A 1924 survey of Palestinian land. The best agricultural land is colored purple and is near the coast from Haifa to south of Tel Aviv. Tan and brown shaded land is of medium quality. The poorest land is colored yellow.
The history of agriculture in Palestine dates back to 8000 BCE
and some of the earliest agricultural settlements in the world. Several
of the crops grown by the earliest famers continued to be important
throughout the long history of Palestinian agriculture. In the 19th century CE the Ottoman Empire discouraged, with limited success, the long-standing communal land system called musha'a practiced by the Palestinian Arab farmers living in the highlands. Wheat and barley were their most important crops and were grown primarily for subsistence rather than the commercial market. Olives are an important traditional crop. In the late 19th century Palestinians began to grow commercial and export crops such as citrus in the lowlands near the Mediterranean Sea coast. Large landowners, both resident and non-resident, owned a large part of the land, especially near the coast.
IN 1882, Jewish
immigrants, with financing and technical assistance from abroad, began
to purchase land and establish agricultural settlements in the coastal
area of Palestine. Jewish farmers focused on producing commercial and
export crops such as vegetables and citrus. By 1941, Jews owned 24.5
percent of the cultivated land in Palestine. Most Palestinian Arabs
continued to live in the highlands and practice subsistence agriculture.
The partition of Palestine into the country of Israel and the Palestinian territories
in 1947–1948 resulted in a war in which most Palestinian farmers living
in Israel were dispossessed of their land which was subsequently farmed
by Israelis. Additional land farmed by Palestinians in the Palestinian
territories (and subsequent State of Palestine) has since been gained by Israel as a result of additional wars and uprisings and Israeli settlements.
Israeli policies limiting the supply of water, access to farmland, and
other factors of production have impacted Palestinian agriculture.
Early agriculture
Jericho, c. 1900.
Jericho, near the Jordan River in Palestine, is one of the oldest agricultural settlements in the world dating to 8,000 BCE or earlier. Eight founder crops were grown at that time or shortly thereafter: three cereals (Einkorn and emmer wheat and barley); four pulses (lentils, peas, chickpeas, and bitter vetch), and flax The fig tree may have been domesticated even earlier, possibly around 9000 BCE. The olive tree was domesticated about 6000 BCE. Citrus trees originated in Southeast Asia but were introduced into Palestine during the first millennium BCE. The early farmers of Palestine had four important domesticated animals: goats, sheep, oxen, and camels.
The importance of Palestinian agriculture was attested in the 10th century by the Palestinian geographer Al-Maqdisi who cited olives, cotton, grapes, and sugar cane among the crops of the region. In the 16th century, Franciscan priest Francesco Suriano
added apples, citrus, and sesame to the list of important Palestinian
crops. Cotton and sesame were exported to Europe from the 16th century
onward.
Ottoman rule
The Ottoman empire conquered the Palestinian region in 1516 and ruled until World War I
(1914–1918). Under pressure from European rivals and steeped in a
traditional system, the Ottomans attempted a modernization and reform of
their society during the Tanzimat period beginning in 1839. Among the reforms was a 1867 law which permitted foreigners to own land in the Ottoman empire.
In the mid 19th century most Palestinians lived in the hills and
mountains that run down the center of the region. This was due to the
prevalence of malaria and the danger of Bedouin
raids in the lowlands. The highlands were densely populated compared to
the lowlands. Many highland villages also owned land in the lowlands
and established satellite settlements there. The population in the
lowlands increased towards the end of the 19th century as population
pressure forced highland farmers to migrate and the Ottomans pushed the
Bedouin tribes eastward beyond the Jordan River. Opportunities to profit
from commercial agriculture for export also motivated highlanders to
move toward the Mediterranean Coast on the west and the Dead Sea and Jordan River on the east.
The years after 1856 were a period of economic growth for Palestine,
especially for agricultural exports to Europe and regional markets.
Wheat and barley were the most important crops, grown on 75
percent of cultivated land. Yields were best in the northern Jordan
valley and the lowland coast with many highland areas having poor
yields. Most of the wheat and barley was consumed by the farmers rather
than sold. Olive cultivation was common or poorer lands in the highlands
both for home use and as a cash crop. Grapes were grown in the vicinity
of Hebron. Citrus production expanded in the latter decades of the 19th century near the Mediterranean and was an important export.
Theoretically, almost all the agricultural land in the empire was
owned by the Ottoman state, but inheritable rights to use the land was
granted to individuals and villages. The most important systems of land
tenure for agriculture in Palestine were musha'a (also masha'a) and mafrouz, a land tenure system that roughly corresponds to the European concept of private property. Mafrouz land made up only a small percentage of agricultural land. The larger percentage of land called musha'a
was allocated and utilized in common by a village or community and
parceled out to individuals and peasant families. At intervals of one to
five years the peasants redistributed the land usually by lot. Thus, a
village farmer did not have rights to a single plot of land, but rather
the plot of land he cultivated changed every few years. The
redistribution process tended to equalize the economic possibilities of
each peasant. A peasant allocated a poor plot of land might find himself
with a better plot of land with the redistribution and vice versa.
In the 19th and early 20th century most Palestinian Arabs lived in the hilly interior. Photo dated 1922, taken near Ramallah with Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea in the distance.
The musha'a system is often criticized as inefficient and
hindering agricultural progress. Given the periodic redistribution of
land, the peasant had no incentive to improve the land he was
cultivating. The opposite view is that no evidence proves that the musha'a system was less efficient than individual land-holdings and that the musha'a system reduced risks to peasant communities and encouraged communal cooperation and responsibility.
In the late 19th century, the growing dependence of some farmers on
selling to local and foreign markets for agricultural products and
encouraged the increase in individual entrepreneurs who operated in a
monetary economy rather than the collective and traditional nature of
the musha'a. The Ottoman government attempted, without much success, to eliminate the musha'a with its land law of 1858.
The Ottomans aimed to increase its revenue from taxation and to exert
more control over land. Jewish settlers who wished to buy land in
Palestine beginning about 1880 found the musha'a system
inconsistent with their preference for clear titles and boundaries to
land. The British continued the effort to eliminate musha'a after they overthrew Ottoman rule during World War I. By the end of the Ottoman period, the small farmers of the musha'a
system were impoverished by government policy hostile to the
continuation of collective land tenure, higher taxes, indebtedness, and
increased pressure on the land due to population growth. Land was
increasingly owned by large investors, many of whom were not resident in
Palestine.
Beginnings of Jewish agriculture
The
first Jewish agricultural settlements were established in 1882 after
purchasing land from Palestinians. Their inhabitants were eastern
European Jews who had little knowledge of agriculture and adopted local
practices. The first settlements were in danger of failing, but were
saved when banker Edmond de Rothschild
invested in the settlements, encouraging and financing commercial
rather than subsistence agriculture and the adoption of modern European
technology. By the year 1900, more than 5,000 Jews were engaged in
agriculture and they cultivated 5,500 ha (14,000 acres) of land mostly
devoted to grains and vineyards.
