Why and How did it come about when it did?
Contents:
1. Palestine Under the Turks.
2. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Reasons for it.
3. The International Strategic Aspect of the Balfour Declaration.
4. British Rule.
5. The Names "Palestine" versus "Land of Israel."
6. The 1920 Battle of Tel Chai and the Riots of Nebi Musa.
7. Sir Herbert Samuel and the British from an over-all point of view.
Before the British came to Palestine it had been part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Ottoman Turks had ruled over the area for 402 years (1516-1918), except for the 9 years between 1831 and 1840, when the Egyptian Governor Muhammad Ali sent his troops to capture Palestine under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha. The area known as Palestine did not then have a distinct ethnic identity. They thought of themselves primarily according to their religion and secondly as inhabitants of the southern area of Syria. They were mainly Sunni Muslims but different minorities were also present including Armenian Christians, Greek Orthodox, Maronite Catholics, Latin Catholics, Druze in the north, a few Protestants, Jews, and others.
In 1914 the Ottoman Turks joined the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, in World War 1. - The Ottoman Turkish army included numerous Arab conscripts. It also encompassed German and Austro-Hungarian advisors, officers, and support troops. Some Jews from Palestine, such as David ben-Gurion, also initially served in its forces. For its part the Ottoman Turks turned against the Jews and other minorities. Many of the Jews in Palestine had come from areas of the Russian Empire. When war came all Jews holding Russian passports were forced to leave. Some them went to Egypt (which was then ruled by the British) to wait the War out. In Palestine those Jews who remained suffered from plague and famine. At one stage the Turks intended to massacre all the Jews as they had partially done previously to the Armenians in Anatolia (i.e. the Turkish mainland) in 1914 and were to do so again in 1923. The Germans, at the request of the Kaiser who was otherwise anti-Semitic, however intervened and a massacre of the Jews prevented.
As the war progressed an eventual victory by the Allies became more and more certain.
The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 resulted from discussions between the British and French as to what to do with the conquered Turkish territories once victory was achieved. It was decided that what until then had been the Ottoman Empire would be divided into spheres of influence. One conception was that most of Palestine, after ending the Ottoman control over it, would become an international zone not under direct French or British colonial control. In practice any area that did not go directly to France was assumedly entrusted to British discretion.
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2. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Reasons for it.
The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 in effect pre-emptied Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration had taken the form of a letter dated 2 November 1917 to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet
"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.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours,
Arthur James Balfour
Arthur Koestler (see: People of Note. https://hebrewnations.com/articles/sources/vips.html) summarized the Balfour Declaration as a document in which "one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third".
The reality was that,
"One Nation (the British) Promised to return the Land of a Second Nation (the Arabs) to its original inheritors (the Jews) despite the wishes of the Second Nation (of Arabs). Members of the Second Nation had themselves either entered as squatters or taken land by force from others."
The Balfour Declaration was issued on the same day Australian and British troops conquered Beer Sheba on their way to complete conquest of the Land. In December 1917 British Forces including ANZACS (Australian and New Zealand Armored Corps) liberated Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine shortly afterwards. A Jew from New Zealand raised the Zionist Star of David over Jerusalem. This was allowed to emain for a while before being taken down.
Gareth Adamson (on Quora) commented:
The Declaration was made on November 2, 1917. Although Jerusalem fell just over a month later, the British advance then continued east (into Transjordan) rather than north until February 1918, and after that the decision was made to concentrate resources on the western front in France, and just hold the line in Palestine. The rest of Palestine was finally mopped up in the Megiddo campaign of September-October 1918, with the entirety of what would become Palestine in British hands probably by the end of September, as Ottoman resistance collapsed, and the front started moving very rapidly into and through what would become Lebanon and Syria. ... just short of 11 months.
An Arab commentator (on Quora) who terms himself "Palreestinians" and uses the nom de- plume of "Handala" in 2025 made the following comments:
# ... Balfour made no reference of the vast Arab majority of the populace (approximately 94% at the time), except in a backhanded way as the 'existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' They were defined in terms of what they were not, and most definitely not as a nation or a people, the terms 'Palestinian' and 'Arab' are absent from the declaration's sixty-seven words. This great majority was promised only 'civil and religious rights,' not political or national rights. By contrast, Balfour bestowed national rights to what he referred to as 'the Jewish people,' who constituted a tiny minority in 1917, accounting for approximately 6% of the country's population.
Rightly or wrongly the Balfour Declaration did not promise national rights to the Arabs but only to the Jews.
Other commentators noted:
# Over the last century, the British government's motives and goals have been thoroughly investigated. Among its numerous motivations were a romantic, religiously inspired philo-Semitic compulsion to 'return' the Hebrews to the land of the Bible, and an anti-Semitic desire to decrease Jewish immigration to Britain, attached to a belief that 'world Jewry' possessed the ability to keep newly revolutionary Russia fighting and to draw the United States into the conflict. Apart from those impulses, Britain sought control of Palestine primarily for geopolitical strategic reasons that predated World War I, and were reinforced by wartime events....
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3. The International Strategic Aspect of the Balfour Declaration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Allenby,_1st_Viscount_Allenby
# Murray and Allenby were invited to give lectures at Aldershot in 1931 about the Palestine campaign. Exchanging letters beforehand, Murray asked whether it had been worth risking the Western Front (in the autumn of 1917) to transfer troops to Palestine. Allenby avoided that question, but commented that in 1917 and into the spring of 1918 it had been far from clear that the Allies were going to win the war. The Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers of December 1917 had effectively taken Russia out of the war, but the Americans, who had entered the war in April 1917, were not yet present in strength. France and Italy were weakened and might have been persuaded to make peace, perhaps by Germany giving up Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine, or Austria-Hungary giving up the Trentino. In those circumstances, the Central Powers were likely to be left in control of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and it had been sensible for Britain to grab some land in the Middle East to block Germany's route to India. Allenby's views mirrored those of the War Cabinet at the time.#
That just about sums up one aspect of the Balfour Declaration.
The British wanted (or rather had "fancied") Palestine for strategic reasons. It strengthened their control over the Suez Canal and adjoining regions. Some Britishers very strongly wanted the Jews to be settled in Palestine for Biblical and Humanitarian motivations. This automatically would require British tutelage, financing, and protection, and justify them being there.
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In 1919 Churchill had written:
"... there are the Jews, whom we are pledged to introduce into Palestine and who take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience."
After the war, Palestine was left under British Military Occupation from 1917 until 1920. In 1920 a British Civil Administration was established in anticipation of the granting of a formal League of Nations Mandate to the United Kingdom. This was approved in July 1922 and came into effect in September 1923.
.# ... In 1922, at a dinner at Balfour's residence, three of the era's most renowned statesmen: Lloyd George, Balfour, and Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Churchill, assured Weizmann that the concept 'Jewish national home' , 'always meant an eventual Jewish state.' Lloyd George persuaded the Zionist leader that Britain would never permit a representative government in Palestine for this purpose. Neither did it.
In 1937 Churchill gave evidence to the Palestine Royal Commission in which he declared that according to British understanding eventually there would be an independent state in which Jews would be the majority. He also said that British policy had been to bring in as many Jews as possible.
Churchill later stated:
"The number of Palestinians who left (willfully or under coercion) what later became the State of Israel in 1948 was more than offset by Jews who fled from Islamic lands and lost most of their property and possessions in doing so."
Mandatory Palestine was officially established in 1920. A British Civilian Administration was headed by a Governor. Along side this was a Military apparatus. The British Government of Egypt was also involved and technically had a degree of seniority .n.1,
n1. This explains the later involvement of Lord Moyne (Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo from August 1942 to January 1944 and Minister-Resident for the Middle East from January 1944 until his assassination in November 1944 by the Lehi.
Within the British system at that time, this meant some degree of control (by the British in Egypt) over Persia, the Middle East, including Mandatory Palestine, and Africa. Moyne had earned a reputation for working against the acceptance into Palestine of Jewish refugees.
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5. The Names "Palestine" versus "Land of Israel."
The name given to the Mandate's territory was "Palestine", in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage and with European tradition. 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 A. Y. "Erets Yisrael":) which stood for that designation.
The Mandate charter stipulated that Mandatory Palestine would have three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.
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6. The 1920 Battle of Tel Chai and the Riots of Nebi Musa.
Meanwhile the French had received a Mandate over Lebanon and claimed suzerintity over Syria and an area (Alexandretta and part of Cilicia) of southeast Turkey. In the south of Lebanon were many Shiite Muslims who resented French rule and rebelled. This conflicted overflowed into neighboring northern Palestine. A Shiite Arab militia, accompanied by Bedouin from a nearby village, entered the Jewish agricultural locality of Tel Hai in search of French soldiers.
The Battle of Tel Hai was fought on 1 March 1920 between Arab and Jewish forces at the village of Tel Hai in Northern Galilee. Joseph Trumpeldor, the commander of Jewish defenders of Tel Hai, was shot in the hand and stomach, and died while being evacuated to Kfar Giladi that evening. Tel Hai was eventually abandoned by the Jews and burned by the Arab militia.
Joseph Trumpeldor had been a war hero in Czarist Russia and was much admired among the Jewish settlers in Palestine.
The incident illustrates the nature of conflict in this region. It is not always logical and sometimes resembles gang warfare provoked by Arabs in search of loot, ravage, and/or adventure more than anything else.
Partially inspired by events in the Galilee there were also riots in Jerusalem in protest against the Balfour Declaration.
These are referred to as "The 1920 Nebi Musa riots," or "1920 Jerusalem riots."
Five Jews were killed and ca. 160 injured. British soldiers were also inured and 4 Arabs killed.
Jewish women were raped. The Arab rioters had used illicit weapons concealed on the bodies of Arab women.
Reprobate elements among the British Mandatory authorities due to their hostility towards Zionism had actively encouraged Arab leaders to incite the violence. Once it began they somewhat lethargically brought it to a close.
This was to set the pattern for the rest of the Mandate Period. Some British were in favor of the Jews while others were against.
Nevertheless, the British presence enabled the Jews to put together the framework for their future state.
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7. Sir Herbert Samuel and the British from an over-all point of view.
The first High Commissioner, was Sir Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a Jew.
Samuel had been a British Cabinet Minister and defined himself as a non-believer even though at times he was nominally practising.
Samuel had promoted Zionism within the British Cabinet, beginning with his 1915 memorandum entitled "The Future of Palestine." See: "Sameul Memon 1915. He served from 1920 to 1925. Despite his Zionist credentials Samuel acted to slow Jewish immigration and win the confidence of the Arab population. Samuel chose Haj Amin al Husseini, as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, i.e. head of the Muslim community, although he was young and had received the fewest votes from Jerusalem's Islamic leaders. Haj Amin al Husseini is often referred to simply as the "Mufti." He was to become an anti-Jewish anti-British agitator and eventually took refuge in Nazi Germany.
British Policy could be influenced by a number of different and sometimes differing authorities including the Home Government in London.
Nevertheless, from an over-all point of view the British helped the Jews in Palestine whose population increased from ca. 20,000 in 1917 to more than 600,000 in 1948.