July 24 this year will mark the centenary of the ratification of the British Mandate over the territory then known as Palestine. While most people in the Jewish communities around the world know something about the British Mandate—especially in Israel—not many Christians know about it, and only a tiny percentage of people in the general public have any knowledge of it at all. So, what is the Mandate for Palestine and why is it so important? We will be examining this question in a series of six articles, beginning with this one.
What led to the Mandate?
The Mandate for Palestine was one of a number of Mandates that were formed after the First World War to enable people living in what would be perceived today as ‘Third World’ countries to prepare themselves for self-determination and independence. These were countries or territories in various parts of the world, mainly in Africa and Latin America, but also in the territory that had been under the control of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. Included in those Mandates was the Mandate for Palestine, which we will examine in detail in forthcoming articles. But first, we need to backtrack a bit and examine what led to the Mandate for Palestine.
There were two major milestones preceding this particular Mandate. The first one was the vision encapsulated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The second one was the Resolution that came out of the San Remo Conference of 1920, which itself was an adjunct of the Paris Peace conference of 1919.
From Vision to International Law
Chaim Weizmann (then leader of the Zionist movement and who would later become the first President of the State of Israel), addressing the annual Zionist conference in July 1920, described the San Remo Resolution as “the most momentous political event in the whole history of our movement and it is perhaps no exaggeration to say in the whole history of our people since the exile.”
Across the Atlantic, the Zionist Organisation of America declared: “that the decision of the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers [in other words, the San Remo Resolution] crowned the British declaration [which was, of course, the Balfour Declaration] by enacting it as part of the Law of Nations of the world.”
The San Remo Resolution of April 1920, in many respects, is even more significant to the Jewish people than the Balfour Declaration of November 1917. The Balfour Declaration, in legal terms, was nothing more than a statement of Government policy. The San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine that resulted from it, both of which encapsulated the Balfour Declaration, raised it to the legal status of an international treaty.
The San Remo Resolution, and the Mandates that resulted from it, were not isolated events. There was a back-story—especially as far as the Mandate for Palestine is concerned—that continues to have both prophetic and spiritual ramifications to this day, both now and into the future.
Biblical Title Deed to the Land
Most Christians, who share God’s love for Israel and the Jewish people, know that the title deed to the land, originally known as the land of Canaan, as being the sole inheritance of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob forever. It is referred to many times in the Hebrew Bible.
…in 1920 the Lord did a remarkable thing. He enshrined that ancient ‘title deed’ into international law in the modern era
The best example is found in Genesis 15, where the Lord entered into an unconditional covenant with Abraham, especially regarding the land that became known as Israel. Behind the scene at San Remo in 1920 the Lord did a remarkable thing. He enshrined that ancient ‘title deed’ into international law in the modern era. The ratification of the Mandate for Palestine in July 1922, and its subsequent implementation in 1923, was the blueprint for its realisation.
Theodor Herzl’s Vision
The Balfour Declaration was the vital stepping-stone to that happening. However, what became known as the Balfour Declaration was not an isolated event either. We need to rewind back even further to the 1890s, when there was a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe. This was epitomised by the Dreyfus Affair in France, when a Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of treason because he was Jewish. Among those reporting on the trial was a Jewish Vienna-based journalist. His name was Theodor Herzl.
Herzl came to realise that only persecution lay ahead for the Jewish people in Europe, and in 1896 he published a booklet entitled Der Judenstaat—The Jewish State. The following year, 1897, Herzl organised the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, where he predicted there would be a Jewish State within 50 years. In 1900 the Zionist Congress was held in London, where Herzl said: “Zionism demands a publicly recognised and legally secured home in Palestine for the Jewish people. This platform, which we drew up three years ago, is unchangeable.”
The Christian Vision
Alongside Theodor Herzl in his quest to establish a Jewish state in the ancestral home of the Jewish people was a Christian Anglican minister who was Chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna. His name was William Hechler, and in many respects he was as ‘Zionist’ as Herzl himself.
Hechler was by no means the first ‘Christian Zionist’. In Britain the expectation of the restoration of the Jewish people to their ancient Promised Land had started with the Puritans in the 17th Century, followed by the evangelical revivalists of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Almost every Christian leader one could name from that era—among them the Wesley brothers, William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon, Robert Murray McCheyne, Lord Shaftesbury, Bishop J C Ryle and C H Spurgeon—held this belief. Christians in those days were looking to and longing for the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with a passion that is rarely seen in the Church today.
They also understood from the Bible that before the Lord could return, the Jewish people had to return to the land of Israel, and they began to pray for that restoration in anticipation of the Lord’s return. I believe that the Balfour Declaration was God’s answer to those prayers, which were entirely in line with His purposes.
The Balfour Declaration
These days, most non-Christians (and, sadly, many who call themselves Christians too) would describe such belief as fanaticism, even criminal. They would blame the Balfour Declaration on nothing more than British imperialism. To be sure, British geo-political interests did play a part in the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob used that too!
At the time, the members of the War Cabinet sat down in Whitehall on 31 October 1917 to determine the final wording of the statement of policy that became known as the Balfour Declaration, the British Government was in no position to implement it. All of Palestine—as the area was then known—and beyond was firmly in the control of the Ottoman Turkish empire, which was fiercely opposed to the idea of Jewish self-determination, let alone the restoration of their national home.
Unknown to the War Cabinet, at the very time they were meeting in Whitehall, the Allied forces had captured Beersheba. This first crucial victory on the Eastern front opened the way for the conquest of Jerusalem and eventually the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Was the timing of this decisive victory on the battlefield mere coincidence, or was it the sovereign hand of God? Two days after the War Cabinet meeting, a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour was conveyed to Lord Rothschild. Simultaneously, news of the victory at Beersheba reached London. The date was 2 November 1917.
A Positive Response and a Pledge
A number of church leaders responded favourably to the Balfour Declaration, including three Roman Catholic bishops and fourteen Anglican bishops. The then-Bishop of Lincoln wrote: “What lover of Holy Scripture and what friend of freedom can help rejoicing at the prospect of the Hebrew people returning to their own land again? God speed them!”
Jan Christian Smuts was one of the ten men at that momentous War Cabinet meeting on 31 October 1917. He was also one of the authors of the Covenant of the League of Nations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He said of the Balfour Declaration: “Christians who had received the leadership of the Prince of Peace from the Jewish nation were now in a position to make some small return for those priceless blessings, and to restore Israel to the ancient glorious homeland.”
He went on to say that it was “A debt of honour which must be discharged in full at all costs and in all circumstances.”
References
- Opening address by Chaim Weizmann to the Zionist Congress, London, 7 July 1920
- Interview with Dr Cynthia Day Wallace, Whose Land? Part 1, produced by Hugh Kitson
- Address to the Zionist Congress, London, July 1920.
- Quoted from an interview with the late Right Reverend John Taylor, former Bishop of St Albans, reading from A Survey of Christian Opinion published by the Zionist Organisation in 1918. ‘The Destiny of Britain’, produced by Hugh Kitson.
- Quoted from an interview with Dr Paul R Wilkinson (author ‘Understanding Christian Zionism’) in ‘The Destiny of Britain’, produced by Hugh Kitson.
- Ibid
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