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Land ownership of the British Mandate of Palestine
According to the first paragraph of the abovementioned section in the article, it appears that Arabs owned 94% of the land of the Mandate, which is inconceivable, as well as inconsistent with the table that follows, stating a much lower percentage in almost all districts, most notably the huge Beersheba District which consisted of almost half of the Mandate territory. I'm quite sure the Survey of Palestine does not state the figures quoted in the first paragraph, can someone say where exactly (page number) was this said?--Doron22:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I put that section up. Unfortunately I am away fom home right now. It would be helpful if you could wait until then. Alternatively, you can put a "fact" tag and some one else will respond. The figures are correct because if you look at the other table (Land ownership by type) you will find the figure there. the contradiction is due to what is considered Arab land.Bless sins15:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, it is impossible that Arabs owned (privately or collectively) 94% of the lands, because the Beersheba District was mostly state lands. I would very much like to see the source of that statement and the table, they both sound incorrect. I'll have a look myself next time I have a chance to go to the library, in the meantime I'll put the tag. Cheers.--Doron17:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
I can't help suspecting that someone made this up having seen the well-known figure that 6-7% of the land towards the end of the Mandate was in Jewish ownership, and assumed that the rest was in Arab ownership. Palmiro | Talk03:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I guess someone subtracted (total area)-(Jewish owned) and called it Arab owned. Wrong. Whatever the explanation, the Survey of Palestine does not contain this 94% claim. It does not state a specific figure for total Arab ownership at all. You know, I could swear that in the past month or so I typed a summary of what the Survey says into Misplaced Pages somewhere, but I can't find it. Anyone? --Zero12:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
I have a vague memory of this issue coming up in the past. If memory serves me, the whole issue of land ownership was very complicated in Palestine, as during the Mandate period there was a transition from old Ottoman land laws to modern land laws. I think only a third of the lands of Palestine had been surveyed by the time the Mandate was terminated, so the distinction between private/collective/state lands was not clear and may be a matter of interpretation of the laws. I know that Israel took advantage of this situation in the West Bank (where land laws haven't been changed) during the 1980s to declare land as state-owned and allocate it for settlements. Does this make any sense to anyone?--Doron16:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
Hopefully, the recent edits have clarified the matter somewhat. In addition to the original reserch on the percentage of Arab-owned land, I have removed the percentages on cultivable and total land owned by Jews, giving the numerical values for the land area should suffice. There is still a reference to Uri Avneri; I'm uncertain which work is meant here, but anyway I doubt he can be considered a reliable source on the land ownership issue (even though his figure does make some sense). BeitOr11:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
That's not Uri Avneri but a different Avneri (Aryeh?), who wrote a book called something like "The Claim of Dispossession". You can tell from the title how balanced it is. Stein's book is much more like a serious history book, so thanks for adding material from there. Can you find anything to replace Avneri? Also, we need to add something about Arab ownership. I can (when I have time) summarise what the Survey of Palestine has, but maybe Stein has done that? --Zero12:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I see, that's The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 by Arieh Avneri. BeitOr18:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I had a look at the Survey and was astonished to find that the "Land Ownership by Type" table is indeed as it appears there (almost), with the two categories of "Jewish ownership" and "Arab and other non-Jewish ownership". However, I find this table very misleading, as from the analysis in the Survey it appears that a large proportion of the "non-Jewish" land is state land, while this phrasing associates the state land with Arab ownership. The Survey gives no specific figure of Arab land ownership at all, so I think there's a problem with this presentation.
The reason for this is that under the Ottoman Land Code, land registration was unreliable, dysfunctional, and incompatible with western land ownership systems. The Mandate government, through the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance, attempted to settle the titles of the lands of Palestine, but by 1947 had only managed to settle 5,243,042 dunums (out of 26,184,702), so it was impossible to give any figure of Arab land ownership. The Survey estimates that more than 10,000 km of the 12,577 km of the Beersheba District is state-owned waste land, as well as some 3,000 km in the wilderness east of Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron. It estimates that some 2,000 km in the Beersheba District may be claimed by individuals or communities. Taxation records suggest that some 7,000 km in the rest of Palestine are cultivated. Of the 5,000 km or so whose title had been settled, about 1,000 km where public land.
All this is very confusing and not very accurate, but I think it's fair to say that at least half of the lands of Palestine were state lands. Jewish land ownership is given (1,624,000 as of 31.12.46, according to the "Supplement to Survey of Palestine, notes compiled for the information of the UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON PALESTINE", June, 1947, p. 30), and the analysis may suggest that most of the remainder (no more than 10,000 km) was owned or tenured by Arabs, but this information is my own conclusion and is not given anywhere in the text. Nevertheless, I think it's enough to establish that assigning 24,000 km to "Arab and other non-Jewish ownership" (or the much worse, and incorrect, "Arab ownership" that is in the article currently) is misleading and biasing.--Doron14:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure we need so many tables in this particular article: let's just summarize the issue and move on. If there is a lot of material, we can split a separate article on land ownership and fill it with as many tables as necessary. BeitOr18:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I totally agree, I might start such an article myself if I find the time. However, there's still that table that you changed -- although it is now factually correct, it is still somewhat misleading and biased. I think we're better off without it than with it, unless someone can come up with reliable estimates of Arab ownership alone. Would anyone object to removing this table?--Doron19:59, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
"Arab and other non-Jewish" means simply "non-Jewish"; giving figures for Jewish vs. non-Jewish ownership is hardly meaningful. For the time being, I suggest sticking to the figures for the Jewish ownership only, where numbers are more or less reliable. BeitOr20:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why you would like to remove the table. It's sourced to a reliable soure and is relevent. It show how much was owned by Jews, how much wasn't and how much was there in total. Why is the table misleading (unless we are misrepresenting the Survey of Palestine)? If you have other figures feel free to include them. Bless sins22:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
If we are talking about the table "land ownership by type" then it is certainly unacceptable in its present form. However I hope we can rescue it rather than just deleting it. The question of Arab land ownership is quite complicated as Doron pointed out above. Even the definition is not a triviality since Ottoman concepts of ownership did not neatly fit into the categories of the Torrens system of land registration (copied from Australia) that the British adopted. For example there was a concept of owning an amount of land rather than an actual plot of land. There was also a lot of land possessed under a type of perpetual lease rather than outright ownership. Of course some people want to call that "Arab owned" and some people want to call it "state land", and both are inaccurate. --Zero22:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Since we already have the British estimates of land ownership in the previous table, why don't we turn this one into land usage by type without being concerned with ownership? If I remember correctly, the Survey does have data of this sort. --Zero23:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't see the harm in presenting the additional info. Also, I understand that land ownership is a complex issue. Perhaps, you should include in thearticle how Arab ownership was judged.Bless sins23:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
As proposed before, what we really should do is start an article about land ownership in Palestine which would discuss this complexity and move this table there, where it would be in context. I think this table is too specific for a general article about the Mandate anyway.--Doron06:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
In the 1920 there was no such map. The division between "Palestine" and "trans-jordan" (as shown on that map) did not came about until 1923 after Abaddal a took by force the area known today as Jordan.
As clearly written in the article, the mandate came into effect in September 1923, while the government under the Hashemite Emir was established in Transjordan in 1921.--Doron09:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
Wrong... it was occupied by force by Abdullah and it had nothing to do with the designated mandate. Amoruso23:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
This is an old issue here. Several users are attempting to say that the Mandate only included western Palestine. That is a mistake. In fact, the original map was accurate and was changed in several articles. The current version is more accurate. Amoruso23:07, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
This is irrelevant to your changes to the map caption. Palestine was given to Great Britain by the 1922 Leagure of Nations resolution. She didn't "alter" anything.--Doron06:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Of course it did and it is sourced. It altered the mandate it was supposed to receive by cutting Palestine into half. Amoruso13:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Wow, now a few millennia are summed up in the (rather unreadable) intro, isn't this going a bit too far? How about restoring the old intro that only introduced the British period, how it began and how it ended (i.e., only mention the Ottoman period, mandate establishment and termination) and leave the long story to the History section?--Doron00:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Recent changes
There's been a bit of dispute here. There's good reason for this, as much that is easily available is very confusing or impossible. I thought I might throw my 2 cents in about some things that could be added to help clarify things. First, good work, Ian. This latest version increases the accuracy and has a lot of good info. Second, I believe Amoruso's version is completely in good faith, but it contains some "well known" but untrue, indeed impossible misconceptions, along with some good points that should be here. As is here now, and as I just reclarified in the San Remo conference article, there is no question that in April or August 1920 the borders of Palestine and the other mandates were not yet really drawn. Look at the resolution and treaty of Sevres. I'll speak mainly of Jordan and Palestine. Until Samuel's arrival in June 1920 everything, Jordan and Palestine was part of OETA (Occupied Enemy Territory) (mainly) South. But Samuel was explicitly and repeatedly instructed by his superiors that his authority and the mandate only extended to the Jordan river (see Wasserstein, Israelis and Palestinians: Why Do they fight, ca. p. 100 an excellent, too short but very clear reference on this period) "in order to not prejudice the decision of the powers" ( quoted (from memory) from Leonard Stein's Balfour Declaration, footnote on next to last page, another excellent reference.).
So the original (provisional) eastern border of Palestine was the Jordan river. And all the sequel did in essence was to confirm this in a circuitous way. After Abdullah arrived in Jordan, as related in Kirkbride's memoirs that Amoruso referred to, he asked Kirkbride if he happened to know just who owned Jordan. Kirkbride candidly replied that nobody really knew. (You can see the lightbulb going on over Abdullah's head. :-) ) Something important that is missing is the March 1921 Cairo Conference (1921), see British Mandate of Iraq which occurred before Churchill visited Jerusalem ( A convenient reference is Fromkin's Peace to End all Peace.] . Britain did indeed "alter" the mandate there. The decision was made to ADD article 25 to the December 1920 (IIRC) draft of the mandate Article 25 allowed differing treatment of Jordan and Palestine under the terms of the mandate and having the JNH only in the latter. The decision was to add Jordan to the Mandate terrritory and "give" it provisionally to Abdullah. It was already "occupied by force by Abdullah and it had nothing to do with the designated mandate" as Amoruso said. .But this did not partition the mandate - which was impossible - Jordan was already controlled by Abdullah more or less, and legally Jordan was still OETA, not being under the mandate's civil administration, not part of the mandate's territory in any sense yet.
To be repetitive, the March 1921 Cairo/Jerusalem events ADDED Jordan to the British Mandate. under a then-modified Mandate document. There was no time whatsoever that Jordan was ever ruled under the full British Mandate document including the Jewish National Home provisions and the Balfour Declaration. There was no partition, just addition of a new territory under different arrangements, at a different time from the original territory. The rest of the history is relatively unproblematic.
A couple more amusing sidelights. What did the Zionists think of this? As Wasserstein relates, the Zionist Executive had no problem with this and ratified these arrangements in 1922. In particular "Jabotinsky, had as a member of the Zionist Executive, endorsed the arrangements in 1922 that explicitly prohibited Jewish settlement in Transjordan." But "most Revisionists conveniently forgot that." :-) For later, as his article here relates, "His new party demanded that the Zionist movement recognize as its objective the establishment of a Jewish state along both banks of the Jordan River." Basically he said "we wuz robbed" but forgot to mention he was one of the "robbers." This is pretty much the origin of the confusion and distortion that led to some recent disputes. Another amusing sidelight is the National Government of Moab established in Transjordan under Samuel's but not the Mandate's authority before the Cairo Conference - the references I put there, Sachar, Sykes are also worth looking at. Were another proof needed, it shows that Jordan was not considered part of the mandate then.
Glad to help people less lazy than me - which would be practically anyone though! I promised Jay I'd write something about this a long time ago but never did. It makes me feel less crazy staying up so late here. John Z12:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks John Z. Please try to integrate this with the material I presented other than blind reverting like Doron and Ian Pitchford engage at. Cheers, Amoruso13:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Map
Will you all stop edit warring already and discuss things on the talk page! *sigh*
Now the map that does not distinguish between Palestine proper and Transjordan is misleading. Transjordan was never administrated as part of Palestine and almost all official references to Palestine refer to the territory west of the Jordan River. A map that fails to make this distinction creates the false impression that Transjordan was actually part of Palestine, whereas in fact it was a separate entity. The inclusion of Transjordan is really only relevant to the short period when the Mandate was being established.--Doron21:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
How is the map misleading? As you acknowledge, during the period when the Mandate was being established, this territory was one contiguous mandate, and 'Transjordan' was a part of it. It was later excluded, and administered separately, and the article as well as the map's caption explain this. Isarig01:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it was later excluded. By 'later' I mean during the first month of the Mandate. The map does not show Transjordan at all. At the very least, a map of the Mandate should reflect the political status during almost the entire period of the Mandate, and not just the original territory in the moment it was established. The map in Image:BritishMandatePalestine1920.jpg was in the article for a long time and was replaced unilaterally and without consensus to a map that omits the distinction between Palestine and Transjordan.--Doron09:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
By the time the Mandate became a legal entity in 1923, the League of Nations had already approved the British proposal to administer Transjordan according to a different set of rules (essentially, all the clauses dealing with a Jewish homeland were excluded). So for most practical purposes Palestine and Transjordan were separate entities right from the first moment. Removing them from the map is historical engineering. It is worth noting that the French Mandates of Lebanon and Syria were also assigned to France in a single document, which is something that advocates of Greater Syria like to repeat ad nauseam. They are also engaging in wishful thinking. In summary, we can describe the facts on the ground for the entire legal life of the Mandate, or we can pretend that the only thing that matters is the position of some of the parties for a short time when the Mandate was still on the drawing board. The choice is pretty clear. --Zero09:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
So, what's actually misleading is both of the responses above, which conflate the date when the mandate's final borders were demarcated , with the date when it actually became a legal entity. The mandate did not become a legal entity in 1923 -it became one in 1920. The mandate was granted and approved by the LoN in San Remo that year. The first High Commissioner began exercising his power under the legal force of the mandate that year. The only legal way for the British to have separated Transjordan was under the legally binding terms of the mandate (specifically, article 25), which already existed. what Syria may politically claim WRT to Lebanon is a red herring here - as irrelevant as political claims that Transjordan is actually part of Palestine. that is not what is being discussed. What is being discussed is what area was granted to Britain as a mandatory power for Palestine - and that area included what later became known as "Transjordan". Isarig14:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Neither. It became a legal entity under the Sanremo conference, and subsequently, the British began exercising their mandate, through the power of a High Commissioner, in 1920. Isarig14:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Ok. (According to the Sanremo Conference article: "The conference's decisions were embodied in the stillborn Treaty of Sèvres (Section VII, Art 94-97). As Turkey rejected this treaty, the conference's decisions were only finally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922 and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne." So, 1920. Anyway, does anyone want two maps? The original borders and the division that followed a month later? Seems to me that it would resolve any POV issues, just stating the facts without prejudice, in chronological order. Kaisershatner15:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't want 2 maps, and in fact, I'm ok with the original map - I just object to the false, misleading and POV-pushing caption that asserts the Mandate became a legal entity in 1923, post, or contemporaneously with the excision of transjordan from it. Isarig15:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
