The phrase that actually appears is: “nothing should be done which might
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine.”
[AS
ALWAYS
PLEASE GO TO THE LINK
TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN
FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/mar/07/palestine-what-mandate-said/
Palestine: What the Mandate Said
Avishai Margalit replies:
Yisrael Medad is right
about the wording of the League of Nations’ Mandate document. But since
the “indigenous Arab people” (my expression) and “non-Jewish communities
in Palestine” (the Mandate document expression) are coextensive, apart
from 1 percent of others, it is a difference that makes no difference.
If
wording counts, it is more important to remark that the Mandate
document doesn’t mention “political rights” for the Jewish people in
Palestine. The only reference to “political rights” is the rights of
“Jews in any other country.” The expression “national home” lacks any
juridical meaning, unlike, say, home rule. The Mandate document
deliberately left vague what the rights of the Jews in Palestine are. It
is Medad who gives prerogative political rights to the Jews in
Palestine rather than the wording of the Mandate.
The
interpretation Medad gives to the Mandate expression “civil rights” as
confined to residency rights and personal liberty rights is again of his
making. There is no reason to believe that “civil rights” in the
Mandate document meant to preclude the rights of the non-Jews to
citizenship in any future state in Palestine.
In response to:
Palestine: How Bad, & Good, Was British Rule? from the February 7, 2013 issue
 |
| Library of Congress photo: The King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British Mandate
Administration, after it was bombed by the Irgun paramilitary group,
July 22, 1946 |
