The British Mandate Charter on Palestine: Content and Substance

Abstract

This research provides a critical analysis of the British Mandate for Palestine, highlighting how it served as a legal and political instrument to implement the Balfour Declaration and establish a Jewish national home at the expense of the Palestinian Arab population. Approved by the League of Nations in 1922, the Mandate's text was crafted in alignment with Zionist objectives, deliberately omitting any recognition of the Arabs’ political rights and referring to them merely as “non-Jewish communities.” The study outlines how the Mandate facilitated Jewish immigration, granted them Palestinian citizenship, and recognized the Zionist Jewish Agency as an official advisory body—without establishing a parallel Arab agency. Ultimately, the Mandate is depicted as a colonial tool that legalized dispossession and settlement, making national resistance a just and necessary response.