Mandate for Palestine

The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan – which had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries – following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France’s concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously agreed “international administration” of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the Franco-Syrian War. Civil administration began in Palestine and Transjordan in July 1920 and April 1921, respectively, and the mandate was in force from 29 September 1923 to 15 May 1948 and to 25 May 1946 respectively.

The mandate document was based on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of 28 June 1919 and the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers ’ San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920. The objective of the mandates over former territories of Ottoman Empire was to provide “administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone”. The border between Palestine and Transjordan was agreed in the final mandate document, and the approximate northern border with the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was agreed in the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement of 23 December 1920.

In Palestine, the Mandate required Britain to put into effect the Balfour Declaration ‘s “national home for the Jewish people” alongside the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population; this requirement and others, however, would not apply to the separate Arab emirate to be established in Transjordan. The British controlled Palestine for almost three decades, overseeing a succession of protests, riots and revolts between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities. During the Mandate, the area saw the rise of two nationalist movements: the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs. Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine ultimately produced the 1936–1939 Arab revolt and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was passed on 29 November 1947; this envisaged the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states operating under economic union, and with Jerusalem transferred to UN trusteeship. Two weeks later, British Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948. On the last day of the Mandate, the Jewish community there issued the Israeli Declaration of Independence. After the failure of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, the 1947–1949 Palestine war ended with Mandatory Palestine divided among Israel, the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and the Egyptian All-Palestine Protectorate in the Gaza Strip.

Transjordan was added to the mandate following the Cairo Conference of March 1921, at which it was agreed that Abdullah bin Hussein would administer the territory under the auspices of the Palestine Mandate. Since the end of the war it had been administered from Damascus by a joint Arab-British military administration headed by Abdullah’s younger brother Faisal, and then became a no man’s land after the French defeated Faisal’s army in July 1920 and the British initially chose to avoid a definite connection with Palestine. The addition of Transjordan was given legal form on 21 March 1921, when the British incorporated Article 25 into the Palestine Mandate. Article 25 was implemented via the 16 September 1922 Transjordan memorandum, which established a separate “Administration of Trans-Jordan” for the application of the Mandate under the general supervision of Great Britain. In April 1923, five months before the mandate came into force, Britain announced its intention to recognise an “independent Government” in Transjordan; this autonomy increased further under a 20 February 1928 treaty, and the state became fully independent with the Treaty of London of 22 March 1946.

Background

Palestine and Transjordan on a pre-World War I British government ethnographic map

Immediately following their declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, the British War Cabinet began to consider the future of Palestine ¹ (at the time, an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population).² ³ By late 1917, in the lead-up to the Balfour Declaration, the wider war had reached a stalemate. Two of Britain’s allies were not fully engaged, the United States had yet to suffer a casualty, and the Russians were in the midst of the October Revolution.⁴ ⁵ A stalemate in southern Palestine was broken by the Battle of Beersheba on 31 October 1917. The release of the Balfour Declaration was authorised by 31 October; the preceding Cabinet discussion had mentioned perceived propaganda benefits amongst the worldwide Jewish community for the Allied war effort.⁶ ⁷

The British government issued the Declaration, a public statement announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, on 2 November 1917. The opening words of the declaration represented the first public expression of support for Zionism by a major political power.⁸ The term “national home” had no precedent in international law,⁵ and was intentionally vague about whether a Jewish state was contemplated.⁵ The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified,⁹ and the British government later confirmed that the words “in Palestine” meant that the Jewish national home was not intended to cover all of Palestine.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² The second half of the declaration was added to satisfy opponents of the policy, who said that it would otherwise prejudice the position of the local population of Palestine and encourage antisemitism worldwide by (according to the presidents of the Conjoint Committee, David L. Alexander and Claude Montefiore in a letter to the Times) “stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands”.¹³ The declaration called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs, who composed the vast majority of the local population, and the rights of Jewish communities in any other country.¹⁴

The Balfour Declaration was subsequently incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine to put the declaration into effect.¹⁵ Unlike the declaration itself, the Mandate was legally binding on the British government.¹⁵

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British government map illustrating territorial negotiations with the Sharif of Mecca

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Map signed by Sykes and Picot, enclosed in the official Anglo-French correspondence

Between July 1915 and March 1916, a series of ten letters were exchanged between Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the head of the Hashemite family that had ruled the Hejaz as vassals for almost a millennium, and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt.¹⁶ In the letters – particularly that of 24 October 1915 – the British government agreed to recognise Arab independence after the war in exchange for the Sharif of Mecca launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.¹⁷ ¹⁸ Whilst there was some military value in the Arab manpower and local knowledge alongside the British Army, the primary reason for the arrangement was to counteract the Ottoman declaration of jihad (“holy war”) against the Allies, and to maintain the support of the 70 million Muslims in British India (particularly those in the Indian Army that had been deployed in all major theatres of the wider war).¹⁹

The area of Arab independence was defined as “in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca ”, with the exclusion of a coastal area lying to the west of “the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo ”; conflicting interpretations of this description caused great controversy in subsequent years. A particular dispute, which continues to the present,²⁰ was whether Palestine was part of the coastal exclusion.²⁰ ²¹ At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George told his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau and the other allies that the McMahon-Hussein correspondence was a treaty obligation.²² ²³

Around the same time, another secret treaty was negotiated between the United Kingdom and France (with assent by the Russian Empire and Italy) to define their mutually-agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. The primary negotiations leading to the agreement occurred between 23 November 1915 and 3 January 1916; on 3 January the British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot initialled an agreed memorandum. The agreement was ratified by their respective governments on 9 and 16 May 1916. The agreement allocated to Britain control of present-day southern Israel and Palestine, Jordan and southern Iraq, and an additional small area including the ports of Haifa and Acre to allow access to the Mediterranean.²⁴ The Palestine region, with smaller boundaries than the later Mandatory Palestine, was to fall under an “international administration”. The agreement was initially used as the basis for the 1918 Anglo–French Modus Vivendi, which provided a framework for the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) in the Levant.²⁵

The mandate system was established as a “sacred trust of civilisation” under Article 22 of Part I (the Covenant of the League of Nations) of the Treaty of Versailles.

The mandate system was created in the wake of World War I as a compromise between Woodrow Wilson ‘s ideal of self-determination, set out in his Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, and the European powers’ desire for gains for their empires.²⁶ It was established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, entered into on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and came into force on 10 January 1920 with the rest of the treaty. Article 22 was written two months before the signing of the peace treaty, before it was agreed exactly which communities, peoples, or territories would be covered by the three types of mandate set out in sub-paragraphs 4, 5, and 6 – Class A “formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire”, Class B “of Central Africa” and Class C “South-West Africa and certain of the South Pacific Islands”. The treaty was signed and the peace conference adjourned before a formal decision was made.²⁷

Two governing principles formed the core of the mandate system: non-annexation of the territory and its administration as a “sacred trust of civilisation” to develop the territory for the benefit of its native people.²⁸ The mandate system differed fundamentally from the protectorate system which preceded it, in that the mandatory power’s obligations to the inhabitants of the territory were supervised by a third party: the League of Nations.²⁹ The mandates were to act as legal instruments containing the internationally agreed-upon terms for administering certain post-World War I territories on behalf of the League of Nations. These were of the nature of a treaty and a constitution, which contained minority-rights clauses that provided for the rights of petition and adjudication by the World Court.³⁰

The process of establishing the mandates consisted of two phases: the formal removal of sovereignty of the state previously controlling the territory, followed by the transfer of mandatory powers to individual states among the Allied powers. According to the Council of the League of Nations meeting of August 1920, “draft mandates adopted by the Allied and Associated Powers would not be definitive until they had been considered and approved by the League… the legal title held by the mandatory Power must be a double one: one conferred by the Principal Powers and the other conferred by the League of Nations.” ³¹ Three steps were required to establish a mandate: “(1) The Principal Allied and Associated Powers confer a mandate on one of their number or on a third power; (2) the principal powers officially notify the council of the League of Nations that a certain power has been appointed mandatory for such a certain defined territory; and (3) the council of the League of Nations takes official cognisance of the appointment of the mandatory power and informs the latter that it [the council] considers it as invested with the mandate, and at the same time notifies it of the terms of the mandate, after ascertaining whether they are in conformance with the provisions of the covenant.” ³² ³³

Palestine

January 1919 Foreign Office memorandum setting out the borders of Palestine for the Eastern Committee of the British War Cabinet before the Paris Peace Conference

Discussions about the assignment of the region’s control began immediately after the war ended and continued at the Paris Peace Conference and the February 1920 Conference of London, and the assignment was made at the April 1920 San Remo conference. The Allied Supreme Council granted the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia to Britain, and those for Syria and Lebanon to France.³⁴

In anticipation of the Peace Conference, the British devised a ” Sharifian Solution ” to “[make] straight all the tangle” of their various wartime commitments. This proposed that three sons of Sharif Hussein – who had since become King of the Hejaz, and his sons emirs (princes) – would be installed as kings of newly created countries across the region agreed between McMahon and Hussein in 1915. The Hashemite delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, led by Hussein’s third son Emir Faisal, had been invited by the British to represent the Arabs at the conference; they had wanted Palestine to be part of the proposed Arab state, and later modified this request to an Arab state under a British mandate.³⁵ The delegation made two initial statements to the peace conference. The 1 January 1919 memorandum referred to the goal of “unit[ing] the Arabs eventually into one nation”, defining the Arab regions as “from a line Alexandretta – Persia southward to the Indian Ocean”. The 29 January memorandum ³⁶ stipulated that “from the line Alexandretta – Diarbekr southward to the Indian Ocean” (with the boundaries of any new states) were “matters for arrangement between us, after the wishes of their respective inhabitants have been ascertained”, in a reference to Woodrow Wilson ‘s policy of self-determination.³⁶ In his 6 February 1919 presentation to the Paris Peace Conference, Faisal (speaking on behalf of King Hussein) asked for Arab independence or at least the right to choose the mandatory.³⁷ ³⁸ The Hashemites had fought with the British during the war, and received an annual subsidy from Britain; according to the confidential appendix to the August 1919 King-Crane Commission report, “the French resent the payment by the English to the Emir Faisal of a large monthly subsidy, which they claim covers a multitude of bribes, and enables the British to stand off and show clean hands while Arab agents do dirty work in their interest.” ³⁹ ⁴⁰

