Reason tells me yes, but since it was a League of Nations mandate rather than a colony I thought maybe it would be different? Like, administered by the British but not subject to them.
Mandatory Palestine memorabilia has been one of the most common things to be seen among those talking about the conflict online throughout the recent events. The displayed things may include Mandatory Palestine posters, coins, banknotes, stamps, land documents, oaths of naturalization, birth certificate, and others, many of which are shown to prove some goals. What do Israelis and Palestinians think of the proliferation of images of Mandatory Palestine memorabilia online?
Hi, I am making a map, that is meant to be some "future" Palestine, or otherwise displays the major cities in the region of Palestine. Having some sort of internal division, like districts, would add interest to the map. However, I'm not sure if it is appropriate to use the districts of the Mandatory Palestine (are they meaningful? would a future Palestinian state adopt something like them? is something else more appropriate?).
Thank you :)
(August, 1946)
After the King David Hotel bombing and the condemnation of Irgun by the Jewish Agency, the Mandate Government has decided it is time to make peace with the more moderate Zionists. Through negotiations, we have arrived at the following agreement:
The Mandate Government will:
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Grant amnesty to all Haganah members charged with crimes less serious than murder.
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Instruct Mandate prosecutors to recommend non-capital sentences for those Haganah members charged with murder or more serious crimes.
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Ensure no foreign troops (I.e. non-British and non-Palestinian) enter the Mandate before the end of the Mandate
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Will agree to abide by whatever plan to end the Mandate is recommended by UNSCOP
The Jewish Agency will:
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Use their own police force to disarm Irgun and Lehi.
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Condemn any further attacks by Jewish insurgents against the Mandate Government.
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Respect the authority of the British Mandate until such a time as UNSCOP deems it necessary to end the Mandate.
With the British failing to stand up to American ahem international pressure with regards to policy on Palestine, the Mandate of Palestine was becoming a lame duck claim. The British embarrassment at the hand of the French has led even less desire to continue to play as an arm of their state. Thus, I am switching to controlling the newly-elected Palestinian Arab Government.
As Arab Palestinians, I still plan to attempt to avert the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, by attempting to sway UNSCoP to present a proposal less divisive than the IRL Partition Plan. However, if a partition is presented which will place hundreds of thousands of Arabs under Jewish rule, I will be prepared to go to war to defend their freedom.
I was speaking with a friend recently about how difficult it is to have a nuanced understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its causes, and his (tongue-in-cheek) advice was "When in doubt, blame the Brits and run". To what extent is that approach valid when understanding the conflict?
https://preview.redd.it/5ppqp5081nj61.jpg?width=3009&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93418aabd0b9e440a000222a98c2f1fcb3a3db55
Map of Mandatory Palestine by Survey of Palestine, 1946. The original map was published in three sheets, and I combined the three sheets into one, which is crudely done since I find myself unable to adjust the edge areas, thus the area would be slightly distorted.
This map showed the Jewish and Arab localities in late Mandatory Palestine, just a year before the UNGAR 1947. Israelis here can try to find out whether they lived in a city/locality that already existed in 1946, Palestinians from the territories can locate the city/locality they live in, and Palestinian refugee descendants can locate the depopulated Palestinian locality their forebears once lived on this map. History lovers here can locate the battles of Israeli War of Independence and the Jewish-inhabited areas attacked by angry Arabs in 1929 Arab uprising, birthplace of Israeli and Palestinian leaders and political figures, as well as other significant places in Israeli and Palestinian history.
Would it be fair to call it a colony of Britain? If so how did the UK profit from the colony. In a lot of the reading I've done it is quite mixed on how the British treated natives.
It almost seems up to the individual as to how single officers would act towards locals. For instance, some didn't believe in arming local Jewish people even as the nazis were getting to Egypt and as the local garrison was severely undermanned. In the Churchill government some ministers expressed disgust towards Jews while Churchill could be considered a Zionist. Some army officers seemed to treat jews and Arabs as martial races and prescribed them as warlike people or whatnot. In cases of property, sometimes the government favored Jews and in other cases Arabs were treated with priority.
