Mandatory Palestine

Palestine
1920–1948
Flag Public Seal[1]
Mandatory Palestine in 1946
Status	Mandate of the United Kingdom
Capital	Jerusalem
Common languages	English, Arabic, Hebrew
Religion	Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Baháʼí Faith, Druze faith
Demonym(s)	Palestinian
High Commissioner
• 1920–1925 (first)	Sir Herbert L. Samuel
• 1945–1948 (last)	Sir Alan Cunningham
Legislature
• Parliamentary body of the Muslim community	Supreme Muslim Council
• Parliamentary body of the Jewish community	Assembly of Representatives
Historical era	Interwar period Second World War Cold War
• Mandate assigned	25 April 1920
• Britain officially assumes control	29 September 1923
• Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel	14 May 1948
Area
• Total	25,585.3 km2 (9,878.5 sq mi)[2]
Population
• Census	757,182 (1922)[3]
Currency	Egyptian pound (until 1927) Palestine pound (from 1927)
ISO 3166 code	PS
Preceded by Succeeded by Occupied Enemy Territory Administration Israel Jordanian annexation of the West Bank All-Palestine Protectorate
Today part of	Israel Palestine

Mandatory Palestine^[a][4] was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

After an Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire arose during the First World War in 1916, British forces drove Ottoman forces out of the Levant.^[5] The United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence in case of a revolt but, in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided what had been Ottoman Syria under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs. Another issue was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which Britain promised its support for the establishment of a Jewish "national home" in Palestine. Mandatory Palestine was then established in 1920, and the British obtained a Mandate for Palestine from the League of Nations in 1922.^[6]

During the Mandate, the area saw successive waves of Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both the Jewish and Arab communities. Competing interests of the two populations led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine and the 1944–1948 Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine to divide the territory into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, was passed in November 1947. The 1948 Palestine war ended with the territory of Mandatory Palestine divided among the State of Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which annexed territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Kingdom of Egypt, which established the "All-Palestine Protectorate" in the Gaza Strip.

Mandatory Palestine was designated as a Class A Mandate, based on its social, political, and economic development. This classification was reserved for post-war mandates with the highest capacity for self-governance.^[7] All Class A mandates other than mandatory Palestine had gained independence by 1946.^[8]

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