The World Zionist Organization delegation to the Peace Conference – led by Chaim Weizmann, who had been the driving force behind the Balfour Declaration – also asked for a British mandate, asserting the “historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine”.⁴¹ The confidential appendix to the King-Crane Commission report noted that “The Jews are distinctly for Britain as mandatory power, because of the Balfour declaration.” ³⁹ ⁴⁰ The Zionists met with Faisal two weeks before the start of the conference in order to resolve their differences; the resulting Faisal–Weizmann Agreement was signed on 3 January 1919. Together with letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal’s name to Felix Frankfurter in March 1919, the agreement was used by the Zionist delegation to argue that their plans for Palestine had prior Arab approval;⁴² however, the Zionists omitted Faisal’s handwritten caveat that the agreement was conditional on Palestine being within the area of Arab independence.⁴³ ⁴²

The French privately ceded Palestine and Mosul to the British in a December 1918 amendment to the Sykes–Picot Agreement; the amendment was finalised at a meeting in Deauville in September 1919.⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ Matters were confirmed at the San Remo conference, which formally assigned the mandate for Palestine to the United Kingdom under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Although France required the continuation of its religious protectorate in Palestine, Italy and Great Britain opposed it. France lost the religious protectorate but, thanks to the Holy See, continued to enjoy liturgical honors in Mandatory Palestine until 1924 (when the honours were abolished).⁴⁶ As Weizmann reported to his WZO colleagues in London in May 1920,⁴⁷ the boundaries of the mandated territories were unspecified at San Remo and would “be determined by the Principal Allied Powers” at a later stage.³⁴ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

The original Sharifian Solution, illustrated in a map presented by T. E. Lawrence to the Eastern Committee of the War Cabinet in November 1918, 110 was superseded by the policy agreed at the March 1921 Cairo Conference.

Under the terms of the 1915 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence and the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, Transjordan was intended to become part of an Arab state or a confederation of Arab states. British forces retreated in spring 1918 from Transjordan after their first and second attacks on the territory,⁵⁰ indicating their political ideas about its future; they had intended the area to become part of an Arab Syrian state.⁵¹ The British subsequently defeated the Ottoman forces in Transjordan in late September 1918, just a few weeks before the Ottoman Empire’s overall surrender.⁵²

Transjordan was not mentioned during the 1920 discussions at San Remo, at which the Mandate for Palestine was awarded.³⁴ ⁴⁸ Britain and France agreed that the eastern border of Palestine would be the Jordan river as laid out in the Sykes–Picot Agreement.⁵³ ⁵⁴ That year, two principles emerged from the British government. The first was that the Palestine government would not extend east of the Jordan; the second was the government’s chosen – albeit disputed – interpretation of the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, which proposed that Transjordan be included in the area of “Arab independence” (excluding Palestine).⁵⁵ ⁵⁶

Herbert Samuel ‘s proclamation in Salt on 21 August 1920 at the courtyard of the Assumption of Our Lady Catholic Church. Samuel was admonished a few days later by Curzon, who said: “There must be no question of setting up any British administration in that area”. 117 118 119

Regarding Faisal’s Arab Kingdom of Syria, the French removed Hashim al-Atassi ‘s newly proclaimed nationalist government and expelled King Faisal from Syria after the 23 July 1920 Battle of Maysalun. The French formed a new Damascus state after the battle, and refrained from extending their rule into the southern part of Faisal’s domain; Transjordan became for a time a no-man’s land ⁵⁷ or, as Samuel put it, “politically derelict”.⁵⁸ ⁵⁹

There have been several complaints here that the political situation has not been dealt with with sufficient clarity, that the Mandate and boundaries questions were not mentioned. The Mandate is published and can now not be altered with one exception, which l will now explain. Transjordania, which in the first draft of the Mandate lay outside the scope of the Mandate, is now included. Article 25 of the Mandate which now lies before the League of Nations, contains this provision. Therewith, Mr. de Lieme, the question of the eastern boundaries is answered. The question will be still better answered when Cisjordania is so full that it overflows to Transjordania. The northern boundary is still unsatisfactory. We have made all representations, we have brought all the arguments to bear and the British Government has done everything in this connection. We have not received what we sought, and I regret to have to tell you this. The only thing we received was the concession to be allowed a voice in the discussion on the water rights. And now just a week ago, when the Administration in Palestine, under pressure from a few soldiers, wished to alter our boundaries we protested most strongly and confirmed the boundary along the lines that were agreed upon. That is not satisfactory, but with the forces at our disposal nothing else could be attained. So it is with the Mandate.
—Speech by World Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann ⁶⁰ ⁶¹
The Congress notes with satisfaction that Transjordania, which the Jewish people has always regarded as an integral part of Erez Israel, is to be again incorporated into the mandated territory of Palestine. The Congress deplores that the question of the northern boundary of Erez Israel, despite all the efforts of the Executive, has not yet received a satisfactory solution.
—Congress Declaration, III. Boundaries.⁶²

Excerpts relating to Transjordan’s inclusion in the Mandate from the 1–14 September 1921 12th Zionist Congress, the first following the Balfour Declaration. Article 25 was presented as a Zionist victory, despite its intention to exclude Transjordan from the Jewish National Home, which was not then public.

After the French occupation, the British suddenly wanted to know “what is the ‘Syria’ for which the French received a mandate at San Remo?” and “does it include Transjordania?“.⁶³ British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon ultimately decided that it did not; Transjordan would remain independent, but in a close relationship with Palestine.⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ On 6 August 1920, Curzon wrote to newly appointed High Commissioner Herbert Samuel about Transjordan: “I suggest that you should let it be known forthwith that in the area south of the Sykes–Picot line, we will not admit French authority and that our policy for this area to be independent but in closest relations with Palestine.” ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ Samuel replied to Curzon, “After the fall of Damascus a fortnight ago… Sheiks and tribes east of Jordan utterly dissatisfied with Shareefian Government most unlikely would accept revival”,⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ and asked to put parts of Transjordan directly under his administrative control.⁷⁰ Two weeks later, on 21 August, Samuel visited Transjordan without authorisation from London;⁷¹ ⁷² at a meeting with 600 leaders in Salt, he announced the independence of the area from Damascus and its absorption into the mandate (proposing to quadruple the area under his control by tacit capitulation). Samuel assured his audience that Transjordan would not be merged with Palestine.⁷³ ⁷⁴ Curzon was in the process of reducing British military expenditures, and was unwilling to commit significant resources to an area considered of marginal strategic value.⁷⁵ He immediately repudiated Samuel’s action, and sent (via the Foreign Office) a reiteration of his instructions to minimize the scope of British involvement in the area: “There must be no question of setting up any British administration in that area”.⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ At the end of September 1920, Curzon instructed an Assistant Secretary at the Foreign Office, Robert Vansittart, to leave the eastern boundary of Palestine undefined and avoid “any definite connection” between Transjordan and Palestine to leave the way open for an Arab government in Transjordan.⁷⁸ ⁷⁹ Curzon subsequently wrote in February 1921, “I am very concerned about Transjordania… Sir H.Samuel wants it as an annex of Palestine and an outlet for the Jews. Here I am against him.” ⁸⁰

Abdullah, the brother of recently deposed King Faisal, marched into Ma’an at the head of an army of from 300 to 2,000 men on 21 November 1920.⁸¹ ⁸² Between then and the end of March 1921, Abdullah’s army occupied all of Transjordan with some local support and no British opposition.⁸³

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12 March 1921 British memorandum explaining the situation of Transjordan: “His Majesty’s Government have been entrusted with the Mandate for ‘Palestine’. If they wish to assert their claim to Trans-Jordan and to avoid raising with other Powers the legal status of that area, they can only do so by proceeding upon the assumption that Trans-Jordan forms part of the area covered by the Palestine Mandate. In default of this assumption Trans-Jordan would be left, under article 132 of the Treaty of Sèvres, to the disposal of the principal Allied Powers.” ⁸⁴ From 12 to 25 March 1921, the inclusion of Transjordan in the mandate was formulated by the British government.⁸⁵

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25 March 1921 proposal, approved a week later, to include Transjordan via Article 25: “On the assumption that… provision is made in some way in final political arrangements as regards Trans-Jordania for its inclusion within the boundaries of Palestine as eventually fixed, but under a form of administration different from that of Palestine, however undesirable it may be for His Majesty’s Government themselves to propose alterations of the mandates at this stage, they were inclined to view that when the “A” mandates come to be considered by the Council of the League it would be wise in this case to propose to that body the insertion… after article 24 of the Palestine mandate…” ⁸⁶

