User:Mr. Ibrahem/s5

Key issues

National home for the Jewish people (Preamble and Articles 2, 4, 6, 7, 11)

"Zionist Rejoicings. British Mandate For Palestine Welcomed", The Times, Monday, 26 April 1920, after the San Remo conference

According to the second paragraph of the mandate's preamble,

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice 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 ...

Weizmann noted in his memoirs that he considered the most important part of the mandate, and the most difficult negotiation, the subsequent clause in the preamble which recognised "the historical connection of the Jews with Palestine". Curzon and the Italian and French governments rejected early drafts of the mandate because the preamble had contained a passage which read, "Recognising, moreover, the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the claim which this gives them to reconstitute it their national home..." The Palestine Committee set up by the Foreign Office recommended that the reference to "the claim" be omitted. The Allies had already noted the historical connection in the Treaty of Sèvres, but had not acknowledged a legal claim. Lord Balfour suggested an alternative which was accepted and included in the preamble immediately after the paragraph quoted above:

Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

In the body of the document, the Zionist Organization was mentioned in Article 4; in the September 1920 draft, a qualification was added which required that "its organisation and constitution" must be "in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate". A "Jewish agency" was mentioned three times: in Articles 4, 6 and 11. Article 4 of the mandate provided for "the recognition of an appropriate Jewish agency as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the interests of the Jewish population of Palestine," effectively establishing what became the "Jewish Agency for Palestine". Article 7 stated, "The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine." The proviso to this objective of the mandate was that "nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".

Religious and communal issues (Articles 13–16 and 23)

Religious and communal guarantees, such as freedom of religion and education, were made in general terms without reference to a specific religion. The Vatican and the Italian and French governments concentrated their efforts on the issue of the Holy Places and the rights of the Christian communities, making their legal claims on the basis of the former Protectorate of the Holy See and the French Protectorate of Jerusalem. The Catholic powers saw an opportunity to reverse the gains made by the Greek and Russian Orthodox communities in the region during the previous 150 years, as documented in the Status Quo. The Zionists had limited interest in this area.

Britain would assume responsibility for the Holy Places under Article 13 of the mandate. The idea of an International Commission to resolve claims on the Holy Places, formalised in Article 95 of the Treaty of Sèvres, was taken up again in article 14 of the Palestinian Mandate. Negotiations about the commission's formation and role were partly responsible for the delay in ratifying the mandate. Article 14 of the mandate required Britain to establish a commission to study, define, and determine the rights and claims relating to Palestine's religious communities. This provision, which called for the creation of a commission to review the Status Quo of the religious communities, was never implemented.

Article 15 required the mandatory administration to ensure that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship were permitted. According to the article, "No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief." The High Commissioner established the authority of the Orthodox Rabbinate over the members of the Jewish community and retained a modified version of the Ottoman Millet system. Formal recognition was extended to eleven religious communities, which did not include non-Orthodox Jews or the Protestant Christian denominations.

Transjordan (Article 25 and Transjordan memorandum)

The public clarification and implementation of Article 25, more than a year after it was added to the mandate, misled some "into imagining that Transjordanian territory was covered by the conditions of the Mandate as to the Jewish National Home before August 1921". This would, according to professor of modern Jewish history Bernard Wasserstein, result in "the myth of Palestine's 'first partition' [which became] part of the concept of 'Greater Israel' and of the ideology of Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement". Palestinian-American academic Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, then chair of the Northwestern University political science department, suggested that the "Jordan as a Palestinian State" references made by Israeli spokespeople may reflect "the same [mis]understanding".

On 25 April 1923, five months before the mandate came into force, the independent administration was recognised in a statement made in Amman:

Subject to the approval of the League of Nations, His Britannic Majesty will recognise the existence of an independent Government in Trans-jordan under the rule of His Highness the Amir Abdullah, provided that such Government is constitutional and places His Britannic Majesty in a position to fulfil his international obligations in respect of the territory by means of an Agreement to be concluded with His Highness.

Legality

1921 Zionist Organization legal argument, written by barrister William Finlay about the Mandate for Palestine and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations

The legality of the mandate has been disputed in detail by scholars, particularly its consistency with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. According to the mandate's preamble, the mandate was granted to Britain "for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations". That article, which concerns entrusting the "tutelage" of colonies formerly under German and Turkish sovereignty to "advanced nations", specifies "[c]ommunities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire" which "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." During the mandate, Palestinian Arab leaders cited the article as proving their assertion that the British were obliged (under the terms of the mandate) to facilitate the eventual creation of an independent Arab state in Palestine.

