Should the British Government be blamed for its handling of the Mandate in Palestine?

Yes, the British government should be blamed

1. Arab objections ignored 

The British adopted a policy in Palestine that the majority of the population of the country were strongly opposed to. The Palestine Arabs' objections to Britain's Jewish National Home policy were repeatedly and clearly expressed to the British before the Mandate was even written. However, the British government did not take the Arabs seriously  and refused to believe that Arabs could have genuine political aspirations. Britain's high-handed and dismissive attitude to the Arabs meant that discord, unrest and violent conflict were an inevitable consequence of British rule in Palestine under the terms of the Mandate. 

Extracts from the Memorandum Submitted by the Arab Higher Committee to the Permanent Mandates Commission and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Dated July 23rd 1937 

'We regard as a profound error the point of view adopted by His Majesty's Government that in their mutual relations the Arabs and the Jews of Palestine stand as opposed litigants with equal rights. Though we have always repudiated any such suggestions, the Royal Commission have gone still further, and in seeking their "solution", have treated the Jewish case as the basic issue, to be considered and solved without reference to the Arab issues at stake. Accordingly its actual and stated policy has been that His Majesty's Government must fulfil its promise to the Jews and only in the second place consider its promises to the Arabs; this, despite the solemn assertion of the Permanent Mandates Commission and the British Government that their "dual obligations" are of equal weight. The latter assertion is itself an understatement of the Arab rights which is not justified by either morality or history. For the Arabs of Palestine are the owners of the country and lived in it prior to the British Occupation for hundreds of years and in it they still constitute the overwhelming majority. The Jews on the other hand are a minority of intruders, who before the war had no great standing in this country, and whose political connections therewith had been severed for almost 2,000 years. It is impossible to find either in logic or morality any justification for the attempt to reniew this broken connection by the establishment of a so-called Jewish National Home. Such an attempt is without precedent in history, ancient or modern, nor is it based on anything but the force of British Arms and the complete lack of a sense of political reality among the Jews.... 

The Arabs have never ceased since its promulgation in 1917 vigourously to repudiate the Balfour Declaration, proclaiming through every congress, party programme and delegation their steadfast rejection thereof. ... 

We now...assert that the British Government has consciously persisted in a policy of palpable errors and recognised contradictions, by mere weight of armed force, despite the unceasing gestures of protest and repudiation on the part of the Arabs...' 

 https://www.loc.gov/item/2017498670/ 

Notes: 

The Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) was a body established by the League of Nations to oversee the the territories that were governed by mandates awarded by the League. The countries possessing the mandates, such as Britain and France, were required to make annual reports to the Commission and were held to the provisions of the mandates by the Commissioners. 

The Royal Commission of Inquiry to Palestine was appointed in 1936 by the British government to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine. The Commission published a report in 1937 which recommended that Palestine should be partitioned to create separate territories for the Arabs and the Jews. 

An Arab nationalist – Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh 

Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh was born in Nablus in 1887, into an established textile merchant family. Darwazeh did not go to college, but taught himself Turkish, French, maths and history. He became a published writer and educator; one of his plays was performed in Nablus in 1913. He served the Ottoman administration in the Department of Telegraphic and Postal Services at Nablus. In 1908 he supported the movement for greater democracy within the Ottoman Government,  but by 1918 he had committed himself fully to the Arab nationalist cause, for which he worked throughout the British Mandate.   

Darwazeh was one of the founders of the Istiqlal (Independence) Party, in 1932, one of several Arab political parties established at the time in Palestine which aimed to mobilize mass opposition to the British administration through strikes, demonstrations and non-cooperation. These parties only lasted a few years as they were overtaken by events in the escalating crisis. 

In 1936 Darwazeh was arrested and interned in a detention camp by the British. By 1937 he had been able to escape Palestine, and then travelled to Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia to enlist support for the Palestine Arab cause. Exiled by the British, Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh was never able to return to Palestine. 

Anglo-French Declaration 

November 7, 1918 

The Anglo-French Declaration was signed between France and Great Britain on November 7, 1918, four days before the armistice agreement that ended World War I, and issued in Syria, Palestine and Iraq. Copies were posted on the public notice boards in all towns and villages in the Arab territories then occupied by the Allied forces. 

'The goal envisaged by France and Great Britain in prosecuting in the East the War let loose by German ambition is the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations. 

In pursuit of those intentions, France and Great Britain agree to further and assist in the establishment of indigenous Governments and administrations in Syria (1) and Mesopotamia (2) which have already been liberated by the Allies, as well as in those territories which they are endeavouring to liberate, and to recognise them as soon as they are actually set up.. 

Far from wishing to impose any particular institutions on the populations of those regions, their [ie France and Great Britain’s] only concern is to offer such support and efficacious help as will ensure the smooth working of the governments and administrations which those populations will have elected of their own free will to have; to facilitate the economic development of the country by promoting and encouraging local initiative; to foster the spread of education; and to put an end to the dissensions which Turkish policy has for so long exploited. Such is the task which the two Allied Powers wish to undertake in the liberated territories.' 

(1) This name was officially used to denote the whole of geographic Syria from the Taurus mountains to the Egyptian frontier. 

(2) Denoted the region made up of the former Ottoman vilayets of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, which is today’s Iraq. 

From The Arab Awakening, George Antonius, Capricorn Books Edition,1965. 

https://balfourproject.org/anglo-french-declaration 

Article 22, Covenant of the League of Nations, 1919. 

