Talk:Mandatory Palestine/Archive 3

Land ownership of the British Mandate of Palestine
According to the first paragraph of the abovementioned section in the article, it appears that Arabs owned 94% of the land of the Mandate, which is inconceivable, as well as inconsistent with the table that follows, stating a much lower percentage in almost all districts, most notably the huge Beersheba District which consisted of almost half of the Mandate territory. I'm quite sure the Survey of Palestine does not state the figures quoted in the first paragraph, can someone say where exactly (page number) was this said?--Doron 22:50, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I put that section up. Unfortunately I am away fom home right now. It would be helpful if you could wait until then. Alternatively, you can put a "fact" tag and some one else will respond. The figures are correct because if you look at the other table (Land ownership by type) you will find the figure there. the contradiction is due to what is considered Arab land.Bless sins 15:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, it is impossible that Arabs owned (privately or collectively) 94% of the lands, because the Beersheba District was mostly state lands. I would very much like to see the source of that statement and the table, they both sound incorrect. I'll have a look myself next time I have a chance to go to the library, in the meantime I'll put the tag. Cheers.--Doron 17:42, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't help suspecting that someone made this up having seen the well-known figure that 6-7% of the land towards the end of the Mandate was in Jewish ownership, and assumed that the rest was in Arab ownership. Palmiro | Talk 03:02, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I guess someone subtracted (total area)-(Jewish owned) and called it Arab owned. Wrong.  Whatever the explanation, the Survey of Palestine does not contain this 94% claim.  It does not state a specific figure for total Arab ownership at all.  You know, I could swear that in the past month or so I typed a summary of what the Survey says into Wikipedia somewhere, but I can't find it.  Anyone?  --Zerotalk 12:01, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I have a vague memory of this issue coming up in the past. If memory serves me, the whole issue of land ownership was very complicated in Palestine, as during the Mandate period there was a transition from old Ottoman land laws to modern land laws. I think only a third of the lands of Palestine had been surveyed by the time the Mandate was terminated, so the distinction between private/collective/state lands was not clear and may be a matter of interpretation of the laws. I know that Israel took advantage of this situation in the West Bank (where land laws haven't been changed) during the 1980s to declare land as state-owned and allocate it for settlements. Does this make any sense to anyone?--Doron 16:39, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hopefully, the recent edits have clarified the matter somewhat. In addition to the original reserch on the percentage of Arab-owned land, I have removed the percentages on cultivable and total land owned by Jews, giving the numerical values for the land area should suffice. There is still a reference to Uri Avneri; I'm uncertain which work is meant here, but anyway I doubt he can be considered a reliable source on the land ownership issue (even though his figure does make some sense). Beit Or 11:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That's not Uri Avneri but a different Avneri (Aryeh?), who wrote a book called something like "The Claim of Dispossession". You can tell from the title how balanced it is. Stein's book is much more like a serious history book, so thanks for adding material from there.  Can you find anything to replace Avneri?  Also, we need to add something about Arab ownership.  I can (when I have time) summarise what the Survey of Palestine has, but maybe Stein has done that?  --Zerotalk 12:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see, that's The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948 by Arieh Avneri. Beit Or 18:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I had a look at the Survey and was astonished to find that the "Land Ownership by Type" table is indeed as it appears there (almost), with the two categories of "Jewish ownership" and "Arab and other non-Jewish ownership". However, I find this table very misleading, as from the analysis in the Survey it appears that a large proportion of the "non-Jewish" land is state land, while this phrasing associates the state land with Arab ownership. The Survey gives no specific figure of Arab land ownership at all, so I think there's a problem with this presentation.
 * The reason for this is that under the Ottoman Land Code, land registration was unreliable, dysfunctional, and incompatible with western land ownership systems. The Mandate government, through the Land (Settlement of Title) Ordinance, attempted to settle the titles of the lands of Palestine, but by 1947 had only managed to settle 5,243,042 dunums (out of 26,184,702), so it was impossible to give any figure of Arab land ownership. The Survey estimates that more than 10,000 km² of the 12,577 km² of the Beersheba District is state-owned waste land, as well as some 3,000 km² in the wilderness east of Nablus, Jerusalem and Hebron. It estimates that some 2,000 km² in the Beersheba District may be claimed by individuals or communities. Taxation records suggest that some 7,000 km² in the rest of Palestine are cultivated. Of the 5,000 km² or so whose title had been settled, about 1,000 km² where public land.
 * All this is very confusing and not very accurate, but I think it's fair to say that at least half of the lands of Palestine were state lands. Jewish land ownership is given (1,624,000 as of 31.12.46, according to the "Supplement to Survey of Palestine, notes compiled for the information of the UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON PALESTINE", June, 1947, p. 30), and the analysis may suggest that most of the remainder (no more than 10,000 km²) was owned or tenured by Arabs, but this information is my own conclusion and is not given anywhere in the text. Nevertheless, I think it's enough to establish that assigning 24,000 km² to "Arab and other non-Jewish ownership" (or the much worse, and incorrect, "Arab ownership" that is in the article currently) is misleading and biasing.--Doron 14:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we need so many tables in this particular article: let's just summarize the issue and move on. If there is a lot of material, we can split a separate article on land ownership and fill it with as many tables as necessary. Beit Or 18:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I totally agree, I might start such an article myself if I find the time. However, there's still that table that you changed -- although it is now factually correct, it is still somewhat misleading and biased. I think we're better off without it than with it, unless someone can come up with reliable estimates of Arab ownership alone. Would anyone object to removing this table?--Doron 19:59, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * "Arab and other non-Jewish" means simply "non-Jewish"; giving figures for Jewish vs. non-Jewish ownership is hardly meaningful. For the time being, I suggest sticking to the figures for the Jewish ownership only, where numbers are more or less reliable. Beit Or 20:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see why you would like to remove the table. It's sourced to a reliable soure and is relevent. It show how much was owned by Jews, how much wasn't and how much was there in total. Why is the table misleading (unless we are misrepresenting the Survey of Palestine)? If you have other figures feel free to include them. Bless sins 22:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

If we are talking about the table "land ownership by type" then it is certainly unacceptable in its present form. However I hope we can rescue it rather than just deleting it. The question of Arab land ownership is quite complicated as Doron pointed out above. Even the definition is not a triviality since Ottoman concepts of ownership did not neatly fit into the categories of the Torrens system of land registration (copied from Australia) that the British adopted. For example there was a concept of owning an amount of land rather than an actual plot of land. There was also a lot of land possessed under a type of perpetual lease rather than outright ownership. Of course some people want to call that "Arab owned" and some people want to call it "state land", and both are inaccurate. --Zerotalk 22:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Since we already have the British estimates of land ownership in the previous table, why don't we turn this one into land usage by type without being concerned with ownership? If I remember correctly, the Survey does have data of this sort. --Zerotalk 23:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see the harm in presenting the additional info. Also, I understand that land ownership is a complex issue. Perhaps, you should include in thearticle how Arab ownership was judged.Bless sins 23:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

As proposed before, what we really should do is start an article about land ownership in Palestine which would discuss this complexity and move this table there, where it would be in context. I think this table is too specific for a general article about the Mandate anyway.--Doron 06:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The new article sounds quite interesting. I would thoroughly enjoy reading it. As to the table in this article, it seems clear it should be deleted or amended. Per a previous entry, the table is not in accord with the analysis in the survey. Further, describing public land under the grouping of lands under "Arab and other non-Jewish ownership" is as misleading as a description that categorizes "Arab Ownership" as 6% or some such figure and "Jewish and other non-Arab ownership" as 94%. Clearly the table is problematic. Aba Shmuel (talk) 02:04, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

There is no problem here. Yes, the "Survey of Palestine" data does refer to "Arab and others" but that is because the useful land is predominantly Arab, which is the interpretation that would be applicable if the same formulation was used in any other context. The other publication by the Mandatory government towards the end of the Mandatory period which dealt with land ownership was Village Statistics 1945, from which the table dealing with ownership by sub-ditrict was compiled. That categorises the data into three - Arab-owned, Jewish-owned, and Public and other. And the attached reference is to this map held at the UN, which displays the data in the table. I find it curious that all those who have expressed such concern apparently missed the table and presumably the map, which clarified the issue.

As regards the Settlement of Title process, that has little bearing on this debate. It's purpose was to identify a single owner for each parcel of land. It's effect was to break up collectively held land and grant title to the individual tenants in the collective - usually villages. Since, as far as I know, there was no mixed ownership of village land, it would make no difference to the overall percentages. Simply file all the particular land as Arab-owned or Jewish-owned.

One final point, there is another page which deals with Land ownership at the end of the Mandate period. The interesting point is that it provides confirmation of the map from Israeli sources. Specifically the Jewish National Fund and the Custodian of Absentee property. Indeed, the very fact that Israel regarded it as the highest priority to pass legislation expropriating the ethnic-cleansed Palestinians' property  tells the story. Israel was by no means full. If the usable land was actually state -owned, they would have inherited it and there would have been no urgency to expropriate.Devils Advocate1000 (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Disputed Immigration section
I dispute much of the newly-added material:
 * The 1945 Anglo-American Survey did estimate the total immigration (legal+illegal), I can get the figures next time I visit the library. The way the section is written, the reader is lead to think that no reliable figures exist, while this is in fact the revisionist point-of-view of the article that is quoted. Official figures should be given first, even if they are disputed by some, unless there is a very good reason why they are so unreliable as to be completely unnoteworthy.
 * Even worse, the biased source is misquoted to create further bias -- the 11.8% figure refers to immigration into specific sub-districts (those deemed "Jewish" by the author), including internal migration, and not "Arab immigration into Palestine" as the Wikipedia article states.

