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The Mandate for Palestine was a
League of Nations mandate A League of Nations mandate represented a legal status under international law for specific territories following World War I, involving the transfer of control from one nation to another. These mandates served as legal documents establishing th ...
for
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
administration of the territories of
Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
and Transjordanwhich had been part of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
for four centuriesfollowing the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in
World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. 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 The Sykes–Picot Agreement () was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. T ...
. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the
Franco-Syrian War The Franco-Syrian War took place during 1920 between France and the Hashemite rulers of the newly established Arab Kingdom of Syria. During a series of engagements, which climaxed in the Battle of Maysalun, French forces defeated the forces of th ...
. 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 The Covenant of the League of Nations was the charter of the League of Nations. It was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Creation Early ...
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 The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (; , also referred to as the Levant States; 1923−1946) was a League of Nations mandate founded in the aftermath of the First World War and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, concerning the territories ...
was agreed in the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement of 23 December 1920. In Palestine, the Mandate required Britain to put into effect the
Balfour Declaration The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman regio ...
'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 The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Pl ...
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 The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (), was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708), at the end of the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war phase and ...
. After the failure of the
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Pl ...
, the 1947–1949 Palestine war ended with Mandatory Palestine divided among
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
, the
Jordanian annexation of the West Bank The Jordanian administration of the West Bank officially began on 24 April 1950, and ended with the decision to sever ties on 31 July 1988. The period started during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, when Jordan occupied and subsequently annexed the ...
and the Egyptian All-Palestine Protectorate in the
Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
. Transjordan was added to the mandate following the
Cairo Conference Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
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


Commitment regarding the Jewish people: the Balfour Declaration

Immediately following their declaration of war on the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
in November 1914, the British War Cabinet began to consider the future of
Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
(at the time, an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population). By late 1917, in the lead-up to the
Balfour Declaration The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British Government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman regio ...
, 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 The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
. 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 Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
community for the Allied war effort. 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. The term "national home" had no precedent in international law, and was intentionally vague about whether a
Jewish state In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland for the Jewish people. Overview Modern Israel came into existence on 14 May 1948 as a polity to serve as the homeland for the Jewi ...
was contemplated. The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified, 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. 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 Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
worldwide by (according to the presidents of the Conjoint Committee, David L. Alexander and
Claude Montefiore Claude Joseph Goldsmid Montefiore, also Goldsmid–Montefiore or just Goldsmid Montefiore  (1858–1938) was the intellectual founder of Anglo-Liberal Judaism (UK), Liberal Judaism and the founding president of the World Union for Progress ...
in a letter to the ''Times'') "stamping the Jews as strangers in their native lands". 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. The Balfour Declaration was subsequently incorporated into the Mandate for Palestine to put the declaration into effect. Unlike the declaration itself, the Mandate was legally binding on the British government.


Commitment regarding the Arab population: the McMahon–Hussein 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 The Hashemites (), also House of Hashim, are the Dynasty, royal family of Jordan, which they have ruled since 1921, and were the royal family of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Hejaz, Hejaz (1916–1925), Arab Kingdom of Syria, Syria (1920), and Kingd ...
that had ruled the
Hejaz Hejaz is a Historical region, historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes the majority of the western region of Saudi Arabia, covering the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif and Al Bahah, Al-B ...
as vassals for almost a millennium, and Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner to Egypt. 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 The Sharif of Mecca () was the title of the leader of the Sharifate of Mecca, traditional steward of the Holiest sites in Islam, Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The term ''sharif'' is Arabic for "noble", "highborn", and is used to desc ...
launching the
Arab Revolt The Arab Revolt ( ), also known as the Great Arab Revolt ( ), was an armed uprising by the Hashemite-led Arabs of the Hejaz against the Ottoman Empire amidst the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I. On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Co ...
against the Ottoman Empire. 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). 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 Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...
,
Homs Homs ( ; ), known in pre-Islamic times as Emesa ( ; ), is a city in western Syria and the capital of the Homs Governorate. It is Metres above sea level, above sea level and is located north of Damascus. Located on the Orontes River, Homs is ...
,
Hama Hama ( ', ) is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria. It is located north of Damascus and north of Homs. It is the provincial capital of the Hama Governorate. With a population of 996,000 (2023 census), Hama is one o ...
and
Aleppo Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Governorates of Syria, governorate of Syria. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents it is Syria's largest city by urban area, and ...
"; conflicting interpretations of this description caused great controversy in subsequent years. A particular dispute, which continues to the present, was whether Palestine was part of the coastal exclusion. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, British Prime Minister
David Lloyd George David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party (United Kingdom), Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leadi ...
told his French counterpart
Georges Clemenceau Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who was Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A physician turned journalist, he played a central role in the poli ...
and the other allies that the McMahon-Hussein correspondence was a treaty obligation.


