Summary
The British government department responsible for the conduct of relations between the mandates and independent states, in Banko’s account diverging fundamentally from the Colonial Office over Palestine (Aaron Klieman), more sympathetic toward general Arab opposition to Zionist policy, and central to the consular protection questions that framed Mandate Article 12 (The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, PDF p.40, p.44 / printed p.29, p.33).
Details
- Locally, from the beginning of the military administration in Palestine, the Foreign Office and the Colonial 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. With the beginning of the civil administration the Foreign Office assumed responsibility for the conduct of relations between the mandates and independent states (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- The Foreign Office was aware of Palestine’s importance for the wider Arab and Muslim world and felt more sympathetic toward the general Arab opposition to Zionist policy; by contrast the Colonial Office was concerned with Arab public opinion specifically to maintain political stability and public security. In 1921 Winston Churchill 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 Herbert Samuel (PDF p.40 / printed p.29).
- Until the ratification of the mandates, Zionist leaders such as Chaim Weizmann requested that the Foreign Office offer consular protection to Palestine’s Jewish immigrant population. This request framed Article 12 of the mandate charter, which entitled all citizens to British protection when abroad (PDF p.44 / printed p.33).
- The Foreign Office failed to come to an agreement with the Colonial and Home Offices as to whether all Ottomans came under British protection or if Great Britain could instead grant Jewish immigrants the status of imperial subjects (PDF p.47 / printed p.36).
- The Foreign Office helped Norman Bentwich to arrange for consular facilities to be offered to provisional nationals, as part of the office’s overall management of the international relations of the Palestine administration. Its legal advisor H. W. Malkin advised Bentwich that Palestinian citizenship should be automatically given to foreign Jews who settled in Palestine — imposed — and warned that otherwise Britain ‘shall have the spectacle of the Jewish National Home containing quantities of Jews who are not citizens’ (PDF p.48 / printed p.37).
- Bentwich worked with the Foreign Office to draft model regulations for dual nationality, the revocation of nationality and naturalisation, which needed to conform to the 1914 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act and the 1919 Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, including a five-year residency requirement before foreigners could naturalise as British subjects (PDF p.48-49 / printed p.37-38).
- Foreign Secretary Curzon disputed protection for Palestinians in Egypt with Samuel: Samuel held that Britain had assumed responsibility to provide consular services to Palestinians abroad, while Curzon argued that privileges should go only to select, ‘better-educated’ Palestinian individuals, stating that the Egyptian administration assumed Muslim Levantine Arabs to be ‘on a lower plane of civilisation than the average Egyptian’ (PDF p.49-50 / printed p.38-39).
- In 1920 the Foreign Office advised consular officers not to recognise any claims to British protection by Arabs who lived abroad, although in practice it provided emergency certificates for Arabs and Jews that entitled them to one-way Palestinian visas or laissez-passer (PDF p.50 / printed p.39). In August 1920 it published the two categories devised for the Arab and Jewish population: Ottoman nationals by birth or descent abroad who could prove paternal descent, and non-Ottoman residents (mainly Jewish immigrants) wishing to adopt Palestinian nationality, both required to undertake to opt for Palestinian nationality once a law passed; natives habitually resident fell into neither category (PDF p.50-51 / printed p.39-40).
- On the draft nationality order, the Foreign Office agreed with the Colonial Office’s proposal that Jewish immigrants could declare their desire not to become citizens, and suggested that non-habitually resident Jews who wished to help build the national home should have the option to acquire Palestinian citizenship (PDF p.54-55 / printed p.43-44).
Related pages
The Invention of Palestinian Citizenship, 1918–1947, Colonial Office, Winston Churchill, Herbert Samuel, Norman Bentwich, Provisional Palestinian nationality