Policing British Palestine – Talk

Frome Friends of Palestine have managed to persuade Margaret Penfold to come and talk in Frome on Friday January 13.

It’s 100 years now since Britain conquered Palestine, and the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour made his famous ‘Balfour Declaration’ to the Zionist Federation, in which he pledged the British Government to setting up “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

For 31 years turbulent years Britain tried to make this impossible situation work. “The history of Britain’s administration of Palestine is one of side-effects and paradoxes”, says Margaret, who was brought up in British Palestine and is an authority on the British Palestine Police Force.

A civil administration took over Palestine from the military in 1920 and created the Palestine Police, but the British Section was given military training and many of its later actions were controlled by the army.

Britain’s stated policy for Palestine was to weld the multicultural and multi-ethnic elements of the populations of the former Ottoman Southern Syria, Province of Jerusalem and Negev Wilderness into a single Palestinian nation ready for independence. Over the years, however, the policy changed to one of ‘divide and rule’, accidentally at first with the creation of the Jewish settlement police and then, towards the end of the mandate, more deliberately with the introduction of zoning.

Margaret is also the author of four novels set in Mandate Palestine, so an interesting and insightful evening is guaranteed

Entry by donation.