Commitment to the French: the Sykes–Picot agreement

Around the same time, another secret treaty was negotiated between the United Kingdom and France (with assent by the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
and Italy) to define their mutually-agreed
spheres of influence In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity. While there may be a formal a ...
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 Colonel Sir Tatton Benvenuto Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet (16 March 1879 – 16 February 1919) was an English traveller, Conservative Party politician, and diplomatic advisor, particularly with regard to the Middle East at the time of the First ...
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 Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
and
Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...
,
Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...
and southern
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
, and an additional small area including the ports of
Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...
and
Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...
to allow access to the Mediterranean. The Palestine region, with smaller boundaries than the later
Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...
, 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 The Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) was a joint British, French and Arab military administration over the Levantine provinceswhich had been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuriesbetween 1918 and 1920, set up on 23 October ...
(OETA) in the Levant.


Commitment to the League of Nations: the mandate system

The mandate system was created in the wake of World War I as a compromise between
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...
's ideal of
self-determination Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...
, set out in his
Fourteen Points The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress ...
speech of January 1918, and the European powers' desire for gains for their empires. It was established under Article 22 of the
Covenant of the League of Nations The Covenant of the League of Nations was the charter of the League of Nations. It was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. Creation Early ...
, entered into on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the
Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles was a peace treaty signed on 28 June 1919. As the most important treaty of World War I, it ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allies of World War I, Allied Powers. It was signed in the Palace ...
, 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. 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. The mandate system differed fundamentally from the
protectorate A protectorate, in the context of international relations, is a State (polity), state that is under protection by another state for defence against aggression and other violations of law. It is a dependent territory that enjoys autonomy over ...
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 The League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), Paris Peace ...
. 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 The International Court of Justice (ICJ; , CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the only international court that adjudicates general disputes between nations, and gives advisory opinions on international legal issues as interpretati ...
. The process of establishing the mandates consisted of two phases: the formal removal of
sovereignty Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate au ...
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." 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 he councilconsiders 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."


Assignment to Britain


Palestine

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. In anticipation of the Peace Conference, the British devised a " Sharifian Solution" to " akestraight 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. The delegation made two initial statements to the peace conference. The 1 January 1919 memorandum referred to the goal of "unit ngthe Arabs eventually into one nation", defining the Arab regions as "from a line Alexandretta
Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
southward to the Indian Ocean". The 29 January memorandum 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 Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only History of the Democratic Party (United States), Democrat to serve as president during the Prog ...
's policy of
self-determination Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...
. 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. 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." The World Zionist Organization delegation to the Peace Conference – led by
Chaim Weizmann Chaim Azriel Weizmann ( ; 27 November 1874 – 9 November 1952) was a Russian-born Israeli statesman, biochemist, and Zionist leader who served as president of the World Zionist Organization, Zionist Organization and later as the first pre ...
, 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". 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." 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 Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, advocating judicial restraint. Born in Vienna, Frankfurter im ...
in March 1919, the agreement was used by the Zionist delegation to argue that their plans for Palestine had prior Arab approval; however, the Zionists omitted Faisal's handwritten caveat that the agreement was conditional on Palestine being within the area of Arab independence. 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 Deauville () is a communes of France, commune in the Calvados (department), Calvados department, Normandy (administrative region), Normandy, northwestern France. Major attractions include its port, harbour, Race track, race course, marinas, con ...
in September 1919. 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). As Weizmann reported to his WZO colleagues in London in May 1920, the boundaries of the mandated territories were unspecified at San Remo and would "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" at a later stage.


