The British Advent
Before the British came to Palestine it had been part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The Ottoman Turks invaded 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 distinct ethnic identity. They thought of themselves primarily according to their and secondly as inhabitants of the southern area of Syria. They were mainly Sunni Muslims but different minorities were also present inlcuding Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Maronites, Latin Catholics, Druze in the north, and Jews.
The Ottoman Turks had joined the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, and were fighting World War 1. - The Ottoman Turkish army included numerous Arab conscripts. It also included German and Austro-Hungarians advisors officers, and support troops.
They had turned against the Jews. Many of the Jews 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 to wait the War our. In Palestine the locals suffered from plague and famine. At one stage the Turks intended to massacre the Jews as they done previously to the Armenians. The Germans, at the request of the Kaiser who was otherwise anti-Semitic, however intervened.
The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 had divided the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence. It was envisioned that most of Palestine, after ending the Ottoman control over it, would become an international zone not under direct French or British colonial control. However, after the war, Palestine was left under British Military Occupation from 1917 until 1920, where a British Civil Administration was established in anticipation of the granting of a formal League of Nations Mandate to the United Kingdom, which was approved in July 1922 and came into effect in September 1923.
In December 1917 British Troops of which the ANZACS (Australian and New Zealanders) were a major component had liberated Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine shortly afterwards. They continuedfromt here to take Damascus (October 1918) whose capture was later falsely attributed to the Arabs.
Before these events, in November 1917, the British had issued the Balfour Declaration.
It consisted of a letter to Lord Rothschild:
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
An Arab commentator who describes himself as "Palreestinians" and uses the nom de- plume of "Handala" makes 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.
# 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....
.# ... 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 (Arab) government in Palestine for this purpose. Neither did it.