How The Palestine 30 Year Mandate Came About But Kept Jews Out

 Nadene Goldfoot                            

In the two years after 1946, more than 100,000 people arrived in the new Israel.  Most were not allowed to stay because Britain held the 30 year mandate and kept them out.  

Jewish youth rescued from the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp show their camp tattoos on their forearms on board the refugee immigration ship Mataroa July 15, 1945 at Haifa port, during the British Mandate of Palestine. 

Romans  didn't allow any Jews back into Jerusalem.  They were the keepers of the entrance.  Then after 630, the Arabs took over Palestine and kept Jews out.  The Jews' magnificent 2nd Temple of Solomon had been destroyed, burned down and looted.  Over that the Romans had built their Temple, and over that the Muslims built their mosque, a huge one at that. Jews prayed 3 times a day for their return to Jerusalem.  The famous Jewish Hillel, born in Babylon in the 1st century BCE from the days when Babylon in 597 BCE took hostages from Judah, made it to Palestine and worked as a laborer while studying the Torah with  the well-known teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  Getting to Palestine has never been easy in any year.                                               

After the resolution on 25 April 1920, standing outside Villa Devachan, from left to right: Matsui, Lloyd George, Curzon, Berthelot, Millerand, Vittorio Scialoja, Nitti.

WWI ended on November 11, 1918. Starting on July 28, 1914, it had been the bloodiest war ever known that lasted over 4 years.  

28 June 1919:  Versailles Conference: This Paris Peace Conference was the formal meeting in 1919 and 1920 of the victorious Allies after the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and Italy, it resulted in five treaties that rearranged the maps of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands, and also imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other losing nations had no voice in the Conference's deliberations; this gave rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.

  David Lloyd George was one of the 20th century’s most famous radicals. He was the first and only Welshman to hold the office of Prime Minister.  He was acclaimed as the man who had won the war, and in 1918 the coalition won a huge majority. It was the first election in which any women were allowed to vote. In 1919 he signed the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations and the war reparations settlement.

On April 24, 1920, it was formally decided by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers at the conference in San Remo that Britain should administer Palestine and be responsible for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. 

The San Remo conference was an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council as an outgrowth of the Paris Peace Conference, held at Villa Devachan in Sanremo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. 

The San Remo Resolution passed on 25 April 1920 determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for the administration of three then-undefined Ottoman territories in the Middle East: "Palestine", "Syria" and "Mesopotamia". The boundaries of the three territories were "to be determined [at a later date] by the Principal Allied Powers", leaving the status of outlying areas such as Zor and Transjordan unclear.

The conference was attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the prime ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand), Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by Japan's Ambassador Keishirō Matsui.

It was agreed –

(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the procès-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. 

The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 8th [2nd] November, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, 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.

While Transjordan was not mentioned during the discussions, three months later, in July 1920, the French defeat of the Arab Kingdom of Syria state precipitated the British need to know 'what is the "Syria" for which the French received a mandate at San Remo?' and "does it include Transjordania?" – it subsequently decided to pursue a policy of associating Transjordan with the mandated area of Palestine but not to apply the special provisions which were intended to provide a national home for the Jewish people West of the Jordan                                 

                   Weizmann and Feisal

Therefore, Transjordan, soon to become Jordan, was decided upon 3 months after the mandate was written in July of 1920 when they (British, French) had decided not to make it land that could be a part of the National Home for the Jews.                                 

Notes:  Faisal is mentioned who was Emir Feisal and would become King Faisal of Syria and of Iraq; was friends during the Conference with Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952). 

                              President Chaim Weizmann    

 Weizmann was a chemist who became a Zionist leader and 1st president of Israel.  Very likeable with terrific personality; liked by Lloyd George and Balfour.  

                           Britain's Herbert Samuel, 1st Jew to be a member of a British cabinet, happening in 1909.  He held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to1916; and then in the national government  in 1931 and 1932.  He wrote a memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 concerning a British trust for the Jewish Home which influenced the Balfour Declaration.  

In 1920, Great Britain appointed Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel as high commissioner and established a mandatory government in Palestine that remained in power until 1948.  It was the 30 year mandate. 

A mandate is:  the authority to carry out a policy or course of action, regarded as given by the electorate to a candidate or party that is victorious in an election.

