Summary: Reading Time: 18 minutesOne of the consistent trends I’ve witnessed in studying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the way people’s perspectives of the conflict change as they get closer to it. You will see this among reporters and academics. Academics and reporters who teach about the topic often tend to be very pro-Israeli. Meanwhile, those reporters who live in the midst of the conflict and witness its day to day realities firsthand increasingly move to a pro-Palestinian position over the course of their reports. I mention this only to point out how after the Balfour Declaration and during the Palestine Mandate, the British followed this same path. They entered into the era of the Palestine Mandate with a spirit of pro-Zionism. By the end of it all, as they deserted Palestine after World War 2 they were not merely pro-Palestinian but they were anti-Israel. There were specific occasions and circumstances where the British made sure to arm some of the Arab groups with weapons as they left the country in the mid 1940s.<br> The Mandate would change the shape of British perspectives and also of Zionist and Arab perspectives on the ground. It was a time when the seeds of division transformed into the fruit of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<br> The Palestine Mandate<br> The Palestine Mandate was part of a whole system of mandates set up at the Paris Peace Conference that closed out World War I. The idea behind the mandate system was to get rid of the old system where great powers set up colonies and imperial holdings in conquered lands. Instead the people of the world would be given the gift of self-rule. All the groups of the world who wanted it could now have their own nation.<br> <br> The problem, as far as the leaders of the Paris Peace Conference were concerned, not all these people groups could handle immediate status as nations. Some of them had to go through a process of development and systems and infrastructure had to be built. The mandate system was the solution to this problem. The mandates were contrived to provide a system by which the new groups could evolve into nations under the tutelage of the great powers.<br> It is worth noting that it seemed the darker one’s skin was, in the sight of the European power brokers in Paris in 1919, the less capable a group was to rule themselves. According to the great powers light skinned people were ready for self-rule; darker skinned people no so much.<br> Initially the Palestine mandate was established to create a future state for both Palestinians and Jews. The British were going to help the two groups develop a system of self-government including both and it allow for a peaceful transition whenever the people were eventually ready for full statehood.<br> <br> From the very beginning both groups, the Palestinian Arabs and the Zionist Jews living in Palestine began organizing themselves. The Arabs developed a Muslim-Christian Association made up of representatives from all the major towns in Palestine. They held their first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem as early as 1919 with a specific statement of opposition to the Balfour Declaration.<br> The Jewish residents also set up their own local organization to represent the will and intent of the Jews living in Palestine. The Zionist Commission, as this came to be known, would be the official voice of Palestinian Jews even as they worked in conjunction with the larger World Zionist Organization to fulfill the ultimate aims of a Jewish State in Palestine.<br> The first British High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate, or British authority, was Herbert Samuel who arrived in 1920. Samuel was a British born Zionist Jews who had previous experience in British politics and policy but his appointment was immediately controversial and he found himself in a position where it was impossible to please the two parties that were growing increasingly belligerent toward one another.<br>
