International law was formed as a "law of civilized nations" and served to defend the interests of colonial powers, including imposing unequal agreements on countries in the mediate and Far East that gave Europeans unilateral privileges in the field of trade and settlement. He sanctioned violent conquests, and the colonized population was not considered to be the subject of any kind of opinion. With this in mind, it is easier to realize what happened in the first half of the 20th century in Palestine.
Watching Dreyfus' loud scandal in 1894, which became an crucial caesium in the past of European anti-Semitism, Theodor Herzl wrote Jewish State. In this landmark book, he claimed that the only way to escape anti-Semitism was to build a judaic state. The Zionist movement at that time promised the Jews security, and the Europeans a solution to the “problem” that the erstwhile would represent on the continent.
Palestine was only 1 of the places under consideration. Uganda and the Sinai Peninsula were besides involved. In his essay, Herzl besides proposed Argentina, a fertile land with a tiny population and a pleasant climate. In his view, the Republic of Argentina would benefit from the transfer of part of its territory to the Jews. However, historical considerations were to talk more for Palestine, where, as Herzl writes, the judaic state could become a European barrier against Asia, ahead of “civilization against barbarism”. The colonial rhetoric utilized by the movement was not as criticized as it was today, so organizations specified as the Palestine judaic Colonization Association were able to operate freely. Herzl sought allies among specified individuals as the infamous Cecil Rhodes, and 1 of the leaders of the Zionist movement, Żabatoński, wrote in 1923 with disconcerting sincerity that “every indigenous population resists colonizers... This is what the Arabs in Palestine do, and they will not halt doing this, as long as there is simply a spark of hope that they will halt the transformation of Palestine into Israel." The fact of this opinion strikes after a 100 years.
Did the English promise Palestine to the Arabs?
The deepening contradictions between the powers led to an detonation in 1914 planet War I, which resulted in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Its territory in the mediate East was divided between Britain and France before the collapse of the "diseased man of Europe" under the Sykes-Picot Agreement. However, before a secret French-English agreement was signed, correspondence began between Hussein bin Ali, 1 of the arabian leaders, and Sir Henry McMahon, who promised the Arabs independency on behalf of the United Kingdom in exchange for inciting rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. To this day, this correspondence is simply a subject of controversy, as it contains an answer to the question whether the English promised the historical areas of Palestine Arabs for helping them fight. Unfortunately, as it turns out, this answer is given so ambiguously that the explanation of this text in correspondence changed depending on the prevailing political climate.
The basis of the agreements was the land to be given to the Arabs, so outlined by Hussein bin Ali: in the north reaching the cities of Mersin, Adana, Urfa and Midiat (today's south of Turkey). To the east – the border with Persia, until Bashar village in present-day Iraq. In the south, the Indian Ocean was to form the border (excluding the surrounding areas of the city of Aden). In the west, the independent arabian state was to scope the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
The future arabian state outlined by Hussaini
British map of 1918 showing commitments to Arabs. It differs from the map showing Hussaini's request from the exclusion of the areas designated by McMahon.McMahon about agreed to this arrangement, but made crucial reservations. He excluded the promised territories of Mersin and Alexandretta, as well as “part of Syria lying west of Damascus, Homs, Hamy and Aleppo” from the Arabs, which justified the inability to act to the detriment of France's ally, adding that these areas could not be called “pure Arabic”. How writes historian William M. Mathew, the excluded lands lay west of the line connecting Aleppo and Damascus, overlapping with the areas of present-day Lebanon and northwestern Syria. Indeed, they were inhabited by a large non-Arab population, and France carried out its imperial interests there.
In terms that dominated the first years of the debate on precisely what areas the correspondence concerned, Palestine was to be within the limits of the promised arabian state. surely this was the promise the arabian leaders understood, who in June 1916 started the announced rebellion (which they would call for, among others, leaflets scattered in Palestine, promising independence), but not only. Arnold Toynbee, a UK delegate to a peaceful Paris conference, working at the Ministry of abroad Affairs, wrote: "With respect to Palestine, His Majesty's government is bound by McMahon's letter to [Hussaini] on 24 October 1915 to include it in the limits of arabian independence." akin statements were made by Lord Curzon and another British officials. However, policy on these areas has changed importantly in connection with a paper called the Balfour Declaration.
Declaration by Balfour, ‘non-Jewish population’ and geographical manipulation
One reason for issuing a declaration promising a “national house” for Jews in Palestine was to want to keep Russia as an ally in the war against the Germans, which prevented a large Russian judaic community from war. It was besides assumed that this would make a good impression on the public in the United States. Prime Minister Arthur Balfour himself supported the Zionist movement, but not due to his sympathy for the Jews – his government was behind the 1905 Act, closing the borders against refugees who managed to escape the pogroms in the east. Like many anti-Semites before and after him, Balfour of the Jews willingly saw outside Europe. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe erstwhile wrote aptly that for Europeans the liberation of Jews was not about accepting them on the continent, but about allowing Palestine to colonize to build their own Europe there.
Balfour's declaration nonchalantly described the 90% arabian majority, the population with a unique culture and a formation of national distinctness, as simply a "non-Jewish population" and simply pointed out that it should enjoy individual and spiritual rights. This population was not considered a political entity with the right to self-determination, which was part of a repentant agenda (repeated even by a politician of the Polish Left), according to which “there is no and no 1 like the Palestinians”.
The declaration caused a stir among the Palestinians, who rightly feared that the empire intended to make them a second-class population on their own land. In 1919, the Palestinian arabian National legislature first gathered in Jerusalem, to which delegations sent all the large cities of the region. Different forms of possible Palestinian statehood were considered. However, arabian independency was not the UK's thought to safe trade routes in the mediate East and reduce French influence. The Zionist program and its settlements were to aid this due to the fact that it justified the presence of the power in this area, and at the time it did not mean full independency of the judaic state. In 1919, Balfour wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister: “(...) we refuse to admit the rule of self-determination towards Palestine (...), we consider it absolutely exceptional due to the judaic issue (...), of global importance.” The anticipation of the people of the region proved to have no importance in the eyes of the powers.
During this period there were besides arguments to prove that Palestine was excluded from the areas promised to Arabs from the very beginning, that is, from Hussaini and McMahon's correspondence. The first government paper raised this in 1920. There has been an explanation that non-existent in the administrative division of the Ottoman Empire "districts" are not immediate surroundings, as initially understood, but individuals called "vilayet". In specified a case, the vilayet Damascus would mean a territorial unit whose capital is Damascus, or Syria. In this take Palestine was among the areas that McMahon excluded in 1915 from his promises. This explanation was confirmed by Churchill in 1922.
Map depicting McMahon's explanation of correspondence according to which Palestine would be part of an arabian state.
Map interpreting McMahon's correspondence as excluding Palestine from the arabian state.League of Nations, Palestine Mandate and the Law of the Stronger
After planet War I, victorious states set up the League of Nations to defend the global order, but above all to defender their interests. The mandate strategy introduced in 1919 was a solution that allowed to reconcile the right to self-determination demanded by communities surviving in erstwhile colonies with the presence of powers in the region. Article 22 of the League of Nations Pact imposed on the "developed countries" under which the "care" was placed mandate territories, the work to lead them like shepherds to independence, taking care of the improvement and prosperity of the inhabitants.
The erstwhile colonies were organized in terms of how much they resembled Western societies, and thus how close they were to managing their own affairs themselves like Europe. Palestine, which yet became British mandated territory, was among kind A mandates, along with another parts of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire. These territories were considered the most "civilized" among erstwhile colonies. As regards them, the League of Nations pointed out as the main rule of considering the wishes of their people. This is an crucial evidence that the Palestinians will trust on again and again (ineffectively) erstwhile Britain will introduce key changes to the region over their heads.
The 1919 King-Crane Commission, which was tasked with focusing on the moods of the people of the mediate East, noted that the Palestinians are explicitly demanding the rejection of the Zionist program, with expanding force from recently arrived European settlers. Thus, by emphasizing their sympathy for the "Jewish cause", the authors of the committee study advised against the plan to establish a "national home" for Jews in Palestine. The study was never taken into account and was not published until 1922, erstwhile the fresh reality came to the land of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire for good.
The United Kingdom did not intend to implement the Plan of the League of Nations in Palestine, indicating the request to implement the Zionist program and the extraordinary nature of the region, unique to the 3 large monotheistic religions. Already in 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres treated Palestine differently than another mandate territories in the erstwhile lands of the Ottoman Empire, repeating the assumptions of the Balfour Declaration and denying even temporary independency to Palestinians. erstwhile the Palestinian Arabs protested, pointing out that the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres violate Article 22 of the League of Nations Pact, ordering first consultations with residents, they were told that there was no reason to treat them as little advanced than their neighbours from Iraq or Syria (whose temporary independency was recognized), but His Majesty's government is bound by agreements that precede the League of Nations Pact. The Palestinians argued that the article of the pact being an overriding act extract abolishes all previously incompatible commitments (including those made in and on the basis of the Balfour Declaration), but in vain.