The settlements were located in the plains near the Mediterranean coast
where Palestinian commercial agriculture was also expanding. This was
the most fertile area of Palestine. The emphasis was on citrus
production for export to Europe. By 1914, near the end of the Ottoman
empire, Jews owned an area of 42,000 ha (100,000 acres) of land, 6.4
percent of cultivated land in Palestine.
British mandate
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I led to the League of Nations giving Great Britain a mandate
to administer Palestine. The mandate lasted from 1920 to 1948. The
mandate "included the incompatible goals" of encouraging settlement of
Jews while protecting the rights of the Palestinian Arabs and a small
population of European Christians.
According to 1922 census, Jews made up 11 percent of the population of
750,000 in the British mandate with Palestinians, both Muslims and
Christians, making up almost all of the remainder.
The British conducted surveys and implemented policies to convert
land cultivated in common by Palestinian communities into private
property. As a consequence, the percentage of land cultivated by
Palestinian communities in the musha'a system declined from 70 percent in 1917 to 25 percent in 1940.
The mandate period is also characterized by the side-by-side existence
of the indigenous agricultural systems of Palestinians and the imported
technology of Jewish farmers, the rise of capitalism in the agricultural
sector, the rapid increase in the Jewish population due to immigration,
and the progress in growing and marketing cash crops by both Jewish and
Palestinian farmers.
Palestinian Arab agriculture
During
the mandate period, the typical Palestinian farmer in the highlands
continued to practice subsistence farming of wheat, barley, and millet
and continued to have problems of too-small holdings, debt, and
uncertain tenancy. "They devoted their energies into holding on to what
they had." Yields of the grain crops varied greatly from year to year
and imports were necessary to make up deficits in the demand for grain
for local consumption.
However, the share of farmland devoted to growing grain declined (as did the musha'a
system of land tenancy in favor of privately owned land) as Palestinian
agriculture increased in diversity. Palestinian production of export
and commercial crops increased rapidly. Vegetables (including potatoes, a
new crop), olives, and fruit, especially citrus, were the most
important commercial crops. As opposed to grain production in the
highlands, most commercial agriculture was on the plains near the
Mediterranean Sea and irrigation was commonly used to make up deficits
in precipitation. Inland Galilee
was an area of increase in growing olives and producing olive oil.
During the mandate period, Palestinian vegetable production increased
more than ten-fold, olive production more than doubled, and acreage planted in citrus increased more than seven-fold. Citrus comprised about 40 percent of the value of the agricultural exports of the Palestinian Arabs.
Despite the rapid increase in Palestinian citrus cultivation, by 1945,
the acreage of Jewish-grown citrus had risen to slightly exceed
Palestinian acreage. Palestinian vegetable production continued to be
almost triple than of Jewish production. The production of wheat,
barley, and olives was dominated by Palestinian farmers.
Jewish agriculture
Jewish-owned land (blue and green) in Palestine as of 31 December 1944.
During the mandate period the Jewish population in Palestine
increased much more rapidly than the Arab Palestinians. In 1918, the
population of Palestine consisted of about 60,000 Jews and 630,000
non-Jews. By 1947, the population was 630,000 Jews as compared to
1,324,000 non-Jews.
The increase in the Jewish population was mostly due to immigration.
Jewish agriculture increased as the Jewish population did. In 1914, the
6.4 percent of cultivated land owned by the "European sector"
(predominately Jews) increased in 1941 to 160,480 ha (396,600 acres) of
land, 24.5 percent of cultivated land.
Agriculture and the acquisition of agricultural land served the Zionist
objective of creating a Jewish state. The Jews mostly purchased land
from large landowners on the plains near the fertile Mediterranean coast
rather than from the musha'a peasants in the hills and mountains
in the interior. The first Jewish settlements utilized Palestinian
labor, but soon the standard was to employ only Jews on Jewish-owned
land even although the cost was higher than when Palestinian labor was
used.
The Jews claimed that the money they spent for land stimulated the
former landowners to invest in modernizing Palestinian agriculture.
Charles S. Kamen doubts that view as many land owners were urban
dwellers or not residents of Palestine, although some of the money may
have been invested in Palestinian citrus plantations. Palestinians claim
that the Jewish land purchases displaced many farmers. Kamen estimates
that the displacement amounted to between 10,000 and 30,000
Palestinians.
Crops (1943)
An olive orchard in as-Samu, Palestine (2015)
In 1943, 91.7 percent of crop land was rainfed and 8.3 percent was
irrigated. Most of the Jewish land was cultivated in commercial and
export crops while most Palestinians continued to practice subsistence
farming growing wheat, barley, and olives. The acreage devoted to crops
(including both Palestinian and Jewish land) was the following.
Garden plots and orchards in the State of Palestine in 2016.Fields in the Jezreel Valley of Israel in 2010.
The post-World War II civil war in Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
resulted in the partition of Palestine into the independent state of
Israel, inhabited primarily by Jews, and the Palestinian territories,
inhabited primarily by Palestinian Arabs. The wars resulted in 700,000 Palestinians (85 percent of the Palestinian population living within the borders of Israel),
mostly farmers, being forced off or abandoning their land in what
became Israel—and few of them have been able to return. For example,
prior to the war about one-half of the commercially-important citrus
orchards near the Mediterranean coast were owned by Palestinians.
Palestinian and Israeli citrus-growers cooperated as members of a Citrus
Board. In 1950, after the Palestinian owners had been expelled from
their lands, several prominent Jewish citrus growers requested the
Israeli government to allow four Palestinians who had been members of
the Citrus Board to return and reclaim their property. The Israeli
government turned down the request and the former Palestinian citrus
orchards remained in Israeli hands.
The value of the agricultural land of the Palestinians lost to
the Israelis was valued in 1996 at between 2.2 and 2.6 billion dollars
(1993 dollars), about $5 billion in 2023. Eighty percent of the 2,185,000 dunums
(221,000 ha (550,000 acres)) Israel claimed was brought into
cultivation after the 1948 war was agricultural land that belonged to
and had been cultivated by the Palestinians before their displacement
from the land during the war.
This displacement and disruption caused the near disappearance of
Palestinian agriculture in Israel and the replacement of Palestinian
farmers by Israelis. In the Palestinian territories (and since 1988 the
State of Palestine), much farmland has been occupied by Israeli
settlers. Concurrently, Israeli policies limiting Palestinian access to
land, water, markets, and technology have been detrimental to
Palestinian Arab farmers and favorable to Israeli settlers in Palestine,
a situation which endures into the 21st century.
Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate,
based on its social, political, and economic development. This
classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest
capacity for self-governance. All Class A mandates other than mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946.
The name given to the Mandate's territory was "Palestine", in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage and with European tradition. The Mandate charter stipulated that Mandatory Palestine would have three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.