Addition of Transjordan

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 The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...
attacks on the territory, indicating their political ideas about its future; they had intended the area to become part of an Arab Syrian state. The British subsequently defeated the Ottoman forces in Transjordan in late September 1918, just a few weeks before the Ottoman Empire's overall surrender. Transjordan was not mentioned during the 1920 discussions at San Remo, at which the Mandate for Palestine was awarded. Britain and France agreed that the eastern border of Palestine would be the Jordan river as laid out in the Sykes–Picot Agreement. 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). Regarding Faisal's
Arab Kingdom of Syria The Syrian Arab Kingdom (, ') was a self-proclaimed, unrecognized monarchy existing briefly in the territory of Bilad al-Sham, historical Syria. It was announced on 5 October 1918 as a fully independent Arab constitutional government with the perm ...
, the French removed
Hashim al-Atassi Hashim al-Atassi (; 11 January 1875 – 5 December 1960) was a Syrian politician and statesman who served as the President of Syria on three occasions from 1936 to 1939, 1949 to 1951 and 1954 to 1955. Background and early career He was bo ...
'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 or, as Samuel put it, "politically derelict". 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?". British Foreign Minister
Lord Curzon George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), known as Lord Curzon (), was a British statesman, Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician, explorer and writer who served as Viceroy of India ...
ultimately decided that it did not; Transjordan would remain independent, but in a close relationship with Palestine. 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." 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", and asked to put parts of Transjordan directly under his administrative control. Two weeks later, on 21 August, Samuel visited Transjordan without authorisation from London; at a meeting with 600 leaders in
Salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...
, 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. 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. 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". 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. 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." 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. Between then and the end of March 1921, Abdullah's army occupied all of Transjordan with some local support and no British opposition. The
Cairo Conference Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
was convened on 12 March 1921 by
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...
, 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. On the first day of the conference, the Middle East Department of the
Colonial Office The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created in 1768 from the Southern Department to deal with colonial affairs in North America (particularly the Thirteen Colo ...
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.


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. 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. 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.


1919: Initial Zionist-British discussions

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. However, the Zionist Organisation Report stated that a draft was presented by the Zionist Organization to the British on 15 July 1919.''The Zionist Congress''
. The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, p. 6, 9 September 1921. At news.google.com, p. 3
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. By December 1919, they had negotiated a "compromise" draft.


1920: Curzon negotiations

Although Curzon took over from Balfour in October, he did not play an active role in the drafting until mid-March. 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" 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 ..."). Curzon insisted on revisions until the 10 June draft removed his objections; 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. 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. The draft was submitted to the League of Nations on 7 December 1920, and was published in the ''Times'' on 3 February 1921.


1921: Transjordan article

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. 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
iver Iver is a civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. In addition to the central nucleated village, clustered village, the parish includes the residential neighbourhoods of Iver Heath and Richings Park and the hamlets o ...
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.
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. This created two administrative areas – Palestine, under direct British rule, and the autonomous
Emirate of Transjordan The Emirate of Transjordan (), officially the Amirate of Trans-Jordan, was a British protectorate established on 11 April 1921,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 Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
but was rebuffed both times. 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. On the way, the delegation held meetings with
Pope Benedict XV Pope Benedict XV (; ; born Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa, ; 21 November 1854 – 22 January 1922) was head of the Catholic Church from 1914 until his death in January 1922. His pontificate was largely overshadowed by World War I a ...
and diplomats from the League of Nations in
Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
(where they also met Balfour, who was non-committal). 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 Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
Members of Parliament. Musa al-Husayni led a 1922 delegation to
Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...
and then to the Lausanne Conference, where (after
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and revolutionary statesman who was the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President of Turkey, president from 1923 until Death an ...
's victories against the Greek army in Turkey) the
Treaty of Sèvres The Treaty of Sèvres () was a 1920 treaty signed between some of the Allies of World War I and the Ottoman Empire, but not ratified. The treaty would have required the cession of large parts of Ottoman territory to France, the United Kingdom, ...
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". During the negotiations, Ismet Pasha refused to recognise or accept the mandates; 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.


1922: Final amendments

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.


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. 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: 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 John Poynder Dickson-Poynder, 1st Baron Islington (31 October 1866 – 6 December 1936), born John Poynder Dickson and known as Sir John Poynder Dickson-Poynder from 1884 to 1910, was a British politician. He was Governor of New Zealand between 1 ...
. 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. 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: 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.
Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (3 August 186714 December 1947), was a British statesman and Conservative politician who was prominent in the political leadership of the United Kingdom between the world wars. He was prime ministe ...
, 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". 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." Describing it as "nothing short of remarkable",
international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...
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. Documents related to the 1923 reappraisal remained secret until the early 1970s.


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. 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. 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". Despite opposition from the
State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...
, this was followed on 21 September 1922 by the Lodge–Fish Resolution, a congressional endorsement of the Balfour Declaration. 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). The State Department prepared a report documenting its position on the mandate.


Council of the League of Nations: Mandate

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:
heMandates 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.
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, 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. The Council stated that the mandate was approved and would come into effect "automatically" when the dispute between France and Italy was resolved. A public statement confirming this was made by the president of the council on 24 July. With the Fascists gaining power in Italy in October 1922, new Italian Prime Minister
Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his overthrow in 194 ...
delayed the mandates' implementation. On 23 August 1923, the Turkish assembly in Ankara ratified the Treaty of Lausanne by 215 of 235 votes. The Council of the League of Nations determined that the two mandates had come into effect at its 29 September 1923 meeting. The dispute between France and Italy was resolved by the Turkish ratification.


Council of the League of Nations: Transjordan memorandum

Shortly after the mandate's approval in July 1922, the Colonial Office prepared a memorandum to implement Article 25. 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.''League of Nations Official Journal'', Nov. 1922, pp. 1188–1189. 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."


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, because it required the agreement of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and revolutionary statesman who was the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President of Turkey, president from 1923 until Death an ...
. 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 The Treaty of Lausanne (, ) is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially ...
, 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) The Ankara Agreement (1921) (or the Accord of Ankara; Franklin-Bouillon Agreement; Franco-Turkish Agreement of Ankara, Turkish: ''Ankara Antlaşması'', French: Traité d'Ankara) was signed on 20 October 1921"Ankara, Treaty of" in '' The New En ...
and renounced its sovereignty over Palestine.


Key issues


National home for the Jewish people (Preamble and Articles 2, 4, 6, 7, 11)

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 ...
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". 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''..." 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 .e. by the Treaty of Sèvresbeen given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;
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". A "Jewish agency" was mentioned three times: in Articles 4, 6 and 11. 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 The Jewish Agency for Israel (), formerly known as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jews, Jewish non-profit organization in the world. It was established in 1929 as the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). ...
". 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." 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".


Religious and communal issues (Articles 13–16 and 23)

Religious and communal guarantees, such as freedom of religion and education, were made in general terms without reference to a specific religion. 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, 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 is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, economic, legal, environmental, political, religious, scientific or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the curren ...
. The Zionists had limited interest in this area. 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. 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.