The Cairo Conference was convened on 12 March 1921 by Winston Churchill, then Britain’s Colonial Secretary, and lasted until 30 March. It was intended to endorse an arrangement whereby Transjordan would be added to the Palestine mandate, with Abdullah as the emir under the authority of the High Commissioner, and with the condition that the Jewish National Home provisions of the Palestine mandate would not apply there.⁸⁷ On the first day of the conference, the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office set out the situation of Transjordan in a memorandum. On 21 March 1921, the Foreign and Colonial Office legal advisers decided to introduce Article 25 into the Palestine Mandate to allow for the addition of Transjordan.⁸⁸

Drafting

The intended mandatory powers were required to submit written statements to the League of Nations during the Paris Peace Conference proposing the rules of administration in the mandated areas.⁸⁹ Drafting of the Palestine mandate began well before it was formally awarded at San Remo in April 1920, since it was evident after the end of the war that Britain was the favored power in the region.⁹⁰ ⁹¹ The mandate had a number of drafts: the February 1919 Zionist proposals to the peace conference; a December 1919 compromise draft between the British and the Zionists; a June 1920 draft after Curzon’s “watering down”, and the December 1920 draft submitted to the League of Nations for comment.⁹² ⁹³

In the spring of 1919 the experts of the British Delegation of the Peace Conference in Paris opened informal discussions with representatives of the Zionist Organisation on the draft of a Mandate for Palestine. In the drafting and discussion in Paris Dr. Weizmann and Mr. Sokolow received valuable aid from the American Zionist Delegation. Towards the end of 1919 the British Delegation returned to London and as during the protracted negotiations Dr. Weizmann was often unavoidably absent in Palestine, and Mr. Sokolow in Paris, the work was carried on for some time by a temporary political committee, of which the Right Hon. Sir Herbert (then Mr.) Samuel, Dr. Jacobson, Dr. Feiwel, Mr. Sacher (of the Manchester Guardian), Mr. Landman, and Mr. Ben Cohen were the first members. The later stage of the drafting negotiations were carried on by a sub-comimittee consisting of Messrs. Sacher, Stein and Ben Cohen, formed specially for the Mandate and frontier questions. Drafts for the Mandate were prepared for the Zionist leaders by Professor Frankfurter and Mr. Gans. After consultation with various members of the Actions Committee and Palestinian [Jewish] delegates then in Paris, these proposals were handed to the British Delegation and were largely embodied in the first tentative draft, dated July 15th, 1919.
—Political Report, 2. The Palestine Mandate Negotiations, 1919–1921.⁹⁴ ⁹⁵ ⁹⁶

Excerpts relating to the creation of the first full draft of the Mandate for Palestine, from a September 1921 Zionist Organization report of the 12th Zionist Congress, the first following the Balfour Declaration.

The February 1919 Zionist Proposal to the Peace Conference was not discussed at the time, since the Allies’ discussions were focused elsewhere. It was not until July 1919 that direct negotiations began between the British Foreign Office and the Zionists, after the production of a full draft mandate by the British. The British draft contained 29 articles, compared to the Zionist proposal’s five articles.⁹⁷ However, the Zionist Organisation Report stated that a draft was presented by the Zionist Organization to the British on 15 July 1919.⁹⁸

Balfour authorised diplomatic secretary Eric Forbes Adam to begin negotiations with the Zionist Organization. On the Zionist side, the drafting was led by Ben Cohen on behalf of Weizmann, Felix Frankfurter and other Zionist leaders.⁹⁹ ¹⁰⁰ By December 1919, they had negotiated a “compromise” draft.⁹⁹

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The draft mandate, published at Cmd. 1176, was submitted by Lord Balfour on 7 December 1920 to the Secretariat General of the League of Nations for the approval of the Council of the League of Nations. The changes between December 1920 and July 1922 were primarily focused on protection of the Holy Places (Articles 14 and 21) and the addition of Transjordan (Article 25).

Although Curzon took over from Balfour in October, he did not play an active role in the drafting until mid-March.¹⁰¹ Israeli historian Dvorah Barzilay-Yegar notes that he was sent a copy of the December draft and commented, ”… the Arabs are rather forgotten…“. When Curzon received the draft of 15 March 1920, he was “far more critical” ¹⁰² and objected to ”… formulations that would imply recognition of any legal rights…” (for example, that the British government would be “responsible for placing Palestine under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of a Jewish national home and the development of a self-governing Commonwealth…”).¹⁰³ Curzon insisted on revisions until the 10 June draft removed his objections;¹⁰⁴ the paragraph recognising the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine was removed from the preamble, and “self-governing commonwealth” was replaced by “self-governing institutions”. “The recognition of the establishment of the Jewish National Home as the guiding principle in the execution of the Mandate” was omitted.¹⁰⁵

After strenuous objection to the proposed changes, the statement concerning the historical connections of the Jews with Palestine was re-incorporated into the Mandate in December 1920.⁹⁸ The draft was submitted to the League of Nations on 7 December 1920,¹⁰⁵ and was published in the Times on 3 February 1921.¹⁰⁶

The inclusion of Article 25 was approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921, and the revised final draft of the mandate was forwarded to the League of Nations on 22 July 1922.¹⁰⁷ Article 25 permitted the mandatory to “postpone or withhold application of such provisions of the mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions” in that region. The final text of the Mandate includes an Article 25, which states:

In the territories lying between the Jordan [river] and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions.¹⁰⁸

The new article was intended to enable Britain “to set up an Arab administration and to withhold indefinitely the application of those clauses of the mandate which relate to the establishment of the National Home for the Jews”, as explained in a Colonial Office letter three days later.¹⁰⁹ This created two administrative areas – Palestine, under direct British rule, and the autonomous Emirate of Transjordan under the rule of the Hashemite family – in accordance with the British Government’s amended interpretation of the 1915 McMahon–Hussein Correspondence.¹¹⁰ ¹¹¹ At discussions in Jerusalem on 28 March, Churchill proposed his plan to Abdullah that Transjordan would be accepted into the mandatory area as an Arab country apart from Palestine and that it would be (initially for six months) under the nominal rule of the Emir Abdullah.¹¹² Churchill said that Transjordan would not form part of the Jewish national home to be established west of the River Jordan:¹¹³ ¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶

Trans-Jordania would not be included in the present administrative system of Palestine, and therefore the Zionist clauses of the mandate would not apply. Hebrew would not be made an official language in Trans-Jordania and the local Government would not be expected to adopt any measures to promote Jewish immigration and colonisation.¹¹⁷

Abdullah’s six-month trial was extended, and by the following summer he began to voice his impatience at the lack of formal confirmation.¹¹⁸

See caption {{{annotations}}} A New York Times report on 31 August 1921 on the Syrian–Palestinian Congress ‘s message to the League of Nations “of the desire of the Syrian and Palestinian populations for complete independence outside of any power”

The drafting was carried out with no input from any Arabs, despite the fact that their disagreement with the Balfour Declaration was well known.¹¹⁹ Palestinian political opposition began to organise in 1919 in the form of the Palestine Arab Congress, which formed from the local Muslim-Christian Associations. In March 1921, new British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill came to the region to form British policy on the ground at the Cairo Conference. The leader of the Palestine congress, Musa al-Husayni, had tried to present the views of the executive committee in Cairo and (later) Jerusalem but was rebuffed both times.¹²⁰ ¹²¹ In the summer of 1921, the 4th Palestine Arab Congress sent a delegation led by Musa al-Husayni to London to negotiate on behalf of the Muslim and Christian population.¹²² On the way, the delegation held meetings with Pope Benedict XV and diplomats from the League of Nations in Geneva (where they also met Balfour, who was non-committal).¹²³ In London, they had three meetings with Winston Churchill in which they called for reconsideration of the Balfour Declaration, revocation of the Jewish National Home policy, an end to Jewish immigration and that Palestine should not be severed from its neighbours. All their demands were rejected, although they received encouragement from some Conservative Members of Parliament.¹²⁴ ¹²⁵ ¹²⁶

Musa al-Husayni led a 1922 delegation to Ankara and then to the Lausanne Conference, where (after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ‘s victories against the Greek army in Turkey) the Treaty of Sèvres was about to be re-negotiated. The Palestinian delegation hoped that with Atatürk’s support, they would be able to get the Balfour Declaration and mandate policy omitted from the new treaty. The delegation met with Turkey’s lead negotiator, İsmet Pasha, who promised that “Turkey would insist upon the Arabs’ right of self-determination and… the Palestinian delegation should be permitted to address the conference”; however, he avoided further meetings and other members of the Turkish delegation made clear their intention to “accept the post–World War I status quo”.¹²⁷ During the negotiations, Ismet Pasha refused to recognise or accept the mandates;¹²⁸ although they were not referenced in the final treaty, it had no impact on the implementation of the mandate policy set in motion three years earlier.¹²⁷

Each of the principal Allied powers had a hand in drafting the proposed mandate, although some (including the United States) had not declared war on the Ottoman Empire and did not become members of the League of Nations.¹²⁹

Notable British drafts of the mandate ¹⁸⁵ ¹⁸⁶ ¹⁵⁹ ¹⁸⁷

Approvals

British Parliament

British public and government opinion became increasingly opposed to state support for Zionism, and even Sykes had begun to change his views in late 1918.¹³⁰ In February 1922 Churchill telegraphed Samuel, who had begun his role as High Commissioner for Palestine 18 months earlier, asking for cuts in expenditure and noting:

In both Houses of Parliament there is growing movement of hostility, against Zionist policy in Palestine, which will be stimulated by recent Northcliffe articles.¹³¹ I do not attach undue importance to this movement, but it is increasingly difficult to meet the argument that it is unfair to ask the British taxpayer, already overwhelmed with taxation, to bear the cost of imposing on Palestine an unpopular policy.¹³²