You two both need to assume good faith! (Zero: "restore map with better information but without the tendentious caption," and Isarig "false, misleading and POV-pushing caption.") If we can all agree on the "original map" (which one is that?) then we can work on a caption that is agreeable. But without the acrimony, maybe? Kaisershatner15:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The Newer map is better and in fact in better quality as far as I can see. It has a nice fixed caption and the correct explanation backed by the best source possible, the Atlas provided by the user posting it. The only reason some people want the original map is to create the false impression, perhaps they actually believe it (WP:AGF although I'm familar with some of the users having a difficult history in this sense), that supposedly the Mandate was only for Western Palestine/Eretz Israel. Well it wasn't - the Mandate for a Jewish National Home was for all Palestine, and this includes both banks of the Jordan river, and it should be reflected in the map. I'm willing to accept the compromise of two maps with ease User:Kaisershatner , it seems like a good idea, thanks for that. Amoruso16:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with Isarig and Amoruso. One of the points I am trying to make is that (a) San Remo gave no borders because the Powers disagreed (b) the original (provisional) borders Britain gave to the civil administration of the Mandate, only a short time later, the FIRST EVER borders of Palestine, was cisJordanian Palestine, the Jordan river was the boundary, the (proposed) Mandate excluded Transjordan from the very beginning. (This is according to Wasserstein, Stein ( who was Political Secretary of the Zionist organization in the 30s,btw) and the Documents on British Foreign Policy series, the primary source.) and (c) There is no question the mandate document was changed - in March 1921 at Cairo, when Article 25 was added. One thing that I don't understand is what Doron and Kaisershatner mention - What does "Yes, it was later excluded. By 'later' I mean during the first month of the Mandate. " or "The original borders and the division that followed a month later?" mean? What are the precise dates? Maybe I'm being stupid, but I just don't see what you guys are talking about.John Z10:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
In 1920 it was decided that there was going to be a Palestine Mandate. It was a decision about what was going to happen and did not immediately create the mandate entity with GB in charge of it. If the US decided that Puerto Rico was going to become independent, it would not be suddenly independent from that moment. Independence would only come at a declared moment after all the legal formalities had been completed, perhaps years later. The Palestine administration answered only to the British crown until 1923, as you can see from where they submitted all their reports. It did not answer to the League of Nations as a mandatory authority as there was no legal basis for that yet. Until the mandate document was approved by the League of Nations in 1922, the details of the mandate were still being negotiated, not only between GB and the League of Nations but between GB and the other powers (esp. France). One of the things decided during that negotiating period was the disposition of Transjordan, with the complete approval of the League of Nations. As illustrations that I'm not making this up, see this 1921 report. Note (1) "on July 1st, 1920, by order of His Majesty's Government a Civil Administration was established in Palestine" (i.e. not by authority of the League of Nations); (2) "the many improvements which the country needs ... have had to be postponed until the Mandate is promulgated" (i.e. there was no official mandate yet). Next see the Palestine Order in Council of August 1922 which replaced the previous British administration by a mandate administration with a completely different legal basis. Then look at this 1922 report which states "the principal event of the year 1922 has been the approval by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24th, 1922, of the British Mandate for the administration of the territory" (i.e. it was not official before that). Finally, see the 1923 report of the mandate government which is clearly labeled the "first annual report to the council of the League of Nations". Look, this whole question would be just a minor historical footnote except that some people want to make an argument that the Jews were cheated out of Transjordan (and the Golan, and the Litani River, etc etc). (Amoruso proved this point just now as I was typing by repeating the absolute falsehood that "all" of the mandate was intended for the Jews.) It's a worn-out political barrow that we should not be pushing. --Zero16:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I'll add: for an even better proof that the statement "it became a legal entity under the San Remo conference, and subsequently, the British began exercising their mandate, through the power of a High Commissioner, in 1920" is incorrect, I refer you to the text of the Sanremo resolution. To quote "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust ... the administration of Palestine ... to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers." You see, at that point of time it was not even official that the Mandatory was going to be Great Britain. (Actually there was a strong push to get the USA to take the job, but they didn't want it.) The same lack of decision over who the Mandatory would be appears in the Sevres treaty later the same year. So, no, Great Britain did not become the Mandatory for Palestine on account of either of these 1920 decisions. That did not happen until the League of Nations decided it in 1922. --Zero16:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
But here I have to admit I'm confused, since practically everyone says that the San Remo conference chose Britain as the Mandatory for Palestine. Until an hour ago, that's what I thought too. But, if so, why does it appear to contradict the actual wording of the resolution? It also contradicts the text of the Sevres treaty which repeats the San Remo wording and adds "The determination of the other frontiers of the said States, and the selection of the Mandatories, will be made by the Principal Allied Powers." Maybe the choice of Britain was made informally? --Zero17:20, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I was the one who put this link in a couple years ago (and wrote most of the San Remo article here). It says in the linked resolution - in French, that GB was chosen: "(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grand Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine."
