JNews takes a closer look at the British Mandate in Palestine and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Thursday, 24 March, 2011 - 10:05
In December 1917 British soldiers overpowered the forces of the Ottoman Empire, marched on Jerusalem and took control of Palestine. From 1922 until their departure in 1948, the British ruled Palestine by virtue of a League of Nations Mandate. Their government had all the trappings of a tiny colony, including a High Commissioner and a closely-knit community of colonial family members, complete with a rigid class system (there was a hunting club in Ramle), tennis courts and tea parties. It also had a constitution, a vast administration (whose officials sipped lemonade at Jerusalem’s YMCA), a British court system, prisons - and of course an army, posted to Palestine to protect British political, military and energy interests in the Middle East.
The colonial method of government in Palestine was described by Edward Keith-Roach, the District Commissioner of the Galilee, as “totalitarianism tempered with benevolence”. Its constitution prescribed both the death penalty and collective punishment.
In his book, One Palestine, Complete, Israeli historian Tom Segev describes how, at first, the British were received as an army of liberation: local Arab Palestinians had been promised national independence under British sponsorship. But just before the conquest of Palestine, the British Government announced its support for the aspiration of Zionist Jews to establish a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people in Palestine. The British kept their promise to the Zionists. They opened up the country to mass immigration and, under British sponsorship, Zionists founded new settlements and created an army – which ultimately defeated the Arab armies in the war of 1948.
In 1936 the Arabs rose up to throw the British out. In response, recounts Segev, the British imposed curfews, erected security fences, built police fortresses around the country, and put up concrete guard posts or ‘pillboxes’ along the roads. They used Arab human shields in their convoys to prevent mining of railway tracks, and established a special centre in Jerusalem to train interrogators in torture (including the ‘water can’ method, in which the police would trickle water into the victim’s nostrils from a coffeepot). In Nablus in August 1938, close to 5,000 men were held in a cage for two days and interrogated one after the other. Thousands were held in prolonged administrative detention without trial. In 1938-1939 more than one hundred Palestinians were sentenced to death; more than thirty were hanged. The bodies of dead terrorists were burned, to prevent their funerals from turning into mass demonstrations.
By 1939 the Arab rebellion had brought the British to the verge of a decision to go home. But this only happened almost a decade later. In the interim, World War II broke out, Jewish immigration was brutally curbed, and after the war British forces were hit by Jewish terrorism as well.
In 1948 the British left behind them an unequal division of power, animosity and war, whose consequences are felt to this day.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.
JNews takes a closer look at the British Mandate in Palestine and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
In December 1917 British soldiers overpowered the forces of the Ottoman Empire, marched on Jerusalem and took control of Palestine. From 1922 until their departure in 1948, the British ruled Palestine by virtue of a League of Nations Mandate. Their government had all the trappings of a tiny colony, including a High Commissioner and a closely-knit community of colonial family members, complete with a rigid class system (there was a hunting club in Ramle), tennis courts and tea parties. It also had a constitution, a vast administration (whose officials sipped lemonade at Jerusalem’s YMCA), a British court system, prisons - and of course an army, posted to Palestine to protect British political, military and energy interests in the Middle East.
The colonial method of government in Palestine was described by Edward Keith-Roach, the District Commissioner of the Galilee, as “totalitarianism tempered with benevolence”. Its constitution prescribed both the death penalty and collective punishment.
In his book, One Palestine, Complete, Israeli historian Tom Segev describes how, at first, the British were received as an army of liberation: local Arab Palestinians had been promised national independence under British sponsorship. But just before the conquest of Palestine, the British Government announced its support for the aspiration of Zionist Jews to establish a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people in Palestine. The British kept their promise to the Zionists. They opened up the country to mass immigration and, under British sponsorship, Zionists founded new settlements and created an army – which ultimately defeated the Arab armies in the war of 1948.
In 1936 the Arabs rose up to throw the British out. In response, recounts Segev, the British imposed curfews, erected security fences, built police fortresses around the country, and put up concrete guard posts or ‘pillboxes’ along the roads. They used Arab human shields in their convoys to prevent mining of railway tracks, and established a special centre in Jerusalem to train interrogators in torture (including the ‘water can’ method, in which the police would trickle water into the victim’s nostrils from a coffeepot). In Nablus in August 1938, close to 5,000 men were held in a cage for two days and interrogated one after the other. Thousands were held in prolonged administrative detention without trial. In 1938-1939 more than one hundred Palestinians were sentenced to death; more than thirty were hanged. The bodies of dead terrorists were burned, to prevent their funerals from turning into mass demonstrations.
By 1939 the Arab rebellion had brought the British to the verge of a decision to go home. But this only happened almost a decade later. In the interim, World War II broke out, Jewish immigration was brutally curbed, and after the war British forces were hit by Jewish terrorism as well.
In 1948 the British left behind them an unequal division of power, animosity and war, whose consequences are felt to this day.
This article may be reproduced on condition that JNews is cited as its source.