Katana VentraIP

Mandate for Palestine

The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. 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.

Not to be confused with Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan, the territories administered under the terms of the mandate.

League of Nations – Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan Memorandum

Mid-1919 – 22 July 1922

29 September 1923

15 May 1948

UNOG Library; ref.: C.529. M.314. 1922. VI.

Council of the League of Nations

Creation of the territories of Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan

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 in Palestine and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. 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, 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.

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.[n] 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:

Permanent Mandates Commission

(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-Lughod, Ibrahim

(2014). Faisal I of Iraq. Yale University Press. pp. 216–. ISBN 978-0-300-19936-9.

Allawi, Ali A.

Amadouny, Vartan (2012). . In Clive H. Schofield and Richard N. Schofield (ed.). The Middle East and North Africa: World Boundaries. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-88028-7.

"The Evolution of the Transjordan-Iraq Boundary, 1915–40"

Alsberg, Paul Avraham

(1972). Jordan: A Study in Political Development 1923–1965. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 978-90-247-1217-5. Retrieved 2 May 2009.

Aruri, Naseer Hasan

Baker, Randall (1979). . The Oleander Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-900891-48-9.

King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz

Beshara, Adel (27 April 2012). . Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-136-72450-3.

The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity

Brecher, Frank W. (1987). "Woodrow Wilson and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict". American Jewish Archives. 39 (1): 23–47.

(1969). Palestine, the Arabs and Israel: the search for justice. Longmans. ISBN 978-0-582-78000-2.

Cattan, Henry

Biger, Gideon (2004). . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-76652-8.

The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947

Boustany, Wadi Faris (1936). . American Press. OCLC 337112.

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

Caplan, Neil (2011). . John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5786-8.

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories

Cassels, Alan (1970). . Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-7234-3.

Mussolini's Early Diplomacy

(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.

Barzilay-Yegar, Dvorah

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). . Routledge. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-135-28462-6.

Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900–1950

Davidson, Lawrence (2002). "The Past as Prelude: Zionism and the Betrayal of American Democratic Principles, 1917–48". Journal of Palestine Studies. 31 (3): 21–35. :10.1525/jps.2002.31.3.21. ISSN 0377-919X.

doi

Friedman, Isaiah (1973). . Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-3868-9.

The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations, 1914–1918

Friedman, Isaiah (2011). . Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-1514-7.

British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922

Friedman, Isaiah (1987). . Garland. ISBN 978-0-8240-4906-5.

The Rise of Israel: Britain enters into a compact with Zionism, 1917

(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.

Frischwasser-Ra'anan, Heinz Felix

Huneidi, Sahar (2001). . I.B.Tauris. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5.

A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians

Huneidi, Sahar (1998). (PDF). Journal of Palestine Studies. 27 (2): 23–41. doi:10.1525/jps.1998.27.2.00p0033m. JSTOR 2538282.

"Was Balfour Policy Reversible? The Colonial Office and Palestine, 1921–23"

(1998). "History and Peace: Revisiting two Zionist myths". Israel Affairs. 5 (1): 126–148. doi:10.1080/13537129808719501.

Garfinkle, Adam

(2014) [2002]. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (3 ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85289-0.

Gelvin, James

Ghandour, Zeina B. (10 September 2009). . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-00963-3.

A Discourse on Domination in Mandate Palestine: Imperialism, Property and Insurgency

Gil-Har, Yitzhak (2000). "Boundaries Delimitation: Palestine and Transjordan". Middle Eastern Studies. 36 (1): 68–81. :10.1080/00263200008701297. S2CID 143735975.

doi

Guckian, Noel Joseph (1985). (PhD). Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 20 June 2019.

British Relations with Trans-Jordan, 1920–1930

Halabi, Awad (2012). . Journal of Palestine Studies. 41 (3): 19–37. doi:10.1525/jps.2012.XLI.3.19.

"Liminal Loyalties: Ottomanism and Palestinian Responses to the Turkish War of Independence, 1919–22"

Hughes, Matthew (2013). . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-32395-9.

Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917–1919

(2009). Palestine papers: 1917–1922: seeds of conflict. Eland. ISBN 978-1-906011-38-3.

Ingrams, Doreen

(1939). Palestine: The Reality. Longmans, Green and Company. p. 105.

Jeffries, Joseph Mary Nagle

Jones, Martin (6 October 2016). . Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-4742-9127-9.

Failure in Palestine: British and United States Policy After the Second World War

Karsh, Efraim; Karsh, Inari (2001). . Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00541-9.

Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789–1923

Kattan, Victor (June 2009). . Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-7453-2579-8.

From coexistence to conquest: international law and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1891–1949

Kedouri, Elie (2014). . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-30842-1.

In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon-Husayn Correspondence and Its Interpretations 1914–1939

(1970). Foundations of British policy in the Arab world: the Cairo Conference of 1921. Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-1125-8.

Klieman, Aaron S.

Klieman, Aaron S. (1987). . Garland Pub. ISBN 978-0-8240-4917-1.

