The next stage was that of drafting the Covenant of the League of Nations and the texts of the Mandates. The two men who had more to do with the framing of the Covenant and the formation of the Mandatory system than anyone else - General Smuts and Lord Cecil - were both ardent pro-Zionists. This alone was enough to ensure the success of the Zionists during this phase of the proceedings, to ensure in fact that the universal principles of the Mandatory system should not be applied to Palestine; that an exception should be made of Palestine in order that the Zionist scheme, which would have been categorically precluded by these principles, should be carried out. This is clearly seen in a paper written by General Smuts for the Peace Conference outlining the nature of the Mandatory system.
"I would begin", said the author of this Memorandum, "by making the following recommendations:-
"That as far as the peoples and territories formerly belonging to Russia, Austria - Hungary and Turkey are concerned, the League of Nations should be considered as Reversionary in the most general sense and as clothed with the right of ultimate disposal in accordance with certain fundamental principles. These principles are first that there shall be no annexation of these territories to any of the victorious states, that in the future government of these territories and peoples the rule of self-determination or the consent of the governed to their government shall be fairly and reasonably applied". This was a clear and admirable statement of universal principles. But the principles enunciated in it would have clearly kept the Zionists out of Palestine, and General Smuts wanted the Zionists in Palestine, so he had to invent a reason for the exclusion of Palestine from the operation of these universal principles. This is how he did it:- "There will be found cases where, owing chiefly to the heterogeneous character of the population and their incapacity for administrative co-operation, autonomy in a real sense would be out of the question, and the administration would have to be undertaken to a very large extent by some external authority. This would be the case, at any rate for some tome to come, in Palestine, where the administrative co-operation of the Jewish minority and of the Arab majority would not be forthcoming", and again "there will however be cases such as Palestine . . . , where for reasons above referred to, an autonomous regime cannot be adopted at the start, and where the consultation of the country on the question of its Mandatory state is therefore not formally possible. Even in such cases the League will, as far as possible, follow the trend of popular opinion".
Either General Smuts, let it be bluntly stated, was completely ignorant of the facts with regard to Palestine and therefore totally unfitted to express any opinion on the matter, or he knew the facts and deliberately tried to distort them. There can be no other explanation of his describing the population of Palestine as of a heterogeneous character and therefore incapable of administrative co-operation. For the population of Palestine, the natural population of the country before the Zionist invasion which General Smuts and his friends were planning, had started, was anything but heterogeneous. It was as homogeneous as any population can be, and more so than that of many countries which have for long been independent national states. That population was entirely Arab with the e exception of a small Jewish Community no larger than that to be found in any other country. There was as yet no question whatever of an Arab Majority and a Jewish minority whose administrative co-operation could not be secured. It was the design of General Smuts and his friends to make the population of Palestine artificially heterogeneous and to create a Jewish minority which would refuse to co-operate with the Arabs and oppose autonomy until it became the majority. The describe the population of Palestine as heterogeneous before all this happened was nothing but an ingenious and unworthy proleptic trick. What General Smuts' argument amounts to in plain honest words, is this: "As we are determined go force a large immigrant Jewish population on the Arabs in Palestine, and as it is manifest that the Arabs will not acquiesce in this invasion of their country and that, if they had a government of their own, they would prevent it, then clearly we cannot allow them a government of their own but must deny them all autonomy and hold them down so that our purpose may be accomplished".
We have analysed General Smuts' statement in such detail because it reveals in an unmistakable way the workings not only of his own mind but of the minds of almost all the European and American champions of Zionism who at that time were presiding over the peace settlement. It reveals the mixture of ignorance and dishonesty, the distortion and casuistry, the tricks of pretences, by which the people of Palestine were to be dispossessed any by which a cloak of morality was to be thrown over their real fate to hide its ugly nakedness.
As we have seen, the Mandate for Palestine was awarded to Britain not by the League of Nations but by the Supreme Allied Council, that is to say, Britain appropriated the Mandate with the consent of the major Powers. The role of the League of Nations was to be confined to a formal endorsement later in the day, and under circumstances which did not give the Assembly, that is to say the League as a whole, any say in the matter, but confined in practice the power of composing and allocating the Mandates to the Council of the League, a body that was almost identical with the Supreme Allied Council consisting as it did of the major Allies of the war. Thus the limitation of the Mandatories' authority could now only proceed from the Mandatories themselves. Moreover this arrogation by the Council of the League of all authority relating to the Mandates was effected without the leave of the Assembly, and therefore of the vast majority of League members. It was effected by the simple process of the Council defining that all the "members of the League" meant itself alone.
When it came to the drafting of the Mandates, the Council of the League obligingly enquired of the principal Allied Powers (that is to say, of itself) "what degree of authority, administration or control they suggest that the Council should confer upon the Mandatory Powers under the terms of paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 22". Where upon the principal Allied Powers wrote back (again, that is to say' to themselves) to offer their suggestions for the power they were to enjoy.
The actual text of the Mandate for Palestine, like that of the Balfour Declaration, was drafted by the Zionist leaders themselves in collaboration with the British Government, and then was issued under cover of the League of Nations' name, as though it were the result of the collective debates of the world's law-givers. As early as the spring of 19191 the experts of the British Delegation to the Peace Conference in Paris opened informal discussions with representatives of the Zionist Organization on the draft of the mandate for Palestine. The Zionists appointed special committees for the purpose which included Dr. Weizmann, Mr. Sokolov and Sir Herbert Samuel. The chief drafter seems to have been Professor Frankfurter who prepared a number of alternative texts. The Zionist proposals were then handed to the British Delegation and were largely embodied in its first tentative draft. For several weeks drafts and counter-drafts were prepared by and exchanged between the Zionist leaders and the British Delegation. As in the case of the Balfour Declaration, the British representatives resisted some of the Zionist demands, notably those which they thought might reveal too much at that early stage, but in the main accepted the bulk and substance of the Zionist proposals.
