Mandatory Palestine, officially known as Palestine, was a British administrative territory in the region of Palestine between 1920 and 1948. Under the League of Nations mandate system, Britain was entrusted with administrating Palestine on the development of representative institutions and eventual self-government. From 1922, Britain administered the territory under the Mandate for Palestine with the British High Commissioner under the Colonial Office as its chief administrator.
After the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in 1916, British forces drove Ottoman forces out of the Levant between 1917 and 1918. Allenby to Robertson 25 January 1918 in Hughes 2004, p. 128 For the British, the United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue that later arose was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. The declaration effectively overrode the emerging principle of self-determination for the territory's existing Palestinian Arab population. Mandatory Palestine was then established in 1920, and the British obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922.Article 22, The Covenant of the League of Nations and "Mandate for Palestine", Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 11, p. 862, Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1972 Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate, based on its social, political, and economic development. This classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest capacity for self-governance.Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004, 2004 International Court of Justice 63. All Class A mandates other than Mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946.Victor Kattan. From Coexistence to Conquest, International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891–1949. London, New York: Pluto Press, 2009.
At the formal beginning of the Mandate, the population was approximately 11% Jewish, 9% Christian Arab, and 78% Muslim Arab. During the Mandate, the area saw successive waves of Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both the Jewish and Arab communities. Competing interests of the two populations led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, adopted by the UN General Assembly in November 1947, recommended dividing the territory into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The 1948 Palestine war ended with the territory of Mandatory Palestine divided among the State of Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which annexed territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Kingdom of Egypt, which established the "All-Palestine Protectorate" in the Gaza Strip.
Etymology
The name given to the Mandate's territory was "Palestine", in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage Chapter 9: Being Palestine, becoming Palestine, p. 287: "the sense of continuity between the ancient, medieval and modern political geography and naming traditions of Palestine eventually came into play in the designation of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine". The preceding pages, p.259-287, document in detail the usage of the term Palestine by native Palestinians from the moment the printing press was introduced into the area in the late 19th century.The 1915 Filastin Risalesi ("Palestine Document") is a country survey of the VIII Corps of the Ottoman Army, which identified Palestine as a region including the sanjaqs of Akka (the Galilee), the Sanjaq of Nablus, and the Sanjaq of Jerusalem (Kudus Sherif), see Ottoman Conceptions of Palestine-Part 2: Ethnography and Cartography, Salim Tamari and with European tradition. The Mandate charter stipulated that Mandatory Palestine would have three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.
In 1926, the British authorities formally decided to use the traditional Arabic equivalent to the English name, and its Hebrew transcription i.e. Filasţīn (فلسطين) and Pālēśtīnā (פּלשׂתינה) respectively. The Jewish leadership proposed that the proper Hebrew name should be ʾĒrēts Yiśrāʾel (ארץ ישׂראל, Land of Israel). The final compromise was to append the initials of the Hebrew proposed name, Alef-Yod, within parenthesis (א״י) after Pālēśtīnā whenever the Mandate's name was mentioned in Hebrew in official documents.Ronald Storrs, Orientations, Nicholson & Watson 1943 pp.383-384.|quote='When . .the first civil issue of Palestine stamps was being designed, strong pressure was exerted on the authorities to render Palestine, in the Hebrew title, by Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel, the ancient and traditional Jewish name. Jews have never called the country Palestine, which was indeed a Roman name etymologically akin to Philistia. .the Government was undoubtedly right in resisting a nomenclature intolerable to the vast majority of Palestinians, and in substituting the device, relatively inoffensive to all parties (though giving complete satisfaction to none), of adding to "Palestine" in Hebrew the two Hebrew initials (E.Y.).' The Arab leadership saw this compromise as a violation of the mandate terms. Some Arab politicians suggested "Southern Syria" (سوريا الجنوبية, Sūriyā al-Janūbiyya) as the Arabic name instead. The British authorities rejected this proposal; according to the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission:
The adjective "mandatory" indicates that the entity's legal status derived from a League of Nations mandate; it derives from the meaning of "mandate" as "authorization" rather than from "mandatory" in the sense of "compulsory".
History
1920s Following the arrival of the British, Arab inhabitants established Muslim-Christian Associations in all of the major towns.Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2002: "The first were the nationalists, who in 1918 formed the first Muslim-Christian associations to protest against the Jewish national home" p.558 In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem.Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Second Edition, 2009: "An All-Palestine Congress, known also as the First Congress of the Muslim-Christian Societies, was organised by the MCA and convened in Jerusalem in February 1919." p.220-221 It was aimed primarily at representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration. Concurrently, the Zionist Commission formed in March 1918 and actively promoted Zionist objectives in Palestine. On 19 April 1920, elections took place for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community. The Palestine Chronicle
In April 1920, riots in Jerusalem caused the deaths of five Jews and four Arabs.
In July 1920, a British civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner replaced the military administration. The first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July. Samuel established his headquarters and official residence in part of the Augusta Victoria Hospital complex on Mount Scopus on what was then the northeastern edge of Jerusalem, a building that had been constructed for the Germans circa 1910.'A Colonial Room With a View of Jerusalem' (Haaretz, 24 April 2012). https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2012-04-24/ty-article/a-colonial-room-with-a-view-of-jerusalem/0000017f-deec-db22-a17f-fefd9e520000 Damaged by an earthquake in 1927, this building served as the headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners until 1933. In that year, a new, purpose-built headquarters and official residence for the High Commissioner was completed on what was then the southeastern edge of Jerusalem. Referred to as Armon HaNetziv by the Jewish population, this building, located on the 'Hill of Evil Counsel' on the ridge of Jabel Mukaber, remained in use as the headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners until the end of British rule in 1948.
One of the first actions of the newly installed civil administration was to begin granting concessions from the Mandatory government over key economic assets. In 1921 the government granted Pinhas Rutenberg – a Jewish entrepreneur – concessions for the production and distribution of electrical power. Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organisations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favour Zionism. The British administration claimed that electrification would enhance the economic development of the country as a whole, while at the same time securing their commitment to facilitate a Jewish National Home through economicrather than politicalmeans.Shamir, Ronen (2013) Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine Stanford: Stanford University Press
In May 1921, following a disturbance between rival Jewish left-wing protestors and then attacks by Arabs on Jews, almost 100 died in rioting in Jaffa.
High Commissioner Samuel tried to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included Jewish participation.Caplan, Neil. Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question, 1917 – 1925. London and Totowa, NJ: F. Cass, 1978. . pp. 148–161. When Kamil al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and Muslim leader. As Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role in violent opposition to Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been established by Samuel in December 1921."It was not scholarly religious credentials that made Hajj Amin an attractive candidate for president of the SMC in the eyes of colonial officials. Rather, it was the combination of his being an effective nationalist activist and a member of one of Jerusalem's most respected notable families that made it advantageous to align his interests with those of the British administration and thereby keep him on a short tether." Weldon C. Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine, I.B.Tauris, 2006 pp. 31–32 The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds,For details see Yitzhak Reiter, Islamic Endowments in Jerusalem under British Mandate, Frank Cass, London Portland, Oregon, 1996 and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget.Excluding funds for land purchases. Sahar Huneidi, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians 1920–1925, I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2001 p. 38. The 'Jewish Agency', mentioned in article 4 of the Mandate only became the official term in 1928. At the time the organisation was called the Palestine Zionist Executive. In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint teachers and preachers.