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Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I)

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aliasesThe Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem, Part I, Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1947

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Summary

A United Nations study of the origins of the Palestine problem from the First World War to 1947, arguing that the problem’s root is the Balfour Declaration and its embodiment in the Mandate for Palestine: Britain gave assurances of independence to the Arabs in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence and later declarations, gave a conflicting commitment to the Zionist Organization for a Jewish national home, and obtained a Mandate that, in the study’s account, violated Article 22 of the League Covenant and the Palestinian people’s right of self-determination, then implemented the national home through Jewish immigration, land purchase and Jewish-labour-only policies against mounting Palestinian resistance, culminating in the 1936-1939 rebellion and the proposal of Partition (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 87-97). Read in full (lines 1-1939): the Introduction and sections I-VI; section VII completes the partition story through the Peel Commission and the Palestine Partition Commission, the 1939 London Conference and the MacDonald White Paper; section VIII examines the League of Nations and the Permanent Mandates Commission; section IX follows the Mandate’s ending through the Second World War, the Biltmore Program, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry and Britain’s referral of the problem to the United Nations in February 1947; the Notes (footnotes 1-147) and annexes I-IX, including the full texts of Article 22 and the Mandate for Palestine, close the copy.

What the file is

  • The United Nations study Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I) as reproduced on the United Nations Question of Palestine website, downloaded from the URL above (access basis: IGO, as supplied). The original delivered is the HTML page; the supplied text copy (37,403 words) is a plain-text rendering of that page with no page markers, so locators are line numbers. The copy is 1,939 lines by the verification count (newline count plus one; 1,938 by wc -l).
  • The copy opens with United Nations website navigation furniture (lines 1-80 approx.), which is not study text. A date string attached to the title line reads “Part I (1917-1947)VS2021-01-22T15:30:03-05:00” (line 79, as printed). No author, publisher or publication date for the study itself is stated anywhere in the copy; its latest cited work is dated 1976, it quotes a 1968 work and a 17 April 1974 Times publication, and it speaks of “the following 30 years” after 1948 (see Open questions). The copy closes with United Nations website navigation furniture (lines 1891-1939), which is not study text.
  • Structure: Introduction; I. The Beginnings of the Palestine Issue; II. The Balfour Declaration; III. The League of Nations Mandates; IV. Palestine Mandated; V. Mandated Palestine: The “Jewish National Home”; VI. Mandated Palestine – Palestinian Resistance; VII. Mandated Palestine: The Partition Plans (lines 945-1061); VIII. Palestine and the League of Nations (lines 1063-1163); IX. The Ending of the Mandate (lines 1165-1335). The Notes (footnotes 1-147, lines 1337-1637) and annexes I-IX (lines 1641-1889) follow; there is no separate conclusion section.
  • The study is built largely from quoted primary and secondary material — British official correspondence and memoranda, commission reports, and named authorities — each credited in the text, with numbered footnote markers (1-147; the footnote texts are gathered at lines 1337-1637 and are accounted for in full in the reading notes). Some markers are printed with a trailing slash (for example 21/, 30/, 56/, 58/, 61/, 110/, 118/) and some numbers repeat in the text (43 for the Storrs quotation, 61 for the Anglo-American Convention, 75 in the Hope Simpson material); for each repeated number there is a single note. These are recorded as printed in the reading notes.
  • Text slips recorded as printed in part 1 include “Axis Powers” for the Entente’s opponents in the First World War context (section I), “compromised” for comprised (line 297), “is quoting as stating” (section IV), “historial connection” inside the Weizmann quotation on the Mandate drafting, “Havlaga” and “Teggert line” (section VI), and the 1929 non-Jewish immigration figure printed “1 31” in both the text copy and the original HTML. Slips recorded as printed in part 2 include “correpondence” in note 7, “Loggmans, Green” in note 14, “Weisga” in note 41, “Palestine and Syrua in 1915” as the Annex III map caption, “for the formance of this trust” in Annex IV’s Article 22 text, “there were not restrictions” in section IX and “actively advocated” in section IX. In Annex V, Article 21 of the Mandate is reproduced only in opening form, ending with an ellipsis as printed, and Annex IX (the Plan “C” map) has a heading and no caption text in this copy.

Section by section

Introduction (lines 87-97)

  • The question reached the United Nations after the Second World War, but its origins lie at the end of the First: the League placed Palestine under Britain as Mandatory, a transitory phase in principle until Palestine attained the fully independent status provisionally recognized in the Covenant, which in fact never emerged. The Mandate decision took no account of the wishes of Palestine’s people, despite the Covenant’s requirement that those wishes be a principal consideration in selecting the Mandatory. Britain had already committed itself to the Zionist Organization on a Jewish national home, pressed on a claim of “historical connection”. The indigenous people, whose forefathers had inhabited the land for virtually two millennia, saw the design as a violation of their natural and inalienable rights and of the independence assurances given to Arab leaders for their war support. Palestinian Arab resistance mounted, Jewish violence followed as the Second World War drew to a close, and after a quarter-century Britain submitted the problem to the United Nations as irreconcilable conflicting obligations. The United Nations proposed partition into a Palestinian Arab State and a Jewish State with Jerusalem internationalized; the Arab State never appeared, Israel proclaimed independence and in successive wars expanded to occupy all of Palestine, and over the following 30 years the Palestinian people have struggled for their lost rights. The Palestine issue lies at the heart of the Middle East problem, and the Palestinian people must be assured its inherent inalienable right of national self-determination for peace to be restored; this study attempts to clarify origins obscured by decades of strife and politico-legal argument.

I. The Beginnings of the Palestine Issue (lines 99-155)

  • The “Eastern question” and Ottoman disintegration: the Great Powers manoeuvred over the declining Ottoman Empire; in 1916 Britain, France and Russia, later Italy, concluded the secret Sykes–Picot agreement, allocating Ottoman Arab territories to spheres of influence, with an international régime initially envisaged for Palestine, which eventually came under British control. Sykes-Picot itself specified recognition of an “independent Arab State” or “confederation of Arab States”, reflecting emergent Arab nationalism.
  • Anglo-Arab understandings: the 1915-1916 McMahon–Hussein correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and Sherif Hussein of Mecca, who demanded “independence of the Arab countries” within boundaries that clearly included Palestine; McMahon confirmed Britain was prepared to recognize and support Arab independence within the limits demanded. Further assurances followed the Soviet revelation of Sykes-Picot: the Hogarth Message of 4 January 1918 (“no people shall be subject to another” in Palestine), a June 1918 declaration basing future government on “the principle of the consent of the governed”, and the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918 of 7 November 1918 on the complete and definite emancipation of the Arab peoples and governments deriving authority from the indigenous populations’ free choice.
  • The 1939 committee on the correspondence: both sides reiterated their interpretations of McMahon’s exclusion phrase, “portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo”, which prima facie corresponds to coastal Syria and northern Lebanon, not Palestine (the Ottoman sanjaks of Jerusalem, Acre and Balqa). The British delegation conceded the Arab contentions had “greater force than has appeared hitherto”, that Palestine was included in the area claimed by the Sherif on 14 July 1915 and must be regarded as included unless excluded later, and that the excluding language “was not so specific and unmistakable as it was thought to be at the time”. The committee concluded His Majesty’s Government “were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard to the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine”. A secret Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department memorandum published in excerpts by The Times on 17 April 1974 states Britain was committed by McMahon’s 24 October 1915 letter to Palestine’s inclusion in Arab independence, and Arnold J. Toynbee wrote in 1968 that Palestine had not been excepted and Palestinian Arabs could reasonably assume Britain was pledged to prepare Palestine for becoming an independent Arab state.

