He states:
“As has been written often, in 1922, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, to reward Arab allies in World War I (remember the movie, Lawrence of Arabia ?), chopped off roughly 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine issued to Great Britain on April 25, 1920–all the land east of the Jordan River (the East Bank)–and created the purely Arab “Emirate of Transjordan”…today’s Jordan. This gift of the lion’s share of “Palestine” to Arab nationalism was engineered by Churchill in 1921 at the Cairo Conference.

Emir Abdullah (the current Jordanian King’s great-grandfather), who received the land on behalf of the Hashemites who were in the process of getting booted out of the Arabian Peninsula by the rival clan of Ibn Saud (hence, Saudi Arabia today), attributed this gift to an act of Allah in his memoirs. Sir Alec Kirkbride, Britain’s East Bank representative, had much to say about this separation of the bulk of the Palestinian Mandate as well.”

Nothing was chopped off in 1922. The Mandate was amended in 1922 to prevent Jews settling within 77% of Palestine then called Transjordan. But all 100% of Palestine remained under Britain’s authority and control until 1946 when Transjordan was granted independence at the last session of the League of Nations before its dissolution.

Britain created an Arab administration there but could do nothing to cede sovereignty without League of Nations approval, which was not given till 1946.This was the first partition of Palestine - giving the Arabs of Palestine their own independent State in 77% of Palestine in which not one Jew lived.

This action amounted to a “reverse Balfour Declaration” which gave the Arabs a State in 77% of Palestine originally intended as an area in which the Jewish National Home would be reconstituted and from which Jewish settlement had been “postponed or withheld” since 1922. That action now become permanent.

Palestine in 1948 was therefore a vastly different area of land to Palestine in 1946 - only 23% of Mandatory Palestine.

Arab propaganda starts the history of Palestine from 1948. This has been its crowning success and Israel’s abysmal failure to properly communicate the real history of Palestine from the time of its modern recreation by the League of Nations in 1920.

My publishers are always at me for being too verbose…So I cut back some of the fine details that you now bring up.

As far as Jews are concerned, it was indeed cut off as of 1922…and that’s what matters the most here. Arab nationalism was indeed handed the lion’s share of the land. That was my main point, so I chose to leave out what you added for the sake of length. I’m always getting nailed by publishers about that.

Perhaps I should have placed the word “effectively” before “cut off” to at least drop a hint.

Thanks again…

Jerry

Palestine as a territorial entity existed intact from 1920 to 1945. The Arabs were rewarded with a sovereign state in 1946 in 77% of Palestine by the League of Nations.The Jews had been denied any rights to live in that part of Palestine from 1923.

The Jews had to fight six Arab armies in 1948 to secure a state in just 17% of Palestine.

It is these facts that are rarely stated when one looks to the justice of the claims by both Jews and Arabs in relation to Palestine.

Book has lots of other interesting facts about why this effective separation occuried, while leaving overall independence of the Emirate until later. Much had to do with appeasing Hashemites for loss of their promised Greater Syria dreams with France installed in Syria after WWI. So, the two princes–Abdullah and Feisal–got Transjordan and Mesopotamia respectively…shafting Jews and Kurds (who were promised independence there) respectively. My own work on the latter, published while doing my own doctoral studies, can be found on recommended reference lists of leading universities all over the world–including Paris’s famed Institut d’Etudes Politique. It first appeared in the Nobel Laureate-sponsored academic journal, the Fall 1981 Middle East Review and was titled “British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, And The Kurdish Struggle For Independence.”

The point I was making in my article, however–that the bulk of the Palestine Mandate became separated from the Jews as of 1922–does not require this elaboration…as important as it is for understanding subsequent details.