Transjordan (Article 25 and Transjordan memorandum)

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". This would, according to professor of modern Jewish history Bernard Wasserstein, result in "the myth of Palestine's 'first partition' hich becamepart of the concept of 'Greater Israel' and of the ideology of Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement". Palestinian-American academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, then chair of the
Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
political science department, suggested that the "Jordan as a Palestinian State" references made by Israeli spokespeople may reflect "the same isnderstanding". 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.


Legality

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. 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 " mmunities 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." 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.


Borders

Before World War I, the territory which became Mandatory Palestine was the former Ottoman Empire divisions of the
Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem The Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem (, ; , , ), also known as the Sanjak of Jerusalem, was a district in Ottoman Syria with special administrative status established in 1872.Büssow (2011), p5Abu-Manneh (1999), p39Jankowski & Gershoni (1997), p174 T ...
and the southern part of the Beirut Vilayet; what became Transjordan was the southern Vilayet of Syria and the northern Hejaz Vilayet. During the war, the British military divided the Hejaz and
Egyptian Expeditionary Force The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) was a military formation of the British Empire, formed on 10 March 1916 under the command of General Archibald Murray from the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and the Force in Egypt (1914–1915), at the ...
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. The post-war military administrations OETA South and OETA East, the latter with an Arab governor, split the territory in the same way; Professor Yitzhak Gil-Har notes that "the military administration n Palestinealways treated Trans-Jordan as a separate administration outside its jurisdiction". In 1955, Professor Uri Ra'anan wrote that the OETA border system "politically, if not legally, was bound to influence the post-war settlement". 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". The biblical concept of
Eretz Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions ...
and its re-establishment as a modern state was a basic tenet of the original
Zionist Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
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". These borders included present day Israel and the
Israeli-occupied territories Israel has occupied the Golan Heights of Syria and the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It has previously occupied the Israeli occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and southern Lebanon as well. Prio ...
, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon "in the vicinity south of Sidon". Neither Palestinians nor any other Arabs were involved in the discussions which determined the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine.


Palestine-Egypt border

The first border which was agreed upon was with British-ruled Egypt. This boundary traced back to 1906, when the Taba Crisis marked the culmination of longstanding disputes over the Sinai and
Negev The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...
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. The decision, a compromise between Zionist aspirations for the el-Arish
Rafah Rafah ( ) is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine, and the capital of the Rafah Governorate. It is located south-west of Gaza City. In 2017, Rafah had a population of 171,889. Due to the Gaza war, about 1.4 million people from Gaza C ...
Aqaba Aqaba ( , ; , ) is the only coastal city in Jordan and the largest and most populous city on the Gulf of Aqaba. Situated in southernmost Jordan, Aqaba is the administrative center of the Aqaba Governorate. The city had a population of 148, ...
triangle and various British proposals, which favored assigning most of the Negev to Egypt, was already well-defined on maps. 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 region of Palestine, also known as historic Palestine, is a geographical area in West Asia. It includes the modern states of Israel and Palestine, as well as parts of northwestern Jordan in some definitions. Other names for the region i ...
, the Zionist Organization had lobbied for Palestine to be given access to the
Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...
. Abdullah's requests for the Negev to be added to Transjordan in late 1922 and 1925 were rejected.


Northern borders

The determination of the mandate's northern border was a far longer and more complex process than for the other borders. 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. 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. It placed most of the
Golan Heights The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a basaltic plateau at the southwest corner of Syria. It is bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon mountains with Mount Hermon in t ...
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.FSU Law
.
Under the treaty, Syrian and Lebanese residents would have the same fishing and navigation rights on
Lake Hula The Hula Valley () is a valley and fertile agriculture, agricultural region in northern Israel with abundant fresh water that used to be Lake Hula before it was drained. It is a major stopover for birds migrating along the Great Rift Valley be ...
, the
Sea of Galilee The Sea of Galilee (, Judeo-Aramaic languages, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ), also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth ...
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 The Jordan River or River Jordan (, ''Nahr al-ʾUrdunn''; , ''Nəhar hayYardēn''), also known as ''Nahr Al-Sharieat'' (), is a endorheic river in the Levant that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and drains to the Dead ...
, 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. The new border followed a strip along the northeastern shore. 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.