In 1926, the British authorities formally decided to use the
traditional Arabic and Hebrew equivalents to the English name, i.e. filasţīn (فلسطين) and pālēśtīnā (פּלשׂתינה) respectively. The Jewish leadership proposed that the proper Hebrew name should be ʾĒrēts Yiśrāʾel (ארץ ישׂראל, Land of Israel). The final compromise was to add the initials of the Hebrew proposed name, Alef-Yod, within parenthesis (א״י), whenever the Mandate's name was mentioned in Hebrew in official documents. The Arab leadership saw this compromise as a violation of the mandate terms. Some Arab politicians suggested "Southern Syria"
(سوريا الجنوبية) as the Arabic name instead. The British authorities
rejected this proposal; according to the Minutes of the Ninth Session of
the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission:
Colonel Symes explained that the
country was described as "Palestine" by Europeans and as "Falestin" by
the Arabs. The Hebrew name for the country was the designation "Land of
Israel", and the Government, to meet Jewish wishes, had agreed that the
word "Palestine" in Hebrew characters should be followed in all official
documents by the initials which stood for that designation. As a
set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the
country should be called "Southern Syria" in order to emphasise its
close relation with another Arab State.
The adjective "mandatory" indicates that the entity's legal status derived from a League of Nations mandate; it is not related to the word's more commonplace usage as a synonym for "compulsory" or "necessary".
For the
period of Palestine's history between the fall of the Ottoman Empire in
1917–18 and the beginning of British civil administration in July 1920,
see Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.
In March 1920, there was an attack by Arabs on the Jewish village of Tel Hai. In April, there was another attack on Jews, this time in Jerusalem.
In July 1920, a British civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner replaced the military administration. The first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel,
a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine
on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July. Samuel
established his headquarters and official residence in part of the Augusta Victoria Hospital complex on Mount Scopus on what was then the northeastern edge of Jerusalem, a building that had been constructed for the Germans circa 1910.
Damaged by an earthquake in 1927, this building served as the
headquarters and official residence of the British High Commissioners
until 1933.
In that year, a new, purpose-built headquarters and official residence
for the High Commissioner was completed on what was then the
southeastern edge of Jerusalem. Referred to as Armon HaNetziv by the Jewish population, this building, located on the 'Hill of Evil Counsel' on the ridge of Jabel Mukaber,
remained in use as the headquarters and official residence of the
British High Commissioners until the end of British rule in 1948.
One of the first actions of the newly installed civil administration was to begin granting concessions from the Mandatory government over key economic assets. In 1921 the government granted Pinhas Rutenberg
– a Jewish entrepreneur – concessions for the production and
distribution of electrical power. Rutenberg soon established an electric
company whose shareholders were Zionist organisations, investors, and
philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British
intended to favour Zionism. The British administration claimed that
electrification would enhance the economic development of the country as
a whole, while at the same time securing their commitment to facilitate
a Jewish National Home through economic – rather than political –
means.
In May 1921, following a disturbance between rival Jewish
left-wing protestors and then attacks by Arabs on Jews, almost 100 died
in rioting in Jaffa.
High Commissioner Samuel tried to establish self-governing
institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab
leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included
Jewish participation. When Kamil al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist
and Muslim leader. As Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential
positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role
in violent opposition to Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been established by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget. In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint teachers and preachers.
The 1922 Palestine Order in Council established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner. Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, and two Jews.
Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as
they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was
unfair. Elections took place in February and March 1923, but due to an Arab boycott, the results were annulled and a 12-member Advisory Council was established.
At the First World Congress of Jewish Women which was held in Vienna,
Austria, 1923, it was decided that: "It appears, therefore, to be the
duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of
Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country."
In October 1923, Britain provided the League of Nations with a
report on the administration of Palestine for the period 1920–1922,
which covered the period before the mandate.
In August 1929, there were riots in which 250 people died.
1930s: Arab armed insurgency
In 1930, SheikhIzz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived in Palestine from Syria, then part of the French-ruled Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, and organised and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist
and anti-British militant organisation. He recruited and arranged
military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200
and 800 men. They used bombs and firearms against Zionist settlers and
vandalised settlers' orchards and British-built railway lines. In November 1935, two of his men engaged in a firefight with a Palestine Police
patrol hunting fruit thieves and a policeman was killed. Following the
incident, British colonial police launched a search and surrounded
al-Qassam in a cave near Ya'bad. In the ensuing battle, al-Qassam was killed.
The death of al-Qassam on 20 November 1935 generated widespread
outrage in the Arab community. Huge crowds accompanied Qassam's body to
his grave in Haifa. A few months later, in April 1936, the Arab national general strike
broke out. The strike lasted until October 1936, instigated by the Arab
Higher Committee, headed by Amin al-Husseini. During the summer of that
year, thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed.
Jewish civilians were attacked and killed, and some Jewish communities,
such as those in Beisan (Beit She'an) and Acre, fled to safer areas. The violence abated for about a year while the British sent the Peel Commission to investigate.
During the first stages of the Arab Revolt, due to rivalry between the clans of al-Husseini and Nashashibi
among the Palestinian Arabs, Raghib Nashashibi was forced to flee to
Egypt after several assassination attempts ordered by Amin al-Husseini.
After the Arab rejection of the Peel Commission recommendation,
the revolt resumed in autumn 1937. Over the next 18 months, the British
lost Nablus and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police, suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force. The British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons) organised Special Night Squads of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as Yigal Alon; these "scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley" by conducting raids on Arab villages. Irgun, a Jewish militia group, used violence also against Arab civilians as "retaliatory acts", attacking marketplaces and buses.
By the time the revolt concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000
Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British had been killed and at least 15,000
Arabs were wounded. In total, 10% of the adult Arab male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled.
From 1936 to 1945, while establishing collaborative security
arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated 13,200
firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.
The attacks on the Jewish population by Arabs had three lasting
effects: firstly, they led to the formation and development of Jewish
underground militias, primarily the Haganah,
which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that
the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition
was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the White Paper of 1939, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of the Second World War,
even this reduced immigration quota was not reached. The White Paper
policy itself radicalised segments of the Jewish population, who after
the war would no longer cooperate with the British.
The revolt had also a negative effect on Palestinian Arab
leadership, social cohesion, and military capabilities, and it
contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because "when the
Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were
still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in
effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that
they were virtually without any leadership at all."
Partition proposals
Jewish demonstration against White Paper in Jerusalem in 1939
In 1937, the Peel Commission
proposed a partition between a small Jewish state, whose Arab
population would have to be transferred, and an Arab state to be
attached to the Emirate of Transjordan, this emirate also being part of the wider Mandate for Palestine. The proposal was rejected outright by the Arabs. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to equivocally approve the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to "possession of the land as a whole".
The same sentiment was recorded by Ben-Gurion on other occasions, such
as at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive in June 1938, as well as by Chaim Weizmann.
Following the London Conference in February and March 1939, the British Government published a White Paper
which proposed a limit to Jewish immigration from Europe, restrictions
on Jewish land purchases, and a programme for creating an independent
state to replace the Mandate within ten years. This was seen by the Yishuv
as betrayal of the mandatory terms, especially in light of the
increasing persecution of Jews in Europe. In response, Zionists
organised Aliyah Bet, a programme of illegal immigration into Palestine. Lehi, a small group of extremist Zionists, staged armed attacks on British authorities in Palestine. However, the Jewish Agency,
which represented the mainstream Zionist leadership and most of the
Jewish population, still hoped to persuade Britain to allow resumed
Jewish immigration and cooperated with Britain during the Second World War.
