British Betrayal of the Palestine Mandate

Following the conquest of Palestine, Britain took over the territory and was granted a Mandate to govern by the League of Nations. The British soon discovered that Arab leaders were set against the return of the Jewish people to their historic Homeland.

Hugh Kitson recounts the sad story of how Britain reneged on its promises.

The last day of October 1917 was truly momentous in history, both in Great Britain and the now reborn nation of Israel. On that day in Whitehall the War Cabinet met to decide on the final wording of what became known as the Balfour Declaration, which was communicated to Lord Rothschild in a letter dated 2 November 1917. Simultaneously to that War Cabinet meeting, the Allied forces captured the town of Beersheba, which dates back to the early Biblical times, from the Ottoman Turkish forces. Without that victory on the ground in Beersheba it is very unlikely that the Balfour Declaration could ever have been implemented.

Six weeks later, on 11th December Gen Sir Edmund Allenby stood on the steps of the Citadel in Jerusalem and declared British rule over the part of Palestine the Allies had conquered.

There is no doubt that the British Government in London at that time intended to fulfill the promise of facilitating the establishment of the Jewish national home in Palestine. However, the very sudden departure of the Ottoman Turkish administration left a vacuum of governance in the Holy City, which the British had to fill quickly, especially as the French were standing in the wings poised to take over. In order to fill that vacuum the Government in London set up a military administration in Jerusalem. It consisted of personnel from other parts of the Middle East, principally from Cairo.

‘The vast majority of British military personnel did not support Balfour Declaration and work from Arab.’

The vast majority of these British military personnel did not support the Balfour Declaration at all - indeed most of them were pro-Arab. When Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist organisation, arrived in Jerusalem the following year, he was received with rapturous welcome by the local Jewish population, but the military administration under Gen Allenby’s leadership were less than welcoming.

The Balfour Declaration, which in legal terms was nothing more than a political letter of intent, was one of the main items on the agenda at the San Remo Conference of 1920. The purpose of this conference, which was an addendum to the Paris Peace Conference, was to create the Mandates that would eventually give self-determination to the Arab people who had lived under Ottoman Turkish rule, and also to give legal status to the policy of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. In fact, the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Mandate of Palestine, along with certain other provisions, thus effectively raising it to the status of treaty legally binding under international law.

In the run-up to the San Remo conference, certain officers in the British military administration in Jerusalem where determined to prevent this outcome. In 1920 the encouraged a pogrom in the old city of Jerusalem. The story is told in the documentary film “The Forsaken Promise”. The main instigator was someone we would describe today as a radical Islamist - Haj Amin Al-Husseini. As a result of this pogrom, which was encouraged by a number of senior British Army officers, the military administration was disbanded by the Government in Whitehall. It was replaced with a civil administration under the leadership of the first High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel.

Samuel, who was Jewish, had proposed the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine back in 1915 to the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey - the predecessor to Arthur James Balfour. As High Commissioner of Palestine, and the only Jew to hold that office, Samuel went out of his way to try to be impartial. He not only pardoned Haj Amin Al-Husseini for his earlier crimes, but appointed him as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, believing that this responsibility would make him more moderate. This act of appeasement had the opposite effect, and set a pattern that would haunt the rest of British rule over Palestine.

The rights of August 1929 left one of some 139 Jews dead… the British responded by expelling the entire Jewish population of Hebron.’

In 1929 the Mufli instigated another pogrom. Once again, as in 1920, the cry went up: “The Government is with us - kill the Jews!” The riots of August 1929 left 139 Jews dead and 339 injured. Of the 139 who lost their lives across the country, half of them lived in Hebron. The British authorities responded by expelling the entire Jewish population of Hebron, thus dismembering one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Not only that, but not single Arab was convicted for the massacres they committed. This injustice was not only contrary to the spirit of Mandate, but also the letter.

The Mandate for Palestine document not only incorporated the Balfour Declaration almost Word for Word, but recognised the historic Jewish connection to the land and their right to reconstitute their National Home there. In other words, their pre-existing right was being recognised. Under the terms of the Mandate the British Government was obliged to place the country under such political, economic and administrative conditions as would secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home (Article 2) and to facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage close Jewish settlement offer land (Article 6). The Jewish people are the only ethnic group specifically mentioned in the Mandate document. The non-Jewish communities are referred to collectively, and civil and religious rights were not to be prejudiced. However the political rights in setting up the Jewish National Home were reserved for the Jewish people and institutions - like the Jewish Agency - who were to be involved in the administration.

By the mid 1930s Palestine had become almost ungovernable with constant Arab violence. Britain responded by restricting Jewish immigration into Palestine at a time when large numbers of European Jews were trying to escape from the Nazis. The aim of the British policy of appeasement was to discourage the Arabs from siding with the Germans, and to ensure continuing supply of oil from Arab countries. Later, during World War II, the Mufti sided with the Nazis with intention of extending Hitler's “Final Solution” across the Middle East.

The next stage in Britain's policy of appeasement was the White Paper of May 1939, which was adopted without the approval of the Council of the League of Nations. At the heart of the White Paper was the restriction of Jewish immigration to a maximum of 75,000 over the next five years. After that no further Jewish immigration would be allowed unless the Arabs, who were not specifically mentioned in the Mandate document at all, agreed to it. Moreover, land sales to Jewish institutions were ‘outlawed’. Furthermore, Article 14(1) of the White Paper implied that the Jewish population of Palestine should not exceed one third of the total. With a two thirds majority - many of them hostile to any Jewish presence there - the political rights of the Jewish people in their National Home were completely compromised.

Winston Churchill was among the fiercest opponents of the White Paper. Legally the 1939 White Paper was a violation of the Mandate. That was the decision of the Permanent Mandates Commission, albeit on a split vote. But it's more serious consequences were for the Jewish people who were trapped in Nazi occupied Europe. At least hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have escaped to the Promised Land perished in the Nazi death camps. Britain has their blood on its hands, and has never owned up to the fact.

‘Thousands of Jews who could have escaped to their promised land perished in the Nazi death camps. Britain has blood on his hands, and has never owned up to the fact.’

After the war, Britain’s betrayal continued with many thousands of Holocaust survivors being denied entry into the one place they wanted to go. At least 3000 Jewish people died at sea trying to run the British naval blockade in order to reach Palestine. The so-called ‘illegal’ immigrants who were intercepted by the Royal Navy where imprisoned and deported to camps outside Palestine - mostly in Cyprus. Britain's cruelty towards the survivors of Hitler's genocide was finally exposed by the Exodus incident in the summer of 1947. Under the terms of the Mandate, it was Britain that was acting illegally, not the Holocaust survivors.

But the ultimate betrayal came with the War of Independence in 1948. Two years earlier the British Government had sent Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery to assess the chances of a Jewish State surviving an invasion of the surrounding Arab armies. Monty's assessment was that the fledgling Jewish State would last no more than three weeks. Instead of helping Jewish people to defend themselves against such an onslaught, the Mandatory Power imposed an arms embargo against the Jewish fighting forces, while at the same time arming and training the Egyptians and Jordanians - as well as allowing Iraqi and Jordanian fighters to embed themselves in strategic parts of Palestine.

Immediately after David Ben Gurion's Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the Arab Legion, commanded by serving British Army officer, Gen Sir John Bagot Glub - otherwise known as Glubb Pasha - invaded the newborn State of Israel. The result of that war was that the Jewish people were ethnically cleansed from their ancient capital city and the historic heartland of Judea and Samaria. Certainly that was a betrayal of the intention of the Mandate.

I believe some questions need to be asked.

· Was Britain acting illegally by militarily backing an aggressive war of invasion?

· Was Britain in breach of the United Nations Charter, article 2, by doing so?

· What would've happened to the Jews if the Arabs had won?

I believe that it was God's mercy as well as his purpose that they didn't.