Re: Launch of Azimute-- Leaving Us

The British Mandate in Palestine

By the early years of the 20th century, Palestine
was becoming a trouble spot of competing
territorial claims and political interests. The
Ottoman Empire was weakening, and European
powers were entrenching their grip on areas in the
eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine.
During 1915-16, as World War I was underway, the
British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir
Henry McMahon, secretly corresponded with Husayn
ibn `Ali, the patriarch of the Hashemite
family and Ottoman governor of Mecca and Medina.
McMahon convinced Husayn to lead
an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which
was aligned with Germany against Britain
and France in the war. McMahon promised that if the
Arabs supported Britain in the war, the
British government would support the establishment
of an independent Arab state under
Hashemite rule in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman
Empire, including Palestine. The Arab
revolt, led by T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of
Arabia") and Husayn's son Faysal, was
successful in defeating the Ottomans, and Britain
took control over much of this area during
World War I.

But Britain made other promises during the
war that conflicted with the Husayn-McMahon
understandings. In 1917, the British Foreign
Minister, Lord Arthur Balfour, issued a
declaration (the Balfour Declaration)
announcing his government's support for the
establishment of "a Jewish national home in
Palestine." A third promise, in the form of a
secret agreement, was a deal that Britain and
France struck between themselves to carve up
the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire
and divide control of the region.

After the war, Britain and France convinced
the new League of Nations (precursor to the United
Nations), in which they were the
dominant powers, to grant them quasi-colonial
authority over former Ottoman territories. The
British and French regimes were known as mandates.
France obtained a mandate over Syria,
carving out Lebanon as a separate state with a
(slight) Christian majority. Britain obtained a
mandate over the areas which now comprise Israel,
the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and
Jordan.

In 1921, the British divided this region in two:
east of the Jordan River became the Emirate of
Transjordan, to be ruled by Faysal's brother
'Abdullah, and west of the Jordan River became
the Palestine Mandate. This was the first time in
modern history that Palestine became a
unified political entity.

Throughout the region, Arabs were angered
by Britain's failure to fulfill its promise to
create
an independent Arab state, and many opposed
British and French control as a violation of
their right to self-determination. In Palestine,
the situation was more complicated because of
the British promise to support the creation of a
Jewish national home. The rising tide of
European Jewish immigration, land purchases
and settlement in Palestine generated
increasing resistance by Palestinian Arab
peasants, journalists and political figures. They
feared that this would lead eventually to the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Palestinian Arabs opposed the British Mandate
because it thwarted their aspirations for
self-rule, and opposed massive Jewish immigration
because it threatened their position in the
country.

In 1920 and 1921, clashes broke out between Arabs
and Jews in which roughly equal
numbers of both groups were killed. In the 1920s,
when the Jewish National Fund purchased
large tracts of land from absentee Arab landowners,
the Arabs living in these areas were
evicted. These displacements led to increasing
tensions and violent confrontations between
Jewish settlers and Arab peasant tenants.

In 1928, Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem began to
clash over their respective communal
religious rights at the Wailing Wall (al-Buraq in
the Muslim tradition). The Wailing Wall, the
sole remnant of the second Jewish Temple, is one of
the holiest sites for the Jewish people.
But this site is also holy to Muslims, since the
Wailing Wall is adjacent to the Temple Mount
(the Noble Sanctuary in the Muslim tradition). On
the mount is the site of the al-Aqsa
Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, believed to mark
the spot from which the Prophet
Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse.

On August 15, 1929, members of the Betar youth
movement (a pre-state organization of the
Revisionist Zionists -- click here for more info)
demonstrated and raised a Zionist flag over
the Wailing Wall. Fearing that the Noble Sanctuary
was in danger, Arabs responded by
attacking Jews throughout the country. During the
clashes, sixty-four Jews were killed in
Hebron. Their Muslim neighbors saved others. The
Jewish community of Hebron ceased to
exist when its surviving members left for
Jerusalem. During a week of communal violence,
133 Jews and 115 Arabs were killed and many
wounded.

European Jewish immigration to Palestine increased
dramatically after Hitler's rise to power in
1933, leading to new land purchases and Jewish
settlements. Palestinian resistance to British
control and Zionist settlement climaxed with the
Arab revolt of 1936-39, which Britain
suppressed with the help of Zionist militias and
the complicity of neighboring Arab regimes.
After crushing the Arab revolt, the British
reconsidered their governing policies in an effort to
maintain order in an increasingly tense
environment. They issued a White Paper (a statement
of political policy) limiting future Jewish
immigration and land purchases. The Zionists
regarded this as a betrayal of the Balfour
Declaration and a particularly egregious act in light
of the desperate situation of the Jews in Europe,
who were facing extermination. The 1939
White Paper marked the end of the British-Zionist
alliance. At the same time, the defeat of the
Arab revolt and the exile of the Palestinian
political leadership meant that the Palestinian
Arabs were politically disorganized during the
crucial decade in which the future of Palestine
was decided.

Page 4 | The United Nations
Partition Plan






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