Borders

Three proposals for the post-World War I administration of Palestine:

  International administration, proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement

  1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference

  Final borders of 1923–1948 Mandatory Palestine

Further information: Borders of Israel and Borders of Jordan

Before World War I, the territory which became Mandatory Palestine was the former Ottoman Empire divisions of the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the southern part of the Beirut Vilayet; what became Transjordan was the southern Vilayet of Syria and the northern Hejaz Vilayet. During the war, the British military divided the Hejaz and Egyptian Expeditionary Force theatres of war along a line from a point south of Akaba to a point south of Ma'an. The EEF theatre was divided between its main theatre in Palestine and the Syrian theatre, including Transjordan, which was led by Faisal's Arab Revolt army. The post-war military administrations OETA South and OETA East, the latter with an Arab governor, split the territory in the same way; Professor Yitzhak Gil-Har notes that "the military administration [in Palestine] always treated Trans-Jordan as a separate administration outside its jurisdiction". In 1955, Professor Uri Ra'anan wrote that the OETA border system "politically, if not legally, was bound to influence the post-war settlement".

At a private 13 September 1919 meeting during the Paris Peace Conference, Lloyd George gave Georges Clemenceau a memorandum which said that British Palestine would be "defined in accordance with its ancient boundaries of Dan to Beersheba".

The biblical concept of Eretz Israel and its re-establishment as a modern state was a basic tenet of the original Zionist program. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, presented a Zionist statement on 3 February 1919 that declared the Zionists' proposed borders and resources "essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country" including "the control of its rivers and their headwaters". These borders included present day Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, western Jordan, southwestern Syria and southern Lebanon "in the vicinity south of Sidon". Neither Palestinians nor any other Arabs were involved in the discussions which determined the boundaries of Mandatory Palestine.

Palestine-Egypt border

Early British proposal for Palestine's southern boundary at the Paris Peace Conference. The proposal followed the 1906 Egypt-Ottoman border to Al Auja, then cutting east–west through the northern Negev.

The first border which was agreed was with British-ruled Egypt. On 9 May 1919, a memorandum of the British political delegation to the Paris Peace Conference stated that the British intended to adopt the border between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire which was established in 1906. The decision, a compromise between proposals by the Zionists and the British authorities in Egypt, was already well-defined on maps.

The Negev region was added to Palestine on 10 July 1922 after its concession by British representative John Philby "in Trans-Jordan's name"; although not usually considered part of the region of Palestine, the Zionist Organization had lobbied for Palestine to be given access to the Red Sea. Abdullah's requests for the Negev to be added to Transjordan in late 1922 and 1925 were rejected.

Northern borders

The determination of the mandate's northern border was a far longer and more complex process than for the other borders. The two primary differences were that this border separated French– and British–controlled areas, and it ran through heavily populated areas which had not been separated. The other borders separated British Palestine from British Egypt and British Transjordan, and ran primarily through sparsely-inhabited areas.

The northern boundary between the British and French mandates was broadly defined by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920; this became known as the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement for French Lieutenant Colonel N. Paulet and British Lieutenant Colonel S. F. Newcombe, who were appointed to lead the 1923 Boundary Commission to finalise the agreement. It placed most of the Golan Heights in the French sphere, and established a joint commission to settle and mark the border. The commission submitted its final report on 3 February 1922; it was approved with some caveats by the British and French governments on 7 March 1923, several months before Britain and France assumed their mandatory responsibilities on 29 September 1923. Under the treaty, Syrian and Lebanese residents would have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lake Hula, the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River as citizens of Mandatory Palestine, but the government of Palestine would be responsible for policing the lakes. The Zionist movement pressured the French and British to include as many water sources as possible in Palestine during the demarcating negotiations. The movement's demands influenced the negotiators, leading to the inclusion of the Sea of Galilee, both sides of the Jordan River, Lake Hula, the Dan spring, and part of the Yarmouk River. As High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel had demanded full control of the Sea of Galilee. The new border followed a 10-metre-wide (33 ft) strip along the northeastern shore. After the settlement of the northern-border issue, the British and French governments signed an agreement of good neighbourly relations between the mandated territories of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon on 2 February 1926.

