

• AJ Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948, Thames & Hudson, 1998, ISBN 0-8018-6620-0
• Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, Henry Holt and Co. 2000, ISBN 0-8050-6587-3

External links

• Resources > Modern Period > 20th Cent. > History of Israel > Building a State > British Mandate (1917-1948)The Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Coins and Banknotes of Palestine under the British Mandate
• Legal Status of West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem
• A history of Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict
• A history of Zionism and the creation of Israel
• An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman Finkelstein
• Map of 1947 UN division
• Jewish Defense Organizations
• United Nations
• Map of Population Distribution by Ethnicity 1946
• Population of Palestine before 1948
• Map of Land Ownership in Palestine 1945
• Facts about Palestine
• Yale Law School, Avalon Project, archive copy of the Palestine Mandate