In 1942, there was a period of great concern for the Yishuv, when the German forces of General Erwin Rommel advanced east across North Africa towards the Suez Canal, raising a fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the "200 days of dread". This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach – a highly trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (a paramilitary group composed mostly of reserves).
As in most of the Arab world, there was no unanimity amongst the
Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents in the
Second World War. A number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis
victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestine back from
the Zionists and the British. Even though Arabs were not highly
regarded by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support as a counter to British hegemony. On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1943, Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent telegrams of support for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, to read out for a radio broadcast to a rally of supporters in Berlin. On the other hand, as many as 12,000 Palestinian Arabs, with the endorsement of many prominent figures such as the mayors of Nablus and Gaza and media such as "Radio Palestine" and the prominent Jaffa-based Falastin newspaper,
volunteered to join and fight for the British, with many serving in
units that also included Jews from Palestine. 120 Palestinian women also
served as part of the "Auxiliary Territorial Service". However, this
history has been less studied, as Israeli sources put more focus in
studying the role played by Jewish soldiers, and Palestinian sources
"were not eager to glorify the names of those who cooperated with
Britain not so many years after the British put down the Arab Revolt of
1936-1939, and thereby indirectly helped the Jews establish a state."[62]
On 3 July 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade within the British Army, with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official communiqué by the War Office announced the formation of the Jewish Brigade Group of the British Army. The Jewish Brigade then was stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia, and Austria, where it played a key role in the Berihah's
efforts to help Jews escape Europe for Palestine, a role many of its
members would continue after the brigade was disbanded. Among its
projects was the education and care of the Selvino children. Later, veterans of the Jewish Brigade were to play a major role in the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
From the Palestine Regiment, two platoons, one Jewish, under the command of BrigadierErnest Benjamin, and another Arab, were sent to join Allied forces on the Italian Front, having taken part in the final offensive there.
Besides Jews and Arabs from Palestine, in total by mid-1944 the
British had assembled a multiethnic force consisting of volunteer
European Jewish refugees (from German-occupied countries), Yemenite Jews and Abyssinian Jews.
The Holocaust and immigration quotas
Jewish State ship, one of several Haganah ships that carried Jewish immigrants from Europe, mostly illegal, at the Haifa Port, Mandatory Palestine, 1947
In 1939, as a consequence of the White Paper of 1939, the British reduced the number of immigrants allowed into Palestine. The Second World War and the Holocaust started shortly thereafter and once the 15,000 annual quota was exceeded, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were interned in detention camps or deported to places such as Mauritius.
Starting in 1939, a clandestine immigration effort called Aliya Bet was spearheaded by an organisation called Mossad LeAliyah Bet. Tens of thousands of European Jews escaped the Nazis in boats and small ships headed for Palestine. The British Royal Navy intercepted many of the vessels; others were unseaworthy and were wrecked; a Haganah bomb sunk the SS Patria, killing 267 people; two other ships were sunk by Soviet submarines: the motor schoonerStruma was torpedoed and sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 with the loss of nearly 800 lives. The last refugee boats to try to reach Palestine during the war were the Bulbul, Mefküre and Morina in August 1944. A Soviet submarine sank the motor schooner Mefküre by torpedo and shellfire and machine-gunned survivors in the water, killing between 300 and 400 refugees.
Illegal immigration resumed after the end of the Second World War,
especially by the Haganah, who carried mostly illegal Jewish immigrants
in the period 1945-47.
After the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were stranded in displaced
persons (DP) camps in Europe. Despite the pressure of world opinion, in
particular the repeated requests of the U.S. President, Harry S. Truman, and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately granted entry to Palestine, the British maintained the ban on immigration.
The Jewish Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and Irgun (National Military Organisation) movements initiated violent uprisings against the British Mandate in the 1940s. On 6 November 1944, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri (members of Lehi) assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo.
Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East and the
assassination is said by some to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. After the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun ("The Hunting Season"), and the Jewish Agency Executive decided on a series of measures against "terrorist organisations" in Palestine. Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a civil war.
After the Second World War: Insurgency and the Partition Plan
The three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the Jewish Resistance Movement and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration. In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel
in Jerusalem, the southern wing of which was the headquarters of the
British administration, killing 92 people. Following the bombing, the
British Government began interning illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. In 1948, the Lehi assassinated CountBernadotte, the UN mediator, in Jerusalem. Yitzak Shamir, a future Prime Minister of Israel, was one of the conspirators.
The UN Partition Plan
The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine
caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain itself and
caused the United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. The British Labour Party
had promised before its election in 1945 to allow mass Jewish migration
into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British
Jewish militancy increased, and the situation required the presence of
over 100,000 British troops in the country. Following the Acre Prison
Break and the retaliatory hanging of British sergeants by the Irgun, the
British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and to withdraw
by no later than the beginning of August 1948.
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry
in 1946 was a joint attempt by Britain and the United States to agree
on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the
Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision.
The Committee approved the American recommendation of the immediate
acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It
also recommended that there be no Arab or Jewish state. The Committee
stated that "in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive
claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a
clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate
Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine". U.S. President Harry S. Truman
angered the British Government by issuing a statement supporting the
100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committee's
findings. Britain had asked for U.S. assistance in implementing the
recommendations. The US War Department
had said earlier that to assist Britain in maintaining order against an
Arab revolt, an open-ended US commitment of 300,000 troops would be
necessary. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants
would almost certainly have provoked an Arab uprising.
These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to
announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the
Question of Palestine before the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The UN created UNSCOP
(the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with
representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a
general survey of the situation in Palestine and issued its report on 31
August. Seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia,
Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the
creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be
placed under international administration. Three members (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.
On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly, voting 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union as Resolution 181 (II),
while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states
proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British
withdrawal. The partition plan required that the proposed states grant
full civil rights to all people within their borders, regardless of
race, religion or gender. The UN General Assembly is only granted the
power to make recommendations; therefore, UNGAR 181 was not legally
binding. Both the US and the Soviet Union
supported the resolution. Haiti, Liberia, and the Philippines changed
their votes at the last moment after concerted pressure from the US and
from Zionist organisations. The five members of the Arab League, who were voting members at the time, voted against the Plan.
The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation,
accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the
news.
The partition plan was rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population. Meeting in Cairo
on November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of
resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict.
Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan, but
refused to enforce it, arguing it was not accepted by the Arabs. Britain
also refused to share the administration of Palestine with the UN
Palestine Commission during the transitional period. In September 1947,
the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would
end at midnight on 14 May 1948.
Some Jewish organisations also opposed the proposal. Irgun leader Menachem Begin
announced, "The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be
recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the
partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people.
Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be
restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever."
When the United Kingdom announced the independence of the Emirate of Transjordan as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946, the final Assembly of the League of Nations and the General Assembly both adopted resolutions welcoming the news.
The Jewish Agency objected, claiming that Transjordan was an integral
part of Palestine, and that according to Article 80 of the UN Charter, the Jewish people had a secured interest in its territory.
During the General Assembly deliberations on Palestine, there
were suggestions that it would be desirable to incorporate part of
Transjordan's territory into the proposed Jewish state. A few days
before the adoption of Resolution 181
(II) on 29 November 1947, US Secretary of State Marshall noted frequent
references had been made by the Ad Hoc Committee regarding the
desirability of the Jewish State having both the Negev and an "outlet to the Red Sea and the Port of Aqaba".