The Rise of Israel: Zionist Political Activity in the 1920s and 1930s

Knee, Stuart E (4 February 2014). . In Jeffrey Gurock (ed.). American Zionism: Missions and Politics: American Jewish History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-67549-2.

"The King-Crane Commission of 1919: The Articulation of Political Anti-Zionism"

Leatherdale, Clive (1983). . Psychology Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-0-7146-3220-9.

Britain and Saudi Arabia, 1925–1939: The Imperial Oasis

(1923). Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters. FRANKLIN CLASSICS TRADE Press. ISBN 978-0-353-27676-5.

Leslie, Shane

Lebow, Richard Ned (1968). "Woodrow Wilson and the Balfour Declaration". . 40 (4): 501–523. doi:10.1086/240237. JSTOR 1878450. S2CID 144175738.

The Journal of Modern History

Lalonde, Suzanne N. (6 December 2002). . McGill-Queen's Press – MQUP. ISBN 978-0-7735-7049-8.

Determining Boundaries in a Conflicted World: The Role of Uti Possidetis

Lieshout, Robert H. (2016). . I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78453-583-4.

Britain and the Arab Middle East: World War I and its Aftermath

(1969). "The United Kingdom and the Beginning of the Mandates System, 1919–1922". International Organization. 23 (1). University of Wisconsin Press: 73–96. doi:10.1017/S0020818300025534. JSTOR 2705765. S2CID 154745632.

Louis, Wm. Roger

Louis, Wm. Roger (1985). . Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822960-5.

The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951

Marlowe, John (1959). . Cresset Press.

The Seat of Pilate: An Account of the Palestine Mandate

Mathew, William M. (2011). (PDF). Journal of Palestine Studies. 40 (2): 26–42. doi:10.1525/jps.2011.xl.2.26. JSTOR 10.1525/jps.2011.xl.2.26.

"War-Time Contingency and the Balfour Declaration of 1917: An Improbable Regression"

Matz-Lück, Nele (September 2005). (PDF). In Armin Von Bogdandy; Rüdiger Wolfrum; Christiane E. Philipp (eds.). Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-14533-7.

"Civilization and the Mandate System under the League of Nations as Origin of Trusteeship"

Mazzawi, Musa E. (1 January 1997). . Ithaca Press. ISBN 978-0-86372-222-6.

Palestine and the Law: Guidelines for the Resolution of the Arab-Israel Conflict

Mcveigh, Shaun (12 March 2007). . Jurisprudence of Jurisdiction. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-42828-0.

"Conjuring Palestine"

McTague, John (1983). British Policy in Palestine, 1917-22. University Press of America. p. 286.  978-0-8191-2934-5.

ISBN

McTague, John J. (1980). "Zionist-British Negotiations over the Draft Mandate for Palestine, 1920". Jewish Social Studies. 42 (3/4). Indiana University Press: 281–292.  4467095.

JSTOR

(2004). A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55632-3.

Pappé, Ilan

(15 August 1994). "Introduction". The Making of the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-85043-819-9. Retrieved 2 May 2009.

Pappé, Ilan

Paris, Timothy J. (2003). . Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-77191-1.

Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule: The Sherifian Solution

Quigley, John B. (1990). . Duke University Press. p. 10.

Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice

Quigley, John (6 September 2010). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49124-2.

The Statehood of Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict

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. :10.1163/15718050-13020001.

doi

Reid, Walter (1 September 2011). . Birlinn. ISBN 978-0-85790-080-7.

Empire of Sand: How Britain Made the Middle East

Renton, James (2016). . In Miller, Rory (ed.). Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years. Routledge. pp. 15–37. ISBN 978-1-317-17233-8.

"Flawed Foundations: The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate"

Salibi, Kamal S. (15 December 1998). . I.B.Tauris. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-86064-331-6.

The Modern History of Jordan

(2010). The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6532-5.

Schneer, Jonathan

Silverburg, Sanford R. (29 January 2009). . McFarland. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-7864-4248-5.

Palestine and International Law: Essays on Politics and Economics

Sicker, Martin (1999). . Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-96639-3.

Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922

Stoyanovsky, Jacob (1928). . Longmans, Green.

The mandate for Palestine: a contribution to the theory and practice of international mandates

(1973). Crossroads to Israel. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-20165-2.

Sykes, Christopher

Teitelbaum, Joshua (2001). . C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85065-460-5.

The Rise and Fall of the Hashimite Kingdom of Arabia

Wilson, Mary Christina (1990). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-39987-6.

King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan

(1930). Mandates Under the League of Nations. University of Chicago Press. OCLC 562719723.

Wright, Quincy

Wright, Esmond (1951). "Abdallah's Jordan: 1947–1951". Middle East Journal. 5: 439–460.

(1973). "On the Settlement of Disputes About the Christian Holy Places". Israel Law Review. 8 (3): 331–366. doi:10.1017/S0021223700004258. S2CID 149471783.

Zander, Walter

Zieger, Robert H. (2001). . Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-9645-1.

America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience