Great Britain's 30 Year Mandate Over Palestine and Their Great Give-Away of land Intended to Become the Jewish Homeland, Part II on UN

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

           Naive   Herbert Louis Samuel, Viscount of Britain chosen to be the High Commissioner,  who chose the wrong Arab 104 years ago  in their mandate over Palestine. A decade and a half after that decision, in late 1936, London appointed a Palestine Royal Commission to probe the Arab revolt that had erupted that spring, and which — Zionist leaders and many British officials believed — was being stoked above all by Husseini himself. Chaired by Lord William Peel, the panel heard 60 witnesses in public sessions. But nearly the same number testified in briefings so secret that even the witness list was hidden.  Samuel led a long, accomplished life. Born shortly after the American Civil War, he nearly lived to see the moon landing. He served in the British Cabinet seven times and ultimately rose to the head of his own Liberal Party. Yet his testimony in front of the commission was possibly the only known instance that he was ever made to defend his elevation of Husseini, who in the words of Samuel’s own son, “turned out to be an implacable enemy not only of Zionism but also of Britain,” culminating in his notorious alliance with Hitler’s Germany in World War II.  He stated that "Jews can be extremely irritating people."                                             

                                                    Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

 WWI was over and the British Campaign of 1917-1918 led to the termination of Turkish rule of their Ottoman Empire.  The administration  of Palestine was entrusted by the League of Nations (1st attempt of what would become the United Nations) in order to implement  The Balfour Declaration of November 2,  1917.  The British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, declared that the British government favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.  This came in the form of a letter to the Jews;  the result of long negotiations initiated by Chaim Weizmann and others shortly after the outbreak of WWI with the support of Herbert Samuel and others.  

Herbert Samuel met in Jerusalem with the Military Governor of Palestine, Major General Louis Bols, on June 30, 1920, the day he arrived in Jaffa. Bols wrote out a receipt, which Samuel signed. “Received from Major General Sir Louis Bols, one Palestine, complete.” (Hebrew Union College Klau Library)

It was known that Great Britain held the 30 year mandate of Palestine and had complete control till the day they pulled out and the Jewish Palestinians could declare themselves a State named Israel.    By 1922, Winston Churchill, the British colonial secretary, did the detaching of Transjordan from the historic Palestine and set it up as a separate emirate that kept out Jews.     As for entering Palestine to create the Jewish Homeland, the British restricted Jewish political rights and sometimes favored if not fostered Arab objections.  Immigration and expansion were arbitrarily limited.   The Jews that could come in  after 1918 were restricted, created new towns, drained swamps, planted forests and built Tel Aviv.  By 1933, Nazi persecution started against Jews.  Jewish immigration increased in Palestine, legally or illegally.  Brits kept Jews out of Palestine.  Jews were suffering in Germany terribly from 1933 to 1939 when Germany went into Poland.  Jews needed Palestine desperately,  but were turned away by the Brits.  

 Ships such as Exodus 1947,  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.  There they were most likely gassed.                            

                                                       1929:  Amin al-Husseini 

Herbert Louis Samuel, Viscount (1870-1963) was Jewish and a British statesman and philosopher, the 1st Jew to be a member of a liberal British cabinet (from 1909) who had chosen a Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who happened to be  Hajj Mohammed Amin el Husseini (1893-1974) , who hated the Jews.  That made him head of the supreme Moslem Council.  In 1936 he organized the Palestine disturbances but was sentenced to exile in 1937.  he fled to Lebanon, and during WWII, was involved in a coup in Iraq before running off to Europe where he met up with Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jes in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  He then escaped to Egypt.  After 1948 he set up a Palestine Government in Gaza that didn't last long, and later in Cairo.  

On April 1947, at the request of the United Kingdom (UK), which acknowledged its inability to possibly implement the mandate, the General Assembly of the UN established a Special Committee on Palestine called UNSCOP, formed to look into the question and submit recommendations.                          

 That was a new line to the world;  England saying they couldn't handle the mandate anymore.  The truth is that England met Saudi's prince Abdullah, who needed land and people to reign over.  The English then gave him 80% of the land east of the Jordan River which was mostly Palestine, reserved for the Jewish Homeland.  Britain gave the land east of the Jordan River to Abdullah in 1921, when they established the Emirate of Transjordan under his rule at the Cairo Conference, effectively separating this territory from the rest of the British Mandate of Palestine;.

England had discovered that there was oil in "them there sand".  From there on, England did everything to keep Jews out of Palestine and allowed Arabs in.  They went against the reason  of the mandate;  responsibility of assisting Jews in creating the Jewish Homeland.  

The UNSCOP's report formed the basis for the Assembly's Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947.  They in turn recommended the establishment, in Palestine, of both a Jewish and an Arab state.   They were trying to appease both sides.  Arabs and Jews each had aided Britain in winning WWI.  The Brits had made promises to each.                            

  If you read the Bible,  it was a well-known fact that Israel, formed in biblical days of King Saul, David and Solomon, was well over 1,000 years old when the Romans destroyed its capital, Jerusalem in 70 CE by fire, burning the city and Temple.  The Romans named the land "Palestine" out of anger  for the Jewish enemy, the Philistines, when Bar Kokhba, a Jewish descendant had led an army and took Jerusalem back in 132, fighting for it till 135 when he was killed.  There never was a State of Palestine;  only the land was named as such for maps.  There had been the state of Judah where Jerusalem was, and from that we get our name, Jews. Our Ancient Homeland was what came to be known as Judea and Samaria.  

     Proclaiming Israel, the new state :  Golda Meier settled in Palestine in 1921,  would go on to become the Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, serving during the Yom Kippur War.  Golda retired in 1974.                                      

Israel was proclaimed by the Palestine Jewish authorities on May 14, 1948, on the eve of the day Great Britain gave up their control.  

Arab armies immediately invaded Israel, and NO CONCRETE HELP came to their aid by the UN in implementing its resolution, but UN mediators negotiated the following cease-fire and armistice agreements supervised by a TRUCE SUPERVISION ORGANIZATION  using Jerusalem for their headquarters.  

Israel's application for admission to the UN was approved by the General Assembly on May 11, 1949, about a year after its birth.  Israel became a member of the many UN agencies in the following months. 

 Her problems came from her relations with the Arab states---and have been on the agendas of the UN's main organs repeatedly.  Israel-Arab relations.  reached a climax in the fall of 1956 with the SINAI OPERATION.   On March 1, 1957, Israel---under pressure, announced its intention to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip and Sharm-e-Sheikh with the reservation that it would exercise its right of self-defense under the UN Charter if its ships were again interfered with in the Gulf of Akaba.  We won't forget what happened in May 1967 when an Egyptian demand to withdraw UNEF troops was immediately obeyed.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-reveals-herbert-samuels-secret-1937-testimony-on-the-infamous-mufti-of-jerusalem/    *****

https://jcpa.org/the-british-mandate-began-100-years-ago-june-30-1920-a-photo-essay/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini#Evaluations_of_Husseini's_historical_significance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Transjordan#:~:text=The%20Emirate%20of%20Transjordan%20(Arabic,Kingdom%20of%20Jordan%20in%201946.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus