Mandatory Palestine Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Etymology== {{see also|Timeline of the name "Palestine"}} The name given to the Mandate's territory was "Palestine", in accordance with local Palestinian Arab and Ottoman usage<ref>{{cite book|author=Nur Masalha|title=Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H6K9AQAACAAJ|year=2018|publisher=Zed|isbn=978-1-78699-272-7}} Chapter 9: Being Palestine, becoming Palestine, p. 287: "the sense of continuity between the ancient, medieval and modern political geography and naming traditions of Palestine eventually came into play in the designation of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine". The preceding pages, p.259-287, document in detail the usage of the term Palestine by native Palestinians from the moment the printing press was introduced into the area in the late 19th century.</ref>{{sfn|Khalidi|1997|pages=151-152}}<ref name="Büssow">{{cite book |last=Büssow |first=Johann |title= Hamidian Palestine: Politics and Society in the District of Jerusalem 1872–1908 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=crPPX99rjYUC&pg=PA5 |access-date=17 May 2013 |date=11 August 2011 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-20569-7 |page=5}}</ref><ref>|The 1915 ''Filastin Risalesi'' ("Palestine Document") is a country survey of the [[VIII Corps (Ottoman Empire)|VIII Corps]] of the Ottoman Army, which identified Palestine as a region including the sanjaqs of Akka (the Galilee), the Sanjaq of Nablus, and the Sanjaq of Jerusalem (Kudus Sherif), see [http://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/48_Shifting_Ottoman_2.pdf Ottoman Conceptions of Palestine-Part 2: Ethnography and Cartography, Salim Tamari] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150327151335/http://palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/48_Shifting_Ottoman_2.pdf |date=27 March 2015 }}</ref> and with European tradition.{{efn|Historian [[Nur Masalha]] describes the "British preoccupation with Palestine" and the large increase in European books, articles, travelogues and geographical publications during the 18th and 19th centuries.<ref>{{cite book|author=Nur Masalha|author-link=Nur Masalha|title=Palestine A Four Thousand year History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eNvVAQAACAAJ|date=2018|publisher=Zed Books|isbn=978-1-78699-274-1|pages=242–245}}</ref>}} The Mandate charter stipulated that Mandatory Palestine would have three official languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew. In 1926, the British authorities formally decided to use the traditional Arabic and Hebrew equivalents to the English name, i.e. ''filasţīn'' (فلسطين) and ''pālēśtīnā'' (פּלשׂתינה) respectively. The Jewish leadership proposed that the proper Hebrew name should be ''ʾĒrēts Yiśrāʾel'' (ארץ ישׂראל, [[Land of Israel]]). The final compromise was to add the initials of the Hebrew proposed name, [[Aleph|Alef]]-[[Yodh|Yod]], within parenthesis (א״י), whenever the Mandate's name was mentioned in Hebrew in official documents. <ref>{{cite web |last1=Sivak |first1=Jacob |title=How was 'Israel' once 'Palestine'? New books and old coins |url=https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/how-was-israel-once-palestine-new-books-and-old-coins-680467 |website=JPost.com |date=27 September 2021 |publisher=Jerusalem Post |quote=“While the Jewish representatives to the Mandatory government objected to the transliteration of Palestine into Hebrew and preferred the traditional Hebrew name of Eretz Yisrael, there were Arab objections. The compromise, suggested by Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner to Palestine, who was a Jew and a Zionist, was the addition, in parentheses, of the Hebrew initials for Eretz Yisrael. The aleph yod abbreviation was used on all official documents, stamps, and coins until the end of the Mandate. “}}</ref> The Arab leadership saw this compromise as a violation of the mandate terms. Some Arab politicians suggested "[[Southern Syria]]" (سوريا الجنوبية) as the Arabic name instead. The British authorities rejected this proposal; according to the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations' [[Permanent Mandates Commission (Palestine)|Permanent Mandates Commission]]: {{blockquote|Colonel Symes explained that the country was described as "Palestine" by Europeans and as "Falestin" by the Arabs. 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 which stood for that designation. As a set-off to this, certain of the Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called "Southern Syria" in order to emphasise its close relation with another Arab State.<ref>League of Nations, Permanent Mandate Commission, [https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/1504FACC47EFBE05052565F0006B70BB Minutes of the Ninth Session] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110628180414/http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/1504facc47efbe05052565f0006b70bb?OpenDocument |date=2011-06-28 }} (Arab Grievances), Held at Geneva from 8 to 25 June 1926,</ref>}} The adjective "[[wikt:mandatory#Adjective|mandatory]]" indicates that the entity's legal status derived from a [[League of Nations mandate]]; it is not related to the word's more commonplace usage as a synonym for "compulsory" or "necessary".<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Rayman |first=Noah |date=29 September 2014 |title=Mandatory Palestine: What It Was and Why It Matters |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |url=https://time.com/3445003/mandatory-palestine/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200526042950/https://time.com/3445003/mandatory-palestine/ |archive-date=26 May 2020 }}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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