Palestine,
variously known in history as Canaan, Judaea, Eretz Yisrael, Filastin,
and Syria Palaestina, has long been a malleable geographical entity.
Renamed by its successive Canaanite, Israelite, Roman, Christian,
Mamluk, Muslim, Ottoman, and British conquerors, it became the revered
"Holy Land" to 19th-century Western visitors.
World
War I transformed geographical nomenclature. On November 2, 1917,
British Foreign Secretary Lord James Balfour issued his famous
declaration proclaiming his government's approval for "the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." But where was
"Palestine"?
After
violent Arab riots during 1920-21, the British government attempted to
mollify infuriated opponents of a "Jewish Palestine." Winston
Churchill, British secretary of state for the colonies, offered
reassurance that the Balfour Declaration did not contemplate "that
Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home,
but that such a home should be founded in Palestine."
If
not "Palestine as a whole," then where? The League of Nations Mandate
for Palestine, approved in July 1924, provided contradictory answers.
Article 6 assured "close settlement by Jews on the land" defined as
Palestine. But Article 25 retracted that assurance. In convoluted
language, it declared: "In the territories lying between the Jordan
[River] and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined,
the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the
League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such
provisions of the Mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the
existing local conditions."
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