II. The Balfour Declaration (lines 157-349)

  • The Declaration’s text is quoted in full: Balfour’s letter of 2 November 1917 to Lord Rothschild conveying the Cabinet-approved declaration (see Balfour Declaration). The study calls it the root of the problem of Palestine: incorporated in the Mandate, it brought Arab opposition and revolt and ultimately led to partition.
  • Background of the “Jewish national home” concept: the Declaration was the direct outcome of a sustained Zionist effort to establish a Jewish State in Palestine. Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (1896) proposed “the restoration of the Jewish State”; the 1897 Basle Congress declared the goal was to “create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law”, and Herzl privately summed it up as founding the Jewish State. “State” was avoided while Palestine was Ottoman — Max Nordau’s “Heimstätte” circumlocution, which “signified “Judenstaat” then and it signifies the same now” — and Leonard Stein is quoted on the movement’s change of tactics without abandoning its essence. Jewish settlement in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century numbered perhaps 50,000, an essentially spiritual link; Palestinians themselves numbered well over half a million. Ahad Ha’am’s warnings against violating Palestinian rights, from before the war and February 1914, are quoted at length and were unheeded.
  • Zionist efforts directed at Britain: Chaim Weizmann cultivated Lloyd George, Balfour, Herbert Samuel and Mark Sykes; Samuel’s 1915 memorandum The Future of Palestine proposed British annexation where “we might plant 3 or 4 million European Jews”. Weizmann’s letters stressed strategic advantage to Britain, including a Jewish settlement forming “a very effective guard for the Suez Canal”. Sykes guided Zionist work into official channels and helped Nahum Sokolow persuade France to relinquish its Sykes-Picot claims to Palestine and accept “the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine”.
  • Drafting: Weizmann’s January 1917 “Outline of Programme for the Jewish Resettlement of Palestine” sought official recognition of the Jewish population, present and future, as the Jewish Nation with full civic, national and political rights. Six drafts were exchanged, United States assent was obtained, and the Palestinians were never consulted; Lloyd George is quoted that the Declaration “was prepared after much consideration, not merely of its policy but of its actual wording”, and Jeffries that its sixty-seven words were each weighed. Stein: the language was “studiously vague”, with no agreed interpretation on either side. Weizmann accepted the result despite its falling short.
  • The safeguards: against the Zionist draft’s “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people”, the final text speaks of a national home established in Palestine, and drops the draft’s discussion of methods with the Zionist Organization. Weizmann called the 4 October text a “painful recession”. The safeguard clause never names the Palestinian or Arab people — over 90 per cent of the population, owning about 97 per cent of the land — calling them the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, and protects only their civil and religious rights, not their political rights, while the next phrase protects the “rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country”; this second safeguard is believed to have come from Edwin Montagu’s apprehensions.
  • Meaning and reactions: W. T. Mallison is quoted on the Declaration’s centrality to Zionist-Israel juridical claims and on British objectives (win the war; maximize the British power position) against consistent Zionist objectives (public law authority for territorial ambitions). Montagu, the only Jewish Cabinet member, dissented in secret memoranda — Zionism a “mischievous political creed”, Judaism a faith distinct from nationality — warning Palestine would become “the world’s ghetto”. Lloyd George states the Cabinet’s contemplation: if Jews became a definite majority, Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth, and restricting immigration to keep Jews a permanent minority “never entered the head of anyone” framing the policy. Three implications are drawn: the Declaration contradicted the spirit of the Arab independence pledges before and after; Palestine’s disposition was settled in close consultation with an organization aiming to settle non-Palestinians there, violating native rights; and Britain committed the Palestinians’ land while it was still Ottoman. One authority holds the Declaration “legally impotent”, Britain having no sovereign rights, proprietary interest or authority to dispose of the land.

III. The League of Nations Mandates (lines 351-399)

  • Arab nationalism was ascendant at the war’s end; J. C. Hurewitz is quoted that Britain and France inherited political controls without annexing outright, and that mandates and preferential alliances were provisional arrangements stimulating local nationalism. Wilson’s Fourteen Points promised non-Turkish nationalities “an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development”, yet the 1919 Paris Peace Conference brought the territories under the mandates system of the Covenant, signed 28 June 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles.
  • Article 22 (full text at annex IV, in part 2) founded the system on tutelage by advanced nations as “a sacred trust of civilization”, with classes A, B and C by development. For former Turkish communities, class A: “their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”, and “The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.” Palestine was in no manner excluded.
  • Allocation: Germany’s divestiture was codified at Versailles (article 119); Turkey’s renunciation, provided for in the unratified Treaty of Sèvres (article 132), was formalized at Lausanne. Former Turkish territories were divided at San Remo on 25 April 1920: Syria and Lebanon to France, Palestine, Transjordan and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Britain.
  • Working of the system: Iraq’s mandate was amended for a 1922 treaty and Iraq obtained independence on 3 October 1932; Syria and Lebanon were governed under full French control, Lebanon independent 22 November 1943 and Syria 1 January 1944; Transjordan, in the same Mandate as Palestine, was separately administered from the League Council resolution of 16 September 1922 under article 25, until independence as the Kingdom of Jordan on 22 March 1946. Only in Palestine did the Mandate lead not to the provisionally recognized independence but towards conflict continuing six decades later.

