Page 16 - SAN REMO 100_PREVIEW BOOKLET

British Failures

Why did Britain fail to fulfil its legal duties during the Mandate?

Col. Richard Kemp CBE
with Hugh Kitson

ust six weeks after the Balfour haunt the rest of British rule over
JDeclaration, General Sir Edmund “British military Palestine.
Allenby entered Jerusalem on 11th
December 1917 and took control administrators were The British government reacted
of the city. Two days earlier the by disbanding the military
Turks had surrendered and left, Arabists, opposed administration, and appointing the
leaving the city with a vacuum to the Balfour Jewish former Home Secretary,
of governance. General Allenby Sir Herbert Samuel, as High
immediately began to set up a Declaration” Commissioner of Palestine. He, in
British military administration. turn, appointed Haj Amin as Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, thinking that the
When, in 1918, Chaim Weizmann administration led by the Military appointment would moderate him.
as leader of the Zionist Organisation Governor in Jerusalem, General It had the opposite effect.
first visited Jerusalem, he found that Bols, encouraged a local Arab Another pogrom in Jaffa saw 43
the British military administration Islamist, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, to Jews killed. The Mufti was at the
was less than enthusiastic about instigate a pogrom in the Old City, centre of the coordinated pogroms
the Zionist cause. Many of Allenby’s and created favourable conditions
staff had been brought up from for him to do so. The officers told
Cairo and elsewhere in the Arab Haj Amin that if the bloodshed was
world, and were fundamentally of sufficient magnitude then both
opposed to implementing the British General Bols and General Allenby
government’s policy enshrined in would advocate the abandonment
the Balfour Declaration. of the Jewish National Home.
Nevertheless, the pogrom failed in
Two weeks before the San Remo its attempt to torpedo the outcome
Conference in April 1920, a group of the San Remo Conference, but a
of senior army officers in the precedent had been set that would

14 SAN REMO 100