THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH MANDATE IN “PALESTINE – Eretz Israel” 1897: Theodor Herzl convenes the First Zionist Congress and opens talks with the Ottoman and British Empires. December 1914: Lord Kitchener in Cairo suggests to the Emir of Mecca that he should inherit the “caliphate”. October 1915: Sir Henry McMahon promises the Emir of Mecca the “districts” of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hama 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement November 1917: The Balfour Declaration promises the creation of a “Jewish homeland in Palestine” 1920: Great Britain receives League of Nations Mandate for Palestine 1929: The Hebron Massacre
The growth of the Jewish communities in Europe as of 1880
“Museum of Horrors: The Traitor!” (French caricature of Alfred Dreyfus, ca. 1896) Baron de Rothschild (France, 1898)
“The Future: Toward Palestine” (German anti-Semitic cartoon, 1880)
“Gulliver Knickerbocker and the Lilliputians” (New York, 1905)
Theodor Herzl at the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 and his famous book published in 1896, The Jewish State See Israel-Arab Reader, pp
Jewish farmers at the new settlement of Metulla, 1896/97 (published by Zionists in Warsaw in 1898)
“Shomer” (a settlement guard from Kinneret, 1912): By now about 50,000 Jews lived in Palestine
LORD KITCHENER SEEKS A NEW “KHALIF” AMONG THE HASHEMITES OF MECCA Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca since 1908, self-proclaimed King of the Hejaz, Faisal bin al Hussein, elected King of Syria in 1920; appointed King of Iraq, Abdullah bin al-Hussein, Emir of Transjordania, , then King of Jordan, See Israel-Arab Reader, pp
Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence ( ) and “Emir Faisal’s camel- mounted irregulars” (photos in the British press, 1917)
The Sykes- Picot Agreement of 1916: The British Foreign Office paid little attention to the promises to the Hashemites
ZIONISTS IN THE BRITISH CABINET? Arthur James Balfour: PM ; Foreign Secretary Balfour’s advisor, Leopold Amery, became Colonial Secretary, : “I was keen on an advance into Palestine on military grounds, and the idea of establishing in Palestine a prosperous community bound to Britain by ties of gratitude and interest naturally appealed to me. I already had doubts as to the permanence of our protectorate in Egypt.” See Israel-Arab Reader, p. 16.
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION (from a letter of November 2, 1917, by Foreign Secretary Balfour to Lord Rothschild and the Zionist Federation) “His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may 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.”
The British military commander of Jerusalem, Borton Pasha, on December 11, 1917
Emir Faisal’s delegation to Versailles (with T.E. Lawrence) Why did Faisal seek agreement with the Zionists? See Israel- Arab Reader, pp
THE PEACE SETTLEMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1922
Abdulaziz ibn Saud ( ), of the “Wahabi” sect of Islam, meanwhile ignored the British as he gained control of the Arabian peninsula by 1925
Sir Herbert Samuel, first Commissioner- General of Palestine, in Amman, Jordan, with T.E. Lawrence and Emir Abdullah, April 1921
Trilingual documents of “Palestine, E.I. [Eretz Israel]”
Garden party at Government House, Jerusalem, ca. 1930
Jewish pioneers in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine, 1920s.
European newcomers, transformed into farmers, ca. 1933
Washing day at the Bat-Nesher Kindergarten in Haifa, 1925
An Arab household in Nazareth, ca. 1910
THERE WERE ABOUT TWO MILLION PEOPLE ALTOGETHER IN INTERWAR PALESTINE DATE Jewish Population , , , , ,000 Jewish immigration accelerated to 60,000 per year after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, but Great Britain imposed strict limits on immigration after the Arab Revolt of 1936/37
The Western Wall, beneath the Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock, third holiest site in Islam
“The Jews’ Wailing Wall” (postcard from the 1890s): Here riots broke out in August 1929
Raymond Cafferata, police chief in Hebron, 1929: “I am not anti- Semitic and I’m not anti-Arab. I’m simply pro- British.” Here 67 Jews were massacred on August 24, 1929