IV. Palestine Mandated (lines 401-639)

  • The Mandate’s contradictions arose from incorporating the Balfour Declaration; international support for a Jewish State was sought to consolidate Jewish opinion, harmonize European Powers with British policy and obtain international approval. Weizmann: zionism must “make the Jewish question an international one”.
  • The Zionist Commission reached Palestine in April 1918; its official task included establishing good relations with Arabs and allaying suspicions. Weizmann reported Arab hostility based on “misconception of our real aims” and that no official steps had brought home Britain’s definite policy; Military Governor Ronald Storrs, “speaking myself as a convinced Zionist”, replied the Zionists themselves had made no public pronouncement to end the misconceptions. Lord Curzon commented to Balfour on Zionist proposals for Paris that Weizmann “is out for a Jewish Government”, contemplating “a Jewish State, a Jewish nation, a subordinate population of Arabs, etc. ruled by Jews”, effected “behind the screen and under the shelter of British trusteeship”.
  • Paris: the Hijaz delegation under Amir Faisal was the only Arab delegation, British-sponsored and, in George Antonius’s account, pressed and isolated; Feisal’s memorandum of 1 January 1919 implied acceptance of a mandate but in no manner consented to a Jewish State. Palestinian principals were absent from decisions on their fate. The Zionist Organization’s draft resolutions asked recognition of “the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine”, sovereign possession vested in the League, government entrusted to Britain, and conditions securing the national home and ultimately an autonomous Commonwealth. Wilson invoked “the consent of the governed” and proposed the inter-allied commission that materialized as the King-Crane Commission.
  • King-Crane: Britain and France did not nominate members (Anthony Nutting: they “backed out” rather than face conflicting recommendations); Wilson appointed Henry King and Charles Crane. The General Syrian Congress resolved for full independence for Syria including Palestine and declared: “We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish Commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country”. The Commission recommended “serious modification of the extreme Zionist programme”, holding that the non-Jewish population — nearly nine-tenths — were emphatically against the entire programme, that subjecting them to unlimited immigration would be “a gross violation” of self-determination, that no British officer consulted believed the programme could be carried out except by force of arms, with not less than 50,000 soldiers required even to initiate it, and that a right based on occupation two thousand years ago “can hardly be seriously considered”.
  • Allied policy: the recommendations received little attention and became moot when the United States stayed out of the League. Balfour told Justice Brandeis that Palestine should be excluded from consultation because the Powers were committed to reconstituting a new community and “definitely building for a numerical majority in the future”. Balfour’s memorandum to Curzon of 11 August 1919 is quoted at length: in Palestine “we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants”; “zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”; the Powers had made “no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate”. The San Remo Conference allocated the Mandate on 25 April 1920 without heed to article 22’s wishes requirement; citizens of Nazareth protested that “we are the owners of this country and the land is our national home”.
  • Drafting the Mandate: Weizmann’s advisers fought over the preamble phrase; Curzon rejected “Recognizing the historic rights of the Jews to Palestine” and Balfour suggested “historical connection” as a compromise. Curzon’s draft comments call a self-governing Commonwealth “an euphemism for a Jewish State”, protest “a country with 580,000 Arabs and 30,000 or is it 60,000 Jews”, and hold “the entire concept wrong”. His Cabinet memorandum records French vehement criticism of the draft’s “almost exclusively Zionist complexion” and Italian similar apprehensions, objection to “reconstitute Palestine as their national home” as an unjustified extension beyond the Declaration, and the Zionists’ plea that such a phrase would help raise money abroad. The House of Lords voted to repeal the Balfour Declaration; the Commons defeated a similar motion. The final text, approved by the League on 24 July 1922 and in effect September 1923, nevertheless included “historical connection” and “reconstituting their national home”. Its preamble recitals and articles 1, 2, 4 and 6 are quoted: full powers of legislation and administration for the Mandatory; responsibility for conditions securing the Jewish national home and self-governing institutions; the Jewish Agency recognized as a public body, the Zionist Organization as that agency; and facilitation of Jewish immigration and close settlement on the land including State and waste lands. No body served Palestinian interests comparably, Palestinians were never consulted on the Mandatory, and the United States associated itself through a joint Congressional resolution and the Anglo-American Convention of 1925.
  • Borders: the Zionist proposal — the Litany River in the north to latitude 33° 45′, west of the Hedjaz Railway in the east, from Akaba to El Arish in the south (map at annex VI, in part 2) — was not admitted; Palestine’s borders enclosed a far more restricted area.
  • Validity: the study holds that failing to consult the Palestinian people ignored both self-determination and article 22. The 1937 Royal Commission is quoted recording an Arab Higher Committee member’s legal argument that the Mandate’s terms are inconsistent with article 22, article 1 conferring full powers where article 22 envisages a community governing independently and a foreigner only assisting. Henry Cattan is quoted at length for three grounds of invalidity: violation of the Palestinian people’s sovereignty and natural rights, the League having no power to dispose of Palestine; violation of article 22 in spirit and letter — a mandate conceived for an alien people’s interest rather than the inhabitants’ well-being, full powers instead of temporary advice and assistance, in marked contrast to the Syria and Lebanon Mandate of 24 July 1922; and conflict with the wartime pledges to the Arabs. Lord Islington is quoted within Cattan: “The Palestine Mandate is a real distortion of the mandatory system”. At the time, Palestine’s people were unable to challenge the Mandate, and establishing the national home commenced.

V. Mandated Palestine: The “Jewish National Home” (lines 641-859)

  • Course of the Mandate: a pattern is described — violent Palestinian resistance, an official inquiry recommending modifications, then Zionist pressure veering policy back — prevalent in the 1920s; by the end of the 1930s Palestine was the scene of full-scale violence. The Mandate acquired de jure jurisdiction in September 1923; de facto administration ran from military government (December 1917-June 1920) to the civilian High Commissioner Herbert Samuel from 1 July 1920, with responsibility transferred to the Colonial Office under Churchill in March 1921. The Declaration was made public in Palestine only in 1920; a Muslim-Christian Association delegation tried in 1921 and 1922 to present the Palestinian case in London.
  • The “Churchill Memorandum” of 1 July 1922 (the study’s name and date for the 1922 White Paper statement) disclaimed a “wholly Jewish Palestine” and “the subordination of the Arab population, language or culture”, while declaring the Declaration “not susceptible of change”, the Jewish community in Palestine “as of right and not on sufferance”, and immigration limited only by economic absorptive capacity. Churchill later said the 1922 intention was that self-governing institutions be “subordinated to the paramount pledge and obligation of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine”. Palestinians refused the proposed legislative council and demanded a national government responsible to a parliament elected by Moslems, Christians and Jews.
  • Immigration, land and labour: the three means were large-scale immigration, land purchase and denial of employment to Palestinian labour. Recorded Jewish immigration 1920-1929 totalled about 100,000 (the table’s Jewish column sums to 99,806, computed), in a country whose 1922 total population was officially estimated at about 750,000; the Jewish population rose from below 10 per cent to over 17 per cent. Immigration certificates supplied in blank to the General Federation of Jewish Labour were allocated, an official Commission reported, with regard to applicants’ political creed rather than qualifications. Jewish land acquisitions stood at about 650,000 dunums (2.5 per cent of 26 million dunums) when registers reopened in 1920, and nearly doubled to 1,200,000 dunums, just below 5 per cent, by the decade’s end.
  • Hope Simpson: the report estimated total cultivable land at about 6.5 million dunums, about a sixth in Jewish hands, and quoted the binding Jewish-labour-only clauses of the Jewish Agency constitution, Keren Kayemet leases and Keren ha-Yesod agreements. It held the provisions incompatible with publicly expressed sentiments, held “the persistent and deliberate boycott of Arab labour” contrary to article 6 of the Mandate and “a constant and increasing source of danger to the country”, recorded that Jewish National Fund land was extraterritorialized — in mortmain and inalienable, the Arab deprived for ever of employment on it — and found “no margin of land available for agricultural settlement by new immigrants” except Jewish agencies’ reserves.
  • Passfield and the MacDonald letter: the Passfield White Paper of October 1930 criticized pressure from Jewish leaders and Palestinian demands for self-determination alike, held that “equal weight shall at all times be given” to the Mandate’s two obligations, announced a renewed legislative council attempt and intent to reassert authority over immigration and land transfers dominated by the Jewish Agency. It was virtually negated by Prime Minister MacDonald’s letter to Weizmann of 13 February 1931, reasserting that the Mandate undertaking was “to the Jewish people and not only to the Jewish population of Palestine”; Weizmann records that under the letter immigration reached 40,000 for 1934 and 62,000 for 1935 (his rounded figures as quoted).
  • The 1930s: recorded immigration 1930-1939 is tabled year by year; the study states Palestine received about 232,000 legal immigrants in the 1930s (the table’s figures sum to 222,648, computed — see Open questions). The Jewish population in 1939 numbered over 445,000 of about 1,500,000, nearly 30 per cent, and Jewish land holdings had risen to almost 1.5 million dunums. Municipal and legislative council measures between 1930 and 1936 were ineffective, and the situation boiled over in 1936.