Palestine-Transjordan border

Vital Cuinet's 1896 map of the region during the late Ottoman period. The map shows the sanjaks of Hauran and Ma'an (Kerak), which formed most of what became Transjordan, and the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and Balqa (Nablus) and Acre Sanjaks (which formed most of what became Mandatory Palestine).

The Occupied Enemy Territory Administration area, according to the British government's History of the Great War. The map shows the British-administered OETA South (consisting of the Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and the Nablus and Acre Sanjaks) and the Arab-administered OETA East, consisting of the Damascus Vilayet and the southern Aleppo Vilayet.

Transjordan had been part of the Syria Vilayet – primarily the sanjaks of Hauran and Ma'an (Kerak) – under the Ottomans. Since the end of the war it was part of captured territory placed under the Arab administration of OETA East, which was subsequently declared part of Faisal's Arab Kingdom of Syria. The British were content with that arrangement because Faisal was a British ally; the region fell within the indirect sphere of British influence according to the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and they did not have enough troops to garrison it.

The Palestine–Transjordan border was still undecided at the beginning of 1921, as illustrated by this early-1921 British Cabinet map with boundaries of the proposed mandates (including those areas not yet determined).

Throughout the drafting of the mandate, the Zionist Organization advocated for territory east of the river to be included in Palestine. At the peace conference on 3 February 1919, the organization proposed an eastern boundary of "a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba"; the railway ran parallel to, and 35–40 miles (about 60 km) east of, the Jordan River. In May, British officials presented a proposal to the peace conference which included maps showing Palestine's eastern boundary just 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) east of the Jordan. No agreement was reached in Paris; the topic was not discussed at the April 1920 San Remo conference, at which the boundaries of the "Palestine" and "Syria" mandates were left unspecified to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" at a later stage.

The Jordan River was finally chosen as the border between the two territories; this was documented in Article 25 of the mandate, approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921, which set the boundary as simply "the Jordan [river]". No further definition was discussed until mid-1922, when the boundary became significant due to negotiations on the Rutenberg hydroelectric power-plant and the Constitution of Mandatory Palestine (which did not apply to Transjordan, highlighting the need for a clear definition). The latter's publication on 1 September was the first official statement of the detailed boundary, which was repeated in a 16 September 1922 Transjordan memorandum: "from a point two miles west of the town of Akaba on the Gulf of that name up the centre of the Wady Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan to its junction with the River Yarmuk; thence up the centre of that river to the Syrian Frontier".

Transjordan-Arabia border

The southern border between Transjordan and Arabia was considered strategic for Transjordan to avoid being landlocked, with intended access to the sea via the Port of Aqaba. The southern region of Ma'an-Aqaba, a large area with a population of only 10,000, was administered by OETA East (later the Arab Kingdom of Syria, and then Mandatory Transjordan) and claimed by the Kingdom of Hejaz. In OETA East, Faisal had appointed a kaymakam (sub-governor) at Ma'an; the kaymakam at Aqaba, who "disregarded both Husein in Mecca and Feisal in Damascus with impunity", had been instructed by Hussein to extend his authority to Ma'an. This technical dispute did not become an open struggle, and the Kingdom of Hejaz was to take de facto control after Faisal's administration was defeated by the French. After the 1924–25 Saudi conquest of Hejaz, Hussein's army fled to the Ma'an region (which was then formally announced as annexed by Abdullah's Transjordan). Ibn Saud privately agreed to respect this position in an exchange of letters at the time of the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah.

Transjordan-Iraq border

The location of the Eastern border between Transjordan and Iraq was considered strategic with respect to the proposed construction of what became the Kirkuk–Haifa oil pipeline. It was first set out on 2 December 1922, in a treaty to which Transjordan was not party to – the Uqair Protocol between Iraq and Nejd. It described the western end of the Iraq-Nejd boundary as "the Jebel Anazan situated in the neighbourhood of the intersection of latitude 32 degrees north longitude 39 degrees east where the Iraq-Najd boundary terminated", thereby implicitly confirming this as the point at which the Iraq-Nejd boundary became the Transjordan-Nejd boundary. This followed a proposal from T.E.Lawrence in January 1922 that Transjordan be extended to include Wadi Sirhan as far south as al-Jauf, in order to protect Britain's route to India and contain Ibn Saud.