CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 
PALESTINE AND TRANSJORDAN 
(A) PALESTINE: A ZIONIST STATE 
Troucn Palestine is the birthplace of both the Hebraic and the 
Christian religions, the followers of neither faith predominate there 
today. Of Christian sects there are many, the members belonging for 
the most part to religious orders that are associated with the holy places. 
The population is composed chiefly of Moslem Arabs, with much 
smaller numbers of Druses, Jews, and Turks. Before the World War 
Tews formed barely an eighth of the total population. 
A ZIONIST STATE 
The widespread interest in the creation of a new Jewish state in 
Palestine springs from the fact that such a state forms a homeland for 
Jews. Some of the Jewish leaders had visions of a Palestine in which 
Jews would become the majority race; but the more immediate pro- 
gram was to set up a state from which action could be launched looking 
toward the amelioration of the condition of Jews in central and eastern 
Europe. It was not at all intended to start a great migration of per- 
secuted Jews toward Palestine, for the country could not contain them. 
The form of political control was the most serious immediate problem. 
To turn over the government of the new state to either the Jews or the 
Arabs would have meant discord from the start. The population had 
had no experience in government, and it would certainly have carried 
into its first political contests a fanatical religious feeling that would 
have meant disaster if outside supervision had been withheld. 
In view of these possibilities there appeared to be but one course to 
take: to make a strong western power the mandatory. In the treaty of 
Iavres (1920) it was provided that Palestine should be administered by a 
mandatory, and that this mandatory should carry out the terms of the 
British declaration of 2 November 1917, which guaranteed the establish- 
ment of a Jewish national home. At the same time it was specified 
that the rights of non-Jews were not to be prejudiced. By the treaty of 
Lausanne (1923), which displaced the treaty of Sevres, Turkey left to 
“the parties concerned” all rights and titles respecting territories out- 
side the boundaries of Turkey (Fig. 173), thus confirming the positions 
of France in Syria and Great Britain in Palestine as mandatory powers. 
Tt was logical to select Great Britain as the mandatory of Palestine, 
because of (1) her interest in the security of the Suez Canal near by and 
in the orderly behavior of the Arab tribes that adjoin Palestine on the 
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