VI. Mandated Palestine – Palestinian Resistance (lines 861-943)

  • Resistance is presented as a continuous response to denial of self-determination and colonization, investigated by successive commissions of inquiry. Non-violent protests marked the Declaration’s first anniversary on 2 November 1918. The April 1920 riots’ underlying causes, as referred to in the 1937 Royal Commission report, were Arab disappointment at non-fulfilment of the independence promises and belief that the Declaration denied self-determination and would lead to economic and political subjection. The May 1921 Jaffa riots left 95 dead and 220 injured; the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry found the fundamental cause to be Arab discontent with and hostility to the Jews due to political and economic causes connected with Jewish immigration and their conception of Zionist policy.
  • The August 1929 revolt, sparked by a dispute over the Wailing Wall, left 220 dead and 520 injured; British reinforcements including aircraft, naval vessels and armoured cars were called in. The Shaw Commission observed that for 80 years before 1920 there was no recorded instance of similar attacks, that before the War Jews and Arabs lived side by side “if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which to-day is almost unknown in Palestine”, and that Arab resentment at the continued failure to obtain self-government was a contributory cause. The Shaw report was a major factor in the Passfield White Paper, which proved abortive.
  • The 1933 riots followed the Nazi rise and the sudden immigration increase; no commission was appointed, and the Peel report is quoted: the greater inflow opened “the intolerable prospect of a Jewish State – of Palestinian Arabs being ruled by Jews”, and in 1933, unlike 1920, 1921 and 1929, the Arabs attacked the Government, the Mandate seen as “a cynical device for promoting British ‘imperialism’”. By 1933 Palestinian parties had united in an Arab Executive Committee; a 1936 legislative council move was defeated in Parliament after the Zionist Congress expressed “its categorical rejection of the scheme … as contrary to the spirit of the Mandate”.
  • The 1936-1939 rebellion: minor April 1936 clashes flared into widespread revolt; a new union of parties formed the Arab Higher Committee under the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Hussaini, which called a general strike for national government. Senior Arab officials of the administration openly identified with the movement. Britain imposed curfews, brought reinforcements from Britain, Egypt and Malta, and resorted to mass arrests, collective fines and internments; large parts of the Arab quarter of Jaffa were demolished on urban improvement grounds. Jewish reprisals ran principally through the Haganah; 2,800 Jewish settlers were enrolled as police supernumeraries. Arab rulers’ mediation ended the strike in October 1936; the official count was 275 dead and 1,112 wounded, the Royal Commission’s estimate 1,000 deaths. After the Royal Commission report, violence renewed; the Arab Higher Committee was proscribed, its leaders deported to the Seychelles, and the Mufti escaped to Lebanon. Military courts awarded 58 death sentences by the end of 1938; the “Teggert line” fence was set up on the borders. A quoted account gives 18,000 to 20,000 British troops in Palestine by the end of October 1938, some 2,930 additional British police recruited during the year, and casualties of 3,717 in 1938 against 246 in 1937. The Irgun and the special night squads trained by Major Charles Orde Wingate were also active on the Jewish side; Christopher Sykes is quoted that the squads “gradually became what Wingate secretly intended, the beginnings of a Jewish army”. By 1939 British operations were succeeding, Palestinian grievances were heard in London, Arab States interceded, and the rebellion ended after three and a half years — having left no doubt Palestinians would not acquiesce, and Britain responding with a proposal to partition Palestine in place of pledged independence.

