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. |