But if you look at what I wrote in "Recent Changes" above, (confirming Zero's statements above) I think things in general should be cleared up. The point is that the initial 1920 territory of the mandate was Palestine proper without Transjordan. Transjordan was not separated later, it was ADDED later at the Cairo Conference in 1921. It really wasn't clear what would be done with that area until then, maybe France would get some of it; it was still in OETA. The mandate document (draft) was simultaneously changed -article 25 was added - to allow GB to not apply the JNH provisions there. And then the League and Britain just regularized these arrangements unchanged once they got around to it.
No matter what starting date one takes for the mandate, there was never any partition. One can get an idea of why this confusion started, and who did it, from my discussion above. We need not care about "the position of some of the parties for a short time when the Mandate was still on the drawing board" because during this short time, these parties did not actually have this position. :-)
If you look at maps like in Martin Gilbert's map book, you can see that there is something in the oft heard story that doesn't make sense. Earlier, in Paris or Versailles at the end of the war, the Zionists tried to get a fatter Palestine as the mandate territory, going up to the railroad iirc, sort of doubling the size of Palestine. But they were unsuccessful. Then we are to believe that the Powers insisted on giving them much more P + TJ, and then took away TJ Does this make sense?John Z19:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
John Z, thanks for showing that I am only going blind and not going insane :-). I did indeed miss the French text. I wonder if there are parts missing from that source, or if it is several things cobbled together, as the mixture of languages looks pretty odd. I have a lead on a better source. Anyway, I found something that can explain the wording inconsistency I found: "The boundaries will not be defined in Peace Treaty but are to be determined at a later date by principal Allied Powers. The mandatory is not mentioned in Treaty, but by an independent decision of Supreme Council was declared to be Great Britain..." (Telegram from Curzon at San Remo to Allenby, quoted in Doreen Ingrams, Palestine Papers, p92.) So the names of the Mandatories were left out of the main text on purpose, for some reason. As for your "make sense?" question, the point is that nobody ever promised all of Palestine, or even all of "Western" Palestine, to the Zioinists. Not Britain, not the Paris Conference, not the League of Nations, nobody. So the "we wuz cheated" claim is based on a historical fallacy. --Zero08:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
“In the Turkish Peace Treaty, drawn up by the London Conference (February 12-April 10, 1920), finalized by the San Remo Conference (April 18-26, 1920), and signed by the Turkish government at the French town of Sevres on August 10, 1920, the Mandatory for Palestine was tasked with ‘putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 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’ ... . This was an outstanding success for the Zionists. “Though they failed to achieve their territorial goals owing to Britain’s compromise with France over Palestine’s northern frontier, and the effective separation of Transjordan from Palestine that followed … .”
Ref: p.257-258, Empires of the Sand, The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923. Efraim Karsh & Inari Karsh. Harvard University Press. 1999.
It is often called a "separation" and there is some sense to that. (I don't completely agree with John Z on this point.) The meaning of "Palestine" was not initially precise. During the negotiation period 1919-1922, it was decided that Transjordan would be included in the Mandate (much more of it than was ever historically regarded as part of "Palestine") and further that Transjordan would be excluded from the Jewish homeland provisions. That's a separation of sorts. The first 8 words you emphasise just mean that the Zionists got less than they wanted; nobody disputes that either. The problems come when people put these facts together with the false claim that all of the mandate territory had been promised to the Zionists. That never happened. Incidentally, Britain's "compromise" with France over the northern frontier consisted of Britain getting more than previously agreed (see Sykes-Picot Agreement). --Zero09:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Image caption: there was never such an entity as the "Mandate for a Jewish National Home". That name is pure invention. Gilbert does not use it, either. The Jewish national home was to be in Palestine, not all of Palestine. The word in was deliberately chosen to avoid specifying how much of Palestine or which part of Palestine was intended; see Ingrams, Palestine Papers, for example. Note that nobody here is proposing that the image caption expresses the Arab position that the mandate was designed to deprive the Arab inhabitants of their right to self-determination in violation of the League of Nations Charter. This "debate" is between the Revisionist Zionist position and the neutral position. Those people trying to push their political positions into the figure should desist. --Zero 10:19, 4 May 2007
Really? Contrary to your false claim, Gilbert captions it as "The Palestine Mandate, granted to Britain at the San Remo Conference in 1920, as the region of a Jewish National home."
Also, "according to your logic there was "never such an entity as" The British Mandate for Palestine the]. It is just The Mandate for Palestine. The title of this article should be changed to reflect this simple fact.
The title of the article was chosen to conform with all the other mandate articles, but anyway my source trumps yours: Palestine Mandate official published title --Zero09:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Zero, I'm not really sure how we disagree. (I agree with you about everything but this!) I agree that there was a separation of sorts, but it was simultaneous with the 1921 Cairo Conference addition of Transjordan to the projected Mandate, so calling it a separation, rather than an addition is very misleading. In April, 1920 at San Remo, the powers disagreed acrimomiously about what the precise borders of Palestine would be, so they left the matter undecided. See Stein, among other sources. Before and after Samuel's arrival in June 1920, the British government made it very clear that he would not have authority beyond the river Jordan. Wasserstein and Stein quote from the appropriate documents in the Documents on British Foreign Policy series to this effect. The sequence was as follows 1) Everything is OETA 2) San Remo April 1920 decides that there will be a British Mandate of Palestine, with mysterious borders 3) June 1920 Samuel arrives and sets up the civil administration of the mandate, under British authority, with the legal details not completely ironed out. But the British government makes very clear that the border of "Palestine" and his authority at that moment is the Jordan river. You might call this a separation of Palestine proper from the rest of OETA! A little later, the British even set up silly things like the National Government of Moab in TransJordan (cf Sykes,Sachar) 4) Abdullah gets to Jordan in Autumn 1920 5) The Cairo Conference, Spring 1921, basically run by Churchill, trying to reconcile the various (implicit, vague) promises to everyone, decides that they should add a new article to the mandate document draft, that would allow the JNH provisions to not apply beyond the Jordan and simultaneously decides to provisionally add this territory beyond the Jordan to the projected Mandate territory, with Abdullah as the local satrap, largely because the British taxpayer was complaining about the expense. This is in Fromkin 6) Once this happens, there is no real change of who is running things, or what laws apply, people just accept what happened at Cairo (and Jerusalem a week later) , dot all the legal i's and cross the t's. In particular, Jabotinsky & the Zionist Executive says all this is perfectly OK in 1922. (At the time, why should the Zionists care much? The total Jewish population of Transjordan was 2-3 individuals, according to Sykes.) Zero's post above shows how the legal arrangements confirming this developed. 7) Jabotinsky and the Revisionists start their "exercise in historical mythmaking" to quote Wasserstein, basically saying "we wuz robbed" to make propaganda, and "conveniently forget" that Jabotinsky himself was perfectly OK with separating = in reality adding, Jordan under a different, no Jewish National Home, arrangement.
I can do some possible copyright violation and post or email the 3 relevant pages from Wasserstein's excellent, extremely, extremely NPOV book here or on people's user talk pages. This is a book that Wikipedians should plagiarize! I never really felt I understood what happened until I read his account.John Z12:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Zero, you aren't the only one going blind or insane. Some of your older comments ( with the blind or insane part) seem to have appeared out of thin air when I was about to post this. And then you and Ian posted more with an edit conflict. I agree with your comments, nobody promised the Zionists Transjordan. Thinking they did get such a promise leads to an incredible but common story. That source, realroadtopeace, was the best I could find two years ago, and was consistent with Stein's book. Oh well, maybe the margarita + 4 beers had something to do with my blind insanity. Contrary to some crazy wikiguideline, I think this procedure should be obligatory before writing on the Arbraeli-Jewishstinian conflict. Cheers to everyone!John Z12:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
(UTC) I looked at Gilbert's map and don't have much problem with it. He doesn't say that the whole area was ever given to the Zionists and even shows the much smaller area that the Zionists were hoping to get. Since the Jewish National Home is the topic of his map, it is reasonable for him to include information such as Jewish immigration to Transjordan. The topic of our map is different; adding the Zionist view without adding the Arab view as well would violate NPOV in our case. Gilbert's map shows an area "ceded to the French mandate" but fails to show the area that France ceded to the British mandate at the same time -- that's the main complaint I have with Gilbert's map. --Zero11:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry you don't understand it. "As the region of a Jewish national home" means "As the region in which a Jewish national home would be established". It doesn't imply that the whole area would be a Jewish national home. Gilbert only had a few square centimeters to write the caption and couldn't be expected to explain the details. Your interprettation is actually offensive to Gilbert, who as a serious historian would not make such an undergraduate error. On the other hand, the detailed and very authoritative sources brought above are being completely ignored by you. You should be looking for sources of similar eminence that support your case (you won't find any). There is simply no place here for your false image and its phoney caption. (It is also poorly drawn as the Jordan River looks like part of the Dead Sea.) --Zero03:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Zero, Resorting to personal insults is often a sign of a weak argument.
Do you make the same insult (“undergraduate error “) against the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs that caption the map as “Area allocated for a Jewish National home, San Remo Conference 1920?”] Or, do you have a different insult for them?
Zero, Your objection is a red herring. I make no interpretation, YOU do. I merely report Gilbert. Did Gilbert tell you that your red herring “interpretation is actually offensive?” Did he publish that somewhere or do you still continue to refuse to comply with WP policy of WP:OR ?
Zero, Regarding your claim that Gilbert did not have enough “centimeters” to meet your needs for "details", I would point out that he did find the centimeters on the map for quoted text from three documents:
(1) a communication from Emir Feisal to Felix Frankfurther 3 March 1919 (approx 80 words),
(2) Winston Churchill statements in the Illustrated Sunday Herald 8 Feb 1920 (approx 80 words),
(3) The Balfour Declaration 2 Nov 1917 (approx 70 words):
“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. The Balfour Declaration 2 Nov 1917”
It seems Gilbert found the “centimeters” to provide plenty of words. I suspect that he is quite good at it. You just don’t seem to like it.
Again, Gilbert's caption is:
"The Palestine Mandate, granted to Britain at the San Remo Conference in 1920, as the region of a Jewish National home."
And consistent with Gilbert, the official government website of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs caption the same area as
"Area allocated for a Jewish National home, San Remo Conference 1920."
I'm sorry you don't like it. However, there is simply no place here for WP:OR or WP:SOAP.