VII. Mandated Palestine: The Partition Plans (lines 945-1061)

  • The Peel Commission report, a 400-page document headed by Lord Robert Peel, defended the British record and stood by the Balfour Declaration, yet recognized the force and justice of Palestinian demands for independence, acknowledged the “dual obligations” were not reconcilable, and recommended partition “in Solomonian fashion”. Its quoted passages in this range hold that fostering immigration in hope of a Jewish majority with Arab consent was one thing, but “the forcible conversion of Palestine into a Jewish State against the will of the Arabs” would violate the Mandates System’s spirit — self-determination “withheld when the Arabs were a majority in Palestine and only conceded when the Jews were a majority”, the Arabs “bartered about from Turkish sovereignty to Jewish sovereignty”; that the crux for Arab eyes was the Balfour Declaration and its embodiment in the draft Mandate; that nationalism was nowhere more acute after the War, with advance towards self-government everywhere except Palestine; and that 1936 “was an open rebellion of the Palestinian Arabs, assisted by fellow-Arabs from other countries, against British Mandatory rule”. The quotation on the rebellion’s underlying causes begins at line 970 — “(i) The desire of the Arabs for national independence” — and continues in part 2.
  • The causes quotation completed (lines 971-979): the two underlying causes — Arab desire for national independence, and hatred and fear of the Jewish National Home — were the same as in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1933, inextricably linked, and the only underlying causes. The Commission held the national home’s creation “directly against their will” had opened a breach between Jewry and the Arab world, and that “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. About 1,000,000 Arabs are in strife, open or latent, with some 400,000 Jews” (lines 981-987; figures are the Commission’s as quoted). The Arab demands, as the Mufti’s delegation stated them, were abandonment of the national home, complete stoppage of immigration and of land sales to Jews, and termination of the Mandate with a treaty on the Iraq, Syria and Lebanon basis; the Commission stressed the case’s core “is political”, not interracial, and that Arab nationalism “has not yet reached its climax” (lines 989-997).
  • “The Force of Circumstance” and partition (lines 999-1015): the Commission recognised the Mandate could only be implemented by force, with no assurance of success — repression “leads nowhere” — and recommended: “Partition seems to offer at least a chance of ultimate peace. We can see none in any other plan.” The British Government accepted partition in a White Paper in July 1937, holding the conflict irreconcilable under the present Mandate and that partition “would convert the Jewish national home into a Jewish State”, while Arabs would obtain national independence and be “finally delivered from all fear of Jewish domination”.
  • Rejection and the Woodhead Commission (lines 1017-1033): partition was unacceptable to the Palestinians, the rebellion flared again until 1939, and the Arab Higher Committee reasserted full independence in the whole of Palestine. The twentieth Zionist Congress (Zurich, August 1937) rejected the Peel scheme as unacceptable and rejected the assertion that the Mandate had proved unworkable, while empowering its Executive to negotiate the precise terms for a Jewish State; the study comments the Congress considered it too early to accept a State in only part of Palestine. The Peel plan allotted roughly the northern quarter and most of the western coastal plain — about a third of the country — to the Jewish state, with Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth and a corridor to Jaffa under a continuing British Mandate (annex VII). The Palestine Partition Commission (the “Woodhead Commission”, inquiries April-August 1938) found the Peel plan unworkable, since almost half the proposed Jewish State’s population would be Palestinian Arab, and proposed Plan “B” (Galilee under mandate instead; annex VIII) and Plan “C” (the Jewish State on the coastal plain north of Jaffa, the southern half, the Jerusalem enclave and a large northern area under mandate; annex IX), while expressing reservations over any partition scheme. Britain then abandoned partition as “impracticable” (lines 1031-1033).
  • The London Conference and the MacDonald White Paper (lines 1035-1061): the 1939 London Conference sat as parallel Anglo-Arab and Anglo-Jewish conferences (February-March 1939), the Arabs refusing formally to recognise the Jewish Agency; Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and the Yemen attended, and the Husain-McMahon correspondence was made public and examined by the Anglo-Arab Committee. British proposals were rejected first by the Jewish side and, after revision, by both. The May 1939 White Paper (Cmd. 6019) disclaimed any intention to create a Jewish State, rejected independence as an Arab State, envisaged termination of the Mandate by 1949 with an independent Palestine in which Arabs and Jews share in government, limited immigration to 75,000 over five years and strictly regulated land transfers. It did not contest the Royal Commission’s view that the Zionist leaders recognised an ultimate Jewish State was not precluded by the Declaration, but held that “the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that Palestine should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country”. It declared: “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State”, and set the objective of “the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State” in treaty relations with the United Kingdom. The study comments that Palestinian inherent rights were finally acknowledged, but to a country transformed in population and land patterns under the Mandate, and that for the Zionist movement the White Paper was a severe setback requiring a new strategy outside the Mandate framework.

VIII. Palestine and the League of Nations (lines 1063-1163)

  • Sovereignty (lines 1063-1075): the League conferred Britain’s legal title. On Article 22’s wording, the non-annexation principle and the prohibition on alienation (article 5 of the Mandate), several authorities ruled sovereignty rested with the people of a Mandated Territory, albeit in suspense; the International Court of Justice’s view on South-West Africa — that the Mandate involved no cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty to the Mandatory — is quoted, as is Quincy Wright: “Communities under ‘A’ Mandates doubtless approach very close to sovereignty”.
  • The Permanent Mandates Commission (lines 1077-1121): the Council interpreted the League’s responsibility “in the widest manner” but with “extreme prudence”; in practice the PMC required annual reports and commented, acting more widely only on major violence. At its first meeting on Palestine (1923) it recorded the Mandate’s sui generis, dual character against Article 22’s paramount duty to the inhabitants’ interests. In 1929 it sharply criticised the Shaw report, holding the disorders were not “an unexpected disturbance in the midst of political calm” and that the resentment behind Arab attacks was ultimately due to political disappointments attributed primarily to the British Government, quoting the Palestinian Arab delegation: “the main cause of the disturbances which have led to continual bloodshed in Palestine for the last 12 years is the persistence of the British Government in depriving the Arabs of their natural rights”. Yet, paradoxically in the study’s word, the PMC did not uphold self-determination: the claim for self-government, it warned, was contrary to the Mandate’s terms and would find no encouragement from it, and in its report it held the dual obligations to be of equal weight and not irreconcilable, against its Chairman’s view that the national home must be made compatible with autonomous institutions as “the Arab view” consistent with the mandate’s fundamental purpose (lines 1103-1117). The League Council’s Wailing Wall commission of 1931, whose recommendations in general confirmed the status quo, is noted in a parenthesis.
  • The PMC and partition, 1937-1939 (lines 1121-1163): after five routine years, the PMC’s 1937 “Preliminary Opinion” on terminating the Mandate by partition called its task entirely new — a Mandatory proposing termination “not so much the attainment of maturity by the ward as the difficulties of guardianship” — and asked: “What people could be expected to agree wholeheartedly that its country should be used for the establishment of a national home for another people, even if it were thereby to reap appreciable material benefits?” It held “The present mandate became almost unworkable once it was publicly declared to be so” by the Royal Commission and the Mandatory Government, favoured examination of partition in principle but opposed immediate creation of two independent States, holding a prolongation of the mandate “apprenticeship” absolutely essential for both; the Council authorised Britain to prepare a partition plan. In 1938 it recognised the Mandate’s application was “partially suspended”. On the 1939 White Paper it held — without consensus — that the policy “was not in accordance with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power and the Council, the Commission had always placed upon the Palestine mandate”, a comment the study says further complicated the controversy; the outbreak of war in September 1939 precluded further League activity.