According to John Snetsinger, Chaim Weizmann visited President Truman
on 19 November 1947 and said it was imperative that the Negev and Port
of Aqaba be within the Jewish state. Truman telephoned the US delegation to the UN and told them he supported Weizmann's position. However, the Trans-Jordan memorandum excluded territories of the Emirate of Transjordan from any Jewish settlement.
Immediately after the UN resolution, civil war broke out between the Arab and Jewish communities, and British authority began to break down. On 16 December 1947, the Palestine Police Force withdrew from the Tel Aviv
area, home to more than half the Jewish population, and turned over
responsibility for the maintenance of law and order to Jewish police.
As the civil war raged on, British military forces gradually withdrew
from Palestine, although they occasionally intervened in favour of
either side. Many of these areas became war zones. The British
maintained strong presences in Jerusalem and Haifa,
even as Jerusalem came under siege by Arab forces and became the scene
of fierce fighting, though the British occasionally intervened in the
fighting, largely to secure their evacuation routes, including by
proclaiming martial law and enforcing truces. The Palestine Police Force
was largely inoperative, and government services such as social
welfare, water supplies, and postal services were withdrawn. In March
1948, all British judges in Palestine were sent back to Britain.
In April 1948, the British withdrew from most of Haifa but retained an
enclave in the port area to be used in the evacuation of British forces,
and retained RAF Ramat David,
an airbase close to Haifa, to cover their retreat, leaving behind a
volunteer police force to maintain order. The city was quickly captured
by the Haganah in the Battle of Haifa.
After the victory, British forces in Jerusalem announced that they had
no intention of overseeing any local administration but also that they
would not permit actions that would hamper the safe and orderly
withdrawal of their forces; military courts would try anybody who
interfered.Although by this time British authority in most of Palestine had broken
down, with most of the country in the hands of Jews or Arabs, the
British air and sea blockade of Palestine remained in place. Although
Arab volunteers were able to cross the borders between Palestine and the
surrounding Arab states to join the fighting, the British did not allow
the regular armies of the surrounding Arab states to cross into
Palestine.
The British had notified the UN of their intent to terminate the mandate not later than 1 August 1948.
However, early in 1948, the United Kingdom announced its firm intention
to end its mandate in Palestine on 15 May. In response, President Harry S. Truman made a statement on 25 March proposing UN trusteeship rather than partition,
stating that "unfortunately, it has become clear that the partition
plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means... unless
emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in
Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and
bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land. Large-scale fighting among
the people of that country will be the inevitable result". The British Parliament passed the necessary legislation to terminate the Mandate with the Palestine Bill, which received Royal assent on 29 April 1948.
Hoisting of the Yishuv flag in Tel Aviv, 1 January 1948
By 14 May 1948, the only British forces remaining in Palestine were
in the Haifa area and in Jerusalem. On that same day, the British
garrison in Jerusalem withdrew, and the last High Commissioner, GeneralSir Alan Cunningham,
left the city for Haifa, where he was to leave the country by sea. The
Jewish leadership, led by the future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, on the afternoon of 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), to come into effect at the moment of termination of the Mandate at midnight.Also on the 14th, the Provisional Government of Israel asked the US
Government for recognition, on the frontiers specified in the UN Plan
for Partition. The United States immediately replied, recognizing "the provisional government as the de facto authority".
At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired,
and the State of Israel came into being. The Palestine Government
formally ceased to exist, the status of British forces still in the
process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign
territory, the Palestine Police Force
formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel
evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of
Palestine was lifted, and all those who had been Palestinian citizens ceased to be British protected persons, with Mandatory Palestine passports no longer giving British protection. The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight took place both before and after the end of the Mandate.
Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian,
4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian troops crossed over the borders into
Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Around 4,500 Transjordanian troops, commanded partly by 38 British
officers who had resigned their commissions in the British Army only
weeks earlier, including overall commander, General John Bagot Glubb, entered the Corpus separatum region encompassing Jerusalem and its environs (in response to the Haganah's Operation Kilshon)
and moved into areas designated as part of the Arab state by the UN
partition plan. The war, which was to last until 1949, would see Israel
expand to encompass about 78% of the territory of the former British
Mandate, with Transjordan seizing and subsequently annexing the West Bank and the Kingdom of Egypt seizing the Gaza Strip.
With the end of the Mandate, the remaining British troops in Israel
were concentrated in an enclave in the Haifa port area, through which
they were being withdrawn, and at RAF Ramat David, which was maintained
to cover the withdrawal. The British handed over RAF Ramat David to the
Israelis on 26 May and on 30 June, the last British troops were
evacuated from Haifa. The British flag was lowered from the
administrative building of the Port of Haifa and the Israeli flag was
raised in its place, and the Haifa port area was formally handed over to
the Israeli authorities in a ceremony.
Politics
Palestinian Arab community
Front cover
Biographical pages
Passports from the British Mandate era
The resolution of the San Remo Conference
contained a safeguarding clause for the existing rights of the
non-Jewish communities. The conference accepted the terms of the Mandate
with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was
inserted in the memorandum a legal undertaking by the Mandatory Power
that it would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed
by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The draft mandates for Mesopotamia
and Palestine, and all of the post-war peace treaties, contained
clauses for the protection of religious groups and minorities. The
mandates invoked the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of
International Justice in the event of any disputes.
Article 62 (LXII) of the Treaty of Berlin, signed on 13 July 1878, dealt with religious freedom and civil and political rights in all parts of the Ottoman Empire.
The guarantees have frequently been referred to as "religious rights"
or "minority rights". However, the guarantees included a prohibition
against discrimination in civil and political matters. Difference of
religion could not be alleged against any person as a ground for
exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil or
political rights, admission to public employments, functions, and
honours, or the exercise of the various professions and industries, "in
any locality whatsoever".
A legal analysis performed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) noted that the Covenant of the League of Nations
had provisionally recognised the communities of Palestine as
independent nations. The mandate simply marked a transitory period, with
the aim and object of leading the mandated territory to become an
independent self-governing State. Judge Higgins explained that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State."The Court said that specific guarantees regarding freedom of movement and access to the Holy Sites contained in the Treaty of Berlin (1878) had been preserved under the terms of the Palestine Mandate and a chapter of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
According to historian Rashid Khalidi, the mandate ignored the political rights of the Arabs.
The Arab leadership repeatedly pressed the British to grant them
national and political rights, such as representative government, over
Jewish national and political rights in the remaining 23% of the Mandate
of Palestine which the British had set aside for a Jewish homeland. The
Arabs reminded the British of President Wilson's Fourteen Points and British promises during the First World War.
The British, however, made acceptance of the terms of the mandate a
precondition for any change in the constitutional position of the Arabs.
A legislative council was proposed in The Palestine Order in Council,
of 1922, which implemented the terms of the mandate. It stated that:
"No Ordinance shall be passed which shall be in any way repugnant to or
inconsistent with the provisions of the Mandate." For the Arabs, this
decree was unacceptable, akin to "self murder". As a result, the Arabs boycotted the elections to the Council held in 1923, which were subsequently annulled.