The history of one particular clause is worth mentioning here, because it reveals the extreme doubtfulness of the thesis on which the entire Zionist claim to Palestine was based by the Zionist and apparently conceded by Britain and the Allied Powers. In the Balfour Declaration there was no mention whatever of the Jewish historical connection with Palestine and no suggestion that this connection constituted any basis for establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine. In that document the British Government had merely, as we have seen, declared that they viewed with favour the establishment of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine and offered their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that object. But this was not enough for the Zionist, who wanted the National Home they were planning to be based on something that would apparently at least give them a right or a title to it of some moral validity, something beyond a mere offer by the British Government or the Allied Powers. They wanted in fact that the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate should appear at least as the public recognition of a right inherent in the Jewish people. When it came to the drafting of the Mandate therefore, the Zionist leaders inserted a clause into the Preamble to the effect that Britain, by issuing the Balfour Declaration and the allied Powers by endorsing it, had "given recognition to the historical title of the Jewish people to Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their National Home in the country". In the successive drafts that were prepared, this clause kept appearing and disappearing alternately as the result of the revision of the text by the British Delegation, an oscillation on the part of the British Government which, to say the least of it, indicated how doubtful they were about the validity and reasonableness of the Zionist claim, and about the wisdom of their accepting it as a basis for what they had undertaken to do. Eventually the Zionists had their way in principle, if not in detail. The clause was retained, but the phrase "historical title" changed into "historical connection".
Throughout these proceedings, be it noted, the Arabs were never consulted. The Mandate, which ostensibly at least, contained two sets of obligations to be undertaken by Britain, the one towards the Jews and the other towards the Arabs, the actual people of the country, was concocted entirely by the Zionist leaders and the British Government as a private family concern without any notice being taken of the third party.
When the final text had been agreed upon, it was considered and passed
by the British Cabinet, after which Lord Balfour sent it with a covering
letter to the Secretary-General of the Legue of Nations.
The hypocirisy of the little tragic farce which was being thus enacted
can be berst illustrated by quoting what Mr. J.M.N. Jeffries has to say
on these proceedings in his book, "Palestine: The Reality". "It is", he
says "worth considering for a moment what was the status of this letter
(i.e., Lord Balfour's communication to the Secretary-General of the Legue
of Nations). Its sender acted on behalf of the British Government which
acted on behalf of the Surpeme Council of the Allied Powers. Letters passing
from the Surpeme Allied Council to the Council of the League of Nations
had the air of passing from one international body to another international
body, the twain being aloof, disinterested and unrelated to each other.
But in reality they were intertwined. . . It is unnecessary to enlarge
upon Balfour's presence in the Legue Council, and his close connection
with the Supreme Council. The League Council in the affairs of Palestine
was an orchestra which he conducted. The Suprme Council in the affairs
of Palestine. . . was nothing but an alias of Mr. Lloyd George's and he
in Palestine affairs was one with Lord Balfour. So in truth there is scarcely
an exaggeration in saying that when His Majesty's Government acting on
behalf of the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers, was pompously proclaimed
as submitting the draft Mandates for palestine and for Mesopotamia to the
Council of the League of Nations, little more occurred than that Lord Balfour
sent the draft Mandates for approval to Lord Balfour. . . Balfour despatched
the Mandate from his desk, pursued it, caught it up in the Council Chamber,
and surpassed any farce on the stage by having its contents laid before
him, and in a covering letter "ventureing to hope" that what he had drawn
up "would satisfy" himself".
It is worth mentioning here that the minutes of the Council meeting during which Lord Balfour's letter came to hand are omitted from the records of the Council. It is worth mentioning that the draft Mandate was not published in England. There were requests for its publication in the House of Commons, but Mr. Lloyd George stated that there would be no publication till it was known what action the Council of the League intended to take in the matter.
In Geneva the arrival of the draft produced an unexpected result.
The Assembly of the League reacting against the tricks by which its fight
to decide on the tgerms of Mandates had been appropirated by the Council
of the League, met and requested the Council to communicate to it the draft
Mandates received from Lord Balfour. The Council refused. The Sub-Committee
set up by the Assembly to examine the Mandates in detail made a second
appeal, but all it could obtain was that the texts of the Mandates were
communicated to its Chairman "confidentially". The Committee members might
read the drafts, but the drafts must not be laid before them in an official
manner permitting comment. Still less would alteration of them be permitted.
The Assembly was only able to send general recommendations concerning the
Mandates to the Council. These recommendations all implied criticism of
the Council's attitude and the general manner in which the whole question
of Mandates had been hanled. The most important of them were the following:
Thus not only the Arabs but the majority of the countries represented in the League of Nations had had no say in the drafting of the Mandate and knew nothing about its terms before it had been enacted by the small group of Powers which constituted the Council of the League. Tis fact should be remembered every time the Zionist propangists reiterate their hackneyed phrase about the Mandate having been given to Britain by "52 nations" in order that she should establish in Palestine a Jewish state.