Such manipulations are reminiscent of Joan Peters' discredited book. At first glance, the Middle East Forum, which published the sole source used for this section, appears to be a rather biased organization. It is clear that the motivation behind the article is to bolster the theory that claims that much of the Arab population of Palestine consisted of recent immigrants. Such a delicate issue, which has political implications to many people, must be treated with care, not by quoting just one biased source.--Doron 20:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi Doron, I don't have information about these events but it is clear when you read the new version you get the feeling no reliable numbers about immigration exist (due to the fact it was huge). I don't know if this is true or not but if this is not true, the new version is biaised. MEQ is not indeed a good secondary source for "palestinian immigration" but I think it can be considered a reliable tertiary source (nothing proves they misquote others even if they could forget to quote some people they consider not to go in their direction) and a reliable secondary source to point out a "pro-israeli" point of view (it is indeed the pov the defend). Alithien 07:25, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Doron, don't be a dick. I hope you're not asserting the "manipulations" in question are mine, since that would grossly violate WP:AGF.  I would point out that I have done a tremendous amount of work on this article, most of which has been the addition of sources and editing for neutrality and factual accuracy.  The source in question was the first one that appeared reliable to me when googling Arab immigration to Mandate or to Palestine.  Prior to my additions, all that was there was this:  .  Accordingly, if you want to add more sources, just do it.  You're pushing at an open door by making it into a controversy.  Simply editing the section with better sources would be a good place to start.  Without the accusations, maybe?  Kaisershatner 13:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nobody's accusing you of manipulations or of not editing in good faith, the manipulations I referred to were done by the author of the source you've unfortunately quoted (with all due respect to your google research). The reason why I started this discussion rather than the usual counter-edit was because I assumed good faith, and assumed a discussion could improve this section. Given your response, I was obviously wrong.--Doron 22:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, sorry, maybe I'm a little touchy. If you have better sources, I am not standing in the way, and if I was un-necessarily harsh in my reply, please accept my apology. Kaisershatner 01:15, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * No worries, I can see how you'd think I was referring to you by "manipulations", I should have been more accurate in my phrasing.
 * Now, I won't be able to access any of the sources before Sunday. Anyway, an important question is how to represent the debate on this subject. The theory that claims that "the Palestinians were recent immigrants, drawn by Zionist development" is very prevalent among Zionists (that is my impression), though it is widely viewed by historians as a myth (yet another impression). Gottheil's article demonstrates the implications of this issue -- in many Zionists' view, the veracity of the theory may undermine the Palestinian claim to Palestine. If I understand correctly, the "immigration theory" was bolstered by Joan Peters' largely discredited From Time Immemorial, which was harshly criticized by Yehoshua_Porath (among others) and defended by Daniel Pipes, who's incidentally the head of the Middle East Forum think tank that published Gottheil's article, a fact that somewhat confirms my suspicions about the resemblance between Peters' and Gottheil's methods.
 * Anyway, Gottheil's article does not actually bring any evidence of immigration to Palestine, it only argues that such immigration is plausible. The only actual numerical analysis he provides is about internal migration within Palestine, and here, again, based on population increase alone, without actual migration figures. We should find out to what extent these speculations are accepted, my impression was that they are considered a revisionist minority view, but I may be wrong.--Doron 08:33, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Doron gets a star for recognising "the resemblance between Peters' and Gottheil's methods". In fact Fred Gottheil was the source of the mandate-era "data" in Joan Peters' book, as she acknowledges there. Btw, he is an economist. Because this subject is one that lots of venom has been spread over, I think we should restrict ourselves to the true professionals in the demographic field. That even eliminates first-rate historians like Porath. Demographics is a much harder subject that most people realise, and historians simply don't have the training for it. It has more to do with statistical analysis than history. Examples of demographers who have written on immigration into Palestine are Roberto Bacchi (the first official statistician of Israel), P. J. Loftus (a statistician who worked for the mandate government), Mills (director of the 1931 census), and Justin McCarthy (author of The Population of Palestine). I don't have time at the moment to write more, but I will note that (despite what Peters, Gottheil and Co. want us to believe) there is no British report of the mandate period that suggests there was large illegal Arab immigration. In fact report after report consistently claimed the opposite. --Zerotalk 13:57, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Here are some reasons we should not rely on Gottheil's paper.
 * Gottheil quotes a paper of Schmelz about the Jerusalem and Hebron kazas in 1905 regarding Arab migration into those areas, but fails to mention that Schmelz gave actual statistics: of the Muslims 98.4% were born in Palestine, and of the Christians (many non-Arab since Jerusalem city is included) 96.4% were born in Palestine.
 * It is worth noting that far from simply omitting relevant percentages, Gottheil deliberately misleads his readers. In his supposed summary of Schmelz's work he states (with my emphasis):


 * Demographer U.O. Schmelz's analysis of the Ottoman registration data for 1905 populations of Jerusalem and Hebron kazas (Ottoman districts), by place of birth, showed that of those Arab Palestinians born outside their localities of residence, approximately half represented intra-Palestine movement—from areas of low-level economic activity to areas of higher-level activity—while the other half represented Arab immigration into Palestine itself, 43 percent originating in Asia, 39 percent in Africa, and 20 percent in Turkey.


 * Trouble is, as you hinted at, Schmelz stated that roughly 93% of Muslims and Christians were living in the locality where they were born, so the percentages Gottheil gives is based entrirely on the 7% who weren't living where they were born and most of them were born elsewhere in Palestine. I didn't know Gottheil's connection to Joan Peters' discredited fraud, but it was clear that he would only attempt such a transparent deception because he had no actual evidence to support his thesis. I was taught that if the data does not support one's theory, keep the data, dump the theory. Devils Advocate1000 (talk) 13:55, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

The previous incarnation of Gottheil's paper (published in "The Palestinians", eds. Curtis, Neyer, Pollack and Waxman) was even worse. For example he cited the 1937 Peel Commission report without mentioning its conclusion: "There is no evidence available to show that this residue [of illegal Arab entrants who settle in Palestine] is so considerable as seriously to disturb the general economy of Palestine." (p292) He also cites the 1946 Survey of Palestine but fails to report its conclusion: "The conclusion is that Arab illegal immigration for the purposes of permanent settlement is insignificant." (p212) In the present version, Gottheil has wisely decided to ignore these major reports altogether, or did I miss them? --Zerotalk 10:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Gottheil says of the 1931 census "no estimate of its [Arab illegal immigration's] numbers was included in the census count", but in fact the 1931 census report has a whole section on illegal immigration for 1922-1931 that concludes with estimates 9000 for Jews and 4000 for Arabs (Vol I, pp61-65). Gottheil also failed to mention that the census report gives the percentages of people born outside Palestine: Muslims, 2%; Christians, 20%; Jews, 58% (Vol 1, p59).  Gottheil might disagree with these estimates, but what excuse is there for pretending they don't exist?

Whoever wrote this, especially the person who did the immigration section is completely misleading, which others have rightfully pointed out. This is one of the most contentious subjects and you've chosen to present propoganda as fact. If you are going to push this view than you have to represent the other view too, that is only fair. Thank goodness for doron and zero. [unsigned]

Hussein-McMahon Correspondence after Sykes-Picot?!!!
''After Sykes-Picot, the British made two conflicting promises regarding the territory it was expecting to acquire. [5] Britain had promised the local Arabs, through Lawrence, independence for a united Arab country covering most of the Arab Middle East in exchange for their support; and in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had promised to create and foster a Jewish national home in Palestine. The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support.''

I think the above information is incorrect. As far as I know the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence was first and it was the following Sykes-picot and Balfour declaration which were violations of the Hussein-McMahon treaty between the British and the Arabs.

I don't understand why the violation of the Hussein McMahon treaty isn't made more clear in the article. In all the articles about the Israeli Palestine conflict the emphasis always is on the Balfour declaration while it is only a vague promise which didn't state how many Jews on what territory would get a "national home" (not even a state!). The Hussein McMahon treaty on the other hand is pretty clear in what was demanded for Arab support.

It is obvious that Hussein proposed support to the British against the ottomans in exchange of independence for an autonomous Arabia. Hussein asked in his letter for the whole Arab region of the Ottoman Empire and the British agreed but made some territorial exceptions to Hussein’s claims. It excluded "portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, because they cannot be said to be purely Arab, and must on that account be excepted from the proposed delimitation". This portion of Syria is current Lebanon because the inhabitants were Christians. Palestine/Israel lies to the south of Damascus and at the time had only a very small minority of non Muslim inhabitants. Not more than any other region in the ottoman territory.

If it was intended that Palestine should also be excluded why did the list of vertical cities end at Damascus and did it not also include for example Amman, Jerusalem, ma'an and aqaba or any other Jordanian/Palestinian city or reference point? If Hussein wanted at first the whole Arab portion of the Ottoman Empire then it goes without saying that the British would have been much more precise in the description of the excluded territories if Palestine was also intended to be excluded since everything what was not excluded would go to the Arabs. '''In any modern court the court would have favored the side of the Arabs who made the clearest claims. Palestine was inside the territories which were claimed by Hussein but was not explicitly nor in any other way mentioned by McMahon in his exclusions.''' Also what is odd is that the areas west of Damascus, homs etc were allocated to France so even if Palestine (which included Jordan at the time which clearly is east of Damascus) was also excluded, it would have been a French mandate and the balfour declaration made by the British would have still been invalid.

Any way you look at it the Sykes-picot and Balfour declaration and the consequences of it (the formation of Israel) are unlawful. The British never fulfilled their promises and violated the treaty by dividing Syria into British and French mandates and promising a homeland for Jews in Palestinian Arab territory. How is it that the European Jewish refugees who entered Palestine illegally in violation of the British/Palestinian immigration restrictions ended up with their own state thanks to the vague Balfour declaration while the native population (eastern Christians and Muslims) ended up stateless despite the Hussein-McMahon treaty?

In order to keep wikipedia accurate more info should be given about the Hussein-McMahon agreement and its violation because that is an important point in this conflict which up until now has been ignored and omitted by the pro-Israel editors here. Ibrahim4048 (talk) 04:09, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You are correct, the McMahon-Hussein correspondence came before the Picot-Sykes agreement. The article needs to be worked on at that point.  Zerotalk 06:55, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Problem with map
This map is not correct. In the 1920 there was no such map. The division between "Palestine" and "trans-jordan" (as shown on that map) did not came about until 1923 after Abaddal a took by force the area known today as Jordan. This maybe a small point but it is important that wkipedia tell the history as it is Zeq 08:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As clearly written in the article, the mandate came into effect in September 1923, while the government under the Hashemite Emir was established in Transjordan in 1921.--Doron 09:51, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Wrong... it was occupied by force by Abdullah and it had nothing to do with the designated mandate. Amoruso 23:12, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What are you on about?!--Doron 06:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

TransJordan was given to the Hashemites by Churchill in 'thanks' for their siding with the alies. They were landless as they were kicked out of Arabia for their treason! Giving away 78% of the Mandate was an illegal act. The new Hashemtite 'Kingdom' was also to be Jew free. 36,000 Jews were expelled and their property confiscated. ...[Fivish UK 21.1.2008]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.226.205 (talk) 14:32, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The top of the page above the current map says 1920, but only shows the what became Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. But in 1920 Transjordan was simply part of the British Mandate of Palestine. And it also misses out on that Jews were settling in Jordan before Churchill gave the land east of the river to King Abdullah, in abrogation of the Balfour Declaration. There should be a map on this page similar as an svg., but reflects that at one time the mandate had British Palestine and Transjordan.Tallicfan20 (talk) 05:51, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Leaving aside the nonsense in both anon's and Tallicfan20's claims (the 36,000 is pure invention, the mandate did not even exist in 1920, etc.), the map should show Transjordan. There was never such a legal entity as the "Mandate of Transjordan"; it was part of the Mandate of Palestine until Transjordan became independent in 1946. This is fact #1. Fact #2 is that "Transjordan" was already administered separately from "Palestine" by the time the mandate came into legal effect in 1923. We need a map that shows both parts but we should also show a boundary between them and we should label it 1923. Zerotalk 07:13, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Here's what Balfour had to say: "In our promises with regard to the frontiers of the new Arab States we do not seem to have been more fortunate than in our promises about their independence. In 1915 it was the Sherif of Mecca to whom the task of delimitation was to have been confided, nor were any restrictions placed upon his discretion in this matter" - Memorandum by Mr. Balfour (Paris) respecting Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia' [132187/2117/44A], E.L. Woodward and Rohan Butler, Documents on British Foreign Policy, IV, 1919-1939. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1952), 340-348, ISBN:0115915540


 * The pre-mandate era delimitation of Palestine and Transjordan goes something like this: The British government insisted on fixing the borders according to biblical formulas. Those were set by the Jordan river crossing recorded in Yehoshua - Joshua 4:1-7; and the limits of "Dan to Beersheba" mentioned in Shoftim - Judges 20:1. Gideon Bigger relates that Lloyd George interrupted the Deauville negotiations with the French regarding the northern boundary to consult George Adam Smith's works about the geography of the Holy Land. see The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840-1947, Gideon Biger, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0714656542, page 120


 * At the peace conference, Lloyd George and Clemenceau defined Palestine as the area occupied by the British after their withdrawal from Syria. Transjordan was left to the Arabs:


 * 1. Steps will be taken immediately to prepare for the evacuation by the British Army of Syria and Cilicia including the Taurus tunnel.
 * 4. In pursuance of this policy the garrisons in Syria west of the Sykes-Picot line and the garrisons in Cilicia will be replaced by a French force, and the garrisons at Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo will be replaced by an Arab force.
 * 6. The territories occupied by British troops will then be Palestine, defined in accordance with its ancient boundaries of Dan to Beersheba.'text of the Aide-Me'moire
 * 6. The territories occupied by British troops will then be Palestine, defined in accordance with its ancient boundaries of Dan to Beersheba.'text of the Aide-Me'moire
 * 6. The territories occupied by British troops will then be Palestine, defined in accordance with its ancient boundaries of Dan to Beersheba.'text of the Aide-Me'moire


 * Transjordan was east of the Sykes-Picot line. It was allocated to the Arabs and was not mentioned in the proposed Mandate conferred during the San Remo Conference in April 1920. The British and French never had any garrisons in the country under the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. The occupation of Palestine ended on 1 July 1920, when Samuel officially took over as High Commissioner. Faisal's rule over Transjordan came to an end shortly thereafter. On 30 September Curzon instructed Vansittart (Paris) to leave the eastern boundary of Palestine undefined. On 21 March 1921, the Foreign and Colonial office legal advisers decided to introduce Article 25 into the Mandate. It was approved by Curzon on 31 March 1921, but the union of Transjordan with Palestine wasn't officially approved until 22 July 1922. see "Foundations of British Policy In The Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921", by Aaron S. Klieman, John Hopkins Press (and the National Foundation For Jewish Culture), 1970, ISBN-0801811252 harlan (talk) 13:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

how much total land in Mandate west of Jordan River was Arab vs. publicly owned or non-Arab
I notice in the chart where it talks land ownership, but it lumps Arab and "other non-Jews." How much land was owned by those "other non-Jews?" How much of the land owned by Arabs was owned by Palestinian Arabs, as opposed to other Arabs, and how much of that land was absentee owned land? I have heard most of it was in fact public land. Also, how much land was owned by Arabs who would remain in Israel and who left? Also, the Negev was state land under the British passed onto israelTallicfan20 (talk) 07:34, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

The survey of Palestine was never completed. According to "A Survey of Palestine under the British Mandate, 1920-1948", by Dov Gavish there was no cadastral survey of the Negev and much of the rest of the country. SA Sitta, president of the Palestine Land Society, London, and compiler of the Atlas of Palestine 1948, said that "Contrary to general practice in which country surveys started with topographical maps to describe the earth surface, there was a great rush to produce cadastral maps. The aim was to undertake 'legal examination of the validity of all land title deeds in Palestine,' in Weizmann's words. Thus, the extent and identity of private land ownership would be determined. All else would be 'state or waste land,' open for Jewish settlement." harlan (talk) 01:49, 13 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The whole topic is a minefield. The Turkish land tenure system does not map onto the Western one properly, and the details were only decided formally for a fraction of the country.  The map of which areas had land tenure settled bears a remarkable resemblance to the Jewish part of the UN partition plan.  In other words (and due to the different history) the statistics of Jewish land tenure were known much more accurately than the Arab tenure.  Then there are definitions (a playground for spin doctors). Was land jointly owned by a village "state land"? What about land held on permanent lease?  What about land for which someone had a legally recognised right of grazing use?  Of course Arab and Israeli statistics use opposite answers to these questions so we can't expect their totals to be similar. To answer another question, I don't know of figures for foreign-owned land in the mandate period but I'll watch for them.  My guess is that, in decreasing order of size, the main cases were land owned by foreign Jewish organizations and companies, land owned by Christian churches, the German templar holdings, and the rest. Zerotalk 06:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Introducing arguments in the lede
Mideastweb and Tessler both repeat the myth that Transjordan was part of the Mandate territory that was granted to Great Britain by the San Remo Conference, and that it was separated from the Palestine mandate in a series of steps. There is an entire subsection of the article that debunks that fable. The mandate required the establishment of self-governing institutions in both Palestine and Transjordan. The Arab Rights subsection of the article explains that the failure of Great Britain to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine had no basis in the powers of administration that were granted by the Mandate, or a difference in the terms of the mandate regarding Palestine and the other "A" Mandates. For some reason, multiple sources are being cited to make it appear that Palestine was British Administered, but that Transjordan was not. Great Britain always retained control and administration of the armed forces and foreign affairs of Transjordan.

In 1923 the government of Great Britain recognized an "independent government" in Transjordan. It was not however accepted or recognized as an "autonomous state" as Tessler claims. The Journal of the League of Nations and the US State Department's Digest of International Law both state that Great Britain could not unilaterally alter the status of the territory it administered on behalf of the LoN and that the terms of the Anglo-Tansjordanian treaties did not alter the status of the League of Nations Mandate or the Anglo-American Palestine Mandate Convention. Both of those required Great Britain to establish self-government. That fact is not WP:OR. It is already included in the text and citations of the article. WP:ELNO says editors should avoid linking to any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material. harlan (talk) 09:06, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Approppos of this, I was curious to know regarding this piece: "However, the area east of a line from Damascus, Homs, Hamma, and Aleppo - including most of Transjordan - had been pledged in 1915 as part of an undertaking between Great Britain and the Sharif Hussein of Mecca." \ Jaytee1818 (talk) 23:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC) If true, by what right did Britain cede this territory? And if Britain had some right to do this, why does the San Remo conference and the League of Nations refer to this area as a Jewish homeland? Seems like a denial of this particular pledge. Jaytee1818 (talk) 23:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)jaytee1818


 * The British didn't cede anything, since they never occupied the area and had no troops to garrison the territory. They merely pledged the complete and final liberation of the peoples who had been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations. Several British and UN Commissions have published reports which say the terms of the draft mandate, that was adopted by the San Remo Conference, did not establish the borders or attempt to define the scope or meaning of the term "Jewish National home".


 * The territory East of the line drawn from Damascus, Homs, Hamma, and Aleppo lies in modern day Syria and Transjordan. That territory was always earmarked for indirect French and British influence, and was designated as Zones A and B on the map attached to the Sykes-Picot agreement. McMahon mentioned a territorial reservation in connection with interests of the other Allies within the territory lying to the West (not East) of a line drawn from the cites of Damascus, Homs, Hamma, and Aleppo, but the British government has long since declassified the Cabinet files which admit that reservation had no connection whatever to Palestine. Many of those records are available for free download as .pdf files from the UK National Archives website. harlan (talk) 01:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting. What about the document disclosed in November 1917 which became known as the 1917 Balfour Declaration? It is short and quite comprehensible. Nymechein (talk) 08:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Balfour authored a memo from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 in which he admitted that it had been agreed that the Sherif Huessien would establish the boundaries and that the Arabs had been promised their independence. He did not support Jewish settlement in Transjordan. See Nº. 242, Memorandum by Mr. Balfour (Paris) respecting Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, [132187/2117/44A], in EL Woodward and Rohan Butler, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939. (London: HM Stationery Office, 1952), pages 340-348. ISBN:0115915540harlan (talk) 09:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You don't offer us information that we didn't know about. The Mandate Charter itself allows Britain to exclude Transjordan from the Balfour Declaration principle. Palestine itself remained subject to the declaration, at least formally. Anyway, the British promises to Sharif Hussein remained theoretical, so there is no need to talk about them too much. BTW, an important thing that you missed is McMahon's statement that the lands west of the Halab-Homs-Damascus line were not entirely Arabs. Not that he didn't say: they are Arab lands, but we need the ports there, or something like that (cf. the case of Aden). Nymechein (talk) 10:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The British government has declassified the old Cabinet files in which they admit that this was a reference to obligations of the Allies under the Reglement Organique Agreement regarding the Lebanon Vilayet of June 1861 and September of 1864, and did not include Palestine. See for example UK National Archives CAB 27/24, E.C. 41 War Cabinet Eastern Committee Minutes, December 5, 1918 and UK National Archives CAB/24/282, Cabinet Paper 19 (39). The latter is a free download (no direct link search "CAB/24/282" "CP 19" and add to shopping cart) that contains this analysis by the British Foreign Secretary which explained that the government's arguments were unsupportable:
 * (i) the fact that the word " district" is applied not only to Damascus, &etc, where the reading of vilayet is at least arguable, but also immediately previously to Mersina and Alexandretta. No vilayets of these names exist. It would be difficult to argue that the word " districts " can have two completely different meanings in the space of a few lines.
 * (ii) the fact that Horns and Hama were not the capitals of vilayets, but were both within the Vilayet of Syria.
 * (iii) the fact that the real title of the " Vilayet of Damascus " was " Vilayet of Syria."
 * (iv) the fact that there is no land lying west of the Vilayet of Aleppo.'