During the interwar period, the British rejected the principle of
majority rule or any other measure that would give Arabs control of the
government.
The terms of the mandate required the establishment of
self-governing institutions in both Palestine and Transjordan. In 1947,
the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin,
admitted that, during the previous twenty-five years, the British had
done their best to further the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish
communities without prejudicing the interests of the Arabs, but had
failed to "secure the development of self-governing institutions" in
accordance with the terms of the Mandate.
Palestinian Arab leadership and national aspirations
A 1930 protest in Jerusalem against the British Mandate by Arab women. The sign reads "No dialogue, no negotiations until termination of the Mandate."
Under the British Mandate, the office of "Mufti of Jerusalem",
traditionally limited in authority and geographical scope, was
refashioned into that of "Grand Mufti of Palestine". Furthermore, a
Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) was established and given various duties,
such as the administration of religious endowments and the appointment of religious judges and local muftis. In Ottoman times, these duties had been fulfilled by the Imperial bureaucracy in Constantinople (Istanbul). In dealings with the Palestinian Arabs, the British negotiated with the elite rather than the middle or lower classes. They chose Hajj Amin al-Husseini to become Grand Mufti, although he was young and had received the fewest votes from Jerusalem's Islamic leaders. One of the mufti's rivals, Raghib Bey al-Nashashibi, had already been appointed Mayor of Jerusalem in 1920, replacing Musa Kazim, whom the British removed after the Nabi Musa riots of 1920, during which he exhorted the crowd to give their blood for Palestine.
During the entire Mandate period, but especially during the latter
half, the rivalry between the mufti and al-Nashashibi dominated
Palestinian politics. Khalidi ascribes the failure of the Palestinian
leaders to enroll mass support to the fact that they had been part of
the ruling elite and accustomed to their commands being obeyed; thus,
the idea of mobilising the masses was unknown to them.
On the Husseini-Nashashibi rivalry, an editorial in the Arabic-language Falastin newspaper in the 1920s commented:
The
spirit of factionalism has penetrated most levels of society; one can
see it among journalists, trainees, and the rank and file. If you ask
anyone: who does he support? He will reply with pride, Husseini or
Nashasibi, or ... he will start to pour out his wrath against the
opposing camp in a most repulsive manner.
There had already been rioting and attacks on and massacres of Jews in 1921 and 1929.
During the 1930s, Palestinian Arab popular discontent with Jewish
immigration grew. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, several factions of
Palestinian society, especially from the younger generation, became
impatient with the internecine divisions and ineffectiveness of the
Palestinian elite and engaged in grass-roots anti-British and
anti-Zionist activism, organised by groups such as the Young Men's Muslim Association. There was also support for the radical nationalist Independence Party (Hizb al-Istiqlal), which called for a boycott of the British in the manner of the Indian Congress Party. Some took to the hills to fight the British and the Jews.
Most of these initiatives were contained and defeated by notables in
the pay of the Mandatory Administration, particularly the mufti and his
cousin Jamal al-Husseini. A six-month general strike in 1936 marked the start of the great Arab Revolt.
The Palestinian Arab Christian-owned Falastin
newspaper featuring a caricature on its 18 June 1936 edition showing
Zionism as a crocodile under the protection of a British officer telling
Palestinian Arabs: "don't be afraid!!! I will swallow you
peacefully...."
After the Palestinian Arab press during the Ottoman period had been suppressed due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, only two of the three leading newspapers of the Ottoman era were reopened during the mandate period, Al-Karmil and Falastin.
During this period, the press became more diverse, and increasingly
reflected different political factions and national consciousness.
According to one survey in the mid 1930s, over 250 Arabic newspapers and
65 in other languages were circulating in Mandatory Palestine. Twenty newspapers were established in Jerusalem, six in Jaffa, twelve in Haifa, and others in Bethlehem, Gaza and Tulkarem.
The Ottoman Press Law, which mandated licensing and the
submission of translations to government authorities, was adopted by the
British, but they rarely interfered until the 1929 Palestine riots,
which saw violent confrontations between Arabs and Zionists, and led to
a radicalization of Arab newspapers. One outspoken newspaper was
established in Jaffa called Al-Difa' (The Defense) in 1934, which was associated with Hizb Al-Istiqlal (The Independence Party). Falastin and Al-Difa'
became the two most prominent dailies during the mandate period, and a
rivalry developed between the two, which led to improvements in their
quality.
Many of the editors and owners of newspapers were members of
political organizations, and used their publications for mobilizing the
public.
The British authorities' attitude towards Palestinian press was
initially tolerant, given they had assessed that their impact on public
life was minimal, but restrictive measures were soon increasingly
introduced. A new Publications Law was issued in 1933, which gave the
British authorities the power to revoke publication permits, suspend
newspapers, and punish journalists. Regulations were issued that further
restricted freedom of the press. Many major publications were suspended
for extended periods between 1937 and 1938, including Falastin, Al-Difa, and Al-Liwa. After the outbreak of World War II, emergency laws were enacted and the British closed almost all the newspapers, with the exception of Falastin and Al-Difa, due to the moderation of their tone and the publishing of censored news.
The conquest of Ottoman Syria by British forces in 1917 found a mixed community in the region, with Palestine,
the southern part of Ottoman Syria, containing a mixed population of
Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze. In this period, the Jewish
community (Yishuv) in Palestine was composed of traditional Jewish communities in cities (the Old Yishuv), which had existed for centuries, and the newly established agricultural Zionist communities (the New Yishuv),
established since the 1870s. With the establishment of the Mandate, the
Jewish community in Palestine formed the Zionist Commission to
represent its interests.
In 1929, the Jewish Agency for Palestine
took over from the Zionist Commission its representative functions and
administration of the Jewish community. During the Mandate period, the
Jewish Agency was a quasi-governmental organisation that served the
administrative needs of the Jewish community. Its leadership was elected
by Jews from all over the world by proportional representation.
The Jewish Agency was charged with facilitating Jewish immigration to
Palestine, land purchase and planning the general policies of the
Zionist leadership. It ran schools and hospitals and formed the Haganah. The British authorities offered to create a similar Arab Agency but this offer was rejected by Arab leaders.
In response to numerous Arab attacks on Jewish communities, the Haganah,
a Jewish paramilitary organisation, was formed on 15 June 1920 to
defend Jewish residents. Tensions led to widespread violent disturbances
on several occasions, notably in 1921 (see Jaffa riots), 1929 (primarily violent attacks by Arabs on Jews – see 1929 Hebron massacre) and 1936–1939. Beginning in 1936, Jewish groups such as Etzel (Irgun) and Lehi (Stern Gang) conducted campaigns of violence against British military and Arab targets.
Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine from 1920 to 1945
During the Mandate, the Yishuv grew from one-sixth to almost
one-third of the population. According to official records, 367,845 Jews
and 33,304 non-Jews immigrated legally between 1920 and 1945.
It was estimated that another 50–60,000 Jews and a marginal number of
Arabs, the latter mostly on a seasonal basis, immigrated illegally
during this period.
