242 • CONCluSION
To understand the significance of the decisions by the authors of
the mandate to make explicit reference to race and religion, to pair
the two, and to insist that these were illegitimate categories of legal or
political distinction, we must widen our historical lens far beyond Pal-
estine and even outside the Middle East. The Palestine Mandate doc-
ument emerged in the context of a series of postwar agreements and
mandates imposed by the victorious Allies. As Eric Weitz has argued,
the “Paris system,” represented in the fateful decisions that emerged
from the Paris Peace Conference at the conclusion of the First World
War, stressed “population politics.” By “population politics,” Weitz de-
notes the Allies’ vision of the political problems “naturally” posed by
“essential” differences among populations within individual states.^24
From the perspective of the Allies, there were two primary solutions to
the problem of heterogeneity in the regions they had conquered during
the war. One option was population transfer— whether voluntary or
compulsory— that would create demographic homogeneity where it
did not exist. The other solution was to permit heterogeneity within a
state but to insist that minorities, per se, be granted special rights and
protections from the tyranny of the majority.
In identifying the problematic demographic differences within a
single territory that would warrant population transfer or exchange,
the league generally pointed to “race” (or otherwise “race” and “lan-
guage”). For instance, in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, dealing with for-
mer Ottoman territories, the Allies insisted that adults
habitually resident in territories detached from Turkey in ac-
cordance with the present Treaty and differing in race from the
majority of the population of such territory shall . . . be enti-
tled to opt for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Greece, the Hedjaz,
Mesopotamia, Syria, Bulgaria or Turkey, if the majority of the
population of the State selected is of the same race as the person
exercising the right to opt.^25Turkey and Greece were to permit “reciprocal and voluntary emigra-
tion of the populations of Turkish and Greek race in the territories
transferred to Greece and remaining Turkish respectively.”^26 In the
1920 Treaty of Trianon, concerning territories of the former Austro-
Hungarian Empire, the Allies granted “the right to opt” to migrate to
of religion and race, an interest and a pride.” Italics mine. Winston Churchill, “The Chur-
chill White Paper (June 1922),” in laqueur and Rubin, The Israel- Arab Reader, 27.
(^24) See Weitz, “From the Vienna to the Paris System.”
(^25) Article 125, Treaty of Sevres, 1920.
(^26) Article 143, Treaty of Sevres, 1920.