Great Britain had been using that sorry excuse for so many years, that the government simply decided to stick with it. The Secretary concluded: "It may be possible to produce arguments designed to explain away some of these difficulties individually (although even this does not apply in the case of (iv)), but it is hardly possible to explain them away collectively. His Majesty's Government need not on this account abjure altogether the counter-argument based on the meaning of the word "district," which have been used publicly for many years, and the more obvious defects in which do not seem to have been noticed as yet by Arab critics." harlan (talk) 11:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Do you have links to that interesting document? Did you read it yourself, or are you relying on a secondary interpretation? Anyway, from what you say here, you are referring to an analysis, written AFTER the Balfour Declaration was issued and at least two years AFTER McMahon sent his letter. So this source is not very useful. It only indicates that there were civil servants in the UK who tried to undermine the Balfour Declaration, nothing more than that. This is what McMahon wrote on 24 OCT 1915: "The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama.and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded. With the above modification, and without prejudice to our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept those limits." Now, look at the map. You will see that the cities mentioned lies almost on a straight north-to-south line. It is very easy to draw the boundary of the excluded region, it includes Hatay Province, the region of Latakia, Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and at this point the line becomes a bit blur, because McMahon was not kind enough to tell us where to connect it with Mediterranean shore, and because the term "Syria" was not clearly defined in those days (neither was the term "Palestine"). About one year after this letter was sent, the UK Government announces it "views in favor" a Jewish national home in Palestine. Lo and behold. So Apparently Palestine is part of that "not-purely-Arab" region. In 1918 a civil servant produces a document saying that Palestine was indeed promised to Hussein bin Ali from Hijaz. So the Balfour Declaration is null and void? Probably not, as it was presented before the League of Nation by the UK Government a short while afterwards.
 * I am well aware of the fact that WP editors are not supposed to make researches on their own, but sources should be used with a lot of discretion. You have to be very careful about anachronisms, mixing factual reports with analyses and opinions, and of course not to complicate things that are plain simple. Don't bother to write a reply, unless you feel an irresistible urge. I won't comment again on that subject. There is enough here to disprove what you claim. Nymechein (talk) 12:24, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh sorry, just a small correction. You were talking about the issue of districts rather than the cities themselves. Yes, McMahon does use the word "districts", but then again it can equally refers to "vilayet" or to "sanjak". As you can see in this map the western borders of the Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus/Syria sanjaks form more-or-less the same boundary I was talking about. BTW, Aleppo was a name of both a sanjak and a vilayet. Also, in Ottoman Turkish (and also to some extent in Arabic) Şam means both to Damascus and to the region around it otherwise known as Syria. Nymechein (talk) 12:39, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Nothing you've written changes the fact that Okedem has cited a source which says Transjordan was a state, and that I've supplied a half dozen or more which explain that Palestine and Transjordan were both states. Do you have any sources which pass muster per WP:ASF which say the Mandate was not a legal state? You cannot assert editorial opinions as facts or use the Balfour Declaration to make a WP:Synth argument in the article like this: harlan (talk) 13:50, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This is the oldest tactic in the book. Manipulate the facts, and when people notice that, direct the blame at them. You can site thousand sources of this kind and it wouldn't help. None of the sources you've brought is relevant. They are all analyses, opinions, general remarks, straw-men, legal debates rather than historical evidences etc. You know that with some effort and manipulation you can prove that 1=2, and cite sources for that. This is more-or-less what you do here. And there is another problem - WP use the word "state" for sovereign state. The only exception to that are US states. Even if some people use the word "state" otherwise, you have to be consistent with the terminology of other articles on WP. Saying "administrative areas" is very informative a term and it is consistent with other articles. In short - give it a rest. Nymechein (talk) 19:10, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and another thing if I may - when someone suggests an unorthodox view as a fact, the burden of proof is on him. No one here needs to bring you any sources. It is you who need to prove that "state" rather than "administrative area" is a better term in this context, and you failed to do so, as I explained above. If you demand 50 euros from me, it is you who have to prove that this money belong to you, I don't have to prove anything. Nymechein (talk) 19:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You say that "No one here needs to bring you any sources.", but that is a violation of the ARBPIA general sanctions. The problem with your argument is that the article contains a number of third-party verifiable sources which say that the Palestine Mandate was a state. All you've supplied is your personal opinion to support WP:TEDIOUS edits that removed well sourced material from the article. harlan (talk) 20:08, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Harlan, Nymechien told you to give it a rest, then give it a rest. BTW, why was he blocked a few hours after he wrote this post? Are you trying to silence people? Dowletani (talk) 01:18, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Palestinian Narrative
Please be aware when reading this article that the author is repeating the Palestinian narrative of the events. All one needs to do is look at his sources, Pappe, Segav, Morris and Khalidi, to see where he is coming from. All are considered highly partisan supporters of the Palestinian cause. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.172.169.17 (talk) 16:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense. Morris can hardly be considered a supporter of the Palestinian cause. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.154.208 (talk) 12:06, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, not Morris, of course, but Peppe and Khalidi certainly are. In any event, it is not enough to bring sources. You have to cite them correctly, distinguish between factual reports on one hand, and interpretations and analyses on the other, distinguish between historical articles, which are more relevant in our case, and legal analyses, which are less relevant here, and of course give room to ALL significant reliable sources from all sides. Nymechein (talk) 08:37, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Gil-Har paper
I don't really care about this argument, but I'd like to note that Gil-Har is definitely referring to the 1920-ish period when he writes "Palestine and Trans-Jordan emerged as modern states". I think it is clear enough at the start of the paper, but anyway later he writes "Great Britain had always treated Trans-Jordan as a political entity completely separate from Palestine. Its inclusion within the framework of the Palestine Mandate was an outcome of the political events following the fall of Faisal's government in July 1920.  The Palestine–Trans-Jordan boundary served as a political barrier separating two states.  Therefore, the postulation by some writers that the boundary was merely administrative in its character, delineating two territories subjected to the one British rule within the British Empire has no foundation in reality." (p72) Zerotalk 14:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all, the Emirate of Transjordan indeed resembled a state much more than the Mandate of Palestine. Saying Palestine was a state in the common sense of the word is totally misleading, and it is highly unlikely that Gil-Har meant it in the way Wilkerson understand. Saying that the Emirate of Transjordan was a state is somewhat more reasonable, though better not to use such a decisive term. Secondly, Moshe Braver in his book "The Borders of Israel" (1988, available in Hebrew), brings testimonies that at least the southern part of the borders between the entities was not marked and crossing it was totally free. Bedouins often crossed it unaware according to Moshe Braver's sources. HarQayam (talk) 14:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Zero. Whiteman's Digest is cited in the lede, and it does not support Ewawer's edits either. The Gil-Har quote can't be used as the basis for removing an entire subsection of the article with material and quotes from other sources. It isn't misleading to let published sources speak for themselves and to insist that editors utilize reliable sources for their contentious or disputed assertions. Unless Moshe Braver says that Palestine and Transjordan were not states, there is no relevance to starting a discussion here about people crossing the new borders. The relevant Anglo-French Boundary Accords of 1922, 1923 and 1926 preserved the rights of all the inhabitants of the region to continue to exercise their rights as in the past for fishing, navigation, grazing, watering, or cultivation of land on either side of the new boundaries. harlan (talk) 20:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What does that mean? Just move on. Ewawer (talk) 21:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Ewawer, it means you have been asked to observe the requirements of the ARBCOM general sanctions by utilizing reliable sources for your contentious or disputed assertions. Instead of doing that, you are still removing quotes and other well-sourced material contained in neutral narratives that represent the published positions of the interested parties, such as the Courts, Attorney General of Palestine, & etc.


 * The article does not contain material about the acquired rights of Arab cultivators who were already settled on Palestine's State lands. Those rights were affirmed by several British Commissions and by the Courts in the cases mentioned in the section above. The subject of the State lands of Palestine, the Land Commission, the ordinances, and etc. are the subjects of significant works, like State lands and rural development in mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948, By Warwick P. N. Tyler, page 21: "The State Lands of Palestine" ; and A broken trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians 1920-1925, By Sahar Huneidi, pages 212-223. Telling other editors to drop the subject and move on sounds like you are engaging in a WP:BATTLE.


 * One cannot present controversial claims as if they were facts. This is what Wilkerson's version of the lead did. As for Moshe Braver - he didn't say Palestine and Transjordan were not superpowers. Does it entail that they were? He does not say that they were not islands in the Mediterranean. Does it entails that they were in fact islands? Moshe Braver in his review of the formation of the Israeli border does not refer to the Mandate as a state. Gil-Har also does not make such reference in most of his articles about the subject, and I am quite positive that you took a particular quote of his out of context. He also brings testimonies that the border between Mandate Palestine and Transjordan was open wide, and the British didn't care much about people crossing it freely. This is quite contradictory to some claims written above. HarQayam (talk) 22:01, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm not bringing controversial claims. I'm citing and quoting third-party verifiable published sources. It is you and a couple of other editors who are making all of the unsourced controversial claims. harlan (talk) 22:37, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to change article name
This has come up before but wasn't discussed properly. I propose to change the name of the article to "British Mandate for Palestine" on the grounds that it is the correct name. The proof is that it is the heading which appears on the document itself: League of Nations Official Journal, August 1922, Annex 391, pages 1007-1012. Despite a search, I could not find any formal uses of the phrase "Mandate of Palestine" for the whole mandate period. The Official Journal didn't use that phrase even once for the whole time of its publication (1921-1939), but it used "Mandate for Palestine" many times (example). I found a few informal uses of "of" during the 1930s and 1940s. Now "of" is moderately common, but "for" is still more common (about 2:1 in Google Scholar) so the argument of common English usage does not seem to support the present title either. One point of confusion is that the mandate was a legal instrument, not a place; the phrase "mandate for" is like "permission for", while "permission of" is grammatically dubious. Zerotalk 03:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - If you put it that way, who could disagree? Makes perfect sense. Hertz1888 (talk) 03:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - Now that I think of it, "for" is the right name; I don't know why we have "of". okedem (talk) 08:50, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - I think, though, that something that should be considered is whether the focus of the article is the legal instrument/covenant or the place, in which case the article might better be titled British Mandate Palestine, Mandate Palestine or British Palestine.     ←   ZScarpia  10:02, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Support, and also the use of the description Mandate Palestine, which seems the practise in any case. However, I would go further and create another article which analyses the mandate document, article by article; with this article concentrating on the history of the period.Ewawer (talk) 11:04, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that a review of the way the article set is structured would be a good idea.     ←   ZScarpia  12:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do it. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 13:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Support.harlan (talk) 13:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

It is done, and I minimally restructured the first few sentences. I understand there is a bot which will come to fix all the double redirects. This is not a great article. In many places it looks like a battleground with bomb craters all over. The sections are in largely random order. The leading section is pretty awful (no mention of the Ottoman Empire??). Zerotalk 03:10, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I strongly agree with Zscarpia's and Ewawer's proposal. At one point there were two articles, on the territory and on the document, which were merged.  They should be separated again, for intelligibility, and perhaps the sections on demography and land ownership should be put into their own articles.John Z (talk) 22:16, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

The Courts ruled that Palestine was a State
The final decision in ARBPIA requires editors to utilize reliable sources for their contentious or disputed assertions. The article cites a number of journals and legal digests regarding the boundaries of the states that were established in the British Mandate and the international and national courts which ruled that Palestine was a State. Here is an example from Cambridge University's International Law Reports:

STATES AS INTERNATIONAL PERSONS

Case No. 34.---Mandated 8tates---National Character of Inhabitants--- Foreign Subjects In Egypt.

