60. Did the Arabs and the Jews agree on the British occupying Palestine?

The British Mandate over Palestine, given by the League of Nations, was not a “classic” model of colonialism. The precursor of the UN clearly stated that the British should help the local people to develop until they reached their independence, according to the “Balfour Declaration”. In other words, the British began their mandate favoring the Jews because they were ordered to by the authorities that gave them the power to govern these lands. The original policy of the British Mandate was, in fact, to open Jewish immigration, but it did not produce a massive arrival. When the migratory wave increased, so did the Arab discontentment manifestations, and the English began a restrictive policy that would become harder just when the entry of the immigrants was needed the most because of the deterioration of the European situation. The Arab violence provoked the British authorities to gradually retrieve from their commitment to the League of Nations. The demographic relation indicates that the Jewish population reached 11.14% of the population in 1922, to 16.90% in 1931, 27.91% in 1939 and 32.96% in 1945. If there were no more Jews it was because the British did not issue the immigration certificates, limiting the arrival of Jews. In 1922, the Arabs who lived in the region received 76.5% of the British Mandate territory in Palestine (120,000 km2) to form another Arab kingdom, Jordan. In other words, Palestine had already been divided by the British for the benefit of the Arabs. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict occurs in that remaining 23.5%, where the United Nations decided to give the Jews a little over 10% of the 120,000 km2. The Arab-Palestinians did not accept any concession and began a war against Great Britain in 1936.