In Palestine, the measures to confine and restrict Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened. The British government was not free to make drastic changes since Britain had no sovereignty in Palestine. She was there constitutionally to fulfill the Mandate and was answerable to the League of Nations for her actions. As long as the League had prestige […]

Haj Amin el-Husseini received the lowest number of votes and thus could not be included in the recommended list of three. Richmond launched an energetic campaign to get Samuel to appoint him nevertheless. He urged upon him the "expert" view that the poll was unimportant, that Haj Amin was the man the "Moslem populations insisted […]

In the the first flush of enthusiasm, a British military compounded the offense in traditional fashion: The defenders were punished. Jabotinsky was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment and twenty of his followers were given lesser terms. But Haj Amin and el Aref had operated too openly for any government publicly to ignore their guilt. Though […]

The purposes of the administration were now pursued by a stream of memoranda of protest and demands by the several branches of the MCA, dutifully forwarded to London with accompanying evaluations of their originality, spontaneity, sincerity, and the representative character of their signatories. Memoranda, however, were not enough to generate quick action; a "situation" had […]

Just as they continued trying to "biff the French bit of Syria," they applied themselves to biffing the Zionists out of Palestine. While their government was still canvassing international support to grant Britain the Mandate in order to implement the Zionist policy, and while the Zionists were urging Britain’s claims, the first British administration in […]

The elimination of eastern Palestine in 1921-1923 was only the first act — though stark, dramatic, and momentous — in a developing effort by the British to frustrate and emasculate the Jewish restoration that began in Palestine immediately after the British occupation. At first, British policy was confined to the military administration in Palestine itself […]

A dovetailed Middle East, with Arab client states and a Jewish client state coexisting and cooperating under a completely British umbrella, provided the motive power of official British policy in the period 1917-1920. On December 2, 1917, Lord Robert Cecil had said at a large public meeting in London: "The keynote of our meeting this […]

The Sykes-Picot Agreement, providing for an international administration in Palestine, was the original reason for the exclusion of Palestine from the promises made to Hussein. But in 1917, the British government published the Balfour Declaration for the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine. To achieve this promise of support in the restoration of […]