Immigration accounted for most of the increase of Jewish population,
while the non-Jewish population increase was largely natural.
Of the Jewish immigrants, in 1939 most had come from Germany and
Czechoslovakia, but in 1940–1944 most came from Romania and Poland, with
an additional 3,530 immigrants arriving from Yemen during the same
period.
Initially, Jewish immigration to Palestine met little opposition from the Palestinian Arabs. However, as anti-Semitism
grew in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish
immigration (mostly from Europe) to Palestine began to increase
markedly. Combined with the growth of Arab nationalism in the region and
increasing anti-Jewish sentiments the growth of the Jewish population
created much Arab resentment. The British government placed limitations
on Jewish immigration to Palestine. These quotas were controversial,
particularly in the latter years of British rule, and both Arabs and
Jews disliked the policy, each for their own reasons.
Jewish immigrants were to be afforded Palestinian citizenship:
Article 7. 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.
Jewish national home
In 1919, the general secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organisation, Nahum Sokolow, published History of Zionism (1600–1918). He also represented the Zionist Organisation at the Paris Peace Conference.
Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism
One of the objectives of British administration was to give effect to the Balfour Declaration, which was also set out in the preamble of the mandate, as follows:
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.
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine said the Jewish
National Home, which derived from the formulation of Zionist aspirations
in the 1897 Basle program
has provoked many discussions concerning its meaning, scope and legal
character, especially since it had no known legal connotation and there
are no precedents in international law for its interpretation. It was
used in the Balfour Declaration and in the Mandate, both of which
promised the establishment of a "Jewish National Home" without, however,
defining its meaning. A statement on "British Policy in Palestine",
issued on 3 June 1922 by the Colonial Office,
placed a restrictive construction upon the Balfour Declaration. The
statement said the British government did not contemplate "the
disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, language or
customs in Palestine" or "the imposition of Jewish nationality upon the
inhabitants of Palestine as a whole", and made it clear that in the eyes
of the mandatory Power, the Jewish National Home was to be founded in
Palestine and not that Palestine as a whole was to be converted into a
Jewish National Home. The Committee noted that the construction, which
restricted considerably the scope of the National Home, was made prior
to the confirmation of the Mandate by the Council of the League of
Nations and was formally accepted at the time by the Executive of the
Zionist Organisation.
In March 1930, Lord Passfield, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had written a Cabinet Paper which said:
In the Balfour Declaration there is
no suggestion that the Jews should be accorded a special or favoured
position in Palestine as compared with the Arab inhabitants of the
country, or that the claims of Palestinians to enjoy self-government
(subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a
Mandatory as foreshadowed in Article XXII of the Covenant) should be
curtailed in order to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a
National Home for the Jewish people." ... Zionist leaders have not
concealed and do not conceal their opposition to the grant of any
measure of self-government to the people of Palestine either now or for
many years to come. Some of them even go so far as to claim that that
provision of Article 2 of the Mandate constitutes a bar to compliance
with the demand of the Arabs for any measure of self-government. In view
of the provisions of Article XXII of the Covenant and of the promises
made to the Arabs on several occasions that claim is inadmissible.
The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission took the position
that the Mandate contained a dual obligation. In 1932 the Mandates
Commission questioned the representative of the Mandatory on the demands
made by the Arab population regarding the establishment of
self-governing institutions, in accordance with various articles of the
mandate, and in particular Article 2. The chairman noted that "under the
terms of the same article, the mandatory Power had long since set up
the Jewish National Home".
In 1937, the Peel Commission, a British Royal Commission headed by Earl Peel, proposed solving the Arab–Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two states. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.
The US Consul General at Jerusalem told the State Department that the
Mufti had refused the principle of partition and declined to consider
it. The Consul said that the Emir Abdullah
urged acceptance on the ground that realities must be faced, but wanted
modification of the proposed boundaries and Arab administrations in the
neutral enclave. The Consul also noted that Nashashibi sidestepped the
principle, but was willing to negotiate for favourable modifications.
A collection of private correspondence published by David Ben
Gurion contained a letter written in 1937 which explained that he was in
favour of partition because he did not envision a partial Jewish state
as the end of the process. Ben Gurion wrote "What we want is not that
the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country
be Jewish." He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit
Zionists to settle in the rest of the country with or without the
consent of the Arabs.
Benny Morris said that both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion saw
partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual
takeover of the whole of Palestine.
Former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Schlomo Ben Ami writes
that 1937 was the same year that the "Field Battalions" under Yitzhak
Sadeh wrote the "Avner Plan", which anticipated and laid the groundwork
for what would become in 1948, Plan D.
It envisioned going far beyond any boundaries contained in the existing
partition proposals and planned the conquest of the Galilee, the West
Bank, and Jerusalem.
In 1942, the Biltmore Program
was adopted as the platform of the World Zionist Organisation. It
demanded "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth".
In 1946 an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry noted that the
demand for a Jewish State went beyond the obligations of either the
Balfour Declaration or the Mandate and had been expressly disowned by
the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as recently as 1932. The Jewish Agency subsequently refused to accept the subsequent Morrison-Grady Plan
as the basis for discussion. A spokesman for the agency, Eliahu
Epstein, told the US State Department that the Agency could not attend
the London conference if the Grady-Morrison proposal was on the agenda.
He stated that the Agency was unwilling to be placed in a position where
it might have to compromise between the Grady-Morrison proposals on the
one hand and its own partition plan on the other. He stated that the
Agency had accepted partition as the solution for Palestine which it
favoured.
Map of Palestinian land ownership by sub-district (1945) originally published in the Village Statistics, 1945Palestinian index of villages and settlements, showing land in Jewish possession as of 31 December 1944
After transition to the British rule, much of the agricultural land
in Palestine (about one third of the whole territory) was still owned by
the same landowners as under Ottoman rule, mostly powerful Arab clans
and local Muslim sheikhs. Other lands had been held by foreign Christian
organisations (most notably the Greek Orthodox Church), as well as
Jewish private and Zionist organisations, and to lesser degree by small
minorities of Baháʼís, Samaritans and Circassians.
As of 1931, the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine was 26,625,600 dunams (26,625.6 km2), of which 8,252,900 dunams (8,252.9 km2) or 33% were arable. Official statistics show that Jews privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunams (1,393.53 km2), or 5.23% of Palestine's total in 1945.
The Jewish owned agricultural land was largely located in the Galilee
and along the coastal plain. Estimates of the total volume of land that
Jews had purchased by 15 May 1948 are complicated by illegal and
unregistered land transfers, as well as by the lack of data on land
concessions from the Palestine administration after 31 March 1936.
According to Avneri, Jews held 1,850,000 dunams (1,850 km2) of land in 1947, or 6.94% of the total. Stein gives the estimate of 2,000,000 dunams (2,000 km2) as of May 1948, or 7.51% of the total. According to Fischbach, by 1948, Jews and Jewish companies owned 20% percent of all cultivable land in the country.
According to Clifford A. Wright, by the end of the British
Mandate period in 1948, Jewish farmers cultivated 425,450 dunams of
land, while Palestinian farmers had 5,484,700 dunams of land under cultivation.
