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The British Mandate for Palestine, sometimes referred to as the Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate created after the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was split up by the Treaty of Sèvres.
At the 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, at which the Mandates were granted, the precise boundaries of all territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine, were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" and were not completely finalized until four years later. However, it was clear that the boundary of Britain's mandate for Palestine was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia. In 1921, following Churchill's negotiations with Emir Abdullah, Transjordan (later Jordan) was accepted into the Mandate, but it was separated from the area on which a Jewish National Home could be established, a move formalized by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine which allowed for postponement of all mandatory provisions which related to the 'Jewish National Home' on lands which lay to the east of the Jordan River.
The objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the recently defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone."
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia to the east, the French Mandate of Lebanon to the north, the French Mandate of Syria to the northeast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Egypt to the southeast and southwest respectively.
The Mandate for Palestine was transferred to the United Nations at its inception in 1945. The British Peel Commission proposed a Palestine divided between a Jewish and an Arab State, but in time changed their position and sought to limit Jewish immigration from Europe to a minimum. This was seen by Zionists and their sympathisers as betrayal of the terms of the mandate, especially in light of the increasing persecution in Europe and was met with a popular uprising and guerrilla war from Jewish terrorist groups, often viewed as one of several factors that led the British to hand the problem over to the United Nations.
The UN, the successor to the League of Nations, attempted to solve the dispute, creating the UNSCOP (UN Special Committee on Palestine) on May 15, 1947. After spending three months conducting hearings and general survey of the situation in Palestine, UNSCOP officially released its report on August 31. A majority of nations (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. A minority (India, Iran, Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained. On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, in favour of the Partition Plan, while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal. Both the United States and Soviet Union agreed on the resolution. In addition, pressure was exerted on some small countries by Zionist sympathizers in the United States.[70] The five members of the Arab League who were voting members at the time voted against the Plan, as did the United Kingdom.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs and by most of the Arab population. Most of the Jews accepted the proposal, in particular the Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation. Numerous records indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day, Israeli history books mention 29 November, the date of this session, as the most important date leading to the creation of the Israeli state.
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