The House of Lords rejected a Palestine Mandate incorporating the Balfour Declaration by 60 votes to 25 after the June 1922 issuance of the Churchill White Paper, following a motion proposed by Lord Islington.¹³³ ¹³⁴ The vote was only symbolic, since it was subsequently overruled by a vote in the House of Commons after a tactical pivot and a number of promises by Churchill.¹³³ ¹³⁵ ¹³⁶

In February 1923, after a change in government, Cavendish laid the foundation for a secret review of Palestine policy in a lengthy memorandum to the Cabinet:

It would be idle to pretend that the Zionist policy is other than an unpopular one. It has been bitterly attacked in Parliament and is still being fiercely assailed in certain sections of the press. The ostensible grounds of attack are threefold:(1) the alleged violation of the McMahon pledges; (2) the injustice of imposing upon a country a policy to which the great majority of its inhabitants are opposed; and (3) the financial burden upon the British taxpayer…¹³⁷

His cover note asked for a statement of policy to be made as soon as possible, and for the cabinet to focus on three questions: (1) whether or not pledges to the Arabs conflict with the Balfour declaration; (2) if not, whether the new government should continue the policy set down by the old government in the 1922 White Paper and (3) if not, what alternative policy should be adopted.¹³⁸

Stanley Baldwin, who took over as prime minister on 22 May 1923, set up a cabinet subcommittee in June 1923 whose terms of reference were to “examine Palestine policy afresh and to advise the full Cabinet whether Britain should remain in Palestine and whether if she remained, the pro-Zionist policy should be continued”.¹³⁹ The Cabinet approved the report of this subcommittee on 31 July 1923; when presenting the subcommittee’s report to the Cabinet, Curzon concluded that “wise or unwise, it is well nigh impossible for any government to extricate itself without a substantial sacrifice of consistency and self-respect, if not honour.” ¹⁴⁰ Describing it as “nothing short of remarkable”, international law specialist Professor John B. Quigley noted that the government was admitting to itself that its support for Zionism had been prompted by considerations having nothing to do with the merits of Zionism or its consequences for Palestine.¹⁴¹ Documents related to the 1923 reappraisal remained secret until the early 1970s.¹⁴²

United States

The United States was not a member of the League of Nations. On 23 February 1921, two months after the draft mandates had been submitted to the League, the U.S. requested permission to comment before the mandate’s consideration by the Council of the League of Nations; the Council agreed to the request a week later.¹⁴³ The discussions continued until 14 May 1922, when the U.S. government announced the terms of an agreement with the United Kingdom about the Palestine mandate.¹⁴³ ¹⁴⁴ The terms included a stipulation that “consent of the United States shall be obtained before any alteration is made in the text of the mandate”.¹⁴⁵ ¹⁴⁶ Despite opposition from the State Department,¹⁴⁷ this was followed on 21 September 1922 by the Lodge–Fish Resolution, a congressional endorsement of the Balfour Declaration.⁷ ¹⁴⁸ ¹⁴⁹

On 3 December 1924 the U.S. signed the Palestine Mandate Convention, a bilateral treaty with Britain in which the United States “consents to the administration” (Article 1) and which dealt with eight issues of concern to the United States (including property rights and business interests).¹⁵⁰ ¹⁵¹ The State Department prepared a report documenting its position on the mandate.¹⁵²

On 17 May 1922, in a discussion of the date on which the question of the Draft Mandate for Palestine should be placed on the agenda of the Council of the League of Nations, Lord Balfour informed the Council of his government’s understanding of the role of the League in the creation of mandates:

[the] Mandates were not the creation of the League, and they could not in substance be altered by the League. The League’s duties were confined to seeing that the specific and detailed terms of the mandates were in accordance with the decisions taken by the Allied and Associated Powers, and that in carrying out these mandates the Mandatory Powers should be under the supervision—not under the control—of the League. A mandate was a self-imposed limitation by the conquerors on the sovereignty which they exercised over the conquered territory.¹⁵³

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The New York Times, 20 July 1922, two days before the League of Nations’ conditional approval of the Mandate.

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The mandates come into force according to the Council of the League of Nations minutes, 29 September 1923

Documents from the time of conditional approval and effective date. The New York Times article describes Balfour falling asleep during the meetings and the reaction in Palestine to the House of Lords ’ repudiation of the Mandate a month earlier.

The Council of the League of Nations met between 19 and 24 July 1922 to approve the class A mandates for Palestine and Syria (minutes of the meetings can be read here). The Palestine mandate was approved on 22 July 1922 at a private meeting of the Council of the League of Nations at St. James Palace in London,²⁶ giving the British formal international recognition of the position they had held de facto in the region since the end of 1917 in Palestine and since 1920–21 in Transjordan.²⁶ The Council stated that the mandate was approved and would come into effect “automatically” when the dispute between France and Italy was resolved.¹⁵⁴ A public statement confirming this was made by the president of the council on 24 July.¹⁵⁵ ¹⁵⁶ With the Fascists gaining power in Italy in October 1922, new Italian Prime Minister Mussolini delayed the mandates’ implementation.¹⁵⁷ On 23 August 1923, the Turkish assembly in Ankara ratified the Treaty of Lausanne by 215 of 235 votes.¹⁵⁸ ¹⁵⁹ ¹⁶⁰ ¹⁶¹

The Council of the League of Nations determined that the two mandates had come into effect at its 29 September 1923 meeting.¹⁶² ¹⁶³ The dispute between France and Italy was resolved by the Turkish ratification.¹⁶⁴ ¹⁶⁵ ¹¹⁰ ¹⁶⁶

Approval of the Transjordan memorandum at the Council of the League of Nations, 16 September 1922

Shortly after the mandate’s approval in July 1922, the Colonial Office prepared a memorandum to implement Article 25.¹⁶⁷ On 16 September 1922, the League of Nations approved a British memorandum detailing its intended implementation of the clause excluding Transjordan from the articles related to Jewish settlement.¹⁶⁸ ¹⁶⁹ ¹⁷⁰ When the memorandum was submitted to the Council of the League of Nations, Balfour explained the background; according to the minutes, “Lord Balfour reminded his colleagues that Article 25 of the mandate for Palestine as approved by the Council in London on July 24, 1922, provides that the territories in Palestine which lie east of the Jordan should be under a somewhat different regime from the rest of Palestine… The British Government now merely proposed to carry out this article. It had always been part of the policy contemplated by the League and accepted by the British Government, and the latter now desired to carry it into effect. In pursuance of the policy, embodied in Article 25, Lord Balfour invited the Council to pass a series of resolutions which modified the mandate as regards those territories. The object of these resolutions was to withdraw from Trans-Jordania the special provisions which were intended to provide a national home for the Jews west of the Jordan.” ¹⁷⁰

Turkey

Turkey was not a member of the League of Nations at the time of the negotiations; on the losing side of World War I, they did not join until 1932. Decisions about mandates over Ottoman territory made by the Allied Supreme Council at the San Remo conference were documented in the Treaty of Sèvres, which was signed on behalf of the Ottoman Empire and the Allies on 10 August 1920. The treaty was never ratified by the Ottoman government, however,¹⁷¹ because it required the agreement of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk expressed disdain for the treaty, and continued what was known as the Turkish War of Independence. The Conference of Lausanne began in November 1922, with the intention of negotiating a treaty to replace the failed Treaty of Sèvres. In the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, the Turkish government recognised the detachment of the regions south of the frontier agreed in the Treaty of Ankara (1921) and renounced its sovereignty over Palestine.¹⁷¹

Key issues

According to the second paragraph of the mandate’s preamble,

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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…¹⁷²

“Zionist Rejoicings. British Mandate For Palestine Welcomed”, The Times, Monday, 26 April 1920, after the San Remo conference

Weizmann noted in his memoirs that he considered the most important part of the mandate, and the most difficult negotiation, the subsequent clause in the preamble which recognised “the historical connection of the Jews with Palestine”.¹⁷³ Curzon and the Italian and French governments rejected early drafts of the mandate because the preamble had contained a passage which read, “Recognising, moreover, the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the claim which this gives them to reconstitute it their national home…” ¹⁷⁴ The Palestine Committee set up by the Foreign Office recommended that the reference to “the claim” be omitted. The Allies had already noted the historical connection in the Treaty of Sèvres, but had not acknowledged a legal claim. Lord Balfour suggested an alternative which was accepted and included in the preamble immediately after the paragraph quoted above:

Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;¹⁷⁵

In the body of the document, the Zionist Organization was mentioned in Article 4; in the September 1920 draft, a qualification was added which required that “its organisation and constitution” must be “in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate”.⁹³ A “Jewish agency” was mentioned three times: in Articles 4, 6 and 11.⁹³ Article 4 of the mandate provided for “the recognition of an appropriate Jewish agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine,” effectively establishing what became the ” Jewish Agency for Palestine “. Article 7 stated, “The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.” ¹⁷² The proviso to this objective of the mandate was that “nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.¹⁷²

Religious and communal guarantees, such as freedom of religion and education, were made in general terms without reference to a specific religion.⁹³ The Vatican and the Italian and French governments concentrated their efforts on the issue of the Holy Places and the rights of the Christian communities,¹⁷⁶ making their legal claims on the basis of the former Protectorate of the Holy See and the French Protectorate of Jerusalem. The Catholic powers saw an opportunity to reverse the gains made by the Greek and Russian Orthodox communities in the region during the previous 150 years, as documented in the Status Quo.¹⁷⁷ The Zionists had limited interest in this area.¹⁷⁸