Saikaly v. Saikaly 15 December 1925.

THE FACTS.-An action was instituted before the Mixed Courts of Egypt by the plaintiff, who was a resident of Palestine, against the defendant, who was an Egyptian subject.

Held: On the demurrer to the jurisdiction of the Mixed Courts, that former Ottoman territories placed under a Mandate have the character of regular States, and their inhabitants possess the nationality of those States in accordance with Article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne. The plaintiff therefore has Palestinian nationality, and is a foreign subject in Egypt. [Reports: Gazette des Tribunaux - Mixtes, 1926, p. 119; 53 Clunet  (1926), p.1069.] -- See Williams, John Fischer,  Lauterpacht, Hersh editors, International Law Reports, Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 1929, ISBN: 0521463483, page 48

Editors who claim that Palestine was not a state are welcome to add opposing views from reliable published sources. Please stop deleting well sourced material representing the court decisions, so that Wikipedia can provide neutral, encyclopedic coverage about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties. harlan (talk) 06:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You are falling into the trap that you yourself warn against. There is nothing in these sources that supports your view unless you heavily interpret them. Rolhar (talk) 07:21, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Another remark, if I may - This is not an article about legal cases, therefore court rulings have little relevance for this article. This is an article about historical phenomenon, and the naturally, the people who deal with such phenomena are historians, not jurists. A court decision is based upon specific circumstances brought before the court. It cannot be generalized in the way you do, certainly not in the historical context. Rolhar (talk) 07:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

To get out of this cycle - may I suggest that Harlan wilkerson start a new article dealing with the legal question whether Palestine was a state during the Mandate period. This article is concerned with the history of the period, and not its initial legality (which is covered in League of Nations mandate) and analysis of recent opinions and court cases. Ewawer (talk) 08:10, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The topic of this article is an international legal instrument, the British Mandate of Palestine, and the former Ottoman territory that was placed under the terms of the mandate in accordance with the post-war peace treaties. The legal status of the territory was heavily disputed in various courts. The way out of this cycle has always been for editors to observe policies and the general sanctions necessary to write a neutral, encyclopedia about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties. That requires writing with a neutral point of view, remaining civil, avoiding personal attacks, utilizing reliable sources for contentious or disputed assertions, and resorting to dispute resolution where necessary. This issue has already been the subject of several RfCs, and has been discussed extensively at WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. We have arrived at the point where failure to cite reliable sources for contentious or disputed assertions and deletion of well-sourced material representing significant viewpoints about the British mandate has become a major issue. harlan (talk) 12:58, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * So put it into its own article. Ewawer (talk) 13:29, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This happens to be the article about the Mandate . The Allied Powers conferred it on Great Britain to administer the territories of the new States - within the boundaries that they laid down, e.g. That was all done according to the terms of the post-war international treaty agreements. This is not an article devoted specifically to the History of the Mandate Period, the History of the Southern Levant, or the Timeline of British history. Even if it were, the fact that treaties spelled out the terms for the creation of this state, and that a number of courts affirmed that fact, is still very NOTABLE. harlan (talk) 18:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm still waiting to get a source which says simply "Mandate Palestine was a state". Ewawer (talk) 23:04, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The source above discusses Palestine under the heading "Mandated States" and cites several court cases. If you are still waiting, then it is obvious that after stirring up editorial conflict across several articles you still haven't read Marjorie M. Whitemans, Digest of International Law, vol. 1, US State Department (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963) pp 650–652. You just removed a large section of this article that was sourced from the Digest. 

That same edit also removed a quote from the lede footnote on the Gil-Har article and inserted an unsourced WP:OR/WP:Synth editorial in its place. Nonetheless, that edit still indicates that Gil-Har said that Palestine and Transjordan were States. It reads "Yitzhak Gil-Har refers to these administrative areas as states, but they were not independent nor sovereign." What Gil-Har actually said was "Palestine and Transjordan emerged as states; This was in consequence of British War commitments to its allies during the First World War". See Boundaries Delimitation: Palestine and Trans-Jordan, Yitzhak Gil-Har, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 68–81

Whiteman cites several cases based upon Articles 30, 46, 60 and the Protocols of the Treaty of Lausanne. Here is an example from page 652:

"Article 46 of the Treaty of Lausanne provided that the Ottoman Public Debt "shall be distributed. . . between Turkey" and, among others, "the States newly created in territories in Asia which are detached from the Ottoman Empire under the present Treaty." (28 LNTS 11, 37.) The Ottoman Debt Arbitration is also reported in the Annual Digest, with the following "Note":"The arbitrator, after having adopted the principle that the costs have to be equally divided between the States parties to the arbitration, said: 'The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties.

Arbitrator's fees and other costs of the Arbitration were charged to the Parties, and divided between them as follows: Three shares were charged to Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan, collectively as States placed under British Mandate (Etats placés sous mandat britannique). See section VII 1. on page 86 of 87, "Affaire de la Dette publique Ottomane (Bulgarie, Irak, Palestine, Transjordanie, Grèce, Italie et Turquie), 18 Avril 1925, VOLUME I pp. 529-614 harlan (talk) 06:31, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Gil-Har - You took his sentence out of context. Gil-Har did not use the term "state" in the way you use it. Read his article fully, do not rely on one sentence.
 * The Lausanne treaty is irrelevant here, because it uses the French term "état" as a basket term to any geopolitical entity. According to your logic Romania, Greece, Iraq and Mandate Palestine were in the same position during the 1920s, which is not the case according to ALL sources. Wikipedia DOES NOT use the term "state" as a basket term, hence your edits are misleading.
 * The term Palestine was not used in the 1920s in the same manner it is used today. For example, the Zionist movement established a bank called Anglo-Palestine Bank. This bank was based in London and meant to serve the Zionist Jewish population of the region known as Palestine. The Mandate charter set its goal as establishing a Jewish national home and acknowledge the historical relation between the Jewish People and Palestine. If we go along your logics we will have to determine that the State of Israel was established in June 1922 and not in May 1948. This is a far-fetched conclusion that cannot be introduced to a Wikipedian article.
 * All your sources prove that the definition of Palestine as "state" (even as a basket term) was controversial and unclear. The question of whether or not Mandate Palestine constituted a distinct entity was brought before courts of law again and again, with each ruling considering the special circumstances.
 * Court rulings are a minor source to this article. This is an article about history and it should be based upon historical sources not upon juristic interpretations. Lawyers often think the legal world is all there is, but this is just a belief, not the truth. HarQayam (talk) 08:49, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

If an entity were clearly a state for all intents and purposes, there would hardly be a need for courts to rule. I don't see that regarding the court decisions as indicating "as if a state" for certain limited purposes is making a logical leap. On the other hand, arguing that these decisions indicate full statehood is what is questionable and far-fetched. Hertz1888 (talk) 17:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, does that source say it specifically applies to Palestine? If not, you're engaging in OR. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 17:04, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Hertz1888, the courts invariably held that the provisions of the post war treaties regarding new States or States that acquired territories, properties, and concessions from the Ottoman Empire were applicable to Palestine. There are still cases arising in the Israeli Courts today based upon the same treaties, laws of state succession, and 19th-century Ottoman-era titles. The number of post war cases simply proves that people are litigious and that parties have been unsuccessful in their attempts to argue that Palestine was excluded from the provisions of the treaties. Some cases were nothing more than trial balloons brought by bureaucrats or Jewish groups to establish legal precedents. They usually wanted to obtain preferences for Palestine or Palestinians under British law. Other cases were brought by parties who wanted to recover their properties and lands that had been declared state assets during the Ottoman era.

No More Mr Nice Guy, it is not OR to cite analysis from Whiteman's Digest, Lauterpacht's International Law Reports, Norman Bentwich's BYIL article, and etc. If you have to ask what those sources say, it demonstrates the need to read the sources before you make contentious or disputed assertions about them.

These Court decisions cleared up questions surrounding the implementation of Article 30, 46, 60 and the Protocols of the Treaty of Lausanne in the municipal laws of Palestine. Whiteman notes that those acts of legislation were undoubtedly continued in force after the setting up of the State of Israel by the Transition Act adopted by the Knesset maintaining the law of Palestine as it existed on 14 May 1948.

Whiteman cites a number of Israeli Court cases, Norman Bentich's BYIL article, D.P. O'Connell's analysis in "The Law of State Succession", and the British and Palestine Annual Digests to explain that under the British system of law, the provisions of the Mandate and the Treaty were only enforceable in so far as their provisions were incorporated into an Imperial statutes, such as the Palestine Order in Council, 1922, the Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, and the Treaty of Peace (Turkey) Amendment Ordinance, 1926 (which added Article 60 of the Treaty of Lausanne to the Schedule of the Treaty of Peace (Turkey) Ordinance, 1925).

