2.
3.
4.
Table 1.1: British Mandate Policies and their Respective Tools and Impact
Policy
Tools
Impact
Changing the
Demographic
Composition
of Palestine
• The Balfour Declaration (1917) and the
Mandate for Palestine (1922) – under the
preamble, Article 2, and Article 4 – set
the establishment of a Jewish nation-al
home to be of paramount importance,
which included the facilitation of Jewish
migration and settlement in Palestine.4
• Article 7 of the Mandate for Palestine
tasked the Administration of Palestine
to enact a nationality law, which helped
facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian
citizenship by Jews who took up their
per-manent residence in Palestine.5 This
culminated in the Citizenship Order of
1925 and the 1928 Land (Settlement of
Title) Order.6
• Jewish population drastically increased from 8 percent at
the end of the Ottoman era (1914)7 to ≈31 percent at the
end of the British Mandate due to illegal immigration and
settlement.8
• The number of people who acquired Palestinian
citizenship by naturalization was 132,616; around 99
percent of them were Jewish.9
• Because of severe British suppression, some 40,000
Palestinians fled the country during the mid-1930s.10
• It is estimated that 60,000 Palestinians were living,
working, or studying abroad prior to 1925 and therefore
were not allowed to claim Palestinian citizenship.11
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Mandate for Palestine (signed 12 August 1922) C. 529. M. 314. 1922. VI. [hereinafter League of Nations, Mandate for
Palestine] <https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-201057/> accessed 3 October 2022.
Ibid; see also Mutaz M Qafisheh, ‘Genesis of Citizenship in Palestine and Israel: Palestinian Nationality in the 19171925 Period’ (2010) 21 Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem <https://journals.openedition.org/
bcrfj/6405#quotation> accessed 3 October 2022.
Moses Doukhan, Laws of Palestine, 1918-1925: Including Orders in Council, Ordinances, Regulations, Rules of Court, Public
Notices, Proclamations, etc., Arranged in Alphabetical and Chronological Order with an Index (vol 2, L.M. Rotenberg 1933-34).
See ‘Table 2.2 – Population of Palestine in 1918, Projected Back from 1922 Census Figures’, as corrected in Justin
McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (Columbia University
Press 1990), 26.
Ibid, 37.
Ibid.
Rony Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict: The Arab Refugee Problem (A Case Study) (E Droz 1959), 66.
Out of 9,000 citizenship applications from Palestinians outside the country, British officials approved only 100. Based
on an average family size of six persons, more than 50,000 Palestinians may have been affected; see United Kingdom
(UK) Secretary of State for the Colonies, Palestine Royal Commission Report, (Cmd. 5479, HMSO 1937), 331 <https://
palestinianmandate.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cm-5479.pdf>. For a description of the problem facing Bethlehem
families, see: Adnan A Musallam, Developments in Politics, Society, Press and Thought in Bethlehem in the British Era 1917-1948
(WIAM Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center 2002).
3
1
Changing the demographic composition of Palestine and subsequent facilitation
of Zionist-Jewish settlement, including their nationalization while de-nationalizing
Palestinians;
Transferring the use and ownership of lands in Palestine to Zionist organizations,
agencies, and individuals;
Supporting Zionist militias;
Developing Zionist institutions and communities while inducing the de-development
of Palestinian communities.
Chapter
1.