Palestine-Transjordan border

Transjordan had been part of the Syria Vilayet – primarily the sanjaks of
Hauran The Hauran (; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, to the northeast by the al-Safa field, to the east and south by the Harrat ...
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, 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. 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"; the railway ran parallel to, and 35–40 miles (about 60 km) east of, the Jordan River. In May, British officials presented a proposal to the peace conference which included maps showing Palestine's eastern boundary just east of the Jordan. 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. The Jordan River was finally chosen as the border between the two territories; this was documented in Article 25 of the mandate, approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921, which set the boundary as simply "the Jordan
iver Iver is a civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. In addition to the central nucleated village, clustered village, the parish includes the residential neighbourhoods of Iver Heath and Richings Park and the hamlets o ...
. No further definition was discussed until mid-1922, 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). The latter's publication on 1 September was the first official statement of the detailed boundary, 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".


Transjordan-Arabia border

The southern border between Transjordan and Arabia was considered strategic for Transjordan to avoid being
landlocked A landlocked country is a country that has no territory connected to an ocean or whose coastlines lie solely on endorheic basins. Currently, there are 44 landlocked countries, two of them doubly landlocked (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan), and t ...
, with intended access to the sea via the
Port of Aqaba The Port of Aqaba is the only port in Jordan, and is owned by Aqaba Development Corporation (ADC) and has 12 terminals operated by five operators: the Aqaba Company for port management and operation; Aqaba Container Terminal; Industrial Port Co ...
. The southern region of
Ma'an Ma'an () is a city in southern Jordan, southwest of the capital Amman. It serves as the capital of the Ma'an Governorate. Its population was approximately 41,055 in 2015. Civilizations with the name of Ma'an have existed at least since the Nab ...
-
Aqaba Aqaba ( , ; , ) is the only coastal city in Jordan and the largest and most populous city on the Gulf of Aqaba. Situated in southernmost Jordan, Aqaba is the administrative center of the Aqaba Governorate. The city had a population of 148, ...
, a large area with a population of only 10,000, was administered by OETA East (later the Arab Kingdom of Syria, and then Mandatory Transjordan) and claimed by the Kingdom of Hejaz. In OETA East, Faisal had appointed a ''
kaymakam Kaymakam, also known by #Names, many other romanizations, was a title used by various officials of the Ottoman Empire, including acting grand viziers, governors of provincial sanjaks, and administrators of district kazas. The title has been reta ...
'' (sub-governor) at Ma'an; the ''kaymakam'' at Aqaba, who "disregarded both Husein in Mecca and Feisal in Damascus with impunity", had been instructed by Hussein to extend his authority to Ma'an. 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. 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.


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. 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. 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. 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.


Impact and termination


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. The
United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Pl ...
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 terminate on 15 May 1948. On the last day of the mandate, the creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed and the
1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...
began.


Emirate of Transjordan

In April 1923, five months before the mandate came into force, Britain announced their intention to recognise an "independent Government" in Transjordan. 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.


Key dates from Balfour Declaration to mandate becoming effective


See also

* Permanent Mandates Commission


External link

* Full text o
The Palestine Mandate
(of The Council of the League of Nations, 24 July 1922), by The Avalon Project of the
Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...


Notes


Primary supporting quotes


Explanatory notes and scholarly perspectives


Citations


Bibliography


Specialised works

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available in pdf here
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General histories

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Works by involved parties

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online
an
in pdf form
* * * * * ; original German transcript at {{DEFAULTSORT:Palestine, Mandate For * 1923 documents Politics of the Arab–Israeli conflict Documents of Mandatory Palestine History of Palestine (region) History of Zionism League of Nations mandates