Britain would assume responsibility for the Holy Places under Article 13 of the mandate. The idea of an International Commission to resolve claims on the Holy Places, formalised in Article 95 of the Treaty of Sèvres, was taken up again in article 14 of the Palestinian Mandate. Negotiations about the commission’s formation and role were partly responsible for the delay in ratifying the mandate. Article 14 of the mandate required Britain to establish a commission to study, define, and determine the rights and claims relating to Palestine’s religious communities. This provision, which called for the creation of a commission to review the Status Quo of the religious communities, was never implemented.¹⁷⁹ ¹⁸⁰

Article 15 required the mandatory administration to ensure that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship were permitted. According to the article, “No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.” The High Commissioner established the authority of the Orthodox Rabbinate over the members of the Jewish community and retained a modified version of the Ottoman Millet system. Formal recognition was extended to eleven religious communities, which did not include non-Orthodox Jews or the Protestant Christian denominations.¹⁸¹

The public clarification and implementation of Article 25, more than a year after it was added to the mandate, misled some “into imagining that Transjordanian territory was covered by the conditions of the Mandate as to the Jewish National Home before August 1921”.¹⁸² This would, according to professor of modern Jewish history Bernard Wasserstein, result in “the myth of Palestine’s ‘first partition’ [which became] part of the concept of ‘Greater Israel’ and of the ideology of Jabotinsky ‘s Revisionist movement “.⁸⁷ Palestinian-American academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, then chair of the Northwestern University political science department, suggested that the “Jordan as a Palestinian State” references made by Israeli spokespeople may reflect “the same [mis]understanding”.¹⁸³ ¹⁸⁴

On 25 April 1923, five months before the mandate came into force, the independent administration was recognised in a statement made in Amman:

Subject to the approval of the League of Nations, His Britannic Majesty will recognise the existence of an independent Government in Trans-Jordan under the rule of His Highness the Amir Abdullah, provided that such Government is constitutional and places His Britannic Majesty in a position to fulfil his international obligations in respect of the territory by means of an Agreement to be concluded with His Highness.¹⁸⁵ ¹⁸⁶

Legality

1921 Zionist Organization legal argument, written by barrister William Finlay about the Mandate for Palestine and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations

The legality of the mandate has been disputed in detail by scholars, particularly its consistency with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.¹⁸⁷ ¹⁸⁸ ¹⁸⁹ ¹⁹⁰ ¹⁹¹ ¹⁹² According to the mandate’s preamble, the mandate was granted to Britain “for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations”. That article, which concerns entrusting the “tutelage” of colonies formerly under German and Turkish sovereignty to “advanced nations”, specifies “[c]ommunities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire” which “have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone.” ¹⁹³ During the mandate, Palestinian Arab leaders cited the article as proving their assertion that the British were obliged (under the terms of the mandate) to facilitate the eventual creation of an independent Arab state in Palestine.¹⁹⁴

Borders

Three proposals for the post-World War I administration of Palestine: International administration, proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement 1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference Final borders of 1923–1948 Mandatory Palestine

Before World War I, the territory which became Mandatory Palestine was the former Ottoman Empire divisions of the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the southern part of the Beirut Vilayet; what became Transjordan was the southern Vilayet of Syria and the northern Hejaz Vilayet.¹⁹⁵ During the war, the British military divided the Hejaz and Egyptian Expeditionary Force theatres of war along a line from a point south of Akaba to a point south of Ma’an. The EEF theatre was divided between its main theatre in Palestine and the Syrian theatre, including Transjordan, which was led by Faisal’s Arab Revolt army.¹⁹⁶ The post-war military administrations OETA South and OETA East, the latter with an Arab governor, split the territory in the same way;¹⁹⁷ ¹⁹⁸ Professor Yitzhak Gil-Har notes that “the military administration [in Palestine] always treated Trans-Jordan as a separate administration outside its jurisdiction”.¹⁹⁷ In 1955, Professor Uri Ra’anan wrote that the OETA border system “politically, if not legally, was bound to influence the post-war settlement”.¹⁹⁹

At a private 13 September 1919 meeting during the Paris Peace Conference, Lloyd George gave Georges Clemenceau a memorandum which said that British Palestine would be “defined in accordance with its ancient boundaries of Dan to Beersheba “.²⁰⁰ ²⁰¹

The biblical concept of Eretz Israel and its re-establishment as a modern state was a basic tenet of the original Zionist program. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, presented a Zionist statement on 3 February 1919 that declared the Zionists’ proposed borders and resources “essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country” including “the control of its rivers and their headwaters”.²⁰² These borders included present day Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon “in the vicinity south of Sidon”.²⁰³ Neither Palestinians nor any other Arabs were involved in the discussions which determined the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine.²⁰⁴ ²⁰⁵

Palestine-Egypt border

Early British proposal for Palestine’s southern boundary at the Paris Peace Conference. 269 The proposal followed the 1906 Egypt-Ottoman border to Al Auja, then cutting east–west through the northern Negev.

The first border which was agreed upon was with British-ruled Egypt.²⁰⁶ This boundary traced back to 1906, when the Taba Crisis marked the culmination of longstanding disputes over the Sinai and Negev regions between the British and Ottomans. On 9 May 1919, a memorandum of the British political delegation to the Paris Peace Conference stated that the British intended to adopt the border between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire which was established in 1906.²⁰⁷ The decision, a compromise between Zionist aspirations for the el-Arish – Rafah – Aqaba triangle ²⁰⁸ and various British proposals, which favored assigning most of the Negev to Egypt,²⁰⁹ ²¹⁰ was already well-defined on maps.²⁰⁷

The Negev region was added to Palestine on 10 July 1922 after its concession by British representative John Philby “in Trans-Jordan’s name”; although not usually considered part of the region of Palestine, the Zionist Organization had lobbied for Palestine to be given access to the Red Sea.²¹¹ Abdullah’s requests for the Negev to be added to Transjordan in late 1922 and 1925 were rejected.²¹²

Northern borders

The determination of the mandate’s northern border was a far longer and more complex process than for the other borders.²¹³ The two primary differences were that this border separated French– and British–controlled areas, and it ran through heavily populated areas which had not been separated. The other borders separated British Palestine from British Egypt and British Transjordan, and ran primarily through sparsely-inhabited areas.²¹⁴

The northern boundary between the British and French mandates was broadly defined by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920; this became known as the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement for French Lieutenant Colonel N. Paulet and British Lieutenant Colonel S. F. Newcombe, who were appointed to lead the 1923 Boundary Commission to finalise the agreement.²¹⁵ It placed most of the Golan Heights in the French sphere, and established a joint commission to settle and mark the border. The commission submitted its final report on 3 February 1922; it was approved with some caveats by the British and French governments on 7 March 1923, several months before Britain and France assumed their mandatory responsibilities on 29 September 1923.²¹⁶ ²¹⁷ Under the treaty, Syrian and Lebanese residents would have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lake Hula, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River as citizens of Mandatory Palestine, but the government of Palestine would be responsible for policing the lakes. The Zionist movement pressured the French and British to include as many water sources as possible in Palestine during the demarcating negotiations. The movement’s demands influenced the negotiators, leading to the inclusion of the Sea of Galilee, both sides of the Jordan River, Lake Hula, the Dan spring, and part of the Yarmouk River. As High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel had demanded full control of the Sea of Galilee.²¹⁸ The new border followed a 10-metre-wide (33 ft) strip along the northeastern shore.²¹⁹ After the settlement of the northern-border issue, the British and French governments signed an agreement of good neighbourly relations between the mandated territories of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon on 2 February 1926.²²⁰

Palestine-Transjordan border

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Vital Cuinet ‘s 1896 map of the region during the late Ottoman period. The map shows the sanjaks of Hauran and Ma’an (Kerak), which formed most of what became Transjordan, and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and Balqa (Nablus) and Acre Sanjaks (which formed most of what became Mandatory Palestine).

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The Occupied Enemy Territory Administration area, according to the British government’s History of the Great War.²²¹ The map shows the British-administered OETA South (consisting of the Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the Nablus and Acre Sanjaks) and the Arab-administered OETA East, consisting of the Damascus Vilayet and the southern Aleppo Vilayet.

Transjordan had been part of the Syria Vilayet – primarily the sanjaks of Hauran and Ma’an (Kerak) – under the Ottomans. Since the end of the war it was part of captured territory placed under the Arab administration of OETA East,²²² ¹⁹⁸ which was subsequently declared part of Faisal’s Arab Kingdom of Syria. The British were content with that arrangement because Faisal was a British ally; the region fell within the indirect sphere of British influence according to the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and they did not have enough troops to garrison it.⁶⁵ ²²³

The Palestine–Transjordan border was still undecided at the beginning of 1921, as illustrated by this early-1921 British Cabinet map with boundaries of the proposed mandates (including those areas not yet determined).

