Coming out of World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Britain had put itself in a difficult situation. It had made several promises that would prove difficult to accomplish at the same time.
Britain had promised the Hashemite family an Arab kingdom if the Arabs rose up and fought the Ottomans. The Sykes-Picot Agreement promised the French that they would divide up the Ottoman Empire between themselves into spheres of influence. Finally, the Balfour Declaration promised a national home for the Jews in their ancestral land. How to accomplish these three competing goals ultimately fell to the League of Nations.
The League of Nations was an international organization established in 1920 as part of the post-World War I peace settlement, largely at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, to promote international cooperation, resolve disputes peacefully, and prevent future wars. As a side note to everything I am going to talk about, America was not part of any of it. Even though Wilson was instrumental in creating the League of Nations, America ultimately never joined. But that is a story for another time.
Article 22 of the League’s charter created the legal foundation for a system known as mandates. The basic idea was that the old Ottoman Empire lands were not to be colonized. Instead, the territories would be administered by more developed nations until their populations were considered capable of governing themselves. At the San Remo Conference, held in Italy in April 1920, Britain and France divided up the former Ottoman territories into mandates, with most of the land falling under British or French influence.
Turkey was able to fight for its own independent state, an interesting story also for another time. France was given the mandate for what would become Syria. Prince Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, had already established a government in Damascus, but the French defeated his forces at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920 and removed Faisal from power. The French would eventually carve out a separate mandate for Lebanon, partly to protect its Christian population. These stories are also fascinating, but again, for another day.
For the story of Israel, the British mandates are important. Britain was given authority over the mandates of Iraq and Palestine. To honor their agreement with the Hashemite family, after Faisal was kicked out of Syria, the British gave him the throne of Iraq’s constitutional monarchy. Faisal was not particularly happy. He had wanted the entire area, and Damascus was an important urban center while Baghdad was, well, the sticks. But a kingdom is a kingdom.
The more important mandate for our story was Palestine. The British Mandate for Palestine incorporated the Balfour Declaration, formally committing Britain to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people while protecting the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities. This made the Palestine Mandate unique. Britain was not simply administering a territory while preparing it for independence; it also was responsible for implementing a policy intended to advance Jewish national aspirations in a territory where the Arab population had its own expectations of self-government.
Before I go on, it is important to mention one more mandate. The Hashemite family was unhappy with not gaining the entire area as an Arab nation, and Faisal had been moved to Iraq. In 1920, Faisal’s younger brother, Emir Abdullah, gathered a force from Arabia and began marching north. To appease Abdullah and keep him from creating further problems, the British agreed to carve out of Palestine a separate administrative territory east of the Jordan River. This territory became Transjordan, with Abdullah as its ruler.
Jordan is important for two reasons. First, it is the only one of the mandates still under its original ruling family. Today, King Abdullah II sits on the Jordanian throne and is the great-great-grandson of Emir Abdullah. Secondly, it is interesting that there was no clear ethnic distinction between the people living in Jordan and those living west of the Jordan River before the creation of the mandates. If the story had been different, many of the people who identify as Palestinians today might instead have identified as Jordanians or vice versa. Ethnically and culturally, the populations shared much in common. It was artificial political boundaries, followed by the development of separate national movements, that helped distinguish them as different peoples.
The point is that Palestine had long been a geographic region, but it had never existed as an independent political entity or sovereign nation. People who identify as Palestinians today could just as easily have become part of a Jordanian, Lebanese, Iraqi, or Syrian national identity, depending on how the British and French drew the boundaries. There was nothing inevitable about the modern national identities that eventually developed.
The same is true of many of the current Middle Eastern nations. Their cultures and histories are ancient, but their modern political boundaries and national identities are relatively young, barely over a hundred years old. The political divisions we recognize today did not exist before World War I, and the people living in these territories did not identify themselves with the nations we know today. Those identities developed over time, as nationalist movements began to emerge in the 1920s and grew in the decades that followed. This is important as we continue to discuss the “rightful” owners of this ancient land.
For purposes of this story, it is also important to remember that there was never an independent Palestinian government established under the British mandate. The British high commissioner effectively governed the territory, with authority ultimately coming from London and the League of Nations Mandate. This does not mean that Palestinians today do not have a legitimate claim to the land. It simply means that there has never been an established sovereign nation-state or independent government called Palestine, as is commonly believed.
Next, we will look at what happened to the Palestinian Mandate as Jewish immigration, much of it from Europe, dramatically increased. As Jewish communities grew and the Zionist movement advanced the goal of establishing a national home, tensions with the Arab population already living in the territory intensified. Those tensions would eventually lead to violence, rebellion, and a struggle over the future of Palestine.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at james.finck@swoknews.com. Thanks to the Southwest Ledger and the Lawton Constitution for sharing his column.