Article 60 of the Treaty said The States in favour of which territory was or is detached from the Ottoman Empire after the Balkan wars or by the present Treaty shall acquire, without payment, all the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire situated therein. The Palestine Order in Council, 1922 served as the constitution of the Country and vested control of those public lands in the High Commissioner. It said "Public Lands" means all lands in Palestine which are subject to the control of the Government of Palestine by virtue of Treaty, convention, agreement or succession, and all lands which are or shall be acquired for the public service or otherwise. The Order in Council contained provisions concerning Jewish settlement on "State lands". harlan (talk) 21:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Where does the Order in Council say Palestine is a state? No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 00:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As for the Transition Act, or to be more precise the 1948 Law and Administration Ordinance, was not enforced upon Israel by any treaty or international norm. It was a voluntary act taken by the Israeli legislative institute first as a temporary arrangement, then permanently when it failed to reach an agreement about the state's constitution. However, even if I take your word about it, then the Mandate of Palestine and the State of Israel are the same, just like Upper Volta and Burkina Faso, or the Emirate of Transjordan and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. I really don't see why you try to predate the establishment of the State of Israel.
 * Article 60 of the Treaty of Lausanne might as well refer to the UK as the state that inherited Turkey in the government of Palestine. Furthermore, there is no clear definition of "mandate", this term was left vague in purpose according to the League of Nations' charter. The legal interpretations and rulings that you brought do use the term "state", but it is very unclear (to say the least) whether they meant it in the sense common today. The whole idea of "mandate" system was an innovation that lasted only 25 years or so. You can find more information about the legal ambiguity this system created in this lecture by Duncan Campbell Lee from 1921 (it is fully available for free through the links on the left). HarQayam (talk) 08:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The Treaty of Peace (Turkey) Ordinance and Court Decisions
Articles 87, 88, and 89, of the The Palestine Order In Council (1922) granted the High Commissioner legislative powers and also reserved legislative powers for the Crown and Privy Council. Appended directly to the Order in Council is a Royal Instruction to the High Commissioner which contains a statement on British Policy in Palestine. Article XXVII of that instruction tasked the Commissioner to facilitate Jewish settlement on "State land".

Article 240 of the Treaty of Sèvres, August 1920, said States in whose favour territory is detached from Turkey shall acquire without payment all property and possessions situated therein registered in the name of the Turkish Empire or of the Civil List.

After the treaty was signed, the High Commissioner adopted a number of new laws to implement the terms of the treaty and Article 6 of the draft Mandate to govern Palestine's State Lands, i.e. the Mahlul Land Ordinance of October 1920, the Land Transfer Ordinance of September 1920, the Land Ordinance of October 1920, & etc. He appointed a Land Commission to ascertain the extent of Palestine's State Lands. See State lands and rural development in mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948, By Warwick P. N. Tyler, page 21: "The State Lands of Palestine" ; and A broken trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians 1920-1925, By Sahar Huneidi, pages 212-223

Lauterpacht, Whiteman, Bentwich, and O'Connell discuss Heirs of Mohammed Selim v The Government of Palestine, which was heard on appeal as Amine Namika Sultan v. Attorney-General. The Courts of Palestine cited "The Treaty of Peace (Turkey) Ordinance (Cap I46), Vol 2, Laws of Palestine", which said:"Articles of the Treaty and the parts of the Articles of the Treaty set out in Part I of the Second Schedule of this Ordinance shall have full force and effect in Palestine.

Article 60 of the Second Schedule reads as follows: The States in favour of which territory was or is detached from the Ottoman Empire after the Balkan wars or by the present Treaty shall acquire, without payment, all the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire situated therein."

Lauterpacht, Bentwich, et al report that the Attorney General claimed the property had been ceded to the Government of Palestine, and "In pursance of this Article the Court of Palestine declared the properties of the Sultan in Palestine to be State property." Bentwich's article is available online: "State Succession and Act of State in the Palestine Courts", XXIII Brit. Yb. Int'l L. ( 1946) 330, 333. harlan (talk) 09:24, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Again you are jumping into far-fetched conclusions. The fact that the word "state" is used doesn't mean it refers to a entity with statehood. That would be a bit like claiming that IBM is a human being, because in certain legal contexts it is referred to as "person" with "personality" (terms otherwise used only in relation to human beings). "State lands" are lands owned or administered by the authorities. It doesn't necessarily mean that these authorities constitute a state. HarQayam (talk) 11:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's a quote from the very book you were referring to: ""Now it appears to us that in law there is no difference between the status of a Protectorate and that of a Mandated Territory and we have, therefore, reached the conclusion that the judicial position of Palestine is that of a dependency of the Crown in which the Sovereign has full power to legislate by means of Order in Council which are unchallangeable in the Courts even though their provisions go beyond the power recognised by the Mandate." Elihu Lauterpacht, case no. 31, p. 110, Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law Cases 1935-1937. HarQayam (talk) 14:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Please find a reliable source which supports your contentious or disputed assertions. You are quoting a portion of the book which discusses Palestine under the heading "States as International Persons". It doesn't say that Palestine, or British Protectorates for that matter, were not States. It has always been considered "a given" in international law that entities under Protectorates are States. See for example Lassa Oppenhiem, International law: a treatise, Volume 1, Longmans, Green, 1905, page 138, "International Position of States Under Protectorates" harlan (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Listen Wilkerson, (WP:CIVIL   ←   ZScarpia  14:16, 7 May 2010 (UTC))(NOTE: User:HarQayam is currently Indef Blocked as a suspected sock of User:Drork) we have a rule here. Nothing new, just a common rule of debate used in numerous forums of discussion. If you say a sparrow is a kind of frog, it is YOU who have to supply the proof, and it is better be a good proof. So far, you have made a problematic claim, suggested some sources, but as explained above (by me and other people), it is far from being convincing. I and other people here, have also supplied several reliable sources that prove your claim to be weak (one of them is the very book from which you brought a citation). Furthermore, we are not suggesting to ignore the special status of British Mandate Palestine as part of the mandate system. We simply oppose making blunt assertions that are likely to mislead most readers. The current terminology is more than enough to convey the special status of the mandate, any stronger term would just damage the article. I have to point out again, that if the Mandate of Palestine was a state, and considering the Mandate charter and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, we are bound to predate the establishment of the Jewish state to June 1922, something which is not acceptable neither in Israel nor among its allies. Another thing: I cannot assess sources which are not freely accessible. If you want to rely on such source, you will have to bring a good citation from it (not just one sentence, but something which would not infringe copyrights but would put things in proper context). As for Lassa Oppenhiem, he died in 1919, so he hardly saw the mandate system materialize. His world was the pre-WW1 world with different standards and norms. The passage I cited above (from the book you yourself referred to) says explicitly "a dependency of the Crown". A dependency is not a state, at least not in the modern sense of the world. HarQayam (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * India was a state, a dependency of the Crown, and a member of the League of Nations to boot. Oppenhiem wrote about States under Protectorates in the 20th Century. Lauterpacht was writing about cases involving Protectorates, such as the Trucial States, well into the 1960's and the heading for the Land Law case above said "Mandated States" in 1947. harlan (talk) 15:02, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Are blackberries black? Not necessarily, they can also be quite reddish. Is a senator an old person (senātor = old person in Latin) ? Not necessarily, he can also be in his 30ies or 40ies. Are the United States a union of states? Not exactly, it is a federation of autonomous districts. The equivalent of a US-state is called "province" in Canada. Is a "mandate state" a state? 79.177.45.157 (talk) 18:02, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) The relationships between Great Britain and the Protected States and Mandated States were governed by international laws and international conventions, not by a federal constitution. Paul Weis discussed the R v Ketter case, the Treaty of Lausanne, and "persons of international law". He said "The only difference is that relations between a Protecting State (Mandatory) and a Protected State (Mandated Area) are themselves relations of international law. The status of Mandated and Trust Territories is regulated by international law." See Weis Paul, Nationality and statelessness in international law, Brill, 1979, ISBN: 9028603298, pages 21-24 (but especially pages 23 and 24

Since you don't know the difference between a Canadian province and an internationally mandated state, I would suggest that you review "States as International Persons" in Hersh Lauterpacht's Annual Digests, Whiteman's Digest, or the British Yearbook of International Law. You won't get very far before you run into a lot of articles on mandated states, including articles on Palestine, and Trans-Jordan. One of those articles about "States as International Persons" is cited above. An Egyptian Court held that Palestine had all the characteristics of a regular state. In another case regarding "States as International Persons", the Supreme Court of Palestine ruled in 1945 that Trans-Jordan was a foreign state. The people on one side of the border had Palestinian Nationality under the 1925 Palestine Nationality Act, while the people on the other side had Trans-Jordanian Nationality under the 1928 Trans-Jordanian Nationality Act. That is why Gil-Har said that people who claimed it was merely an administrative boundary were making an "untenable argument". The Supreme Court ruled that it was a boundary between two states, and that was the end of the discussion. Lauterpacht, Bentwich, Whiteman, Quigley, DeWaart, and others have reported on various court cases and international treaties involving Palestine under the Mandate which illustrated that it fulfilled the Montevideo Convention constituents of a state as an "international person". harlan (talk) 07:44, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This lecture of yours might be appropriate for the proceedings of an academic conference about the philosophy and history of international law. It has no room in Wikipedia as it is original research. Furthermore, you contradict yourself by referring to the Montevideo Convention, while by the standards of that convention the mandate is not a state (as Prof. Crawford mentions over and over again in several articles). The British Mandate was not governed as a federal province. It was much less independent than that. It was governed directly from London through UK governmental ordinances known as "white papers" or "orders in council". I have never heard of a state ruled directly by a foreign government, this is an innovation of yours. I read quite a few of the articles you mentioned. Quigley, whose ideas you seem to be promoting here, has a very unorthodox view of separating statehood from independence and sovereignty. Needless to say, most scholars and historians do not view his theories with favor. At best they are considered a curiosity. As for other scholars, you simply distort their words, giving them false interpretations. You do the same for Gil-Har and for court rulings. Your tactic is simple, taking a very specific court ruling about a very specific case and generalize it. The generalization is original research, plainly and simply. BTW, since Israel is the Jewish national home the Mandate charter talks about, what you are suggesting actually is to predate the establishment of the State of Israel from 1948 to 1922. Nice idea, but again totally innovative and irrelevant to Wikipedia. 79.177.45.157 (talk) 09:58, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no original research involved in citing analysis from published sources. You should try it yourself. Prof. Paul De Waart recited the terms of the Montevideo Convention and said "The Palestine Mandate has become an eventful example in respect of all the  constituents of statehood". He devoted a separate subsection of the chapter to each constituent.


 * Robert Eisenman explained that the British extended the concept of "State Domain" by defining a new category of "Public Lands" in the Palestine Order in Council of 1922 which was subject to control of the Palestine Government by virtue of treaty, convention, agreement, or succession, and all lands acquired for public benefit or otherwise. He observed in a footnote (17) that Article 60 of the Treaty of Lausanne vested all property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire in the governments of the relevant "successor states" and mentions that this was specifically applied in "Palestine" by the ordinances of 1925-6. See "Islamic law in Palestine and Israel: a history of the survival of Tanzimat and Sharī'a in the British Mandate and the Jewish state, Robert H. Eisenman, BRILL, 1978, ISBN 9004057307, page 139


 * Norman Bentwich also wrote that Palestine was an allied successor state to the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire in "State Succession and Act of State in the Palestine Courts", XXIII Brit. Yb. Int'l L. ( 1946) 330, 333.