Contrary to a normal colony, the British stopped Jewish people from moving there during the war in their infamous closed door policy. Other times the UK government helped move as many Jews as possible out of the UK bc some ministers thought the Jews were causing cities to become dirty and crime ridden
Overall the British attitude towards the region and the pseudo colony seems complex. Hopefully someone knows the history!
https://preview.redd.it/7untn0u19gg61.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=308b539210652efec4daa011abe91456bed58e51
A Mandatory Palestine passport shared by a Palestinian online, showing English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Mandatory Palestine was a self-segregated society. Jews in Mandatory Palestine engaged in the idea of redemption of Jewish society through self-reliant societies, while Arabs in Mandatory Palestine boycotted the Yishuv(the self-governing Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine). When a Mandatory Palestine resident travelled abroad, however, the customs officer would see the same document regardless of whether the traveller was Jewish or Arab. This document was the Mandatory Palestine Passport.
Until 1923, most people in Mandatory Palestine, being nationals of Ottoman Empire, were considered enemy nationals. Prior to 1925, residents of Mandatory Palestine carried a provisional nationality certificate to prove their Mandatory Palestine nationality, or they carried a Laissez-passer.
In 1925, an Order was issued to define the citizenship of Mandatory Palestine, which included all people inhabiting Mandatory Palestine on 1st August 1925 and people who subsequently naturalized(include mostly Jews from Central Europe, but also some Arabs and Sephardic Jews). They were considered British protected persons and received protections in British consulate, but did not have right of abode in rest of the British Empire. As a result of the order, Mandatory Palestine Passport began to be issued to Mandatory Palestine citizens, and this document would be the identifier of Palestinian nationality until 14th May, 1948.
Like many other things associated with Mandatory Palestine, Mandatory Palestine Passport was trilingual, with English, Arabic and Hebrew labels and inscriptions. The Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine was accompanied with (EββY), meaning βLand of Israelβ, showing the Jewish connections to the land between the river and the sea; while the Arabic name was simply Filastin. The cover, though, was in English only. This somehow reflects the power structure and the common perception of the residents about the Mandatory Palestine. The passport, like most European passports at the time, would show the personal information and spouse of the passport holder.
With Israeli independence in 1948, Mandatory Palestine Passport ceased to have legal status, and was replaced first by a provisional Israeli travel d
... keep reading on reddit β‘Before WWII, the world actually worked on racist theory. It was not just the Germans actually I think all Europeans built their legal system this way, including the British. In the British concept, Arabs, Indian and Africans were primitive races incapable of complex thought and importantly Agency, sometimes these were called the "Savage Races". But Europeans, and also importantly Jews were capable of complex thought and had Agency. Will go back to the Jewish part in a second.
What this means is if an Arab committed a crime, no attempt was made to determine his Thinking. Instead, he was tried based on his actions and the consequences of his actions. But when a Jew was tried, there was an attempt to understanding what the Jew was Thinking, and deal Justice based on his/her personal Intent that led to the crime. Certain things like flogging were only reserved to Unthinking races, and Jews were considered a Civilized race, and thus were immune from these kinds of punishments.
Eventually though Jews went from Civilized to Savage in Mandatory Palestine. I think the turning point was the assassination of the governor by Lehi. The courts decided that Jews were indeed a Savage Race and started flogging them and also ignoring what they were thinking. This actually rather enraged the Yishuv, and if you see from the terror attacks against the British from that point on, they had a motive of doing things (1) proving to the British that they were the Savage Race, not Jews and also (2) proving that that the Jews Think. As such, they would explain the Intent with multiple paragraphs in the newspapers of terror attacks they committed. Some terror attacks were intended to treat the British like Savages, for example, kidnap them and flog them. In any case, this kind of breakdown of the British system where they can neatly separate races like this I believe partly lead them to GTFO out of Palestine.
AskHistorians Podcast episode 168 is live!
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This Episode:
In this episode, Naama Cohen joins us to discuss the British mandate in Palestine from 1922 to 1932, when memoirist and childrenβs author Douglas Duff served as a policeman there. How did British servicemen view Palestine, their role in it, and the local populations? Find out this and more.