Note:

1.  Wilson (1988, pp. 46–48) Samuel then organised a meeting of Transjordanian leaders at Salt on 21 August, at which he would announce British plans... On 20 August Samuel and a few political officers left Jerusalem by car, headed for the Jordan river, the frontier of British territory at that time. ‘It is an entirely irregular proceeding,’ he noted, ‘my going outside my own jurisdiction into a country which was Faisal's, and is still being administered by the Damascus (Syria) Government, now under French influence. But it is equally irregular for a government under French influence to be exercising functions in territory which is agreed to be within the British sphere: and of the two irregularities I prefer mine.’... The meeting, held in the courtyard of the Catholic church, was attended by about 600 people..... Sentence by sentence his speech describing British policy was translated into Arabic: political officers would be stationed in towns to help organise local governments; 
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3. Transjordan would not come under Palestinian administration; there would be no conscription and no disarmament......On balance, Samuel's statement of policy was unobjectionable. Three things feared by the Arabs of Transjordan – conscription, disarmament, and annexation by Palestine – were abjured.... The presence of a few British agents, unsupported by troops, seemed a small concession in return for the protection Britain's presence would afford against the French, who, it was feared, might press their occupation southward... Samuel returned to Jerusalem well pleased with the success of his mission. He left behind several officers to see to the administration of Transjordan and the maintenance of British influence.

 Viscount Herbert Louis Samuel was the first Jew to be in English public office.  In 1920 he was the first High Commissioner for Palestine.  It was he who had appointed the Sherif of Jerusalem to be Haj Amin al- Husseini, who was the Jewish enemy in Palestine and had caused all the riots and killings of Jews. Evidently he didn't know because he was from a very high social group of Englishmen and didn't know the Arab people at all, only that Husseini had a title. Husseini was a little fish in a big pond and didn't want to lose his position. Husseini was also against the much bigger fish-Emir Feisal who was a very important man.  Husseini was not related to Feisal.

Feisal I of Iraq:  Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi 20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933) was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 until his death in 1933. He was the third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Emir and Sharif of Mecca, who was proclaimed as King of the Arabs in June 1916.                    

The conference was attended by the allies, the US representative joining the meeting later in an observer capacity.United States of America (as observers):

• Robert Underwood Johnson, US Ambassador in Rome
• Leland Harrison
• T. Hart Anderson, Jr.

"Zionist Rejoicings. British Mandate For Palestine Welcomed", The Times, Monday, 26 April 1920, following conclusion of the conference.

At the end of WWI, there was only one spokesman that qualified for the Muslims, and that was Emir Feisal.  He did his part by becoming the king of Syria and then king of Iraq.  

As to Arab population in Palestine:  here we see 

Year          Jews  Christ.  Muslims    Total

1890	43	57	432	532
1914	94	70	525	689
1922	84	71	589	752
1931	175	89	760	1,033
1947	630	143	1,181	1,970

Estimates by Sergio DellaPergola (2001), drawing on the work of Bachi (1975). Figures in thousands.

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3. In 1920, the British Government's Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine:

   "There are now in the whole of Palestine hardly 700,000 people, a population much less than that of the province of Galilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some 77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are Protestants. 

   Update: There were 750,000 Jews in Israel when the state was established in 1948.   

   The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years a few hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions. Jewish agricultural colonies were founded. They developed the culture of oranges and gave importance to the Jaffa orange trade. They cultivated the vine, and manufactured and exported wine. They drained swamps. They planted eucalyptus trees. They practised, with modern methods, all the processes of agriculture. There are at the present time 64 of these settlements, large and small, with a population of some 15,000.

   As Transjordan was eliminated from the Jewish National Home, so had the Jews been eliminated by the Brits.  Jews were kept out from 1933-1939 at a time they needed to be allowed in with the Nazis at their heels, while Muslims and Arab Christians were allowed in. 

   
        Exodus 1947

   From 1942 President Warfield served in the Second World War as a barracks and training ship for the British Armed Forces. In 1944 she was commissioned into the United States Navy as USS President Warfield (IX-169), a station and accommodation ship for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.