IX. The Ending of the Mandate (lines 1165-1335)

  • Palestine in 1939 and the war (lines 1165-1177): the Royal Commission had declared the Mandate unworkable, its partition proposals had proved equally unworkable, the White Paper postulated an independent unified Palestine with a Palestinian Arab majority in ten years, and the League had proved incapable of arresting deterioration; the Palestinians had sensed only violence would force recognition of their rights, the Zionists reacted with violence in turn, and Nazi crimes led Jews to look to the national home as refuge. Both the Jewish Agency and Palestinian Arab leaders declared support of the Allies; the Mufti, still in exile, eventually aligned himself with the Axis. Under the White Paper’s implementation, the February 1940 Land Transfer Regulations divided Palestine into three zones — transfers to non-”Palestinian Arabs” prohibited in the largest, Arab-to-Arab only in the second, unrestricted in the third — and of the 75,000 immigration certificates for five years only 51,000 had been utilised by 1944, after which legal immigration continued at 18,000 a year.
  • The Jewish response (lines 1179-1209): three features — illegal immigration, terrorism and turning to the United States. Illegal immigration predated the war (Hope Simpson recorded “some thousands each year”); over 20,000 illegal immigrants are estimated to have arrived between April 1939 and December 1943. An official document quoted describes the November 1940 deportation policy and the s.s. Patria, “scuttled at her moorings on 25 November, as a result of sabotage by Jewish sympathizers ashore, with the loss of 252 lives”, with later deportees sent to Mauritius and admitted in 1945 against the quota. An official British document quoted then traces the terrorism: Abraham Stern’s group in 1942, a Haganah arms-stealing conspiracy in 1943, the August 1944 ambush of the High Commissioner, the assassination of Lord Moyne in Cairo on 6 November 1944 by two Stern group members, Irgun destruction of Government property, and “On the 22nd July 1946, the campaign conducted by terrorist organizations reached a new climax with an explosion which wrecked a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem”, killing 86 public servants and five members of the public; by February 1947 British civilians were evacuated into security zones and “statutory martial law” imposed in specified areas. An official report’s conclusions are quoted holding the Haganah and Palmach to have engaged in planned sabotage under “the Jewish Resistance Movement” under the political control of prominent Jewish Agency members, with the Irgun and Stern Group co-operating with the Haganah High Command on certain operations and the “Kol Israel” station supporting them under the Agency’s general direction — notwithstanding the Agency’s formal disclaimers. Churchill, quoted, warned that if dreams for zionism ended “in the smoke of assassins’ pistols”, many would reconsider their position.
  • The Biltmore Programme and the turn to the United States (lines 1211-1239): in May 1942 the Jewish Agency Executive in New York made public the Biltmore Program: “unalterable rejection of the White Paper of May 1939”, the gates of Palestine opened, the Jewish Agency vested with control of immigration and upbuilding, and “Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world”. The Agency’s formal demands of May 1945 asked for an immediate decision to establish Palestine as a Jewish State, Agency authority to bring in as many Jews as necessary, an international loan for the transfer of the first million Jews, German reparations in kind including all German property in Palestine, and international facilities for exit and transit. President Truman responded to Zionist pressure in the United States with a letter to Attlee calling for an additional 100,000 homeless Jews in Europe to be admitted. The new Labour Government’s Foreign Secretary indicated Palestine would be placed under Trusteeship and a permanent solution prepared for submission to the United Nations.
  • The Anglo-American Committee (lines 1241-1289): the 12-member Committee (January-April 1946) is quoted on the Jewish view — the Jews convinced “Arab violence paid”, their self-discipline rewarded by the 1939 Conference and White Paper, Jewish terrorism and militarisation following, the Agency become “the political headquarters of a citizen army” — and on “a virtual Jewish non-territorial State” under the Agency and the Vaad Leumi, a “Jewish shadow government” that had ceased to co-operate in maintaining law and order. Its figures for the illegal armed forces, as stated by the military authorities: Haganah static force 40,000, field army 16,000, Palmach peace establishment 2,000 and war establishment some 6,000; Irgun strength 3,000 to 5,000; Stern Group 200 to 300 — the British Government commenting the estimates were “on the conservative side”. The Palestinian Arab view is summed by the Committee: Palestine a country “the Arabs have occupied for more than a thousand years”, the Declaration a giving away of what did not belong to Britain, the Mandate in conflict with the Covenant and a violation of self-determination, and “They wish to be masters in their own house.” The Committee rejected early independence, partitioned or unified, recommended a United Nations trusteeship pending the Mandate’s continuation, a declaration “that Palestine shall be neither a Jewish State nor an Arab State”, rescinding of the 1940 Land Transfer Regulations and the immediate issue of 100,000 certificates. Truman’s statement welcomed the 100,000 and the effective abrogation of the White Paper; Britain could not accept the recommendations immediately, and a two-province scheme approved by Britain was not approved by the United States.
  • The 1946-1947 London Conference and the referral (lines 1291-1321): the Arab League, formed in March 1945, presented the Palestinian case, the Palestinian Arabs being unable to present their own views. At the London Conference (September 1946-February 1947) the Arab countries proposed a unitary State with a permanent Arab majority, independent after a two-to-three-year transition, with full civil rights for Jewish citizens (ten years’ residence qualifying), safeguards for Jewish religious and cultural rights, Jewish Legislative Assembly seats proportionate to Jewish citizens but never exceeding one third, and Arab-majority consent required for immigration and land legislation. The Zionist Congress at Basle rejected the provincial autonomy scheme as “a travesty of Britain’s obligation under the Mandate”, rejected trusteeship and demanded a Jewish Commonwealth, open gates and Agency control of immigration. Britain’s own February 1947 proposals were rejected by both sides. The Foreign Secretary stated in the Commons on 18 February 1947: “There are in Palestine about 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews. For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish State. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine”, and that Britain had no power under the Mandate “to award the country either to the Arabs or to the Jews, or even to partition it between them”, so the problem would be submitted to the United Nations without recommending any particular solution (figures are the Foreign Secretary’s as quoted).
  • The transformation of Mandated Palestine (lines 1323-1335): population rose from the 750,000 of the 1922 census to almost 1,850,000 at the end of 1946; the Jewish population from 56,000 after the First World War to 84,000 in 1922 to 608,000 in 1946, constituting nearly a third by 1947, primarily urban (about 70 to 75 per cent in and around Jerusalem, Jaffa-Tel Aviv and Haifa); legal immigration accounted for over 376,000 and illegal immigration an estimated 65,000 (the study’s stated total is 440,000 — see Open questions). Jewish-held land rose from 650,000 dunums in 1920 to 1,625,000 dunums at the end of 1946, only 6.2 per cent of the total area and 12 per cent of the cultivable land, while displacing large numbers of Palestinian Arab peasants. The study closes with the Royal Commission’s 1937 quotation of an Arab exponent — relief of distress “provided that it was not at the cost of inflicting a corresponding distress on another people” — and Toynbee in 1968: Jewish immigration was “imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power”, and “The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.”

Notes and annexes (lines 1337-1889)

  • The Notes (lines 1337-1637) give the study’s apparatus in full: Cmd. papers and Public Record Office files for the British documents (the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, Cmd. 5957; the 1939 committee report, Cmd. 5974; the Royal Commission report, Cmd. 5479, cited for most of sections VI-VII; the Shaw report, Cmd. 3530; Hope Simpson, Cmd. 3686; the Passfield White Paper, Cmd. 3692; the 1938 and 1939 Statements of Policy, Cmd. 5893 and Cmd. 6019; the Partition Commission report, Cmd. 5854; the Anglo-American Committee report, Cmd. 6808; the statement on acts of violence, Cmd. 6873), League of Nations documents for the PMC sessions, the ICJ Reports for the South-West Africa opinion, and the books and memoirs the text quotes (Weizmann’s Trial and Error, Stein’s The Balfour Declaration, Jeffries’s Palestine: The Reality, Antonius’s The Arab Awakening, Cattan’s Palestine and International Law, Mallison’s appraisal in Abu Lughod’s The Transformation of Palestine, John and Hadawi’s The Palestine Diary, the Esco Foundation study and the RIIA’s Great Britain and Palestine). Note 7 carries the study’s discussion of the “Feisal Documents”, holding the Feisal-Weizmann agreement invalid because its Arab-independence condition was not fulfilled, on the authority of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (A/364).
  • The annexes (lines 1641-1889) reproduce: I, an extract of the Sykes–Picot agreement of 16 May 1916; II and III, maps of the “excluded areas” and of the Ottoman administrative districts (“Palestine and Syrua in 1915”, as printed); IV, the full text of Article 22 of the Covenant; V, the full text of the Mandate for Palestine of 24 July 1922 (articles 1-28, with the preamble), whose annexed footnote states the Mandate “came into force on 29 September 1922” (as printed — see Open questions); VI, a map captioned ““Palestine” claimed by World Zionist Organization, 1919”; VII, VIII and IX, the partition Plan “A” (1937), Plan “B” (1938) and Plan “C” maps, of which Plan “C” has no caption in this copy.

