Mandatory Palestine

Mandatory Palestine, officially known as Palestine, was a British administrative territory in the region of Palestine between 1920 and 1948. Under the League of Nations mandate system, Britain was entrusted with administrating Palestine on the development of representative institutions and eventual self-government. From 1922, Britain administered the territory under the Mandate for Palestine with the British High Commissioner under the Colonial Office as its chief administrator. After the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War in 1916, British forces drove Ottoman forces out of the Levant between 1917 and 1918. For the British, the United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue that later arose was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. The declaration effectively overrode the emerging principle of self-determination for the territory's existing Palestinian Arab population. Mandatory Palestine was then established in 1920, and the British obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922. Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate, based on its social, political, and economic development. This classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest capacity for self-governance. All Class A mandates other than Mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946. At the formal beginning of the Mandate, the population was approximately 11% Jewish, 9% Christian Arab, and 78% Muslim Arab. During the Mandate, the area saw successive waves of Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both the Jewish and Arab communities. Competing interests of...