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ONE DAY IN LONDON HALF A CENTURY AGO I MET Herbert Samuel at his home on Porchester Terrace--I had a letter of introduction from my father. Another day I heard Winston Churchill speak in Parliament. These personal memories of men who had played central roles in the Palestine Mandate move me now to look back at that formative era, and consider what bearings it may have on territorial changes now under way.
On June 30, 1920, the British military administration of "Occupied Enemy Territory (South)," headquartered in Jerusalem terminated, and next day Sir Herbert Samuel assumed full control as first high commissioner of the Palestine Mandate. Then fifty, he had already achieved distinction being the first professing Jew in the cabinet (starting 1909), holding office in the Liberal government nine years, and in late 1914 writing a memorandum to the cabinet entitled "The Future of Palestine," which impressed Prime Minister Asquith, David Lloyd George (prime minister starting 1916), Lord Milner (then secretary for war), and Sir Mark Sykes (Middle East adviser), thus influencing the Balfour Declaration to come three years later.
Before the British general in command relinquished responsibility he asked the commissioner for a receipt for the territory being surrendered to him, and Samuel obliged with a note written by hand, "Received from Major General Sir Louis Bols one Palestine, complete. E.& O.E."(1) When his term ended five years later, this eminent British public servant left a Palestine far from "complete," in fact a remnant of the original Mandate, with over three-quarters of its territory stripped away, and the remaining land available for a "national home for the Jewish people" torn by Arab riots inflamed by a rabidly hostile grand mufti. What had happened to lead to the near dismantling of the Mandate and destruction of the Yishuv before they were hardly launched, with consequences to this day?
A Hearty Welcome Home
What had happened was first that Winston Spencer Churchill came out to Cairo and Jerusalem in March 1921 to rearrange the Middle East. He had grown restless in his job as war secretary and air minister, and asked Lloyd George for a change. He wanted Exchequer, but his disastrous anti-Red forays in Russia had raised storms in war-weary England, and the prime...