1922 - The British Mandate

The Mandate for Palestine, also known as the Mandate of Palestine or British Mandate of Palestine, was a territory in the Middle East comprising modern Jordan and Israel with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, which the League of Nations entrusted to the United Kingdom to administer in the aftermath of World War I as a Mandate Territory.

Before the end of World War I, Palestine was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The British, under General Allenby during the Arab Revolt stirred up by the British intelligence officer T. E. Lawrence, defeated the Turkish forces in 1917 and occupied Palestine and Syria. The land was administered by the British for the remainder of the war. The British military administration ended starvation with the aid of food supplies from Egypt, successfully fought typhus and cholera epidemics and significantly improved the water supply to Jerusalem. They reduced corruption by paying the Arab and Jewish judges higher salaries. Communications were improved by new railway and telegraph lines.

The United Kingdom was granted control of Palestine by the Versailles Peace Conference which established the League of Nations in 1919 and appointed Herbert Samuel, a former Postmaster General in the British cabinet, who was instrumental in drafting the Balfour Declaration, as its first High Commissioner in Palestine. During World War I the British had made two promises regarding territory in the Middle East. Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence of Arabia, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East, in exchange for their supporting the British; and Britain had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home as laid out in the Balfour Declaration, 1917.

The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of Sanremo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain.

In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain's responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including "securing the establishment of the Jewish national home", and "safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine".

1920 - The Sanremo Conference

The Sanremo conference was an international meeting held in Sanremo, Italy, from 19-26 April 1920. In it, the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East by the victorious powers. The decisions of the conference mainly just confirmed (e.g. concerning Palestine) those of the First Conference of London (February 1920). Britain received the mandate for Palestine and Iraq, while France gained control of Syria including present-day Lebanon. The boundaries of all these territories were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" [1] subsequently, and was in fact not completely finalized until four years later. To enforce its mandate, France subsequently intervened militarily at the Battle of Maysalun to depose the nationalist Arab government which King Faisal had meanwhile established in Damascus.

The conference broadly reaffirmed the terms of the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 16 May 1916 for the region's partition and the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, under which the British government had undertaken to favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The conference's decisions were embodied in the stillborn Treaty of Sèvres (Section VII, Art 94-97). As Turkey rejected this treaty, the conference's decisions were only finally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 and the 1924 Treaty of Lausanne.

1919 - Palestinians first National Conference

The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.

1918 - Jews Immigration

The British government therefore issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

 

After World War I ended in 1918, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set aside as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922.

After World War I the terms of the Balfour Declaration were included in the mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922. The mandate entrusted Great Britain with administering Palestine and with assisting the Jewish people in “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Large-scale Jewish settlement and development of extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948. The Jewish community, or Yishuv, increased tenfold during this era, especially during the 1930s, when large numbers of Jews fled Europe to escape persecution by the Nazis. Tel Aviv became the country's largest all-Jewish city, dozens of other towns and villages were founded, and hundreds of Jewish agricultural collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperatives were established.

Many Jewish political parties founded in Eastern Europe as part of the world Zionist movement developed bases in mandatory Palestine. They included labor, orthodox religious, and nationalist groups whose leaders emigrated from Europe and after 1948 became political leaders and officials in the new Jewish state.

The Yishuv extended its institutions after World War I. Among these institutions was an assembly with a National Council that managed the community's day-to-day affairs in education, health, social welfare, and other services. Jewish religious life was supervised by a Rabbinical Council that controlled marriage, divorce, and other family matters. Local government institutions were also developed to run the city of Tel Aviv and many smaller Jewish settlements. The educational system, cultivating Hebrew language and culture, expanded, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was founded.

The World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Palestine assisted the Yishuv by raising funds abroad, recruiting Jewish immigrants, and seeking political support from Western governments.

1917 - Balfour Declaration

The British government therefore issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The creation of a Jewish State

In 1896 following the appearance of anti-Semitism in Europe, Theodore Hertzl, the founder of Zionism tried to find a political solution for the problem in his book, "the Jewish State". He advocated the creation of a Jewish state in Argentina or Palestine.

 

In 1897 the first Zionist congress was held in Switzerland. Which issued the Basle's program on the colonization of Palestine and the establishment of the world Zionist Organization (WOZ)?

 

In 1904 the fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.

 

In 1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

 

In 1914 with the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany