Palestine : La trahison britannique qui a contribué à façonner un siècle de tragédie

From the Balfour Declaration and the Arab Revolt of 1936 to the suppression of Palestinian nationalism, the partition of Palestine and the catastrophe of 1948: how contradictory British imperial policies helped create the conditions for a conflict that continues to devastate the Middle East.

The British Empire left behind railways, administrative institutions and imposing government buildings across much of the world. In Palestine, however, its most consequential legacy was neither architectural nor administrative. It was a political contradiction of extraordinary magnitude: two peoples, each possessing profound historical attachments to the same land, were drawn into an increasingly irreconcilable struggle under the authority of a government that had made commitments it could not reconcile.

The tragedy did not begin in 1948, nor can it be understood solely through the wars, uprisings and diplomatic failures that followed the establishment of Israel.

Its modern political foundations were laid decades earlier, when Britain assumed responsibility for Palestine after the First World War and undertook to facilitate a Jewish national home without establishing an agreed constitutional future for the Arab majority already living there.

By 1936, those contradictions had erupted into a major Palestinian uprising against British rule and growing Jewish immigration.

The British response was severe.

Military operations, collective punishments, mass arrests, demolitions and the dismantling of much of the Palestinian national leadership profoundly weakened Arab Palestinian society during a period that would prove decisive for its future.

Eleven years later, Britain relinquished responsibility for Palestine, leaving behind two competing national movements, a collapsing political settlement and an escalating civil war.

The events that followed would transform the Middle East.

For Palestinians, 1948 became the Nakba — the catastrophe of displacement and dispossession.

For Jews, the establishment of Israel represented the achievement of national self-determination after centuries of persecution, culminating in the Holocaust.

These histories cannot be reduced to a single imperial decision. Yet British policy played an indispensable part in shaping the circumstances in which they collided.

To understand the tragedy of modern Palestine, one must examine not only what Britain did, but also what it promised, what it failed to resolve and what it ultimately abandoned.

The Balfour Declaration: A Promise Made Without the Consent of the Majority

The origins of Britain’s predicament in Palestine can be traced to the First World War.

As the Ottoman Empire approached defeat, British officials were simultaneously pursuing several strategic objectives in the Middle East.

They wished to secure imperial communications with India, protect the approaches to the Suez Canal, establish influence over former Ottoman territories and strengthen Britain’s position against rival European powers.

During the war, British correspondence with Sharif Hussein of Mecca encouraged expectations of Arab independence across substantial parts of the Ottoman Arab provinces. The precise territorial scope of those undertakings, particularly whether Palestine was included, subsequently became the subject of bitter disagreement.

Then, on 2 November 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild expressing the British government’s support for establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

The declaration also stipulated that the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities should not be prejudiced.

What it did not explicitly guarantee was their collective right to national self-determination.

This omission would prove fundamental.

The overwhelming majority of Palestine’s inhabitants at the time were Arabs, predominantly Muslim but including a substantial Christian community. Palestine also possessed longstanding Jewish communities whose presence predated modern political Zionism.

Britain had endorsed a project with profound implications for the country’s political future without securing the agreement of its majority population.

For Zionists, the declaration represented an important international recognition of Jewish national aspirations, especially in the context of European antisemitism and the historical and religious connection of Jews to the land.

For Palestinian Arabs, it represented a foreign power making commitments concerning their homeland without their consent.

Both reactions must be understood if the subsequent conflict is to be explained.

The British government’s central failure was not simply that it supported Jewish national aspirations. It was that it failed to devise a political settlement capable of reconciling those aspirations with the rights and wishes of the Arab population.

The contradiction became embedded in the League of Nations Mandate approved in 1922.

The Mandate: Britain Governs a Country Without Resolving Its Future

Under the Mandate, Britain assumed responsibility for administering Palestine and facilitating the establishment of a Jewish national home while safeguarding the rights of its inhabitants.

Yet the two principal communities increasingly envisaged different political futures.

The Zionist movement developed institutions intended to support Jewish immigration, land acquisition, economic development and eventual national independence.

The Jewish Agency, the Histadrut labour federation and other organisations contributed to the emergence of a highly organised Jewish national community.

Palestinian Arabs, meanwhile, demanded representative government and independence, arguing that the country’s majority population should determine its political future.

The British administration repeatedly failed to establish a constitutional arrangement acceptable to both communities.

The problem became increasingly acute during the 1930s.

The rise of Adolf Hitler and the persecution of Jews in Germany created an urgent humanitarian crisis. Jewish immigration to Palestine increased substantially, bringing refugees seeking safety and others committed to the Zionist national project.

The importance of this migration must not be understated.

For European Jews facing escalating persecution, Palestine represented refuge and the possibility of national security.

But for many Palestinian Arabs, rapid immigration under British authority intensified fears that they would lose political control over their homeland.

Land purchases, economic competition and demographic changes aggravated existing tensions, although their effects differed considerably between regions and communities.

Britain found itself administering a country in which two national movements were increasingly convinced that their futures were mutually threatened.

Rather than resolving the underlying constitutional question, successive governments attempted to contain the resulting unrest.

By 1936, that approach had reached its limits.

1936: The Great Palestinian Revolt

In April 1936, Palestine entered a period of upheaval that would continue, with interruptions, until 1939.

The immediate background included escalating communal violence, growing opposition to British rule and demands for an end to Jewish immigration.

A general strike began, accompanied by boycotts and widespread civil resistance.

The Arab Higher Committee, headed by Haj Amin al-Husseini, emerged as a principal body coordinating Palestinian nationalist demands.

The movement sought an end to mass Jewish immigration, restrictions on land transfers and the establishment of a representative national government.

The uprising was not exclusively peaceful.

Armed groups attacked British installations, transport networks and Jewish settlements. Civilians were killed, and Palestinian society itself experienced internal intimidation and political violence.

Nevertheless, the revolt cannot adequately be explained as an outbreak of criminality or religious hostility.

It was also an anticolonial uprising rooted in the conviction that Britain was denying the Arab majority the right to determine its political future.

The distinction is essential.

British officials were confronting genuine security threats, including attacks upon civilians. But they were also confronting a national movement whose political grievances had not been resolved through representative institutions.

The response increasingly relied upon military power.

By 1938, Britain had deployed approximately 25,000 troops, supported by additional police and security forces, to suppress the rebellion.

The scale of this deployment illustrates how profoundly the Mandate had deteriorated.

A government established ostensibly to prepare a territory for eventual self-government was now conducting a major counterinsurgency campaign against a substantial part of the population it administered.

Collective Punishment: The British Army’s Campaign Against Palestinian Society

The methods used by British forces during the revolt have become the subject of extensive historical investigation.

The historian Matthew Hughes, in his study From Law and Order to Pacification: Britain’s Suppression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936–39, documents the use of collective punishment, reprisals, torture and other abuses against Palestinian civilians.

His research draws upon British military records, contemporary accounts and testimony concerning the conduct of the counterinsurgency.

British operations included extensive searches, arrests, detention, curfews and the destruction of buildings.

In certain areas, entire communities suffered punishment for attacks attributed to insurgents.

Property was destroyed, inhabitants were displaced and ordinary economic activity was severely disrupted.

The authorities also employed emergency regulations and military courts, including provisions for capital punishment in particular circumstances.

One of the most notorious operations occurred in Jaffa in June 1936, when British forces demolished substantial sections of the old city, officially to improve access and security.

The demolitions displaced large numbers of inhabitants and left an enduring scar upon the urban landscape.

British authorities presented such measures as necessary to restore order and protect civilians.

The army faced attacks on roads, railways, police stations and settlements, and the obligation to protect civilians was real.

But the existence of an insurgency did not remove the distinction between armed combatants and the wider population.

Collective punishment imposed suffering upon people who had not necessarily participated in violence.

The historical evidence also demonstrates that coercive measures became embedded within the British system of colonial security.

The consequences were not confined to the immediate casualties.

The destruction of homes, the disruption of commerce and agriculture, and the imprisonment or displacement of political figures weakened Palestinian society at a moment when its future political organisation was of critical importance.

The revolt ultimately failed to achieve its objectives.

But the methods used to suppress it left a legacy extending far beyond 1939.

The Destruction of Palestinian Political Leadership

One of the most consequential outcomes of the revolt was the weakening of the Palestinian Arab national movement.

British authorities arrested, exiled or otherwise restricted numerous political figures.

The Arab Higher Committee was outlawed in 1937 following renewed violence, and several leading nationalists were deported.

Haj Amin al-Husseini escaped arrest and fled Palestine.

His later collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War constitutes a deeply troubling part of his political record and must not be overlooked.

But the wider Palestinian national movement cannot be reduced to the actions of one leader.

It contained different political factions, local leaders, intellectuals, religious figures and social organisations, many of whom held competing visions of Palestine’s future.

The repression of the revolt, together with internal divisions and violence amongst Palestinians, severely damaged the movement’s organisational capacity.

Thousands of Palestinians were killed, wounded, imprisoned or displaced during the years of rebellion.

By 1939, the Palestinian Arab community had suffered substantial losses amongst its politically active population.

This would have profound consequences less than a decade later.

When the crisis of 1947–1948 arrived, the Jewish community possessed comparatively well-developed political, economic and military institutions.

The Palestinian Arab community, by contrast, remained fragmented, and much of its leadership had been weakened by the events of the preceding decade.

It would be an oversimplification to attribute the Palestinian defeat of 1948 entirely to British repression in the 1930s. Military organisation, regional politics, foreign intervention and decisions taken by Palestinian and Arab leaders also mattered.

Nevertheless, the destruction of political and organisational capacity during the revolt was an important factor in the imbalance that emerged.

Britain had not merely suppressed an uprising.

Its policies had helped shape the relative strength of the communities that would confront one another when the Mandate ended.

The Peel Commission: Britain Proposes to Divide Palestine

In 1936, the British government appointed a Royal Commission under Lord Peel to investigate the causes of the unrest.

Its report, published in July 1937, reached a remarkable conclusion.

The obligations imposed upon Britain by the Mandate had become fundamentally difficult to reconcile.

The commission recognised the depth of the competing Arab and Jewish national aspirations and proposed partitioning Palestine into separate political entities.

A Jewish state would be established in part of the country, while an Arab state would be joined to Transjordan. Britain would retain control over Jerusalem and certain strategically important areas.

The report also discussed the transfer of Arab inhabitants from territory designated for the proposed Jewish state, including the possibility of compulsory transfer if voluntary arrangements proved insufficient.

For Palestinian Arabs, this raised the prospect of losing both territory and homes as a consequence of a policy they had never approved.

The Zionist leadership accepted partition as a possible basis for negotiation while rejecting the proposed boundaries and seeking substantial revisions.

Palestinian Arab leaders rejected the principle of partition, arguing that the majority population should not be required to surrender part of its homeland to create another state.

The Peel Commission therefore did not resolve the conflict.

It exposed the scale of Britain’s failure to reconcile the commitments made during and after the First World War.

The British government subsequently moved away from the commission’s specific proposals.

But the idea of partition had entered international diplomacy.

Ten years later, it would return in a different form through the United Nations.

The White Paper of 1939: Britain Changes Course as Europe Descends into Darkness

In May 1939, with Europe approaching another world war, the British government issued a White Paper that substantially altered its policy towards Palestine.

The document proposed limiting Jewish immigration to 75,000 people over five years, after which further immigration would require Arab consent.

It also envisaged an independent Palestine within ten years, governed in a manner intended to protect the interests of both Arabs and Jews.

The decision was influenced partly by Britain’s strategic need to maintain relations with Arab governments as war approached.

For the Zionist movement, the White Paper represented a profound betrayal of the commitments associated with the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate.

Its timing was especially devastating.

European Jews were facing escalating persecution under Nazi rule. Restrictions upon immigration to Palestine reduced one potential avenue of escape for people whose lives were increasingly endangered.

Palestinian Arab leaders, meanwhile, remained dissatisfied with a policy that did not immediately deliver independence and whose proposed constitutional arrangements were regarded with suspicion.

Britain had once again attempted to resolve an irreconcilable political problem through unilateral decisions.

The White Paper demonstrated the instability of British policy.

In 1917, Britain had publicly supported a Jewish national home.

In 1937, it had considered partition.

In 1939, it proposed a unified independent Palestine while restricting Jewish immigration.

These changes reflected genuine strategic dilemmas, but they also demonstrated the absence of an enduring political settlement accepted by the principal communities.

By the end of the Second World War, the consequences would become still more severe.

The Holocaust, Jewish Refugees and the Collapse of British Authority

The Holocaust transformed the international debate over Palestine.

Six million Jews had been murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Hundreds of thousands of survivors faced displacement, the destruction of their communities and the enormous difficulty of rebuilding their lives in Europe.

For many, the establishment of a Jewish state had become not simply a national aspiration but a matter of collective security.

Britain, however, continued to restrict immigration under the policy established in 1939.

Jewish refugees attempting to reach Palestine aboard ships were intercepted by British forces. Some were detained in camps in Cyprus or elsewhere.

The treatment of passengers aboard the Exodus 1947, many of them Holocaust survivors, became an international scandal when British authorities forcibly returned them to Europe.

At the same time, armed Zionist organisations intensified their campaign against British rule.

The Irgun and Lehi carried out attacks against British personnel and installations, including the devastating bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, which killed 91 people.

The principal Jewish defence organisation, the Haganah, also participated at various times in armed resistance to British restrictions.

British security forces responded with arrests, searches and military operations.

The Mandate was increasingly ungovernable.

Britain had lost the confidence of much of the Arab population during the revolt of 1936–1939.

It was now also facing organised Jewish resistance.

The imperial government had become trapped between national movements whose aspirations could no longer be contained within the political framework it had created.

1947: Britain Hands the Problem to the United Nations

In February 1947, the British government announced that it would refer the future of Palestine to the United Nations.

Britain was exhausted by the Second World War, struggling financially and confronting mounting costs and violence in Palestine.

Its imperial position was also changing rapidly. India would achieve independence that August.

The United Nations established a Special Committee on Palestine, which examined possible arrangements for the territory’s future.

On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, recommending partition into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime.

The Jewish Agency accepted the resolution, despite reservations concerning the proposed boundaries and arrangements.

Arab leaders rejected it, maintaining that partition violated the right of the Arab majority to determine the future of Palestine.

The resolution was a recommendation; it did not itself establish either state or provide an effective mechanism for ensuring a peaceful transition.

Britain announced that it would end its Mandate but declined to enforce the partition scheme.

This decision proved enormously consequential.

As British forces prepared to withdraw, fighting escalated between Jewish and Arab communities.

The United Nations lacked the effective authority and resources to implement the proposed political settlement.

Britain, still the Mandatory Power, increasingly concentrated upon evacuating its personnel and protecting its withdrawal.

The political vacuum widened.

A civil war developed during the final months of British administration.

By the time Britain departed in May 1948, the country was already engulfed in violence.

1948: Independence for Israel, Catastrophe for the Palestinians

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.

For the Jewish people, and particularly for survivors of European persecution, the creation of Israel represented a historic achievement of national self-determination.

The following day, armies from neighbouring Arab states entered the conflict.

The war had already begun months earlier as a civil conflict within Mandatory Palestine, and it now expanded into an international confrontation.

Israel emerged victorious and controlled more territory than had been allocated to the proposed Jewish state under the United Nations partition plan.

For Palestinian Arabs, the consequences were catastrophic.

Approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes during the war.

Hundreds of villages were depopulated, and many were subsequently destroyed or repopulated.

Families who had lived for generations in towns such as Jaffa, Haifa, Lydda and elsewhere found themselves in refugee camps or dispersed across neighbouring countries.

The causes of individual departures varied. Some fled advancing armies or feared violence; others were directly expelled. Atrocities, including the killing of civilians at Deir Yassin in April 1948, intensified widespread fear.

The resulting displacement became known to Palestinians as the Nakba.

The refugees’ descendants would form a substantial population across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the wider diaspora.

The Palestinian Arab state envisaged by the United Nations was not established.

Jordan took control of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, while Egypt administered the Gaza Strip.

The United Nations subsequently recognised the need to address the refugee question, including through General Assembly Resolution 194.

But the central political issues remained unresolved.

Britain had relinquished its Mandate.

The consequences of its administration, however, did not disappear with the departure of the last British soldier.

From 1948 to 1967: The Conflict Becomes Entrenched

The establishment of Israel did not end the struggle over Palestine.

Instead, it created a new political reality in which the Palestinian people remained divided between those who became citizens of Israel, those living under Jordanian or Egyptian administration and those displaced into neighbouring countries.

The refugee question became central to Palestinian national identity.

In 1967, following another Arab–Israeli war, Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, as well as the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

The war transformed the conflict once again.

Israel now controlled territories inhabited by a large Palestinian population whose political status remained unresolved.

Israeli settlements subsequently expanded in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, becoming one of the principal obstacles to a negotiated settlement.

Israel has consistently emphasised its security concerns, including attacks upon its civilian population and the dangers posed by hostile armed organisations.

Palestinians have continued to demand an end to occupation, national self-determination and a just resolution of the refugee question.

The 1993 Oslo Accords raised hopes of a negotiated peace, but they did not resolve the most difficult questions: borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and security.

The failure to achieve a final agreement left the conflict vulnerable to renewed violence and political radicalisation.

These later developments were shaped by decisions taken by Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and international leaders, not by Britain alone.

Nevertheless, the territorial and political disputes inherited from the Mandate remained central to the conflict.

The Tragedy of Gaza and the Responsibility of the Present

The events of 7 October 2023 marked another devastating turning point.

Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

The deliberate killing and abduction of civilians were grave violations of international humanitarian law.

Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza caused enormous Palestinian casualties, widespread destruction, repeated displacement and an unprecedented humanitarian crisis for the territory’s population.

The suffering of civilians on either side cannot be justified by invoking historical grievances.

Nor can the events of 2023 be explained simply as an inevitable consequence of decisions made by British officials a century earlier.

Hamas, Israeli governments, regional powers and international actors all bear responsibility for their own decisions and conduct.

Yet the historical connection remains significant.

The failure to resolve Palestinian national aspirations, the enduring refugee question and the territorial disputes originating in the Mandate and the wars that followed have contributed to the conditions in which successive conflicts developed.

As of October 2026, the humanitarian situation remains severe.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on 2 October that approximately 279,000 people in Gaza were sheltering in flood-prone displacement sites, while funding shortages threatened food assistance and essential services.

Its report also documented continued violence, displacement and serious humanitarian difficulties in the West Bank.

A separate United Nations assessment published on 24 September 2026 warned that settlement expansion, settler violence and restrictions on movement were undermining prospects for a viable Palestinian state.

The contemporary crisis therefore has both immediate causes and a much longer historical background.

Understanding the latter does not diminish the responsibility of those making decisions today.

It makes the need for a durable political settlement more apparent.

Britain’s Historical Responsibility: What Can Fairly Be Attributed to London?

The historical record permits a clear distinction between direct responsibility and longer-term consequences.

Britain was directly responsible for the decisions of its own government and armed forces during the Mandate.

Those decisions included the adoption and implementation of the Balfour Declaration, the denial of an agreed representative constitutional settlement, the suppression of the Palestinian revolt, the imposition of immigration restrictions and the management of the final withdrawal.

Britain also exercised considerable influence over the political and institutional development of the communities living under its administration.

The Mandate’s failures helped shape the unequal political circumstances in which the conflict of 1947–1948 unfolded.

That is a substantial historical responsibility.

But Britain was not the sole architect of every subsequent event.

The emergence of Zionism preceded the Mandate. Palestinian Arab nationalism developed in response to both Ottoman-era changes and British and Zionist policies. The Holocaust profoundly altered the urgency of Jewish statehood. The decisions of regional governments, armed movements and later Israeli and Palestinian leaders further shaped the conflict.

Historical accountability requires acknowledging these distinct causes rather than attributing every tragedy to a single source.

The most persuasive criticism of British policy is therefore not that London deliberately designed every catastrophe that followed.

It is that Britain accepted responsibility for governing a territory containing competing national aspirations, made incompatible commitments, repeatedly failed to establish an agreed political framework and ultimately withdrew without securing an orderly transition.

In 1936, Palestinian Arabs demanded a political future in which they would possess national independence.

Britain answered, in substantial part, through coercion.

In 1947, the imperial government concluded that it could no longer resolve the conflict.

It transferred the question to the United Nations and prepared to leave.

The contrast between those two moments is central to understanding the failure of the Mandate.

Britain had possessed the military power to suppress rebellion.

It had not succeeded in creating a political settlement that the principal communities regarded as legitimate.

Should Britain Acknowledge Its Role?

Historical responsibility does not necessarily imply that a contemporary government can be held legally liable for every consequence of decisions made by its predecessors.

But it does raise important questions of political and moral accountability.

Britain has acknowledged the significance of the Balfour Declaration and has repeatedly expressed support for a negotiated settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

A fuller historical reckoning would require recognising the experiences of both communities under British rule.

For Palestinians, that includes the denial of national self-determination, the repression of the 1936–1939 revolt and the consequences of the Mandate’s collapse.

For Jews, it includes the importance of the national home commitment and the suffering caused by British immigration restrictions during the years of Nazi persecution and the Holocaust.

These experiences are not interchangeable, and acknowledging one does not diminish the other.

A serious examination of the Mandate should also address the documented abuses committed during the counterinsurgency, including collective punishment and torture.

Such an examination would be strengthened by the continued release and study of archival material, historical research and public education.

The objective need not be to impose a single interpretation of history.

It should be to establish the fullest possible record of what happened and how the decisions of an imperial government affected the lives of those it governed.

Britain cannot reverse the events of 1936 or 1948.

It can, however, contribute to an accurate understanding of its historical role and support political arrangements that respect the security, dignity and self-determination of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

A Century of Unfulfilled Promises

The history of Palestine under British rule contains a lesson that extends far beyond the Middle East.

Imperial governments frequently imagined that they could administer territories, balance competing populations and determine political futures through a combination of diplomacy, military force and administrative authority.

But the aspirations of peoples cannot indefinitely be managed as though they were merely questions of imperial convenience.

In Palestine, Britain encountered two national movements whose histories, fears and ambitions demanded a political settlement of exceptional care.

Instead, the government in London repeatedly changed its policies while preserving ultimate authority over the territory.

It promised a Jewish national home but failed to resolve the constitutional rights of the Arab majority.

It confronted Palestinian demands for independence with military repression.

It restricted Jewish immigration during a period when European Jews faced unprecedented persecution.

It proposed partition, abandoned the proposal, returned to the idea of a unified state and finally relinquished responsibility without establishing either.

By the time the British Mandate ended, the political contradictions had become a war.

The human consequences would be borne not by the ministers and officials who had devised the policies, but by generations of Israelis and Palestinians.

Today, the children of Gaza, the families of Israeli victims of violence, the displaced communities of the West Bank and the descendants of Palestinian refugees continue to live with the consequences of a conflict whose modern origins lie partly in that imperial era.

There is no simple line connecting every decision made in London in 1936 with every act of violence committed in the Middle East today.

History is more complicated than that.

But there is a clear and documented chain of political developments linking the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate, the revolt of 1936, the repression that followed, the failure of partition and the war of 1948.

Those connections deserve neither exaggeration nor concealment.

Britain’s responsibility was substantial because its authority was substantial.

For three decades, it governed Palestine, determined its principal administrative arrangements and exercised decisive influence over the political environment in which Jewish and Arab national movements developed.

When that authority ended, the fundamental question of Palestine remained unanswered.

The British Empire departed in 1948. The consequences of its unresolved commitments did not depart with it.

Nearly eighty years later, the search for a just and lasting settlement continues.

And any serious attempt to understand why peace has proved so elusive must return, at least in part, to the decisions taken under the Union Jack during those fateful years of the British Mandate.

For those wishing to gain a deeper understanding of this particularly tragic chapter in the history of Palestine, I would strongly recommend watching Palestine 36, directed by Annemarie Jacir. Set against the backdrop of the Arab Revolt of 1936 against British Mandate rule, the film offers a powerful and deeply human portrayal of a society caught between colonial authority, competing national aspirations and the struggle for self-determination. Beyond its considerable cinematic merits, it invites audiences to reflect upon the historical circumstances whose consequences continue to shape the region nearly a century later. It is a film that deserves to be seen, not merely as a work of cinema, but as an invitation to understand a history too often reduced to political slogans and competing narratives.

Please watch the trailer:

Historical sources and further reading

• National Army Museum — The British Army in Palestine. A British military history of the Mandate, including the Arab Revolt and the changing political situation.
• Matthew Hughes — From Law and Order to Pacification. A detailed scholarly examination of British counterinsurgency and abuses during the 1936–1939 revolt.
• United Nations — History of the Question of Palestine. Historical background covering the Mandate, partition, the 1948 war and subsequent developments.
• Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question — The Peel Commission, 1936–1937. An examination of Britain’s partition proposals and their political implications.
• United Nations OCHA — Humanitarian Situation Report, October 2026. Recent documentation of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the West Bank.