Key passages

  • “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” (lines 165-173, the Balfour Declaration as quoted in the study)
  • “Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory” (lines 377-383, Article 22 as quoted in the study)
  • “We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to create a Jewish Commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country” (lines 477-481, the General Syrian Congress resolution as quoted in the study)
  • “The Palestine Mandate is a real distortion of the mandatory system” (lines 623-631, Lord Islington as quoted within Henry Cattan’s argument in the study)
  • “Land available for settlement. It has emerged quite definitely that there is at the present time and with the present methods of Arab cultivation no margin of land available for agricultural settlement by new immigrants with the exception of such undeveloped land as the various Jewish agencies hold in reserve” (lines 793-799, the Hope Simpson report as quoted in the study)
  • “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country” (line 987, the Royal Commission as quoted in the study)
  • “Partition seems to offer at least a chance of ultimate peace. We can see none in any other plan” (line 1009, the Royal Commission as quoted in the study)
  • “His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State” (line 1055, the 1939 White Paper as quoted in the study)
  • “What people could be expected to agree wholeheartedly that its country should be used for the establishment of a national home for another people, even if it were thereby to reap appreciable material benefits?” (lines 1129-1135, the Permanent Mandates Commission’s Preliminary Opinion as quoted in the study)
  • “They wish to be masters in their own house” (lines 1273-1275, the Palestinian Arab view as summed by the Anglo-American Committee and quoted in the study)
  • “For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine” (line 1319, the Foreign Secretary’s statement of 18 February 1947 as quoted in the study)

Evidence the work relies on

  • British wartime and post-war documents as quoted in the study: the Husain-McMahon correspondence and the 1939 committee report on it; the Hogarth Message of 4 January 1918; the June 1918 declaration and the Anglo-French Declaration of 7 November 1918; a secret Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department memorandum excerpted in The Times on 17 April 1974; the Balfour Declaration and its Zionist and Foreign Office drafts; Balfour’s memorandum to Curzon of 11 August 1919 and his statement to Justice Brandeis; Curzon’s draft comments and Cabinet memorandum on the Mandate; the Churchill Memorandum of 1922; the Passfield White Paper of 1930 and the MacDonald letter of 13 February 1931.
  • Zionist statements and memoirs as quoted in the study: Herzl’s Der Judenstaat and Basle Congress remarks; Nordau and Ahad Ha’am; Herbert Samuel’s 1915 memorandum The Future of Palestine; Weizmann’s letters, his January 1917 Outline of Programme, and his later accounts of Sykes, the drafting, the Mandate battle and the MacDonald letter; the Zionist Organization’s 1919 draft resolutions and proposed borders; Jewish Agency, Keren Kayemet and Keren ha-Yesod land and labour provisions quoted through the Hope Simpson report.
  • Commissions and official reports as quoted in the study: the King-Crane Commission; the 1920 military commission and the Haycraft, Shaw, Hope Simpson and Royal Commission (Peel) reports; the Palestine Partition (Woodhead) Commission; the Permanent Mandates Commission’s session reports and its 1937 Preliminary Opinion; the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry report; the General Syrian Congress resolution.
  • Later British policy documents as quoted in the study: the July 1937 White Paper accepting partition; the 1938 Statement of Policy abandoning it (Cmd. 5893); the 1939 White Paper (Cmd. 6019) and the February 1940 Land Transfer Regulations as described; the official accounts of illegal immigration, the Patria and the terrorist campaign, including the 1946 statement relating to acts of violence (Cmd. 6873); the Foreign Secretary’s Commons statement of 18 February 1947.
  • Zionist and United States material as quoted in the study in part 2: the twentieth Zionist Congress resolutions of August 1937; the Biltmore Programme of May 1942; the Jewish Agency’s demands of May 1945; the Zionist Congress demands at Basle; President Truman’s letter to Attlee and his statement on the Anglo-American report.
  • Annexed primary texts reproduced in the study itself: the Sykes-Picot extract (annex I), Article 22 of the Covenant (annex IV) and the Mandate for Palestine in full (annex V), with maps at annexes II, III and VI-IX.
  • The study’s 147 footnotes (lines 1337-1637) cite the above by Cmd. number, Public Record Office file, League document number and page, and cite the demographic and land figures of section IX to A Survey of Palestine and its 1947 Supplement, Janet Abu Lughod’s demographic study and John Ruedy’s land study.
  • Named authorities cited in the study: Arnold J. Toynbee, Leonard Stein, J. C. Hurewitz, George Antonius, Anthony Nutting, Christopher Sykes, Jeffries, and the international-law writers W. T. Mallison and Henry Cattan, besides one unnamed authority for the Declaration’s legal impotence and one unnamed authority for its character as a contract. Legal authorities in part 2 add Pierre Pic, the International Court of Justice on South-West Africa and Quincy Wright on mandate sovereignty.

Analysis

  • The study is an argument built from its quoted evidence: it assembles British pledges to the Arabs, the Balfour Declaration’s negotiating history, Article 22 and the Mandate’s text, and successive commission findings, and reads them as showing a single line — a commitment made without the Palestinian people’s consent, given international form in a Mandate that subordinated their provisionally recognized independence to another people’s national home, and implemented over their resistance. Zionist aims are presented largely through Zionist leaders’ own words (Herzl, Nordau, Weizmann, Samuel) read as showing a Jewish State was the goal from the start, and British policy through British ministers’ own memoranda (Balfour, Curzon, Lloyd George, Churchill) read as showing awareness of the contradiction.
  • Its apparatus is now fully visible: 147 footnotes tie nearly every quotation to a Cmd. paper, a Public Record Office or Foreign Office file, a League document or a named book and page, and the annexes reproduce the two instruments its legal argument turns on — Article 22 and the Mandate — in full, so its central textual claims can be checked against the reproduced texts themselves.
  • Its limits, on the evidence of the whole: the study’s own framing is openly on the Palestinian side (the Introduction speaks of the Palestinian people’s “lost rights” and “inherent inalienable right of national self-determination”; section IX calls political Zionism’s aim “a settler state” and closes on Toynbee’s verdict of injustice), and its quotations are selected for that argument. The Palestinian case is presented largely as commissions, committees and Arab delegations state it in quoted reports, rather than from Palestinian documents quoted directly; Zionist policy after 1939 is presented through the Biltmore text, the Agency’s demands and British official accounts of violence. Figures quoted from different speakers and dates differ from one another (see Open questions), and the study does not reconcile them; its stated immigration total for the Mandate period does not match the sum of its own two components (see Open questions). The copy gives no author or publication date for the study itself.
  • Nothing in the study as read relies on material outside the documents, reports and authorities it quotes and cites; where the copy’s annexes are incomplete as text (Article 21’s ellipsis, the missing Plan “C” caption), that is recorded above and under Open questions.