‘Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire 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. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.’ 

Notes: 

The creation of the League of Nations was an outcome of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference following the end of World War One. This new organisation, advocated by US President Woodrow Wilson, was intended to prevent future wars by resolving conflicts through negotiation. Wilson believed strongly in the ideal of self-determination for emerging nations, he therefore encouraged the other powers of the League of Nations to reject the old-style annexation of territory by victors. The newly created Mandates system was supposed to be a more enlightened approach to the acquisition of territory by the victors of the war.     

The front page of a special edition of 'Filastin' newspaper, March 25 1925 to mark the visit of Arthur Balfour to Palestine for the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Wikipedia Commons. 

The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915-1916) 

‘With regard to Palestine, His Majesty’s Government are committed by Sir H. McMahon’s letter to the Sherif on the 24th October, 1915, to its inclusion in the boundaries of Arab independence. But they have stated their policy regarding the Palestinian Holy Places and Zionist colonisation in their message to him of the 4th January, 1918.’ 

Political Intelligence Department report, ‘Memorandum on British commitments to King Hussein’. Peace Congress file, March 15 1919. The National Archives, London. Ref: FO 608/92. 

Sherif Hussein of Mecca was approached by British diplomat Sir Henry McMahon, to sound out his loyalties to the Ottoman Empire. In a correspondence that lasted until March 1916, McMahon offered British recognition and protection for an independent Arab kingdom ruled by Hussein and his Hashemite dynasty, in return for the Hashemites leading a revolt against their Ottoman overlords. 

Extracts from the Shaw Commission Report, 1930 

'On the Arab side witness after witness, many of them persons of experience and of influence in the Arab community whose views they were undoubtedly expressing, told us of growing apprehension and alarm due to the conviction that the policy of the Zionists in regard to land and immigration must inevitably result in the complete subordination of the Arabs as a race and the expropriation of their people from the soil. It was further contended that in districts other than rural the admission of Jews on anything like the scale demanded entails the displacement of Arabs by Jews and inevitable unemployment on a large scale,....' 

'We consider that the claims and demands which from the Zionist side have been advanced in regard to the future of Jewish immigration into Palestine have been such as to arouse apprehension in the Arab mind. To say that apprehension or alarm due to fear of the effects of Jewish immigration were immediate causes of the outbreak in August last is perhaps to go too far, but it is our view that, among a large section of the Arab people of Palestine, there is a feeling of opposition to Jewish immigration, that this feeling is well founded in that it has its origin in the known results of excessive immigration in the past and that, given other and more immediate causes for disturbance, that feeling would undoubtedly be a factor which would contribute to an outbreak....' 

'Now it has been argued before us that the Arab fellah takes no personal interest in politics and that the present state of popular feeling, which in every village and most country districts finds its expression in such cries as " Down with the Balfour Declaration " and in demands for a national government, is the result of propaganda promoted artificially and for personal ends by men who wish to exploit what may be, so far as they are concerned, quite genuine grievances. The contention that the fellah takes no personal interest in politics is not supported by our experience in Palestine. No one who has been about the country as we have been and who has listened to the applause which greeted many passages in the addresses read to us by village heads and sheikhs could doubt that villagers and peasants alike are taking a very real and personal interest both in the effect of the policy of establishing a national home and in the question of the development of self-governing institutions in Palestine. No less than fourteen Arabic newspapers are published in Palestine and in almost every village there is someone who reads from the papers to gatherings of those villagers who are illiterate. During the long season of the year when the soil cannot be tilled, the villagers, having no alternative occupation, discuss politics and it is not unusual for part of the address m the Mosques on Friday to be devoted to political affairs. The Arab fellaheen and villagers are therefore probably more politically minded than many of the people of Europe. ... ' 

https://buconflict.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/shaw-commission.pdf 

Notes: 

The Shaw Commission, led by Sir Walter Shaw, was a British Commission of Inquiry appointed to investigate the 1929 Palestine riots and their origins. The Commission report was published in 1930. 

Extracts from a draft of a letter written by Herbert Samuel addressed to ‘My Lord Duke’ , 1922.

“The large majority of the population of Palestine are Moslem Arabs, and among them a majority, favour the general views of what may be termed the Opposition to the present Administration. Three currents of thought combine to create and to maintain this Opposition. First, there is the Arab National Movement, which desires to see the establishment of a great Arab Empire, of which Palestine should form a part; a movement which was always hostile to Turkish rule, and which welcomed the British as the agents of liberation. Second, there is the Anti-Zionist Movement, which came into existence after the Occupation, which is inspired by a dread to submerge under a flood of Jewish immigration and of political subordination, sooner or later, to a Jewish Government. Third, there is the Pan-Islamic Movement, which commands the support of numbers of religious Moslems, which sympathizes with Mohammedanism wherever it is found… paying only secondary attention to the facts of the local situation… these three motives intermingle. The minds of some men may be more influenced by one, some by another. the majority of the Moslems of Palestine are probably moved, in greater or less degree by all three” (Samuel, p. 4-5).

“The Opposition party is composed,….there are a number of young men and a certain number of women who take pleasure in the excitement and interest of a political movement” (p.5).

MEC Archives, Samuel, Sir Herbert Louis, 1st Viscount Samuel (1870-1963) GB 165-0252, Box 1,

Notes:

Sir Herbert Samuel was the first British High Commissioner for Palestine, serving from 1920 to 1925.

Telegram to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George during the Paris Peace Conference