Throughout the drafting of the mandate, the Zionist Organization advocated for territory east of the river to be included in Palestine. At the peace conference on 3 February 1919, the organization proposed an eastern boundary of “a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba”;¹⁰⁵ the railway ran parallel to, and 35–40 miles (about 60 km) east of, the Jordan River.²²⁴ In May, British officials presented a proposal to the peace conference which included maps showing Palestine’s eastern boundary just 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of the Jordan.²²⁵ No agreement was reached in Paris; the topic was not discussed at the April 1920 San Remo conference, at which the boundaries of the “Palestine” and “Syria” mandates were left unspecified to “be determined by the Principal Allied Powers” at a later stage.³⁴ ²²⁶

The Jordan River was finally chosen as the border between the two territories;²²⁷ this was documented in Article 25 of the mandate, approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921,¹⁰⁷ which set the boundary as simply “the Jordan [river]“. No further definition was discussed until mid-1922,²²⁸ when the boundary became significant due to negotiations on the Rutenberg hydroelectric power-plant and the Constitution of Mandatory Palestine (which did not apply to Transjordan, highlighting the need for a clear definition).²²⁹ The latter’s publication on 1 September was the first official statement of the detailed boundary,²³⁰ which was repeated in a 16 September 1922 Transjordan memorandum: “from a point two miles west of the town of Akaba on the Gulf of that name up the centre of the Wady Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan to its junction with the River Yarmuk; thence up the centre of that river to the Syrian Frontier”.²³¹

Transjordan-Arabia border

The southern border between Transjordan and Arabia was considered strategic for Transjordan to avoid being landlocked, with intended access to the sea via the Port of Aqaba. The southern region of Ma’an - Aqaba, a large area with a population of only 10,000,²³² was administered by OETA East (later the Arab Kingdom of Syria, and then Mandatory Transjordan) and claimed by the Kingdom of Hejaz.²³³ ²³⁴ In OETA East, Faisal had appointed a kaymakam (sub-governor) at Ma’an; the kaymakam at Aqaba, who “disregarded both Husein in Mecca and Feisal in Damascus with impunity”,²³⁵ had been instructed by Hussein to extend his authority to Ma’an.²³³ This technical dispute did not become an open struggle, and the Kingdom of Hejaz was to take de facto control after Faisal’s administration was defeated by the French.²³⁶ After the 1924–25 Saudi conquest of Hejaz, Hussein’s army fled to the Ma’an region (which was then formally announced as annexed by Abdullah’s Transjordan). Ibn Saud privately agreed to respect this position in an exchange of letters at the time of the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah.²³⁷

Transjordan-Iraq border

The location of the Eastern border between Transjordan and Iraq was considered strategic with respect to the proposed construction of what became the Kirkuk–Haifa oil pipeline.²³⁷ It was first set out on 2 December 1922, in a treaty to which Transjordan was not party to – the Uqair Protocol between Iraq and Nejd.²³⁸ It described the western end of the Iraq-Nejd boundary as “the Jebel Anazan situated in the neighbourhood of the intersection of latitude 32 degrees north longitude 39 degrees east where the Iraq-Najd boundary terminated”, thereby implicitly confirming this as the point at which the Iraq-Nejd boundary became the Transjordan-Nejd boundary.²³⁸ This followed a proposal from T.E.Lawrence in January 1922 that Transjordan be extended to include Wadi Sirhan as far south as al-Jauf, in order to protect Britain’s route to India and contain Ibn Saud.²³⁹

Mandatory Palestine

The British controlled Palestine for almost three decades, overseeing a succession of protests, riots and revolts by the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities.²⁴⁰ The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was passed on 29 November 1947; this envisaged the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states operating under economic union, and with Jerusalem transferred to UN trusteeship.²⁴¹ Two weeks later, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would terminate on 15 May 1948.²⁴² ²⁴³ On the last day of the mandate, the creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War began.²⁴²

In April 1923, five months before the mandate came into force, Britain announced their intention to recognise an “independent Government” in Transjordan.²⁴⁴ ¹⁸⁴ Transjordan became largely autonomous under British tutelage in accordance with a 20 February 1928 agreement, and became fully independent under a treaty with Britain on 22 March 1946.²⁴⁴

			Administration
Year	Date	Document	Palestine	Transjordan
Pre-war			Ottoman sanjaks: Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre ³⁰⁷	Ottoman sanjaks: Hauran and Ma'an ³⁰⁸
1915	24 October	McMahon–Hussein Correspondence ³⁰⁹
1916	3 January	Sykes–Picot Agreement ³⁰⁹
1917	2 November	Balfour Declaration ³⁰⁹
1918	23 October		OETA South declared under British administration ²⁶¹	OETA East declared under Arab-British administration ²⁶¹
1918	1 December	France cede claim over Palestine ³¹⁰
1919	28 June	Covenant of the League of Nations signed, establishing mandate system
1920	10 January	Covenant of League of Nations comes into effect
	8 March			Kingdom of Syria declared ³¹¹
	25 April	Mandate assigned at San Remo ⁹⁵
	1 July		Civil administration begins as High Commissioner appointed ³¹²
	23 July			Becomes a no-man's land after Battle of Maysalun ¹²⁰
	10 August	Treaty of Sèvres signed (never ratified) ³¹³
	11–26 August			Curzon policy: "no question of setting up any British administration in the area" ¹¹⁷
	21 November			Abdullah 's army moves into southern Transjordan ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴²
	7 December	First draft submitted to the League of Nations ³¹⁴
	23 December	Agreement on northern boundary ³¹⁵
1921	12–30 March	Cairo conference. Article 25 (Transjordan) drafted ³¹¹		Proposal to add the area to Palestine mandate, as separate Arab entity ³¹¹
1921	11 April			Emirate of Transjordan established ¹⁴¹
1922	24 July	Mandate terms approved ⁸⁷
	10 August		Palestine constitution signed ³¹⁶
	16 September	Transjordan memorandum accepted ³¹¹
	23 October		1922 census of Palestine ³¹⁷
1923	25 April			Independence announcement ²⁴⁹
1923	29 September	Mandate comes into effect ³¹⁸

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Specialised works

Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim (1988). “Territorially-based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation”. In Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (ed.). Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-340-6.
Abu-Rass, Thabit (1992). The Egypt–Palestine/Israel Boundary: 1841–1992 (Master’s thesis).
Allawi, Ali A. (2014). Faisal I of Iraq. Yale University Press. pp. 216–. ISBN 978-0-300-19936-9.
Amadouny, Vartan (2012). “The Evolution of the Transjordan-Iraq Boundary, 1915–40”. In Clive H. Schofield and Richard N. Schofield (ed.). The Middle East and North Africa: World Boundaries. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-88028-7.
Alsberg, Paul Avraham [in German] (1973). “קביעת הגבול המזרחי של ארץ ישראל (Determining the Eastern Boundary of the Land of Israel)“. In Daniel Carpi (ed.). הציונות: מאסף לתולדות התנועה הציונית והישוב היהודי בארץ־ישראל. וניברסיטת תל-אביב, הוצאת הכבוץ המיוחד.available in pdf here
- Alsberg, Avraham P.[in German] (1980). “Delimitation of the eastern border of Palestine”. Zionism. 2. Institute for Zionist Research Founded in Memory of Chaim Weizmann: 87– 98. doi:10.1080/13531048108575800.
Aruri, Naseer Hasan (1972). Jordan: A Study in Political Development 1923–1965. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 978-90-247-1217-5. Retrieved 2 May 2009.
Baker, Randall (1979). King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz. The Oleander Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-900891-48-9.
Beshara, Adel (27 April 2012). The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-72450-3.
Brecher, Frank W. (1987). “Woodrow Wilson and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict”. American Jewish Archives. 39 (1): 23– 47.
Cattan, Henry (1969). Palestine, the Arabs and Israel: the search for justice. Longmans. ISBN 978-0-582-78000-2.
Biger, Gideon (2004). The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-76652-8.
Boustany, Wadi Faris (1936). The Palestine Mandate, Invalid and Impracticable: A Contribution of Arguments and Documents Towards the Solution of the Palestine Problem. P. 10 and App. Added and Arabic Version Pres. to the Supreme Arab Committee in Aug., 1936. American Press. OCLC 337112.
Caplan, Neil (2011). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5786-8.
Cassels, Alan (1970). Mussolini’s Early Diplomacy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-7234-3.
Barzilay-Yegar, Dvorah (2017). A National Home for the Jewish People: The Concept in British Political Thinking and Policy Making 1917–1923. Vallentine Mitchell. ISBN 978-1-910383-32-2.
Cohen, Michael J. (2010). “Was the Balfour Declaration at risk in 1923? Zionism and British imperialism”. Journal of Israeli History. 29 (1).
Defries, Harry (2014). Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900–1950. Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-135-28462-6.
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Friedman, Isaiah (1973). The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914–1918. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-3868-9.
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Friedman, Isaiah (1987). The Rise of Israel: Britain enters into a compact with Zionism, 1917. Garland. ISBN 978-0-8240-4906-5.
Frischwasser-Ra’anan, Heinz Felix (1955). The Frontiers of a Nation: A Re-examination of the Forces which Created the Palestine Mandate and Determined Its Territorial Shape. Batchworth Press. ISBN 978-0-598-93542-7.
Huneidi, Sahar (2001). A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians. I.B.Tauris. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5.
Galnoor, Itzhak (2009). “The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919–1947)“. Israel Studies. 14 (2): 76. doi:10.2979/ISR.2009.14.2.72.
Huneidi, Sahar (1998). “Was Balfour Policy Reversible? The Colonial Office and Palestine, 1921–23” (PDF). Journal of Palestine Studies. 27 (2): 23– 41. doi:10.1525/jps.1998.27.2.00p0033m. JSTOR 2538282. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
Garfinkle, Adam (1998). “History and Peace: Revisiting two Zionist myths”. Israel Affairs. 5 (1): 126– 148. doi:10.1080/13537129808719501.
Gelvin, James (2014) [2002]. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (3 ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85289-0.
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Hughes, Matthew (2013). Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917–1919. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-32395-9.
Ingrams, Doreen (2009). Palestine papers: 1917–1922: seeds of conflict. Eland. ISBN 978-1-906011-38-3.
Jeffries, Joseph Mary Nagle (1939). Palestine: The Reality. Longmans, Green and Company. p. 105.
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Karsh, Efraim; Karsh, Inari (2001). Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00541-9.
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Quigley, John B. (1990). Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice. Duke University Press. p. 10.
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Quigley, John (2011). “Britain’s Secret Re-Assessment of the Balfour Declaration.The Perfidy of Albion”. Journal of the History of International Law. 13 (2): 249– 283. doi:10.1163/15718050-13020001.
Reid, Walter (1 September 2011). Empire of Sand: How Britain Made the Middle East. Birlinn. ISBN 978-0-85790-080-7.
Renton, James (2016). “Flawed Foundations: The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate”. In Miller, Rory (ed.). Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years. Routledge. pp. 15– 37. ISBN 978-1-317-17233-8.
Salibi, Kamal S. (15 December 1998). The Modern History of Jordan. I.B.Tauris. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-86064-331-6.
Schneer, Jonathan (2010). The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6532-5.
Silverburg, Sanford R. (29 January 2009). Palestine and International Law: Essays on Politics and Economics. McFarland. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-7864-4248-5.
Sicker, Martin (1999). Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-96639-3.
Stoyanovsky, Jacob (1928). The mandate for Palestine: a contribution to the theory and practice of international mandates. Longmans, Green.
(1973). Crossroads to Israel. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-20165-2.
Teitelbaum, Joshua (2001). The Rise and Fall of the Hashimite Kingdom of Arabia. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85065-460-5.
Wilson, Mary Christina (1990). King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-39987-6.
Wright, Quincy (1930). Mandates Under the League of Nations. University of Chicago Press. OCLC 562719723.
Wright, Esmond (1951). “Abdallah’s Jordan: 1947–1951”. Middle East Journal. 5: 439– 460.
Zander, Walter (1973). “On the Settlement of Disputes About the Christian Holy Places”. Israel Law Review. 8 (3): 331– 366. doi:10.1017/S0021223700004258. S2CID 149471783.
Zieger, Robert H. (2001). America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-9645-1.

