The Zionist Mandate for Palestine

During the First World War, the British came to occupy the territory of Palestine, having conquered it from the defeated Ottoman Empire.

On November 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to financier and representative of the Zionist movement Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild that contained a declaration approved by the British Cabinet. The declaration read:

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.

This statement, which became known as “The Balfour Declaration”, was cited by the Zionist leadership as having legitimized their aspirations, which had been reiterated by Lord Rothschild just a few months prior, on July 18, in a memorandum that expressed “the principle that Palestine should be re-constituted as the National Home for the Jewish People.”

Any opinion the Arabs might have had about their homeland being so “re-constituted” was of no consideration.[33]

The purpose of the declaration was to secure Jewish support for the war effort. (Actually, it was Wilson persistent demand from England to support such a declaration in return for USA entering the war) 

As Prime Minister Lloyd George noted, it was for “propaganda reasons”.

The aforementioned 1937 British commission headed up by Lord William Peel explained that “it was believed that Jewish sympathy or the reverse would make a substantial difference one way or the other to the Allied cause. In particular Jewish sympathy would confirm the support of American Jewry . . . .”

The Zionist leaders promised that, “if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause.”[34]

“The fact that the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917 in order to enlist Jewish support for the Allies and the fact that this support was forthcoming”, the Peel Commission further remarked, “are not sufficiently appreciated in Palestine.”[35]

The wording “national home for the Jewish people” was chosen because it was not politically feasible for the British government to “commit itself to the establishment of a Jewish State” in the place of Palestine; the best it could do was to facilitate immigration and deny self-determination to the people of Palestine—the only one of the formerly mandated territories whose independence was not recognized—until such time as the Jews had managed to establish a majority.[36]

The problem with this plan was that the Arabs recognized that the goal of the Zionist project “would ultimately tend to their political and economic subjection. The Arabs were aware that this prospect was definitely envisaged not only by the Zionists of the ‘extremist’ kind, . . . but also by more responsible representatives of Zionism, such as Dr. Eder, the acting chairman of the Zionist Commission . . . .”[37]

The Peel Commission further acknowledged that “the forcible conversion of Palestine into a Jewish State against the will of the Arabs . . . would mean that national self-determination had been withheld when the Arabs were a majority in Palestine and only conceded when the Jews were a majority.

It would mean that the Arabs had been denied the opportunity of standing by themselves: that they had, in fact, after an interval of conflict, been bartered about from Turkish sovereignty to Jewish sovereignty.”[38]

In an effort to allay Arab apprehension and garner their support, as well, for the war effort, Western governments promised the people of the region their independence.

In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson outlined his “fourteen points”, promising respect for the right to self-determination and independence for the people living under Turkish rule:

“The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.”[39]

On November 7, 1918, the British and French governments issued a joint declaration stating that “The object aimed at by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the war let loose by German ambition is the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of National Governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.”[40]

The British were not incognizant of the self-contradictory nature of its promises. In a memorandum to British Foreign Secretary George Curzon on August 11, 1919, Lord Balfour acknowledged the “flagrant” contradictions of British policy, but dismissed it as a matter of no concern:

For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . . The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, and far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

No declaration had been made by the British with regard to the inhabitants of Palestine, Balfour added, that “they have not always intended to violate”.[41]

As the Peel Commission later noted, “It was never doubted that the experiment”—meaning the Zionist project—“would have to be controlled by one of the Great Powers; and to that end it was agreed . . . that Palestine should have its place in the new Mandate System . . . .”[42]

The League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine was intended to give the color of law to Britain’s occupation and the policies enacted under its administration. It was not only favorable toward their goals, but was effectively written by the Zionists themselves. As the Peel Commission pointed out:

On the 3rd February the Zionist Organisation presented a draft resolution embodying its scheme for the execution of the Balfour Declaration. On the 27th of February its leaders appeared before the Supreme Council and explained the scheme.

A more detailed plan, dated the 28th of March, was drafted by Mr. Felix Frankfurter, an eminent American Zionist. From these and other documents and records it is clear that the Zionist project had already in those early days assumed something like the shape of the Mandate as we know it.[43]

Not surprisingly, given the Zionists’ role in drafting the Mandate, it included the terms of the Balfour Declaration, charging the British with enacting policies to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home”—including the facilitation of Jewish immigration—and requiring the British administration to consult and cooperate with the Jewish Agency toward that end.

It contained no provisions assuring the Arab majority that they would have a say in the administration of their homeland by the foreign occupying power and its European colonialist partners.[44]