 * In 1926 Norman Bentwich was the Attorney General of Palestine. He explained that the coming into force of Article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne on August 26, 1924 allowed the three governments of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq to issue Nationality Acts. According to Bentwich, the guiding principle adopted was that Ottoman subjects habitually resident in the detached territories became ipso facto nationals of the state to which the territory had been transferred. Bentwich said the Nationality Laws transformed the de facto change into a change de jure. See Bentwich, Norman, 7 Brit. Y.B. Int'l L. 97 (1926) Nationality in Mandated Territories Detached from Turkey


 * US immigration law, U.S. TITLE 8, CHAPTER 12, § 1101. Definitions says "(a) As used in this chapter— (14) The term “foreign state” includes outlying possessions of a foreign state, but self-governing dominions or territories under mandate or trusteeship shall be regarded as separate foreign states. The US is a state party to the Montevideo Convention, which it still considers to be "in force". See page 450 of United States Department of State Treaties in Force, A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2010


 * According to Howard Grief, a legal advisor to the government of Israel, "The Covenant was the idea of US President Woodrow Wilson and contained in it his program of Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, while Article 22 which established the Mandates System, was largely the work of Jan Christiaan Smuts who formulated the details in a memorandum that became known as the Smuts Resolution, officially endorsed by the Council of Ten on January 30, 1919, in which Palestine as envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was named as one of the mandated states to be created."


 * The US was a state party to the Treaty of Lausanne and the Anglo-American Palestine Mandate Convention of 1925 which provided that Ottoman subjects would become citizens of the States which acquired territory from the Ottoman Empire. The United States established a nationality quota for "Palestine (with Trans-Jordan) (British mandate)" See for example Proclamation #1872 - Limiting the Immigration of Aliens Into the United States on the Basis of National Origin, March 22, 1929 In 1995 the State Department published a Memorandum of Conversation between William Crawford Jr. and Mr. Shaul Bar-Haim from the Israeli Embassy (February 7, 1963) regarding Jerusalem. Bar-Haim said "The use of the term "Palestine" is historical fiction; it encourages the Palestine entity concept; its "revived usage enrages" individual Israelis". Crawford said "It is difficult to see how it "enrages" Israeli opinion. The practice is consistent with the fact that, in a de jure sense, Jerusalem was part of Palestine and has not since become part of any other sovereignty. That it was not a simple matter since there was a quota nationality, in regard to which U.S. legislation and regulation continue to employ the term Palestine. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. Xviii, Near East, United States. Dept. of State, G.P.O., 1995, ISBN 0160451590, page 341. harlan (talk) 13:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Detailed answer
1. Prof. Paul De Waart - Irrelevant. This source talks about the Arab-Palestinian People's right to self determination. It does not talk about the status of the British Mandate for Palestine. Palestine is a polysemy, just like Congo (name of two adjacent countries), Guinea (name of several countries if Africa and Oceania), Guyana (name of both a country and its neighboring French territory and former name of Surinam). Claiming that the name "Palestine" should be interpreted in the same way everywhere is both wrong and constitute original research.
 * Prof. Paul De Waart said "The Palestine Mandate has become an eventful example in respect of all the constituents of statehood". He devoted a separate subsection of the chapter to each constituent. harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

2. Robert Eisenman - Irrelevant. "State-lands" is a term which means "lands administered by the public authorities". In this case the authority is a dependency. It is a bit like saying that all Public Australian possessions belong to Queen Elisabeth II. That's just a figure of speech, Her Majesty does not really own this property. As for the treaty of Lausanne, it use the term "successor states" as an umbrella term. It equally refers to Romania, Iraq, Greece, Syria and other territories, whether states or non-states. Furthermore, you can easily say that the "successor state" in this case is the United Kingdom. You took a very specific term and generalized it, which constitute and original research.


 * There were no crown lands in Palestine. For example, the Supreme Court of England and Wales ruled that Palestine was not transferred to and, consequently, was not annexed by Great Britain by either the Treaty of Lausanne or the LoN Mandate in King v Ketter [1940] 1 K.B. 787; T.L.R. 449; [1939] 1 All E.R. 729.
 * BTW, Romania, Iraq, Greece, Syria and etc. were all states. harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

3. Norman Bentwich - Irrelevant. See previous remark.

4. Norman Bentwich - Irrelevant. Dependencies have nationality acts. For example, there are special British passports for oversea UK dependencies. A Puerto Rican nationality is not exactly a US nationality. In fact, the British Mandate passports were very similar. They were British passports that did not directly entailed British citizenship, but they were fully guaranteed by the UK Government. Furthermore, in its correspondence with the delegation of Palestinian Arabs in 1922, the UK Ministry of the Colonies said explicitly that the Mandate for Palestine was not an autonomous region, unlike Iraq and Syria. So you have an explicit reference vs. an indirect ambiguous reference.
 * The Annual Digest and British Yearbook of International Law articles about the succession of states say that Palestine was a state. Your discussion about Puerto Rico is off-topic and belongs on some other talk page. In 1924 the Secretary of the Colonies said that Palestine was a Mandated State and mentioned British policies in its Mandated Territory. He said "Negotiations have been in progress for about a year for the conclusion of a treaty with King Hussein of the Hejaz, who is the person to whom the McMahon promises of 1915 (see paragraph 5 of the office memorandum) were given. A draft of the treaty was actually initialled in London in April 1923, but difficulties have since arisen, particularly in regard to Article 2 of the draft, which deals with our position in the Mandated States of Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan. The point is simply this. The late Government hoped to obtain King Hussein's assent to a formula which would imply his acceptance of the policy pursued by the British Government in the Mandated territories." See CAB 24/165, formerly C.P. 121 (24), page 1 (.pdf file 2 of 7)


 * Prof. James Crawford devoted a chapter of his book, "The Creation of States in International Law", Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2007, ISBN: 0199228426, to 19th century "Dependent States". In that chapter he said that the modern system of international administration of territories and special settlements involving groups of states and international organizations are mixed governmental competencies which do not operate under the stigma of dependence, colonial or otherwise (page 283). Crawford treated the League of Nations Mandates elsewhere in his book, in the Chapter on "Creation of States in International Organizations" (page 533). BTW, He cites Israel as an example of a state that was created by secession from Palestine (page 277). harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

5. US immigration law - Proves the contrary of what you claim. The only possible interpretation for this phrasing is: "self-governing dominions or territories under mandate or trusteeship are outlying possessions of foreign states, and yet for the purpose of this statute they shall be regarded as separate foreign states. This is reading comprehension. 6. Howard Grief - Interesting, but irrelevant. A "mandate state" is not a state, just like the "United Kingdom" is not exactly a kingdom (Her Majesty does not really have a say about the administration of country). You know the saying that the "Holy Roman Empire" was neither holy, nor Roman nor an empire. Inferring that "mandate state">>"state" is an original research.
 * Mandates and trusteeships are considered separate foreign states under US law, because of President Wilson's strict policy of non-annexation. They have NEVER been considered outlying possessions of other states. For example, the "BRITISH NATIONALITY AND STATUS OF ALIENS ACT [4 & 5 George V, cap. 17] 1914" provided that the Government of any British possession had the same power to grant a certificate of naturalization as the Secretary of State, but that never applied to Palestine. In the King v. Ketter [1940] the Supreme Court of England and Wales ruled that Palestine was the state that acquired the territory detached from Turkey. The court explained that Palestine was not transferred to and, consequently, was not annexed by Great Britain by either the Treaty of Lausanne or the LoN Mandate. harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

7. "The US was a state party..." - Irrelevant. The US Administration often treat dependencies as if they were state for specific purposes, e.g visa policies and waivers that might apply to residents of a certain district but not another in the same state. Again, your generalization constitutes an original research and contradicts other more explicit sources.
 * The actual laws of the US, a state party to the Montevideo Convention, do not say "as if". They say that mandates are regarded as separate foreign states. harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

8. "In 1995 the State Department published a Memorandum..." - Misquote and illegitimate generalizations. Prof. Crawford explicitly said in several articles of his, that the British Mandate of Palestine was not a state. In the text above Prof. Crawford merely refers to the fact that Jerusalem was under the administration of the British Mandate of Palestine and since the end of the Mandate there was no state that became widely recognized de jura sovereign over the city. Again, you misquote Prof. Crawford and make illegitimate generalizations. 79.177.45.157 (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * William Crawford Jr was a government official in the US State Department Near East section. He has no connection to Prof. James R. Crawford. The accuracy of the quote with regard to US laws and regulations on nationality quotas can be verified at the Jewish Virtual Library. They have a copy of the memorandum online and provide a cite to the FRUS.  harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

To sum up my remarks above, you just pour links and books of name, trusting that due to lack of time and energy, people would not like to check their validity or relevance. Sources that refute your claims (emphases added): 1. An Israeli statement to the UN about Law of treaties, p. 207, par. 3 : "While, therefore, in the main we shall concentrate upon legal developments in the period of the British Mandate over Palestine, we shall not exclude where necessary carrying the description a stage further to include on the basis of the experience and practice of this Government, certain aspects which have arisen since the termination of the British Mandate. The Government of Israel believes that by so doing it will assist in the development of international law, particularly in regard to the problems which arise when dependent territories (whether Trusteeship territories or Colonies, or other forms of non-self-governing territories) obtain their independence.
 * The summary of the Israeli response notes that its review was inconclusive. A number of other sources say that Palestine was a party to multilateral and bilateral international treaties with the US, UK, Egypt, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, France, and etc. which described the signatories as "contracting states", not dependent territories. Those treaties were published in the League of Nations Treaty Series. John Quigley wrote that those treaties constituted evidence that Palestine had the capacity to engage in foreign relations. According to Quigley, the most indicative treaty was one between the mandatory power, Great Britain, and Palestine. He said "Had Britain and Palestine constituted a single sovereignty, there would have been no point to a treaty between them." harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

2. UN, Extract from the Yearbook of the International Law Commission:- 1962, vol. I, p. 33 par. 6: "There was also the subsidiary question of whether there was any difference in law between independent states which had formerly been territories under mandate or trusteeship, and independent states which had never in modern times been persons in international law." (Note that while a mandate territory is indeed defined as being "person in international law", it stands in contrast to "independent stat" and defined as "territory").
 * The problem with your analysis is that Shabtai Rosenne was discussing the rules of state succession. He was describing the difference in law between an independent state established by its own acts and an independent state that was established through the assistance of the international community. He specifically cited the post-WWI treaties and the cessions of territory to new states that were brought into existence by the Allied Powers as the result of the war. In addition, Rosenne noted that some of the mandates contained provisions regarding succession that would be governed by special rules. One of the published authorities cited in Whiteman's Digest of International Law regarding the legal status and disposition of the Palestine Mandate was D.P. O'Connell, "The Law of State Succession: Volume V of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, ed. Hersh Lauterpacht, et al, 1956. On pages 10-11, and 178 O'Connell said that "Article 28 of the Mandate and the UN resolution of 29 November 1947 provided that the successor government that followed the mandatory administration should honor the treaties and financial obligations incurred by the mandatory during the period of the mandate.

