# Talk:Mandate for Palestine

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Description of suggested change:
After current text - "The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was passed on 29 November 1947; this envisaged the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states operating under economic union, and with Jerusalem transferred to UN trusteeship. Two weeks later, British Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced that the British Mandate would end on 15 May 1948"
Add - "In April 1948, Ben Gurion ... Knowing the British mandate in Palestine would end on May 14th, and believing the pieces of Palestine scheduled to be ceded to Israel were too small and scattered, he ordered his army Haganah to take Haifa, Safed, Acre, and Jaffa, even before the Declaration of Independence was published.... lands that the UN intended to allocate to the Palestinians were seized by Haganah" - Donald Akenson (God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster, Chapter 8, page 232)
Diff:

 2600:1700:6F20:9530:9F5:D04:C8C3:588B (talk) 05:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template. SI09 (talk) 01:19, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

The article is inacurate and  misleading. According to the minutes of San Remo conference, the region is split in three territories: Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. The Parties to the conference agree to use the Sykes-Picot line to delimit the border of Palestine. The Parties also formally agree to "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the jewish people". At the time of the San Remo conference, the term "Palestine" is used to refers to the territories on both sides of the Jordan.
The distinction between "Mandatory Palestine" and "Transjordan" appears only later in September 1922 in the memorendum transmited by the United Kingdom to the League of Nations. This distinction is used to split "Palestine" in two smaller territories, including Transjordan that will pave the way to establish the Jordany as a separate State. Making a distinction among the two territories in 1920 or in the context of San Remo is an anachronism. 2A02:1210:5839:2F00:728D:DF25:504E:3D22 (talk) 11:43, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

This has been discussed in detail in the past, as these claims are fuelled by 90-100 year old propaganda that has since been debunked, but occasionally resurface. The academic sources, and the San Remo minutes themselves, confirm that your core statements are incorrect. I suggest you don’t waste any more of your time until you have read them all for yourself. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:31, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
As Once says, this is incorrect. The Sykes-Picot B line was proposed by the French rep as the eastern boundary of Palestne, but the conference only agreed that the Principal Powers would negotiate the boundaries. In any case, a quick look at the Sykes-Picot agreement shows that the French proposal would exclude Transjordan. Zerotalk 12:57, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Hi all.
MOS:ELLAYOUT says:

"External links" should be plural, even if it lists only a single item.

Please somebody rename the section, as I can't yet. Thanks!

 Done Day Creature (talk) 19:50, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

The second map in the right-hand column should be deleted or updated to a factual one. The Palestine Mandate (not the "British Mandate for Palestine") did not include Jordan as of 1923, since Jordan had been separated out the year before. The map is even contradicted by the text below it. Mcdruid (talk) 23:55, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The "British Mandate for Palestine" was a legal instrument, not a region, and this is written on the map. In fact it did cover Transjordan until 1946, even though most of the administration in Palestine and Transjordan was separate. The fact that "Palestine" was only a part of what the legal instrument covered is the source of endless confusion (not all of it accidental). Zerotalk 03:18, 16 August 2025 (UTC)
Nope. Transjordan was not part of the Mandate as of when it began in 1923.
On 16 September 1922, the League of Nations approved a British memorandum detailing its intended implementation of the clause excluding Transjordan from the articles related to Jewish settlement.[173] When the memorandum was submitted to the Council of the League of Nations, Balfour explained the background; according to the minutes, "Lord Balfour reminded his colleagues that Article 25 of the mandate for Palestine as approved by the Council in London on July 24th, 1922, provides that the territories in Palestine which lie east of the Jordan should be under a somewhat different regime from the rest of Palestine ... The British Government now merely proposed to carry out this article. It had always been part of the policy contemplated by the League and accepted by the British Government, and the latter now desired to carry it into effect. In pursuance of the policy, embodied in Article 25, Lord Balfour invited the Council to pass a series of resolutions which modified the mandate as regards those territories. The object of these resolutions was to withdraw from Trans-Jordania the special provisions which were intended to provide a national home for the Jews west of the Jordan."
---
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Palestine_Mandate_(1922)
The following provisions of the Mandate for Palestine are not applicable to the territory known as Trans-Jordan, which comprises all territory lying to the east of a line drawn from a point two miles west of the town of Akaba on the Gulf of that name up the centre of the Wady Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan to its junction with the River Yarmuk ; thence up the centre of that river to the Syrian Frontier."
-----
http://www.danielpipes.org/298/is-jordan-palestine
The complete explanation
## 
Stone also fails to mention that when the state of Jordan was provided
for in 1922, the Turkish territories had not yet been given over to the Allies. This cession occurred only in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne.20
All pre-1923 maneuverings represent at best statements of intent, not binding commitments. When the Allied powers met in the League of Nations, they decided that the initial plan to include all of the land formerly under Turkish hegemony in one mandate proved unworkable and decided on administrative grounds to split the lands east of the Jordan River from the Mandate.
-----
On 16th September, 1922, the Council of the League agreed that those provisions of the Mandate relating to the establishment of a Jewish national home should not apply to Transjordan, which was thereafter separately administered until it became an independent State.  http://www.religion-science-peace.org/2015/06/19/british-government-statement-on-the-end-of-the-palestine-mandate/
With additional commentary here: https://mondoweiss.net/2015/08/independent-sovereign-palestine
----
Do you want another half dozen or so references? Mcdruid (talk) 06:07, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

I feel it would be a good idea to add a link for (René?) Viviani as especially in context his role is unclear - particularly with an Italian sounding surname Microxstephn (talk) 16:18, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

 Done Yes, it was René: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/jewishweekly?a=d&d=JW19220804.2.6&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------  Lova Falk (talk) 12:22, 13 September 2025 (UTC)