Britain and the League of Nations: Was There Ever a Mandate for Palestine?
Keywords: 
League of Nations
British Mandate
Zionism
sovereignty
Balfour Declaration
Treaty of Sèvres
Treaty of Lausanne
belligerent occupation
Abstract: 

Upon capturing Palestine in December 1917, Britain assumed the role of belligerent occupant, and therefore, it had no power to alter the legal order of the country, which it nonetheless did in 1920. In order to grant itself full power of governance over Palestine, Britain drew up the “Mandate for Palestine,” a document in which it declared its aim of promoting a Jewish “national home” in Palestine. This article examines this and other documents from the 1920s to argue that Britain did not have the legal grounding to alter its status as belligerent occupant, and that the League of Nations never took a position on Jewish territorial rights or on the legality of Britain’s governance of Palestine. It argues further that the United Nations misread this history in 1947 when it took the Mandate for Palestine as a commitment of its predecessor to Jewish territorial rights in Palestine, and thus, as a basis for recommending the partition of Palestine.

Author biography: 

John Quigley is a professor emeritus at Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University. He is author of The Legality of a Jewish State: A Century of Debate over Rights in Palestine (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021) and of Britain and Its Mandate over Palestine: Legal Chicanery on a World Stage (London: Anthem Press, 2022).