The history of how the Mandate for Palestine was "granted" to Great Britain, of how its purposes were defined, and its text was drawn up and made to incorporate the Balfour Declaration is merely a repetition or a continuation of that related in the first part of this pamphlet. The Mandate was just the appropriate means devised to give effect to the Balfour Declaration, and it was devised in the same way and the same people and for the same ends as that document. It was devised under the influence of the Zionist leaders and their friends and collaborators in London and New York, and to all intents and purposes in the total absence of the Arabs and without any honest thought being given to their indisputable position and rights in Palestine.
As we have seen, when the scheme to hand Palestine to the Zionists was hatched in London and New York in 1916 and 1917, it was decided - and this was long before the end of the war and the birth of the League of Nations and its Mandates - that Britain should occupy Palestine after the war and carry out the policy envisaged in the Balfour Declaration. This was what the Zionists wanted. Their whole scheme indeed depended on it, since it was clear that the National Home would not be established unless one of the Great Powers occupied Palestine and helped the Zionists to colonize it under its protection. For various reasons England d had been cast for this role by the Zionist leaders with the approval of America and the other Allied Powers. For her part Britain was not averse to the scheme, since it suited her Imperial interests that she should occupy Palestine. Even before the war Britain and France, anticipating the demise of the Sick Man of Europe had begun tentatively to stake their claims to the succession. It was generally assumed that when the Ottoman Empire broke up, France would secure Syria and the Lebanon, and Britain Palestine and Iraq. It is true that under the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 an international administration was envisaged for Palestine, but Britain was no keen on this idea and Zionist scheme, requiring an exclusively British occupation of the country, suited here admirably.
When the war, however, came to an end, and the League of Nations appeared on the scene with such new ideas as the Mandatory system, it became necessary to camouflage the old realities with new phrases. Instead of Britain and France simply occupying these countries, they had not to be given "Mandates" for them to emanating from the League of Nations, but as the Council of the League of Nations was almost identical with the Supreme Allied Council which represented the Great Powers, this did not entail any difficulties, or any change in what had already been or was about to be decided by the Great Powers in pursuit of their interests and traditional policies. True, the Mandatory system as conceived by Wilson and formulated in theory required that the wishes of the peoples of the countries concerned the Covenant of the League of Nations recognized in principle the independence of the Arab countries of the Ottoman Empire. But this as we shall see, was not allowed to stand in the way of the normal course of power politics and Imperial interests. The conditions laid down in theory were simply not observed in practice.