the origins of the british mandate in “palestine – eretz israel” 1897: theodor herzl convenes...

THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH MANDATEIN “PALESTINE – Eretz Israel”

• 1897: Theodor Herzl convenes the First Zionist Congress and opens talks with the Ottoman and British Empires.

• December 1914: Lord Kitchener in Cairo suggests to the Emir of Mecca that he should inherit the “caliphate”.

• October 1915: Sir Henry McMahon promises the Emir of Mecca the “districts” of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama

• 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement

• November 1917: The Balfour Declaration promises the creation of a “Jewish homeland in Palestine”

• 1920: Great Britain receives League of Nations Mandate for Palestine

• 1929: The Hebron Massacre

The growth of the Jewish

communities in Europe

as of 1880

“Museum of Horrors: The Traitor!”

(French caricature of Alfred Dreyfus, ca. 1896)

Baron de Rothschild(France, 1898)

“The Future: Toward Palestine”(German anti-Semitic cartoon, 1880)

“Gulliver Knickerbocker

and the Lilliputians”(New York,

1905)

Theodor Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 and his famous book published in 1896, The Jewish

State

See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 9-10.

Jewish farmers at the new settlement of Metulla, 1896/97(published by Zionists in Warsaw in 1898)

“Shomer” (a settlement guard from Kinneret, 1912):By now about 50,000 Jews lived in Palestine

LORD KITCHENER SEEKS A NEW “KHALIF” AMONG THE HASHEMITES OF MECCA

Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca since 1908, self-proclaimed King of the Hejaz, 1917-24

Faisal bin al Hussein, elected King of Syria in 1920; appointed King of Iraq, 1921-33

Abdullah bin al-Hussein, Emir of Transjordania, 1921-46, then King of Jordan, 1946-49

See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 11-12.

Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) and “Emir Faisal’s camel-mounted irregulars” (photos in the British

press, 1917)

The Sykes-Picot

Agreement of 1916:

The British Foreign

Office paid little

attention to the promises

to the Hashemites

ZIONISTS IN THE BRITISH CABINET?

Arthur James Balfour: PM 1902-

05; Foreign Secretary 1916-19

Balfour’s advisor, Leopold Amery, became Colonial Secretary, 1924-

29: “I was keen on an advance into Palestine on military grounds, and

the idea of establishing in Palestine a prosperous community bound to

Britain by ties of gratitude and interest naturally appealed to me. I

already had doubts as to the permanence of our protectorate in

Egypt.”

See Israel-Arab Reader, p. 16.

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION(from a letter of November 2, 1917, by Foreign

Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild and the Zionist Federation)

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The British military commander of Jerusalem, Borton Pasha, on December 11, 1917

Emir Faisal’s delegation to Versailles (with T.E. Lawrence)

Why did Faisal seek agreement with the Zionists?See Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 17-20.

THE PEACE SETTLEMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1922

Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876-1953), of the “Wahabi” sect of Islam, meanwhile ignored the British as he gained control of the Arabian peninsula by 1925

Sir Herbert Samuel,

first Commissioner-

General of Palestine,in Amman,

Jordan, with T.E. Lawrence and Emir Abdullah,

April 1921

Trilingual documents of “Palestine, E.I. [Eretz Israel]”

Garden party at Government House, Jerusalem, ca. 1930

Jewish pioneers in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine, 1920s.

European newcomers, transformed into farmers, ca. 1933

Washing day at the Bat-Nesher Kindergartenin Haifa, 1925

An Arab household in Nazareth, ca. 1910

THERE WERE ABOUT TWO MILLION PEOPLEALTOGETHER IN INTERWAR PALESTINE

DATEJewish

Population

1921 69,000

1926 150,000

1931 172,000

1936 384,000

1939 425,000

Jewish immigration accelerated to 60,000 per year after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, but Great Britain imposed strict limits on immigration after the Arab Revolt of 1936/37

The Western Wall, beneath the Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Rock, third holiest site in Islam

“The Jews’ Wailing Wall” (postcard from the 1890s):Here riots broke out in August 1929

Raymond Cafferata, police chief in Hebron,

1929:“I am not anti-

Semitic and I’m not anti-Arab. I’m simply pro-

British.”Here 67 Jews

were massacred on August 24,

1929