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! ====Jewish national home==== In 1919, the general secretary (and future President) of the Zionist Organisation, Nahum Sokolow, published ''History of Zionism (1600–1918)''. He also represented the Zionist Organisation at the Paris Peace Conference. {{rquote|The object of Zionism is to establish for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." ... It has been said and is still being obstinately repeated by anti-Zionists again and again, that Zionism aims at the creation of an independent "Jewish State" But this is fallacious. The "Jewish State" was never part of the Zionist programme. The Jewish State was the title of Herzl's first pamphlet, which had the supreme merit of forcing people to think. This pamphlet was followed by the first Zionist Congress, which accepted the Basle programme—the only programme in existence.|Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism<ref>See History of Zionism (1600–1918), Volume I, Nahum Sokolow, 1919 Longmans, Green, and Company, London, pp. xxiv–xxv</ref>}} One of the objectives of British administration was to give effect to the [[Balfour Declaration]], which was also set out in the preamble of the mandate, as follows: {{blockquote|Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the [[Balfour Declaration|declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917]], by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a [[national home for the Jewish people]], it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might 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.<ref name=Avalon>{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp|title=The Avalon Project : The Palestine Mandate|website=avalon.law.yale.edu}}</ref>}} The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine said the Jewish National Home, which derived from the formulation of Zionist aspirations in the 1897 [[Basle program]] has provoked many discussions concerning its meaning, scope and legal character, especially since it had no known legal connotation and there are no precedents in international law for its interpretation. It was used in the Balfour Declaration and in the Mandate, both of which promised the establishment of a "Jewish National Home" without, however, defining its meaning. A statement on "British Policy in Palestine", issued on 3 June 1922 by the Colonial Office,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1922.asp|title=British White Paper of June 1922|website=avalon.law.yale.edu}}</ref> placed a restrictive construction upon the Balfour Declaration. The statement said the British government did not contemplate "the disappearance or subordination of the Arabic population, language or customs in Palestine" or "the imposition of Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole", and made it clear that in the eyes of the mandatory Power, the Jewish National Home was to be founded in Palestine and not that Palestine as a whole was to be converted into a Jewish National Home. The Committee noted that the construction, which restricted considerably the scope of the National Home, was made prior to the confirmation of the Mandate by the Council of the League of Nations and was formally accepted at the time by the Executive of the Zionist Organisation.<ref>See the report of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, UN Document A/364, 3 September 1947</ref> In March 1930, Lord Passfield, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had written a Cabinet Paper<ref>Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, "Palestine: High Commissioners Views on Policy", March 1930, UK National Archives Cabinet Paper CAB/24/211, formerly C.P. 108 (30)</ref> which said: {{blockquote|In the Balfour Declaration there is no suggestion that the Jews should be accorded a special or favoured position in Palestine as compared with the Arab inhabitants of the country, or that the claims of Palestinians to enjoy self-government (subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory as foreshadowed in Article XXII of the Covenant) should be curtailed in order to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people." ... Zionist leaders have not concealed and do not conceal their opposition to the grant of any measure of self-government to the people of Palestine either now or for many years to come. Some of them even go so far as to claim that that provision of Article 2 of the Mandate constitutes a bar to compliance with the demand of the Arabs for any measure of self-government. In view of the provisions of Article XXII of the Covenant and of the promises made to the Arabs on several occasions that claim is inadmissible.}} The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission took the position that the Mandate contained a dual obligation. In 1932 the Mandates Commission questioned the representative of the Mandatory on the demands made by the Arab population regarding the establishment of self-governing institutions, in accordance with various articles of the mandate, and in particular Article 2. The chairman noted that "under the terms of the same article, the mandatory Power had long since set up the Jewish National Home".<ref>{{cite web|title=PERMANENT MANDATES COMMISSION MINUTES OF THE TWENTY-SECOND SESSION|url=https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/B887C0FE3914081705256616005A499B|publisher=LEAGUE OF NATIONS|access-date=8 June 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810180913/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/B887C0FE3914081705256616005A499B|archive-date=10 August 2011}}</ref> In 1937, the [[Peel Commission]], a British Royal Commission headed by [[William Peel, 1st Earl Peel|Earl Peel]], proposed solving the Arab–Jewish conflict by partitioning Palestine into two states. The two main Jewish leaders, [[Chaim Weizmann]] and [[David Ben-Gurion]], had convinced the [[World Zionist Congress|Zionist Congress]] to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.<ref name=Louis/><ref name=Morris66/><ref name=Morris48/><ref>''Partner to Partition: The Jewish Agency's Partition Plan in the Mandate Era'', by [[Yossi Katz (geographer)|Yossi Katz]], Routledge, 1998, {{ISBN|978-0-7146-4846-0}}</ref> The US Consul General at Jerusalem told the State Department that the Mufti had refused the principle of partition and declined to consider it. The Consul said that the [[Abdullah I of Jordan|Emir Abdullah]] urged acceptance on the ground that realities must be faced, but wanted modification of the proposed boundaries and Arab administrations in the neutral enclave. The Consul also noted that Nashashibi sidestepped the principle, but was willing to negotiate for favourable modifications.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1937v02&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=894|title=FRUS: Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers, 1937. The British Commonwealth, Europe, Near East and Africa: Palestine|website=digicoll.library.wisc.edu}}</ref> A collection of private correspondence published by David Ben Gurion contained a letter written in 1937 which explained that he was in favour of partition because he did not envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. Ben Gurion wrote "What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish." He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit Zionists to settle in the rest of the country with or without the consent of the Arabs.<ref>See ''Letters to Paula and the Children'', David Ben Gurion, translated by Aubry Hodes, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971 pp. 153–157</ref> Benny Morris said that both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine.<ref>See ''Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist–Arab Conflict, 1881–1999'', by Benny Morris, Knopf, 1999, {{ISBN|978-0-679-42120-7}}, p. 138</ref> Former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Schlomo Ben Ami writes that 1937 was the same year that the "Field Battalions" under Yitzhak Sadeh wrote the "Avner Plan", which anticipated and laid the groundwork for what would become in 1948, [[Plan Dalet|Plan D]]. It envisioned going far beyond any boundaries contained in the existing partition proposals and planned the conquest of the Galilee, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.<ref>See ''Scars of war, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli–Arab Tragedy'', by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-19-518158-6}}, p. 17</ref> In 1942, the [[Biltmore Program]] was adopted as the platform of the World Zionist Organisation. It demanded "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth". In 1946 an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry noted that the demand for a Jewish State went beyond the obligations of either the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate and had been expressly disowned by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as recently as 1932.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/angch05.asp|title=Avalon Project – Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry – Chapter V|website=avalon.law.yale.edu}}</ref> The Jewish Agency subsequently refused to accept the subsequent [[Morrison-Grady Plan]] as the basis for discussion. A spokesman for the agency, Eliahu Epstein, told the US State Department that the Agency could not attend the London conference if the Grady-Morrison proposal was on the agenda. He stated that the Agency was unwilling to be placed in a position where it might have to compromise between the Grady-Morrison proposals on the one hand and its own partition plan on the other. He stated that the Agency had accepted partition as the solution for Palestine which it favoured.<ref>See Foreign relations of the United States, 1946, The Near East and Africa Volume VII, pp. 692–693</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page