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

Yes, the British government should be blamed

Source list

1. Arab objections ignored 

• 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 

• A demonstration against Zionism, March 1920. American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Dept., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington. LC-DIG-matpc-07459. 

• An Arab nationalist – Muhammad Izzat Darwazeh 

• Anglo French Declaration, 1918

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

• 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.

• The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915-1916) 

• British Intelligence report on the Palestine Conference held in Jerusalem between January 27 and February 10, 1919

• Telegram to the Paris Peace Conference from the Palestine Arab delegates at the 1919 Jerusalem Conference.

• Extracts from the Shaw Commission Report, 1930 

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

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

• Map of villages, 1920

2. The Mandate was flawed 

• Comment by John Martin, Assistant Under-Secretary at Colonial Office from personal correspondence with Sir Henry Gurney, Chief Secretary in Jerusalem, January 1947

• ‘The Future Constitution of Palestine’; Zionist Proposals for the text of the Mandate, with amendments by Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, 7 May 1919

•  Extract from The Alexandria Protocol; October 7, 1944 

• Extracts from the Mandate for Palestine 

• Extracts from Winston Churchill's evidence to the Peel Commission

• Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, High Commissioner for Palestine 1931 to 1938, arriving for a memorial service at the Anglican Cathedral of St Georges in Jerusalem for a memorial service following the death of King George V in January 1936.

• Elections in Palestine for the Ottoman parliament 1912 

• King Feisal of Iraq and his brother the Emir Abdullah, ruler of Transjordan, on a visit to Jerusalem in 1933. 

• Extract from 'The Palestine Mandate' article by Sir John Hope Simpson, published in The Fortnightly' magazine December 1944. 

•  LEAGUE OF NATIONS PERMANENT MANDATES COMMISSION 

• Incoming High Commissioner Sir Harold MacMichael taking the oath of office, Jerusalem 1938.

• Extracts from the Report of the Shaw Commission 1930. 

• The Problem with the Mandate 

3. British Policy was inconsistent and self-serving 

• Anglo-French Declaration 1918

• Debate in parliament on the Hussein McMahon correspondence, 1923

• Permanent Mandates Commission on the pledges made by the UK

• Extracts from the White Paper of October 1930 – the Government's Statement of Policy on Palestine

• Extracts from the debate in the House of Commons 17 November 1930 on the Palestine White Paper issued by the government

• Extracts from a letter from Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann of the Jewish Agency, February 1931

• Extracts from the 1939 White Paper

• The response issued by the Jewish Agency for Palestine after the publication of the British White Paper

• Extracts from speech on the White Paper by Right Honorable Winston Churchill, House of Commons, May 23, 1939

• Labour Party Resolution

• Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, to Clement Attlee, Labour Prime Minister, 1945

 4. Extreme violence against the Arabs

•  Press release from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the killing of Moffatt, Jenin, 1938.

• Page from photo album held at Kings Own Regiment Museum, aftermath of punitive action at Jenin.

• Extract from Kings Own journal describing the use of human shields as 'mine sweepers'

• Photograph from Kings Own Regiment Museum described as 'mine sweepers'.

• Letter from Miss Rathbone to Mr McDonald 30 November 1938

• The Manchester Regiment search a Palestine village, 1938.

• Field guns ready to fire on Miar village, October 1938

• The destruction of Miar village by the British, October 1938

• Extract from 'Atrocities in the Holy Land' 1938/39

• Extracts from 'Searchlight on Palestine: fair-play or terrorist methods? : some personal investigations' by Frances E. Newton

• Soldiers' accounts of incidents in Palestine, from oral history interviews held by the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive

• Letter from the Arab Centre in London to the Labour Party complaining of incidents of ill treatment of Arabs in Palestine, January 1939

• Atrocities in the Holy Land - Publications of the Arab National Bureau Damascus

5. Policies led to sectarian violence 

• Definition of ethnic conflict from the Encyclopædia Britannica

• Extracts from the Report of the Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, 1921

• Extract from the Churchill White Paper of 1922

• Extract from the Shaw Commission Report 1930

• Extracts from the MINUTES OF THE SEVENTEENTH (Extraordinary) SESSION held at Geneva from June 3rd to 21st, 1930

• REPORT by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of PALESTINE AND TRANS-JORDAN for the year 1938

• 'Testimonies From the Censored Deir Yassin Massacre'  by Ofer Aderet , Haaretz, June 16, 2017

• Notes on Jaffa 1948

• Boostross Street in Jaffa, c.1908

• A Bazaar held at Notre Dame de France in aid of the Red Crescent, Jerusalem, 1917

• Photographs of Tiberias from the Torrance Collection, Dundee University

•  A Jewish home in Hebron plundered by Arab rioters, August 24, 1929. 

• Synagogue desecrated by Arab rioters in Hebron, August 1929

• Muslim graves desecrated by Jews in retaliation, Jerusalem, August 1929.  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LC-DIG-matpc-15713 

• Arabs at Abou Ghosh taking the oath of allegiance to the Arab cause, 1936 during the armed resistance against the British from 1936 to 1939

• Buildings in the Manshiyeh area of Jaffa following the April bombardment.

• Jewish protest demonstrations against Palestine White Paper, May 18, 1939

• Hagana soldiers in Jaffa, April 1948