3. UN discussion about Article 77 of the UN Charter, p. 162, par. 9: "With regard to one of the Trust Territories (formerly) under mandate at the time when the Charter came into force, namely, TransJordan, the United Kingdom informed the General Assembly at the first part of the first session that it intended to establish the independence of that Territory. This declaration was welcomed by the General Assembly. 2/ The question of the future status of the other former mandated territory of Palestine, was placed before the General Assembly at its second session by the Mandatory Power, the United Kingdom. The General Assembly adopted resolution 181 (II) recommending the establishment of a Jewish State, an Arab State and an internationalized city of Jerusalem." (Note, that both Transjordan and Palestine are referred to as territories not as states. The term state is only used when referring to the then-anticipated independent Arab and Jewish states according to resolution 181).
 * Many countries consider a defined territory to be a constituent part of statehood, do you have a source which says that territories cannot be states? In 1924 the Secretary of the Colonies for Great Britain said that Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan were Mandated States. A couple of lines later, he referred to them as mandated territories. See CAB 24/165, formerly C.P. 121 (24), page 1 (.pdf file 2 of 7) harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

4. An article by Ralph Wilde (Ph.D., Cambridge University) (p. 94): "foreign state-conducted territorial administration under the Mandate and Trusteeship systems, occupation and international territorial administration, foreign rule has been introduced after conflict, often in circumstances where governance in the territory was degraded in some way by the conflict, for example, through the collapse of a defeated government and the destruction of infrastructure" I'm afraid I don't have enough time to collect more sources, but it seems to me quite enough. 79.177.45.157 (talk) 13:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wilde combines discussions about the Hague convention rules regarding belligerent occupation with discussions about armistice occupations, LoN mandates, and UN trusts as examples of internationally supervised regimes of trusteeship. The Hague rules describe all occupied lands as territories without regard to statehood. Wilde does not say that mandates were not states. In fact he cites a number of sources which explain that mandates were a particular type of statehood. For example on page 14 he cites "HERSCH LAUTERPACHT, The Mandate under International Law in the Covenant of the League of Nations, in INTERNATIONAL LAW VOL III, page 29 (Hersch Lauterpacht & Elihu Lauterpacht eds., 1970)" harlan (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * 79.177.45.157 has been added to the list of   suspected sockpuppets of user Drork, who is currently blocked indefinitely.        ←   ZScarpia  15:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

This section is now completely unreadable. I thought breaking up another editor's comments was frowned upon? Could someone format this for readability? Thanks. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 14:06, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You've been tag teaming on reverts with Drork and his socks. Astroturfing for a banned user is certainly frowned upon. harlan (talk) 14:16, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Feel free to report me. No More Mr Nice Guy (talk) 15:05, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * On the 2nd of May you deleted a raft of references with links to articles and books that specifically said that the Palestine Mandate was a state. My edit summary said "Added text of the Arbiter's decision which said Palestine was a state. Restored Gil-Har quote which said Palestine was a state." Neither of those sources said that Palestine was only considered to be a state for some limited or special purpose. You deleted those sourced statements along with many others and said 'rv. for the nth time - "a court ruled that X is a state for the purpose of Y" != "X is a state"'. Then you came to the talk page and made it clear (once again) that you have never bothered to read the cited portions of Lauterpacht's International Law Reports or Whiteman's Digest, even though the applicable passages which mentioned the statehood of Palestine and Transjordan had been directly quoted. You said "Also, does that source say it specifically applies to Palestine? If not, you're engaging in OR."


 * According to Howard Grief, a legal advisor to the government of Israel, Article 22 [of the Treaty of Versailles] which established the Mandates System was the result of the Smuts Resolution. Grief said that the resolution was officially endorsed by the Council of Ten on January 30, 1919, "in which Palestine as envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was named as one of the mandated states to be created."
 * You and your friends cannot make the WP:Synth claim that a source which calls Palestine a "mandated territory" proves that it wasn't a state. Many countries consider a defined territory to be a constituent part of statehood. In 1924 the Secretary of the Colonies for Great Britain said that Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan were Mandated States. Within the space of a few lines, he also referred to them as mandated territories. See CAB 24/165, formerly C.P. 121 (24), page 1 (page 2 of 7 in the .pdf file) You and Ewawer can stop asking "so where is the statement that "Mandate Palestine was a state"?."  The article already included Lauterpacht's Law Report on the holding of the Mixed Courts of Egypt in the case involving the application of article 30 of the Treaty of Lausanne to Palestine. The court said that the former Ottoman territories which had been placed under mandate had the character of regular states. harlan (talk) 17:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

To HW - I could write more comments about HW's misleading remarks here, but I simply don't have the abundance of time he has. 79.177.45.157 (talk) 18:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Paul J. I. M. De Waart - you are using a quote from a page in a book which is not freely available. However, in a freely available official abstract, De Waart says the following: "Peoples with statehood -- the Iraqis, Somalis, Yugoslavs -- and even more those without -- the Palestinians -- paid a high price for the international lack of decisiveness." . So one thing is for sure: De Waart does not identify the British Mandate of Palestine with an Arab Palestinian state which the Arab Palestinians of our time seek to establish. Beside that, I cannot refer to a quotation which is not freely available, and which is not confirmed in other freely available sources. De Waart could be using a straw-man in this specific quotation. I would trust you unless I saw you misquote sources too many times.
 * 2) The Canadian province of Quebec has signed agreement for mutual cooperation with foreign sovereign states . Does it make the Province a state? Anyway, it is not described a state on Wikipedia, so perhaps you'd like to start there, citing Quigley's opinion which obviously affect the international status of this province.
 * 3) Territory vs. State terminology - When there is a reference to "states" and "territories" in the same context, then it is obvious that the "territories" are not "states", otherwise there would not have been a need to differentiate them terminologically. Furthermore, "state" like "territory" has various meanings. How can you tell whether the term "state" was used as in "sovereign state" or as in "State of New York"? If you cannot tell that with regard to the word "territories" how can you be sure about the word "states"?
 * 4) The problem is that you interpret Shabtai Rosenne's words rather then read them as they were written. Rosenne clearly makes a distinction between "international person" and a "state" (namely "international person" can be a dependency, and the case of Quebec mentioned above is a good example). You are not happy with this distinction - good for you, but you cannot impose your views on Shabtai Rosenne, nor can you impose it on Wikipedia.
 * 5) Your logic goes like this: if a source calls "Palestine" a state then it is reliable. If a source calls "Palestine" "a territory" or "a dependency" then it should not be trusted. Sorry, it doesn't work this way. What you're doing has a simple name in the English language, namely bias.
 * 6) You always prefer casual non-binding remarks of certain officials while rejecting official public statements. This is a very strange approach. Usually what people say publicly and officially is considered to have more weight than remarks they make in private talks, in non-binding personal writings etc.
 * 7) You seem to value legal debates and advices over historical documents and analyses. This article is first and foremost an article about history. Legal advices are not historical accounts. What you are doing is a bit like taking the Pope's preaches as a source about the life of Jesus. It is not. It is the Pope's/Catholic Church's view about the life of Jesus and its meaning. The actual life of Jesus are taught by historians and archaeologists.


 * You obviously don't have an abundance of relevant source material. My logic goes like this, I'm citing and quoting published sources that actually say Palestine was a state. Those sources are backed-up by legally binding court decisions. The court decisions themselves have also been published and analyzed by independent secondary sources. All of those sources can be readily verified by third parties. Your unpublished analogies, unsourced assertions, and personal attacks are not a proper subject for a Wikipedia article or a talk page discussion. Editors are always welcome to add opposing views that are reliably sourced, but you aren't attempting to do that. harlan (talk) 21:03, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't blame you for trying to defend yourself once your manipulations are exposed, and yet it is important to note that even in this apologia of yours there are some absurds: (i) "sources that actually say Palestine was a state" - what kind of state? Surely not a sovereign state. Maybe a state like the Australian state of New South Wales? What about the sources that say it was merely a dependency? Should they be ignored? (ii) "Those sources are backed-up by legally binding court decisions." - Is Wikipedia bound to such court decisions? Are you suggesting that Wikipedia should follow the ruling of a certain court about whether an entity is a state or not? If so, which court? In the US? In Israel? In Saudi Arabia? The ICC? The ICJ? (iii) "analyzed by independent secondary sources" - not exactly independent. In many cases the analyses you've brought were legal advices of jurists who serve a certain side in a conflict. (iv) "All of those sources can be readily verified by third parties" - They were, and most people who did that said you were wrong or at least inaccurate or inconsistent. "Editors are always welcome to add opposing views that are reliably sourced" - As long as your view is presented as facts while the opposing opinion as minor opinions. Finally, how would Wikipedia benefit from saying that the Mandate was a state, rather than administration, geopolitical entity, territory or any other more neutral and less committing term? The term "state" here won't make this article more legible, quite the contrary. People don't spend hours in libraries just to introduce one word into a Wikipedian article. What exactly is your motive here? 79.177.45.157 (talk) 07:33, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The State Department and Cambridge University Digest/Law Reports are independent secondary sources of analysis of the cases cited in the article. The relationship of Great Britain to Palestine was governed by international law. There is nothing devious about introducing published material that covers the international commitments and obligations regarding the creation of the mandated states of Palestine and Transjordan; their boundaries; public domains, and nationalities. I've supplied a number of sources that actually do support my edits, but you haven't been able to do that (which is pretty absurd). You keep raising the abstract concept of "sovereignty". However, you cited Ralph Wilde who said: "the racialized concept of a “standard of civilization” was deployed to determine that certain peoples in the world were “uncivilized”, lacking organized societies, a position reflected and constituted in the notion that their “sovereignty” was either completely lacking, or at least of an inferior character when compared to that of “civilized” peoples."


 * Prof. Crawford said that the creation of states in international organizations did not operate under that stigma of dependency. That is because the ultimate objective of the mandates was the self-determination of the peoples concerned after a brief period of tutelage. He said "The better view is that the concept of sovereignty was inapplicable to international regimes of divided competences such as the Mandate and Trusteeship systems: see esp. Judge McNair, sep. op., Status Opinion ICJ Rep. 1950, p. 128, 150" - Crawford Creation of States, page 336. The ICJ reaffirmed those same opinions regarding self-determination in the "Wall" case. harlan (talk) 09:13, 26 May 2010 (UTC)