Summary
The British government department that assumed responsibility and control over the policy and administration of the Palestine Mandate with the beginning of the civil administration, in Banko’s account diverging fundamentally from the Foreign Office over Palestine (Aaron Klieman) and receiving control of Palestine’s civil administration in the 1921 transfer (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.40, p.42 / printed p.29, p.31).
Details
- Locally, from the beginning of the military administration in Palestine, the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office diverged on policy and only reluctantly worked together. Historian Aaron Klieman argues that the two departments had fundamental differences of orientation and priority for Palestine that emerged out of the post-war tensions over their shared responsibilities for British interests in the Arab world (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- With the beginning of the civil administration the Colonial Office and its new Middle East Department (established in 1921) assumed responsibility and control over the policy and the administration of the Palestine Mandate, while the Foreign Office assumed responsibility for the conduct of relations between the mandates and independent states. Colonial and Foreign Office power were not absolute: the India Office, Air Ministry, Home Office, Dominions Office and other departments also claimed measures of responsibility (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- After the appointment of Herbert Samuel in 1920, the Colonial Office and the Cabinet in London guided the activities of Palestine’s civil administration through the newly established High Commissioner’s Office, once the latter passed ‘on-the-ground’ information to policy-makers in London (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- The Colonial Office was concerned with Arab public opinion specifically to maintain political stability and public security; in later years the World Zionist Organization came to view the Colonial Office as especially against its cause (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- In the 1920s and 1930s the Colonial Office suffered from frequent changes to its secretary and under-secretary (PDF p.41 / printed p.30).
- In the battle between the Colonial and Foreign Offices over the supervision of the mandates, Frederick Lugard argued that each mandate fell within the realm of colonial rather than foreign policy. In order to pre-empt further disagreement, control of the civil administration of Palestine was transferred in 1921 to the Colonial Office (PDF p.42 / printed p.31).
- Until 1938 Colonial Office permanent members jointly devised policy for Palestine in cooperation with each high commissioner, with ultimate approval from the Cabinet or government in London (PDF p.35 / printed p.24). Norman Bentwich submitted his draft nationality law to the Colonial Office (PDF p.34 / printed p.23).
- Winston Churchill was Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Colonial Office’s head, in the period Banko describes: in 1921 he noted that 90 per cent of the British officials in Palestine, at that time closely aligned with the Foreign Office, opposed the Zionist policy of the local administration headed by Samuel (PDF p.40, p.43 / printed p.29, p.32).
- On the draft nationality order, the Colonial Office took up the Joint Foreign Committee’s and the Anglo-Jewish Association’s objection to Bentwich’s amendment and suggested that Jewish immigrants could also declare their desire not to become citizens and that the mandate administration could authorise them to remain in Palestine (PDF p.54-55 / printed p.43-44).
Related pages
The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, Foreign Office, Winston Churchill, Herbert Samuel, Norman Bentwich, Palestine Order-in-Council 1922