Hist 4339

The Palestine Mandate (Context)

Zionism

• Modern political movement for Jewish state in Palestine

• Reaction to European anti-Semitism

            —1880s pogroms in Russia

                        >>>Bilu Manifesto

            —1894 Dreyfus Affairs in France

                        >>>Herzl’s The Jewish State (1896)

• Jewish disillusionment with assimilation,

conviction of need for own homeland

Arab Nationalism

• George Antonius’s The Arab Awakening (1938)

• Roots in Arab secret societies, beginning in 1870s

• Early 19th c: limited to Syria, Iraq, Arabian penninsula

• 1916: Arab uprising against Ottoman rule                                           

Britain’s Conflicting Promises

• 1915-16 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence

• 1917 Balfour Declaration

• British attempt to play both sides?

• Result of imperial structure? (IO, CO, FO, Cabinet, PM)

            —Antonius (397): “the British right hand was

            sometimes completely ignorant of what the

            left hand had done or was about to do.”

• Exacerbation of existing religious/ethnic tensions

Postwar Events

• 1919: Feisal-Weizmann Agreement

• 1920: Jewish-Arab violence in Palestine

• Churchill’s post-Cairo Conference attempts

to allay Arab fears: Jewish national home in Palestine

would be “good for the world, good for the Jews,

good for the British Empire, but also good for the Arabs

who dwell in Palestine . . . They shall share

in the benefits and progress of Zionism.”