General histories

Bentwich, Norman (1932). England in Palestine. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company Limited.
Bentwich, Norman (1929). “The Mandate for Transjordan”. British Yearbook of International Law. 10. Humphrey Sumner Milford: 212– 213.
Chamberlain, Austen (1924), Convention between the United States of America and Great Britain; Treaty Series No. 728, United States Government Printing Office
Council of Four (1919), “The Council of Four: minutes of meetings March 20 to May 24, 1919”, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. V, United States Government Printing Office
Council of Heads of Delegations (1919), “The Council of Heads of Delegations: minutes of meetings August 29 to November 5, 1919”, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, United States Government Printing Office
Council of Ten (1919), “The council of ten: minutes of meetings January 12 to February 14, 1919”, Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vol. III, United States Government Printing Office
ESCO Foundation (1947), Palestine – A Study Of Jewish Arab And British Policies, vol. I, Yale University Press, OCLC 459549878
Lausanne Conference (1923), Cmd. 1814, Lausanne Conference on Near Eastern Affairs 1922–1923: Records of Proceedings and Draft Terms of Peace, HMSO
Macmunn, G. F.; Falls, C. (1930). Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, From June 1917 to the End of the War Part II. History of the Great War based on Official Documents by Direction of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Vol. II. accompanying Map Case (1st ed.). London: HMSO. OCLC 656066774.
Palestine Royal Commission (1937), Cmd. 5479, Palestine Royal Commission Report, also known as the “Peel Report” (PDF), HMSO, For further information see the Commission’s Wikipedia article at Peel Commission
UN Division for Palestinian Rights (1978), “Part I”, The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem, United Nations online and in pdf form
Weizmann, Chaim (1949). Trial and Error, The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann. Jewish Publication Society of America. OCLC 830295337.
Woodward, Ernest Llewellyn (1952). Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, First series, Volume IV. H.M. Stationery Office.
Woodward, Ernest Llewellyn (1963). Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, First series, Volume XIII. H.M. Stationery Office.
Zionist Organisation (1921). “Political Report”. Extracts from the reports of the executive of the Zionist Organisation to the twelfth Zionist Congress, Carlsbad, September, 1921. Zionist Organisation.
Zionist Organization (1922). Report of the Twelfth Zionist Congress: Held at Carlsbad, September 1st to 14th 1921. Central Office of the Zionist Organization.; original German transcript at Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des 12. Zionisten-Kongresses in Karlsbad vom 1. bis 14. September 1921 [Proceedings of the 12th Zionist Congress September 1 to 14, 1921 in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary)] (in German). Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag. 1922. p. 279. ZDB 2176334-3.

External links

Full text of The Palestine Mandate (of The Council of the League of Nations, 24 July 1922), by The Avalon Project of the Yale Law School