People, organizations, places and events

Arthur James Balfour, Henry McMahon, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, Amir Faisal, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Mark Sykes, Herbert Samuel, Leonard Stein, Ahad Ha’am, Edwin Montagu, David Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Ronald Storrs, Henry Cattan, W. T. Mallison, Amin al-Hussaini, Charles Orde Wingate, Balfour Declaration, McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Hogarth Message, Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, Sykes–Picot agreement, World Zionist Organization, Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund, Muslim-Christian Association, General Syrian Congress, King-Crane Commission, San Remo Conference, Mandate for Palestine, League of Nations, Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, Shaw Commission, John Hope Simpson, Passfield White Paper, Arab Executive Committee, Arab Higher Committee, Haganah, Irgun, Peel Commission, Western Wall, Palestine Partition Commission, John Woodhead, 1939 London Round Table Conference, British White Paper of 1939, Permanent Mandates Commission, International Court of Justice, Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Arab League, Palmach, Stern Group, Vaad Leumi, Harry Truman, Abraham Stern, Arnold J. Toynbee, Land Transfer Regulations (1940), Patria, Jewish Brigade, London Conference (1946-1947)

Concepts

Jewish National Home, Self-determination, Mandate system, Jewish Labour Only, Hebrew Labour, Economic capacity, Partition, Zionism, Biltmore Program, Trusteeship

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • The study’s author, publisher and publication date are not stated anywhere in the copy, and the footnotes (now read in full) carry no citation of the study itself. Its latest cited work is Laqueur’s The Israel Arab Reader of 1976 (note 9); it also cites works of 1974 and 1973, quotes Toynbee writing in 1968 and a 17 April 1974 Times publication, and speaks of “the following 30 years” after 1948, placing its writing no earlier than the late 1970s; the web page version is dated 2021-01-22 in its page matter. The date is held open on that evidence only.
  • The 1930-1939 immigration table’s figures sum to 222,648 (computed from the table at lines 843-857), while the text states Palestine received “about 232,000 legal immigrants” in the 1930s — a difference of about 9,352, held unresolved. The table as printed gives a single column of figures with no Jews/non-Jews split.
  • The 1929 row of the 1920-1929 immigration table prints the non-Jewish figure as “1 31” in both the text copy and the original HTML (line 733); the intended figure cannot be recovered from this copy.
  • Population figures quoted from different speakers differ and are held side by side: Balfour’s memorandum gives 700,000 Arabs in Palestine (lines 497-505); Curzon’s draft comment gives 580,000 Arabs and “30,000 or is it 60,000 Jews” (lines 537-545); the study’s section V gives a total population officially estimated at about 750,000 in 1922 (lines 735-741). The study does not reconcile them.
  • Strike-phase casualties of the 1936 rebellion are given as an official count of 275 dead and 1,112 wounded and as the Royal Commission’s estimate of 1,000 deaths (lines 929-933), held side by side as the study gives them.
  • The study calls the June 1922 British policy statement the “Churchill Memorandum” and dates it 1 July 1922 (lines 655-659); the statement’s own ingested page is dated June 1922 (British Policy in Palestine — British White Paper of June 1922). The naming and dating difference is held, not resolved.
  • The study states the former German territories were allotted on 7 May 1919 “shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles” (lines 385-391); the same section dates the Covenant’s signing, as part of Versailles, to 28 June 1919. The chronology as printed is internally in tension and is held as printed.
  • Section II states the assurances to the Arabs followed “the defeat of the Axis Powers” (lines 99-107), in a First World War context; the wording is the study’s as printed.
  • Cattan’s second ground of invalidity is introduced as violating article 22 “in three respects”, but the quotation as printed gives respects (a) and (b) under that ground and then introduces the third ground, on the wartime pledges, inside the same quotation (lines 615-639); the structure is recorded as printed.
  • Footnote markers 1-147 are all accounted for in the Notes at lines 1337-1637, including the repeated in-text markers 43, 61 and 75, for each of which there is a single note, and the markers printed with trailing slashes. Note 7 cites the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine’s report as document A/364 (3 September 1947, p. 35), while note 65 cites a “Report of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (A/648)” at p. 21; the two document numbers for the Committee’s report are held side by side as printed.
  • Section IX states legal immigration accounted for “over 376,000” and illegal immigration an estimated “another 65,000”, “a total of 440,000” (line 1325); the two components sum to 441,000 (computed). The discrepancy is held, not resolved.
  • The study’s percentage wordings in section IX are held as printed: total population 750,000 (1922) to almost 1,850,000 (end of 1946) is “an increase of nearly 250 per cent” (the end figure is about 247 per cent of the start figure, computed); the Jewish population 84,000 (1922) to 608,000 (1946) is “an increase of about 725 per cent” (608,000 is about 724 per cent of 84,000, computed); Jewish-held land 650,000 dunums (1920) to 1,625,000 dunums (end of 1946) is “an increase of about 250 per cent” (1,625,000 is exactly 250 per cent of 650,000, computed). In each case the stated percentage matches the end-to-start ratio rather than the increase over the start.
  • Population figures across part 2 are held side by side by date and speaker: the Royal Commission as quoted gives about 1,000,000 Arabs and some 400,000 Jews (line 987, for 1937); the Foreign Secretary on 18 February 1947 gives about 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews (line 1319); the study’s own transformation passage gives a total of almost 1,850,000 at the end of 1946 with a Jewish population of 608,000 in 1946 (line 1325).
  • The MacDonald White Paper excerpts as quoted print “The proposal of participation recommended by the Royal Commission” (line 1051), where the context — the Royal Commission’s partition proposal, and the finding that self-supporting independent Arab and Jewish States within Palestine had been found impracticable — reads as partition. “participation” is recorded as printed (reading uncertain), not corrected.
  • Note 106 (line 1555) cites the Palestine Partition Commission Report, Cmd. 5854 (1938), for the July 1937 White Paper passage quoted at lines 1013-1015. The document cited is the 1938 Partition Commission report, not the July 1937 White Paper, and its date is 1938, not 1937; the mismatch of document and date is held as printed.
  • Annex V’s footnote states “The Palestine mandate came into force on 29 September 1922” (line 1861), while section IV states the Mandate was approved on 24 July 1922 and in formal effect in September 1923. The years as printed conflict and are held, not resolved.
  • Annex V reproduces Article 21 of the Mandate only in opening form, ending with an ellipsis as printed (line 1827), so the rules that follow in the original instrument are not in this copy; Annex IX, the Plan “C” map, has a heading and no caption or source line in this copy (lines 1887-1889), unlike Annexes VII and VIII.

Coverage

lines 1-1939 of 1939, read in full

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