The 1945 UN estimate shows that Arab ownership of arable land was on
average 68% of a district, ranging from 15% ownership in the Beer-Sheba
district to 99% ownership in the Ramallah district. These data cannot be
fully understood without comparing them to those of neighbouring
countries: in Iraq, for instance, still in 1951 only 0.3 per cent of
registered land (or 50 per cent of the total amount) was categorised as
'private property'.
Land ownership by district
The following table shows the 1945 land ownership of mandatory Palestine by district:
Data is from Survey of Palestine (vol. I, p. 245).
Land ownership by type
The land owned privately and collectively by Jews, Arabs and other
non-Jews can be classified as urban, rural built-on, cultivable
(farmed), and uncultivable. The following chart shows the ownership by
Jews, Arabs and other non-Jews in each of the categories.
Land ownership of Palestine (in square kilometres) on 1 April 1943
Category
Arab / non-Jewish ownership
Jewish ownership
Total
Urban
76.66
70.11
146.77
Rural built-on
36.85
42.33
79.18
Cereal (taxable)
5,503.18
814.10
6,317.29
Cereal (not taxable)
900.29
51.05
951.34
Plantation
1,079.79
95.51
1,175.30
Citrus
145.57
141.19
286.76
Banana
2.30
1.43
3.73
Uncultivable
16,925.81
298.52
17,224.33
Total
24,670.46
1,514.25
26,184.70
Data is from Survey of Palestine (vol. II, p. 566). By the end of 1946, Jewish ownership had increased to 1624 km2.
List of Mandatory land laws
Land classification as prescribed in 1940
Land Transfer Ordinance of 1920
1926 Correction of Land Registers Ordinance
Land Settlement Ordinance of 1928
Land Transfer Regulations of 1940
In February 1940, the British Government of Palestine promulgated the Land Transfer Regulations
which divided Palestine into three regions with different restrictions
on land sales applying to each. In Zone "A", which included the
hill-country of Judea as a whole, certain areas in the Jaffa sub-District, and in the Gaza District, and the northern part of the Beersheba
sub-District, new agreements for sale of land other than to a
Palestinian Arab were forbidden without the High Commissioner's
permission. In Zone "B", which included the Jezreel Valley, eastern Galilee, a parcel of coastal plain south of Haifa,
a region northeast of the Gaza District, and the southern part of the
Beersheba sub-District, sale of land by a Palestinian Arab was forbidden
except to a Palestinian Arab with similar exceptions. In the "free
zone", which consisted of Haifa Bay, the coastal plain from Zikhron Ya'akov to Yibna,
and the neighborhood of Jerusalem, there were no restrictions. The
reason given for the regulations was that the Mandatory was required to
"ensur[e] that the rights and positions of other sections of the
population are not prejudiced", and an assertion that "such transfers of
land must be restricted if Arab cultivators are to maintain their
existing standard of life and a considerable landless Arab population is
not soon to be created."
Street in As-Salt in the 1920sPopulation distribution near the end of the Mandate
In 1920, the majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who accounted for some 11% of the total) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Somalis, Circassians, Egyptians, Copts, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs:
The first census of 1922 showed a population of 757,182, of whom 78% were Muslim, 11% Jewish and 10% Christian.
The second census, of 1931, gave a total population of 1,035,154 of whom 73.4% were Muslim, 16.9% Jewish and 8.6% Christian.
A discrepancy between the two censuses and records of births, deaths
and immigration, led the authors of the second census to postulate the
illegal immigration of about 9,000 Jews and 4,000 Arabs during the
intervening years.
Arab Christian Palestinian boys at the Jerusalem YMCA, 1938
There were no further censuses but statistics were maintained by
counting births, deaths and migration. By the end of 1936 the total
population was approximately 1,300,000, the Jews being estimated at
384,000. The Arabs had also increased their numbers rapidly, mainly as a
result of the cessation of the military conscription imposed on the country by the Ottoman Empire, the campaign against malaria
and a general improvement in health services. In absolute figures their
increase exceeded that of the Jewish population, but proportionally,
the latter had risen from 13 per cent of the total population at the
census of 1922 to nearly 30 per cent at the end of 1936.
Some components such as illegal immigration could only be estimated approximately. The White Paper of 1939,
which placed immigration restrictions on Jews, stated that the Jewish
population "has risen to some 450,000" and was "approaching a third of
the entire population of the country". In 1945, a demographic study
showed that the population had grown to 1,764,520, comprising 1,061,270
Muslims, 553,600 Jews, 135,550 Christians and 14,100 people of other
groups.
Under the terms of the August 1922 Palestine Order in Council, the
Mandate territory was divided into administrative regions known as districts and were administered by the office of the British High Commissioner for Palestine.
Britain continued the millet system of the Ottoman Empire
whereby all matters of a religious nature and personal status were
within the jurisdiction of Muslim courts and the courts of other
recognised religions, called confessional communities. The High Commissioner established the Orthodox Rabbinate and retained a modified millet
system which only recognised eleven religious communities: Muslims,
Jews and nine Christian denominations (none of which were Christian
Protestant churches). All those who were not members of these recognised
communities were excluded from the millet arrangement. As a
result, there was no possibility, for example, of marriages between
confessional communities, and there were no civil marriages. Personal
contacts between communities were nominal.
Apart from the Religious Courts, the judicial system was modelled
on the British one, having a High Court with appellate jurisdiction and
the power of review over the Central Court and the Central Criminal
Court.
The five consecutive Chief Justices were:
"Palestine" is shown in English, Arabic (فلسطين) and Hebrew; the latter includes the acronym א״י for Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel).
Between 1922 and 1947, the annual growth rate of the Jewish sector of
the economy was 13.2%, mainly due to immigration and foreign capital,
while that of the Arab was 6.5%. Per capita, these figures were 4.8% and
3.6% respectively. By 1936, Jews earned 2.6 times as much as Arabs. Compared to Arabs in other countries, Palestinian Arabs earned slightly more.
The country's largest industrial zone was in Haifa, where many housing projects were built for employees.
On the scale of the UN Human Development Index
determined for around 1939, of 36 countries, Palestinian Jews were
placed 15th, Palestinian Arabs 30th, Egypt 33rd and Turkey 35th. The Jews in Palestine were mainly urban, 76.2% in 1942, while the Arabs were mainly rural, 68.3% in 1942. Overall, Khalidi concludes that Palestinian Arab society, while overmatched by the Yishuv, was as advanced as any other Arab society in the region and considerably more than several.
There were several attempts by the Arab Palestinians to establish
an Arab higher education institution, starting from the 1920s, but it
did not materialise. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé
attributed this to "Zionist pressure, British anti-Arab racism, and
lack of resources." He added that "the colonial mentality of the British
authorities who deemed the Palestinians yet another colonized people
who had to be oppressed, while regarding the Zionist settlers as fellow
colonialists, feared that such a university would enhance the
Palestinian national movement."
Literacy rates in 1932 were 86% for the Jews compared to 22% for
the Palestinian Arabs, but Arab literacy rates steadily increased
thereafter. By comparison, Palestinian Arab literacy rates were higher
than those of Egypt and Turkey, but lower than in Lebanon.
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