British Mandate For Palestine

British Mandate For Palestine

Mandatory Palestine or the British Mandate of Palestine (English: Palestine; Arabic: فلسطين‎ Filasţīn; Hebrew: פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א"י) Palestína (EY), where "EY" indicates "Eretz Yisrael") was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948.

In 1917, during the First World War, Britain defeated the Ottoman forces and occupied and set up a military administration, named Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, across the former Ottoman Syria. The land remained under British military administration for the remainder of the war, and beyond. The British sought to set up legitimacy for their continued control of the region and this was achieved by obtaining a mandate from the League of Nations in June 1922. The formal objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone." The civil Mandate administration was formalized with the League of Nations' consent in 1923 under the British Mandate for Palestine, which covered two administrative areas. The land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948, while the land east of the Jordan was a semi-autonomous region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz, and gained independence in 1946.

Through the British Mandate period, the area experienced the ascent of two major nationalist movements, one among the Jews and the other among the Arabs. Competition and collision of those nationalist movements have had a significant impact on the history of that period, with violence peaking especially high during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 and the Civil War of 1947-1948. World War II had made little direct impact on life in Mandatory Palestine, but its indirect effects eventually led to the sectarian Civil War and eventual British evacuation.

The aftermath of the Civil War and the consequent Arab-Israeli War of 1948 led to the establishment of 1949 cease fire, with partition of the former Mandatory Palestine between the newborn Israel with Jewish majority, the West Bank annexed by Jordanian Kingdom and the Arab All-Palestine Government in Gaza Strip under military occupation of Egypt.