How Palestine was partitioned

It is customary to refer to the arbitrary act by which Great Britain separated Trans-Jordan from its main body "Mandated Palestine the Jewish National Home," as the first partition of Palestine. This description, however, ought to be somewhat qualified. The circumstances were these:

In July 1920, Emir Feisal, who had a few months previously been proclaimed King of Syria, was expelled from Damascus, following a French ultimatum. In reprisal for his brother's expulsion, Emir Abdullah came up with a force of 1200 troops from the Hedjaz to attack the French. The British could easily have frustrated his adventure. The sight of a single British airplane might perhaps have been sufficient to make them take to their heels; but the British were tired even of a symbolic show of force, preferring to come to an understanding with Abdullah. In a half hour's talk in which Winston Churchill, Lawrence and Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Palestine, participated, Abdullah was persuaded to administer Trans-Jordan under the supervision of the High Commissioner, and the British Parliament voted by way of further inducement a substantial grant-in-aid for his new administration.

This first "whittling down" of the Mandate was soon formalized in the Mandate itself. An additional article (25) was included in the draft, which reads as follows. "In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of articles 15, 16 and 18."

Its effect was, therefore, to make the provisions of the Balfour Declaration inapplicable to the territories east of the Jordan. But there was no question of altering the nature of sovereignty or introducing a radical change of status. Trans-Jordan continued to be a part of Palestine, administered by the Colonial Office and subject to the supervision of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. At first the arrangement with Abdullah was for six months, and its temporary nature was evident from the very formulation of Article 25; under it, the Mandatory Power was merely "to postpone or withhold" the application of the Jewish National Home provisions, not to exclude them. Dr. Ernst Frankenstein, the eminent international lawyer, suggests that the French text is even more explicit; it speaks of the right "de retarder ou suspendre," and "suspendre" means "a provisional arrangement which leaves things in suspense. " It can further be noted that the extension of the Jewish National Home to Trans-Jordan would become possible in due course, when the local conditions there were ripe for economic development.

Unpalatable as the measure was, the Jewish Agency had to accept it under duress. On September 16, 1922, the British government submitted to the Council of the League of Nations a memorandum regarding the Palestine Mandate; no change in the Mandate was asked for, and the application of Article 25 was somehow explained away. The Council approved the memorandum.

Yet the Churchill-Abdullah arrangement did not pass without protest. Some friends of Zionism were aghast at the letting down of the Jews by the British Government. They pointed out that over three-fourths of the original area allotted to the Jewish National Home had been "taken out of circulation." The Palestine Mandate extended over 46,000 sq. m. - 35,500 sq. m. representing Trans-Jordan, and 10,500 sq. m. Cis-Jordan. Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, Chief Political Officer in Palestine until 1919 and later holder of an important position at the Colonial Office under Churchill, bitterly railed/protested against his chief for having committed the grave mistake of reducing the area of the Jewish National Home to one-third of Biblical Palestine. (MIDDLE EAST DIARY, 1917-1956, p. I 00). He resented the handing over of Trans-Jordan, an integral part of Palestine, to "a mere upstart, a useless figure-head" who could not maintain himself for an instant without British bayonets and large subsidies.

This act of injustice rankled with him for many years. He urged that Abdullah's tenure should cease, for he foresaw "that eventually the Jews would attain sovereignty in Palestine and I did not wish them to be surrounded on all sides by hostile Arabs; moreover, as the Jewish population increased, they would require more land."

The Peace Treaty with Jordan has been achieved now, and its results are the acknowledgment/grant and the total validation of the existence of an entity (Jordan) ripped off its mother's womb (Palestine)where 75% of its inhabitants are of Palestinian Arab stock anyway...

The point is, that the repeat performance above is being orchestrated once more... Oslo has been forced down the throats of every one and has helped erode the Israeli situation from within... 900,000 Jordanian Citizens and a few hundred thousands other aliens of every denomination are festering inside its borders and draining its resources.

It is high time for Israelis to divest themselves from all of that... Repatriate, compensate these foreigners unless of course their intention is to swear allegiance to Israel and the Jewish flag.

rahel7@aol.com

Last changed: August 16, 2004

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