You are misreading Gilbert. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has another motive, which should be obvious. You can read the San Remo resolution for yourself and see that it copies the wording of the Balfour Declaration. Then you can read the history of the Balfour Declaration and see that it was changed from a form that clearly refers to the whole area to a form that says "in Palestine" on purpose. You can read Leonard Stein's monograph on the Balfour Declaration (Stein was a senior person in the Zionist Organization) and see that Weizmann was informed already at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Transjordan was not included. It is not a crime to be uninformed about history, but it is about time you realised that the copious very eminent sources being provided here make a case that your few sources can't match. --Zero00:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
To illustrate the danger of unthinkingly using popular pocket sources like Gilbert's atlases as the final word on anything, turn to page 106 of Gilbert's "Routledge Atlas of Jewish History". There you will find Palestine ending at the Jordan River labeled "British Mandate 1920-1948". The boundary line marked by Gilbert runs right down the Jordan River! So your source Martin Gilbert is willing to label as "British Mandate 1920-1948" an area that excludes Transjordan altogether and you want to use a map that includes Transjordan without naming it. The solution is to use better sources and make an effort to get it right. --Zero01:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me there's a distinction that's been missed, which is that between the scope of the mandate as granted by the League of Nations on the one hand, and the mandate as Great Britain chose to implement it on the other. Keep in mind that Palestine had never been a clearly delineated area - ever; and Transjordania was a new invention, put in place for the benefit of the Hashemite tribe as compensation for ceding Arabia to the Saud family. It may very well be that the original mandate as it was conceived did not see the Jordan as a dividing line; but it's very obvious that Great Britain, in the early 1920s had very good reason for making it so. After all, it wasn't as if the already fragile League of Nations was going to challenge anything Britain decided to do at that point. --Leifern01:50, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
User:Zero, The problem is not with my reading of Gilbert’s atlas; it is that you don’t want anyone else to. His atlas is WP:RS. And, after all, we are talking about maps.
When it served your purpose you called Gilbert a “serious historian,” but now, according to you his work is not serious but merely “popular.” His book is an atlas, a book of maps that has seen 7 editions. By the way my 1st edition hardcover copy will not fit in my pocket. So what if it did? Your rhetoric seems to be increasingly desperate. Sir Martin Gilbert is Winston Churchill's official biographer, and a leading historian of the modern world. He is the author of seventy-seven books, among them Churchill: A Life, his twin histories First World War and Second World War, a comprehensive History of Israel, and his three-volume work, A History of the Twentieth Century.
You also reject, The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs published document because they have “another motive, which should be obvious.” So you are saying that The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs is lying; and, you know the reason why. Well, what is it? Be specific and show how it serve them to lie about this particular map?
In fact, even the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, hardly a Zionist advocacy group, caption the exact same area on their map in the same way:
"The Palestine Mandate granted to Great Britain at the 1920 San Remo Conference as the region of a Jewish National Home."
Apparently, according to you, not only am I, “unthinking,” but so is the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. I do not object to their caption and will be delighted to use it. Please read this.] Cheers.
User Zero, I looked at your map on page 106 of the "Routledge Atlas of Jewish History." Your illustration was not of an "unthinking" reader, rather it was of a moron. The map is as of 1948. Your example is a pointless waste of time. The map you want to delete is as of 1920 from the San Remo conference. My estimation of your creditability is approaching zero and I think your time is up-Doright05:40, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I also looked at Gilbert's "The Arab -Israeli conflict - it's history in Maps" by Gilbert (published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1974) and it is very clear Zero is misleading us. Here is what it sais: on the area of the mandate that is east of the jordan river: "Separated from palestine by Britain in 1921 and given to Emir Abdulla. Named Transjordan this terrotory was once closed to Jewish settlement" Zeq06:23, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
You are looking at the wrong map. Look at page 106. The words you quote do not appear on there. Both maps have accuracy problems. The eastern border had not yet been defined at the time of the San Remo conference. In fact the northern border wasn't defined yet either, but was decided late in 1920. Until that time it might have been anywhere from the Sykes-Picot line (just north of Acre) to the Litani River. --Zero07:10, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Zero, yes, In know: What other people see in sources is wrong and what you see in the sources is right. Sigh ... Are you callimg me a liar by saying : "The words you quote do not appear" - please apologize at once and stop misleading the debate. At some point you need to intenelize the meaning of NPOV: There are two views one is yours and one is the oppsoing view - your consatnt push for your POV and your nulification of the opposing POV is being noticed. Zeq07:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
When does a mandate begin?
The question of exactly when the Mandate for Palestine began arose above. This being a legal question, I have located a book that is regularly cited as a standard source on the laws of the mandate system: Quincy Wright, Mandates under the League of Nations, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1930. Here are some relevant extracts.
1. Quoting the Council of the League of Nations, meeting of August 1920 (p109-110):
"draft mandates adopted by the Allied and Associated Powers would not be definitive until they had been considered and approved by the League ... the legal title held by the mandatory Power must be a double one: one conferred by the Principal Powers and the other conferred by the League of Nations"
2. Summarising the effect of the League Council's ruling (p110-111):
Thus three steps were necessary to put the system into effect: (1) The Principal Allied and Associated Powers confer a mandate on one of their number or on a third power; (2) the principal powers officially notify the council of the League of Nations that a certain power has been appointed mandatory for such a certain defined territory; (3) the coucil of the League of Nations takes official cognisance of the appointment of the mandatory power and informs the latter that it considers it as invested with the mandate, and at the same time notifies it of the terms of the mandate, after assertaining whether they are in conformance with the provisions of the covenant.