The British proposal of the Palestinian government assumed that only 10 or 11 of its 27 members would be Palestinians – given that the vast majority of the residents opposed the solutions contained in the Balfour Declaration, giving them power was not the English's idea. The Palestinian delegation, of course, protested this solution, again citing the League of Nations Pact (i.e. trying to fight through measures that offered global law created for the imperial interests of the powers). No success.
Noura Erakat, a Palestinian-American global law expert, called the Mandate of Palestine, yet established in 1922, a mandate sui generis (of its own kind), whose government was importantly different from another kind A mandates. The content of the paper establishing it included the assumptions of the Balfour Declaration. Six times mentioned in it are national laws and the “national house” of Jews. The Palestinians' right to self-determination does not fall once, as if they were an alien (though an overwhelming majority) element, which, unlike recently arrived settlers from Europe, has no national rights to their land or historical ties to it. The content of Baruch Kimmerling, an Israeli sociologist, described as polyticide (political eradication of the remaining Palestinian population). Balfour, in 1 of the secret documents, acknowledged that contrary to Article 22 of the League of Nations Pact, there would be no consultation with the Palestinians due to the fact that Zionism "is rooted in a long-standing tradition, in present needs, in future hopes of no greater importance than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs...".
The Palestinians refused to accept the content of a peculiar Mandate that erased them as a nation, so, unlike another Class A mandates, there was no parallel ruling body in Palestine made up of indigenous residents, while Britain recognized and supported the judaic Agency, a Zionist body administering an global diplomatic position representing the interests of the Zionist movement before the League of Nations and another entities. According to historian Rashid Khalidi, akin power was never in the hands of the Palestinians who were the majority of the Mandate.
Article 7 of the paper establishing the Mandate allowed Palestinian citizenship to be obtained by migrant Jews to the region (but it did not supply it to Palestinians who left during the Ottoman Empire and wanted to return—a situation akin to the present). In vain, the Palestinians pointed to Article 22 of the League of Nations Pact and to Wilson's celebrated 14 Points, demanding the right to self-determination. They played a very good game of becoming akin to European societies, emphasising an exceptionally low level of illiteracy and a large number of engineers and graduates of medicine or law. They even filed a complaint with the Standing Mandate Commission. These actions have not produced results, and the Palestinians have not been the first and last time to see that global law is often, in fact, simply a stronger law.
Armed conflict Against Powerlessness
In 1936, the Palestinians began an uprising against Britain and its plans to establish a judaic state in Palestine. The temper was further heated in 1937 by the British proposal to divide Palestine and quit 17% of the land (among them the most fertile[1]) judaic settlers, at the same time announcing cultural cleansing (called euphemistly "transfer") of 225 000 Arabs from this region. The Palestinians, who at the time could not foretell that the future would bring them much worse conditions and much larger cleaning, were outraged by this solution. The British plan assumed that Jerusalem would be outside the area left to the Palestinians, who would not enjoy independency anyway – they could number on being given to the king of Transjordania.
The uprising started in 1936 was bloodyly suppressed by the British. It made them realize that the division of Palestine would not decision another than by force. The coming planet War II ordered them to make concessions for the people of the mediate East and in 1939 in a paper called White Paper reject the proposed division and reduce the migration of judaic settlers. Those in Palestine present proclaiming the request for an armed fight against the occupier, mention the 1936-1939 uprising as more effective in the fight against the colonial administration than the 20 years of idle legal dispute preceding it. However, after the experience of Nazi crimes in Europe, as well as the reluctance of states specified as the United Kingdom and the United States to accept besides many judaic refugees, the Zionist program was implemented after the war.
Meanwhile, the large harm to the Palestinian origin has been done by the Nazi mufti Al-Husayni, who is inactive recalled as evidence that Palestinians have always caused not national free ambition, but unknown origin hatred of Jews. For the Israelis, the uprising of Israel is simply a celebration. For Palestinians 1948 is simply a year of disaster, cultural cleansing, which deprived homes of 800 1000 of them, with accompaniment of massacres in places specified as Tantura, Lydda or Deir Jassin, which was essential for the establishment of a unified ethnically judaic state on land inhabited by the overwhelming majority of the arabian population. It started then. Nakba inactive going on today.
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When I prepared the article, I utilized books: The 100 Years’ War on Palestine.A past of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance (R. Khalidi); International public law outlines (W. Góralczyk, K. Karski, S. Sawicki); The Iron Wall: We and the Arabs (V. Jabotinsky); The Statehood of Palestine (J. Quigley); The thought of Israel ( I. Pappé); Justice for Some.
Law and the Question of Palestine (N. Erakat); The Arabs: A past (E. Rogan).
[1] Rogan, E., The Arabs: A History, Penguin. 257
