Long read: British rule in Palestine during the 1920s and 1930s enabled Zionist colonisation at the expense of Palestinians.

With the allied victory and collapse of the Ottoman empire in world war one, Britain occupied Palestine which it ruled until 1948. This was formalised by the newly created League of Nations, which divided up the former Ottoman territories into ‘mandates’. Britain was awarded Palestine as one such mandate in 1922. But British rule there was never neutral. The UK authorities blocked Palestinian rights, violently suppressed protests and prevented self-determination for the Palestinian Arab majority.

Palestinian efforts to organise for their rights faced immediate obstacles. Before the mandate was even established, Britain ran a military regime from 1917-20, where publication of news of the Balfour Declaration was banned and newspapers were not able to reappear in Palestine for almost two years. In a cruel irony, some of the last people to hear about the declaration were Palestinians themselves, who often learned of it slowly through word of mouth and from Egyptian newspapers brought in by travellers.

After 1929, British forces carried out raids against Palestinian villages, detaining and then brutalising Arabs in custody, refusing applications for bail and imposing collective fines against entire villages.

Personnel from the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the notorious “Black and Tans” – world war one veterans who joined the RIC – were sent to Palestine. Whitehall briefing papers drew attention to strong similarities between their actions in Ireland and Palestine. These forces had committed brutal crimes during the Irish War of Independence, and were previously under the command of Henry Hugh Tudor who admitted that the gendarmerie was sent to Palestine “to resist the Arab attempt at self-determination.”