3. Concerning the source of the law under which the mandates operated (p516):
The mandate texts or charters have been regarded by the League and the mandatories as the fundamental law for the areas.
These conclusions are justified by Wright over many pages. In summary, until the mandate was officially approved by the League of Nations it was only a draft. Incidentally, one detail given by Wright (p114) is that the July 22, 1922 decision of the Council was only a tentative approval of the Palestine and Syria mandates. It was thought important that these two mandates should begin at the same time, but there was a dispute between France and Italy over the Syria mandate. On September 29, 1923, the French and Italian delegates announced that their disupute was resolved, so both mandates were declared to be in force immediately. --Zero04:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The same opinion, that a mandate does not come into legal existence until the League of Nations says so, was given in all of the law books I could find that discuss the issue (about 6). These included: Temperley, History of the Paris Peace Conference, Vol VI, p505-506; League of Nations, The Mandates System (official publication of 1945); Hill, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, p133ff. --Zero08:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
That the Zionist Organization did not disagree with this assessment can be seen from a submission it made to the League of Nations in 1921. It refers repeatedly to the "draft Palestine Mandate" and uses the future tense. (League of Nations, Official Journal, Jul-Aug 1921, p443). --Zero08:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Two official statements from the League of Nations:
"the mandates for Palestine and Syria would now enter into force automatically and at the same time" (League of Nations Council minutes Sep 29, 1923, Official Journal, Nov 23, p1355)
In Oct 1923, Britain provided the League with two reports on the administration of Palestine and Iraq for the period 1920-1922. The Secretary General's statement accepting the reports says: "The mandate for Palestine only came into force on September 29th, 1923. The two reports cover periods previous to the application of the mandates." (League of Nations, Official Journal, Oct 1923, p1217) -- and what could be clearer than that?
No dispute at all of course with the above. Indeed, what could be clearer? Particularly glad you found the Zionist statement. Christopher Sykes (son of the Mark Sykes of Sykes-Picot, btw) in his Crossroads to Israel I mentioned before makes the following observations:
It was becoming increasingly clear to the politicians of the West that a peace treaty with Turkey was not to be concluded for some time yet, so in April 1920 the Allies decided that so far as the Arabic-speaking world was concerned they would implement the provisions of such a treaty as they envisaged. Such action was of course, highly illegal...this irregular conduct was more public spirited than otherwise. It was the only sensible thing to do...
I think he is saying that it is illegal because it infringed on Turkish sovereignty; the League or Allies wouldn't have the sovereignty to confer on Britain until Turkey formally gave it up. It didn't matter in the end because the Treaty of Lausanne was a few months before the League formally gave the Mandate to Britain. Not sure if he is right (HWNAL) since I think earlier documents the Turks signed may have given them this power; the text of the San Remo resolution I linked to seems to indicate this. Of course, this point only strengthens Zero's overwhelming case above if that were possible.
In any case what is more important is that that reminded me to take a look again at the text of the Treaty of Lausanne at or , which has an attached map or. It is much less pretty than the ones we have been using and you have to crop it to get a good look at the area we are interested in, but what it shows is a "Proposed British Mandate" covering "Palestine" divided by the Jordan from "Kerak or Trans-Jordan." Still saying "proposed" on July 24, 1923, again bolstering what Zero said. The vague but somewhat different borders are of interest too. Perhaps it belongs in the article.
I don't think anyone is being "mendacious" or acting in bad faith or putting in fake maps. Nobody is proposing to put OR in the article. We are just trying to give the account that the best specialists give, an account that makes sense and is possible, and does not violently conflict with universally accepted primary sources. The problem is that there is no lack of sources that give a brief, cursory version of events that seems to be or support the Revisionist Zionist "we wuz robbed" version, or that even repeat the Revisionist complaint in full detail. I sort of beleved it too once. But when you look more closely at specialist works and try to see month by month what happened, see what the most expert people say happened, this story becomes less and less plausible, its factual, primary source basis more and more elusive.
I think we are starting to amass the material for good articles on these topics. If disagreement remains, we will just have to represent it in the article in the usual way, with reasonable sources. Things that would be nice to have would be a better sourced version of the San Remo Resolution, put into context hopefully and a copy of the pre-Cairo Conference Mandate draft. Aaron Klieman has a book on the Cairo Conference which might be helpful. Wasserstein's other books would be good too. An important thing to do is to change back the San Remo article and things which link to it. Someone irrationally insists it should be Sanremo because that's what Italians call it nowadays. That's like insisting we should call the Treaty of Rome the Treaty of Roma. John Z09:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
I didn't find the San Remo text in a printed source yet. Could it be in the Documents on British Foreign Policy series? --Zero10:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Zero, I believe you can find the text in A Documentary History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Charles Geddes. I don't have immediate access but could get a copy within a few days or so. --Ian Pitchford11:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