   In 1947 she was renamed Exodus 1947 to take part in Aliyah Bet. She took 4,515 Jewish migrants from France to Mandatory Palestine. Most were Holocaust survivors who had no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. The Royal Navy boarded her in international waters and took her to Haifa, where ships were waiting to return the migrants to refugee camps in Europe.

   

   Protesting Britain's decision to return the passengers of the Exodus 1947 to Germany

   Jewish displaced persons protest Britain's decision to send back to Germany the Jewish refugees from the ship Exodus 1947. Photograph taken by Henry Ries. Hohne-Belsen displaced persons camp, Germany, September 1947.

   • Henry Ries / The New York Times Copyright © The New York Times.  
   • Aliyah Bet:

4.  Aliyah refers to immigration to the Land of Israel, while "bet" (the Hebrew equivalent of the letter "B") here implies something unofficial or secret. The phrase Aliyah Bet describes the movement of Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, not permitted to enter Palestine by the British authorities. Initiated by Zionist activists as the urgency for Jews to leave Europe intensified, this phenomenon was referred to by the British as "illegal" immigration. By 1948, well over 100,000 people had taken this route including more than 70,000 Holocaust survivors.

5. clandestine immigration of Jews to Palestine between 1920 and 1948, when Great Britain controlled the area.

6.  So we read:  By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including Bedouin).  An example of one ship trying to get to Palestine from Germany below:  

   
   View of the damaged Exodus 1947 as it is towed into the port of Haifa, after its interception by the British navy. (July 1947)  Exodus 1947 was a packet steamship that was built in the United States in 1928 as President Warfield for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. From her completion in 1928 until 1942 she carried passengers and freight across Chesapeake Bay between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland.

7. In July 1947, the President Warfield left Sète, France, for Palestine. It carried over 4,500 Jewish men, women, and children, all displaced persons (DPs) or survivors of the Holocaust. Even before the ship (by then renamed the Exodus 1947) reached Palestine's territorial waters, British destroyers surrounded it. On July 18 a struggle ensued between British naval forces and passengers on the ship. A Jewish crew member and two passengers were killed. Dozens suffered bullet wounds and other injuries. The people aboard the ship were tortured on other ships that got them to camps of death in Germany

8. The Royal Navy brought Exodus 1947 into Haifa, where her passengers were transferred to three larger and more seaworthy ships for deportation: Empire Rival, Ocean Vigour and Runnymede Park. Members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) witnessed the transfer. (Brits wanted the Jews deported to Germany where they would be killed.)

9. After her historic voyage in 1947, the damaged Exodus 1947, along with many other Aliyah Bet ships, was moored to the breakwater of Haifa port. In December 1947 the Palestine Railways' Ports Authority advertised the ships for sale in British shipping journals. The advertisement warned that some of the ships were fit only for scrap. But no-one bought Exodus 1947.  From Haifa, they would be deported back to Germany.

   The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 brought massive migration of European Jewish refugees from displaced persons camps to Israel. There was little time or money to focus on the meaning of Exodus 1947. Abba Khoushy, the Mayor of Haifa, proposed in 1950 that the "Ship that Launched a Nation" should be restored and converted into a floating museum of the Aliyah Bet. As the ship was being restored, an unexplained fire broke out aboard her on August 26, 1952. Fireboats fought the fire all day, but she burned down to her waterline. Her hulk was towed north of the Kishon River and scuttled near Shemen Beach.

   
   

10. On September 29, 1947,  Response to Exodus 1947:  Zionist Irgun and Lehi militants blew up the Palestine Police Force headquarters in Haifa in retaliation for the British deportation of Jewish migrants who arrived on Exodus 1947. 10 people were killed and 54 injured, of which 33 were British. Four British policemen, four Arab policemen, an Arab woman and a 16-year-old were killed. The 10-storey building was so heavily damaged that it was later demolished. They used a barrel bomb, described by police as a "brand new method" and the first use of a barrel bomb by Jewish forces.  Irgun went on to make many more barrel bomb attacks in 1947–48.

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13. Resource:
14. The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Aliyah
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Remo_conference
16. https://www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/david-lloyd-george
17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)
19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus#:~:text=The%20Royal%20Navy%20brought%20Exodus,(UNSCOP)%20witnessed%20the%20transfer.