Reid 2011, p. 115. ↩
Quigley 1990, p. 10. ↩
Friedman 1973, p. 282. ↩
Zieger 2001, pp. 91, 97–98, 188–189. ↩
Gelvin 2014, pp. 82–83. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Hurewitz 1979, pp. 102–106. ↩
Lebow 1968, p. 501. ↩ ↩²
Caplan 2011, p. 78: ”… becoming the first major power…” ↩
Biger 2004, p. 49. ↩
Friedman 1973, p. 257. ↩
Renton 2016, p. 21. ↩
Caplan 2011, p. 74. ↩
Lieshout 2016, p. 210. ↩
Schneer 2010, p. 336. ↩
Renton 2016, p. 16. ↩ ↩²
Kedouri 2014, p. 3. ↩
Kattan 2009, p. 101. ↩
Huneidi 2001, p. 65. ↩
Paris 2003, pp. 19–26. ↩
Huneidi 2001, pp. 65–70. ↩ ↩²
²⁴⁵ ↩
Council of Four 1919, pp. 1–10. ↩
Kattan 2009, pp. 109–111. ↩
Rogan 2015, p. 286. ↩
Paris 2003, p. 48. ↩
McTague 1980, p. 281. ↩ ↩² ↩³
“Foreign relations of the United States - Collection - UWDC - UW-Madison Libraries”. search.library.wisc.edu. ↩
²⁴⁶ ↩
Ghandour 2009, p. 33. ↩
“Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970)” (PDF). International Court of Justice: 28– 32. 21 June 1971. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 January 2015. Retrieved 28 August 2010. ↩
Wright 1930, p. 110. ↩
Wright 1930, pp. 110–111. ↩
See also: Temperley, History of the Paris Peace Conference, Vol VI, pp. 505–506; League of Nations, The Mandates System (official publication of 1945); Hill, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, pp. 133ff. ↩
Biger 2004, p. 173. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
“DESIRES OF HEDJAZ STIR PARIS CRITICS; Arab Kingdom’s Aspirations Clash with French Aims in Asia Minor. PRINCE BEFORE CONFERENCE Feisal’s Presentation of His Case will Probably Be Referred to a Special Committee. England Suggested as Mandatory”. Archived from the original on 17 February 2017. Retrieved 15 February 2017. ↩
Beshara 2012, p. 265. ↩ ↩²
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“King-Crane Commission Report: Confidential Appendix”. Archived from the original on 15 May 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2012. ↩ ↩²
Knee 2014, p. 50. ↩ ↩²
“Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine, 3 February 1919”. Archived from the original on 12 February 2007. ↩
Allawi 2014, p. 189. ↩ ↩²
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Hughes 2013, pp. 122–128. ↩
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The Vatican and Zionism: Conflict in the Holy Land, 1895–1925, Sergio I. Minerbi, Oxford University Press, USA, 1990, ISBN 978-0-19-505892-5 ↩
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Hughes 2013, pp. 71–88. ↩
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Hughes 2013, p. 88. ↩
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Lieshout 2016, p. 414. ↩ ↩²
Paris 2003, p. 154. ↩
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Pipes, Daniel (26 March 1992). Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition. Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-19-536304-3. ↩
Edward W. Said; Christopher Hitchens (2001). Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. Verso. p. 197. ISBN 978-1-85984-340-6. ↩
Zionist Organization 1922, p. 69. ↩
“Great Speech by Dr. Weizmann”. The Jewish Chronicle, 16 September 1921 ↩
Zionist Organization 1922, p. 149. ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 44; cites Hubert Young to Ambassador Hardinge (Paris), 27 July 1920, FO 371/5254. ↩
⁶⁵ ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 44. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Aruri 1972, p. 17; cites: Telegram from Earl Curzon to Sir Herbert Samuel, dated 6 August 1920. ↩
Woodward 1963, p. 331. ↩
Aruri 1972, p. 18; cites: Telegram 7 August 1920. ↩
Woodward 1963, p. 334. ↩
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⁷² ↩
Wilson 1990, pp. 46–48. ↩ ↩²
Aruri 1972, p. 18. ↩
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Sicker 1999, p. 158. ↩ ↩²
Paris 2003, p. 156. ↩
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Alsberg 1973, p. 236. ↩
Paris 2003, p. 155; cites Curzon note to Lindsay, 12 February 1921, FO 371/6371, p. 128. ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 48. ↩
Salibi 1998, p. 93. ↩
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Klieman 1970, p. 115. ↩
Klieman 1970, pp. 115–125. ↩
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McTague 1980, p. 282. ↩
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McTague 1980, p. 289. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Zionist Organisation 1921, p. 27. ↩
Friedman 1987, pp. 27–28. ↩
Jeffries 1939, p. 524. ↩
⁹⁹ ↩
The Zionist Congress Archived 6 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine. The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, p. 6, 9 September 1921. At news.google.com, p. 3 ↩ ↩²
McTague 1980, p. 283. ↩ ↩² ↩³
²⁵⁹ ↩
McTague 1980, p. 284. ↩
Barzilay-Yegar 2017, p. 179. ↩
UN Division for Palestinian Rights 1978, pp. 26–30. ↩
McTague 1980, pp. 284–285. ↩
Sicker 1999, pp. 163–165. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Paris 2003, p. 130. ↩
Klieman 1970, pp. 228–234. ↩ ↩² ↩³
“The Avalon Project: The Palestine Mandate”. Archived from the original on 25 April 2019. Retrieved 18 February 2012. ↩
²⁵⁶ ↩
Palestine Royal Commission 1937. ↩ ↩²
²⁶⁰ ↩
Paris 2003, p. 203. ↩
Ingrams 2009, pp. 116–117. ↩
Ian Lustick (1988). For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. Council on Foreign Relations. p. 37. ISBN 978-0-87609-036-7. ↩
²⁶¹ ↩
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Karsh & Karsh 2001, p. 322. ↩
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Kayyali, pp. 93, 99. ↩
Segev, p. 159. “firmness bordering on disrespect.” ↩
²⁶⁵ ↩
Sykes, p. 71. ↩
Pappe, pp. 220, 221. ↩
Sykes, p. 72. ↩
Kayyali, pp. 99–104. ↩
Halabi 2012, pp. 30–32. ↩ ↩²
²⁶⁶ ↩
Ingrams 2009, p. Chapter 9, Drafting the Mandate. ↩
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²⁶⁸ ↩
Huneidi 2001, p. 57; Huneidi cites: CO 733/18, Churchill to Samuel, Telegram, Private and Personal, 25 February 1922 ↩
Huneidi 2001, p. 58. ↩ ↩²
Hansard, Palestine Mandate Archived 21 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine: HL Deb 21 June 1922 vol 50 cc994-1033 (outcome of the vote cc1033 on next page) ↩
²⁶⁹ ↩
²⁷⁰ ↩
Quigley 2011, p. 269. ↩
Huneidi 1998, p. 33. ↩
Cohen 2010, p. 6. ↩
Huneidi 1998, p. 37. ↩
Quigley 2011, p. 279. ↩
Quigley 2011, pp. 280–282. ↩
Stoyanovsky 1928, p. 30. ↩ ↩²
Hansard, PALESTINE (ANGLO-AMERICAN AGREEMENT) Archived 18 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine, HC Deb 16 May 1922 vol 154 c209: ”… communiqué on this subject issued by the Department of State at Washington on 14th May” ↩
The Nation, 12 July 1922, American Rights in Palestine, volume CXV, issue 2975, page 53 ↩
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Great Britain (Harvey), 10 May 1922 Archived 18 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922, volume II, 867n.01/236: Telegram ↩
Davidson 2002, pp. 27–30. ↩
67th Congress, H.J.Res. 322; pdf Archived 12 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine ↩
Brecher 1987. ↩
Chamberlain 1924, pp. 212–222. ↩
“Text of the agreement”. Archived from the original on 26 September 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2012. ↩
Division of Near Eastern Affairs (1931). Mandate for Palestine (PDF) (Report). US State Department. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 May 2019. Retrieved 25 May 2019. ↩
Date on which the question of the Draft Mandate for Palestine should be placed on the Agenda of the Council Archived 25 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine, League of Nations, Official Journal, June 1922, pp. 545–546. ↩
²⁷¹ ↩
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The Times, 25 July, p. 9. ↩
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The Times, 24 August 1923, p. 8 ↩
“In a letter in reply dated September 8, 1923, the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires in Berne stated that the Turkish National Assembly had ratified the Treaty of Peace of Lausanne on August 23, 1923.” L of N, OJ 4 (1923) 1467 ↩
“Note: the treaty was not ratified by Britain until July 1924”. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 16 July 1924. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2018. ↩
²⁷⁴ ↩
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The Times, 1 Oct, p. 11. ↩
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LoN OJ minutes, Volume III, page 799; Italian representative: “the future of these mandates should be bound up with the fate of the Treaty of Sèvres”. ↩
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Pappé 2004, p. 84. ↩
Bentwich 1929, p. 212. ↩
League of Nations Official Journal, Nov. 1922, pp. 1188–1189. ↩ ↩²
Rifkind, Simon Hirsch (1 January 1977). The Basic Equities of the Palestine Problem. Arno Press. ISBN 978-0-405-10279-0. Retrieved 25 March 2016 – via Google Books. ↩ ↩²
“The Avalon Project: The Palestine Mandate”. Archived from the original on 25 April 2019. Retrieved 18 February 2012. ↩ ↩² ↩³
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Ingrams 2009, p. 98. ↩
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UN Secretariat (8 April 1949). “United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine Committee on Jerusalem: The Holy Places”. United Nations. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 11 June 2018. … proposal, however was not carried into effect, and as a consequence, the Status Quo promulgated in 1757, and reaffirmed in 1852 was applied in respect of the rights and claims of the various communities throughout the duration of the British Mandate ↩
Nicault, Catherine (30 March 1999). “The End of the French Religious Protectorate in Jerusalem (1918–1924)“. Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Français À Jérusalem (4): 77– 92. Archived from the original on 29 December 2008. Retrieved 18 February 2012 – via bcrfj.revues.org. ↩
Hurewitz 1979, p. 308. ↩
²⁷⁹ ↩
¹⁸⁴ ↩
Abu-Lughod 1988, pp. 197–199. ↩ ↩² ↩³
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Works related to Covenant of the League of Nations at Wikisource ↩
“THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, III.The Palestinian People Under the Mandate, Protests by the Palestinian People”. United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR). 1 January 1980. Archived from the original on 6 August 2017. Retrieved 6 August 2017. These demands were to remain constant throughout the Mandate period ↩
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Gil-Har 2000, p. 68; Gil-Har cites General W. Robertson, Chief Imperial General Staff, War Office, to General Officer Commanding in Chief, British Forces Egypt, 21 February 1917. FO 882/16.. ↩
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Biger 2004, p. 135. ↩
Agreement between His Majesty’s Government and the French Government respecting the Boundary Line between Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean to El Hámmé, Treaty Series No. 13 (1923), Cmd. 1910. Also Louis, 1969, p. 90. ↩
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Biger 2004, p. 179. ↩
Biger 2004, pp. 180–182. ↩
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Paris 2003, p. 203; Paris references the correspondence which developed the boundaries: Samuel to CO, 27 and 30 August and 2 September 1922, FO 371/7791, pp. 169, 171, and 177; CO to Samuel, 28 and 30 August 1922, ibid., pp. 170, 174.. ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 229 (footnote 70). ↩
Leatherdale 1983, pp. 41–42. ↩ ↩²
Baker 1979, p. 220. ↩
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²³⁴ ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 100. ↩ ↩²
Amadouny 2012, pp. 132–133. ↩ ↩²
Amadouny 2012, pp. 132–133, Amadouny cites Lawrence, ‘Transjordan-Extension of Territory’, 5 January 1922, CO 733 33. ↩
Renton 2016, pp. 15–37. ↩
Works related to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 at Wikisource ↩
Jones 2016, p. 296. ↩ ↩²
²⁸⁶ ↩
Wright 1951, pp. 439–460. ↩ ↩²
Mathew 2011, pp. 26–42. ↩
Matz-Lück 2005, pp. 70–71. ↩
Pappé 1994, pp. 3–5. ↩
‘Zionist Aspirations: Dr Weizmann on the Future of Palestine’, The Times, Saturday, 8 May 1920, p. 15. ↩
Woodward 1963, p. 252. ↩
Biger 2004, p. 170. ↩ ↩²
Paris 2003, pp. 202–203. ↩
Bentwich 1932, p. 51. ↩
Friedman 2011, p. 325. ↩
Karsh & Karsh 2001, p. 317. ↩
Sicker 1999, pp. 159–161. ↩
Klieman 1970, p. 123. ↩ ↩²
Wasserstein 2008, pp. 105–106. ↩
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Weizmann 1949, pp. 347–348. ↩
“1946 Aide-Memoire from “The British Embassy to the Department of State"" (PDF). Archived from the original on 16 April 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2012. ↩
Wilson 1990, p. 53. ↩
Louis 1985, p. 348. ↩
Paris 2003, pp. 198–202. ↩
McTague 1980, p. 290. ↩
Weizmann 1949, p. 348. ↩ ↩²
Lausanne Conference 1923, p. 395. ↩
Leslie 1923, p. 284. ↩
Defries 2014, p. 103. ↩
Hansard, Colonial Office Archived 12 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine: HC Deb 04 July 1922 vol 156 cc221–343 (outcome of the vote cc343) ↩
Mathew 2011, p. 36. ↩
Klieman 1987, p. 85. ↩
Klieman 1987, p. 88. ↩
Cassels 1970, pp. 31–32. ↩
Wright 1930, p. 59. ↩
“Minutes of Meeting of Council held at Geneva on 29 September 1923”. League of Nations Official Journal. 4: 1355. 1923. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 31 May 2018. ↩
Wright 1930, p. 57. ↩
Marlowe 1959, p. 62. ↩
Paris 2003, p. 203; Paris references Churchill to Hankey, Cabinet, 1 September 1922, FO 371/7791, pp. 180–2. ↩
Garfinkle 1998. ↩
Works related to United Nations Special Committee on Palestine Report: Chapter II at Wikisource ↩
Council of Heads of Delegations 1919, p. 216. ↩
UN Division for Palestinian Rights 1978. ↩
Biger 2004, p. 181; Biger references 10 July 1922 meeting notes, file 2.179, CZA. ↩
Biger 2004, p. 164. ↩
Biger 2004, p. 169. ↩
Hansard, Palestine Archived 21 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine: HC Deb 11 December 1947 vol 445 cc1207-318 ↩

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