CONCluSION • 243a region in which one would be among the majority to those who
differed from the majority in “race and language.”^27 Difference in race,
or in race and language, constituted a reason to leave, in the minds of
the drafters of these treaties, though, as we have recognized in other
contexts in this book, it is far from clear what precisely was meant by
“race”— an ambiguity accentuated by the Treaty of Sevres’ references
to “non- Moslem races.”^28 In cases in which population exchange was
deemed undesirable or impracticable, “minority rights” were proposed.
For these, the Paris system identified three categories of difference—
race, language, and religion. At Versailles in 1919, for instance, the
new Czecho- Slovak state and Poland were ordered “to protect the in-
terests of inhabitants of that State who differ from the majority of the
population in race, language, or religion.”^29
It was in this political, ideological, and terminological environment
that the Palestine Mandate was composed. As we have seen, during
the Late Ottoman period, for Jews and Arabs in Palestine, religion and
race were at once fundamental marks of distinction and sources of in-
tercommunal commonality. Now, however, in the post– Great War mo-
ment, these same categories were redefined by a new dominant inter-
national system (the League of Nations) and ruling power (the British
Mandate). The insistence that governments treat their residents and
citizens equally, “irrespective of race and religion,” implied that, above
all, these two frames of identity and status were dangerous sources
of difference and potential conflict. These categories were at once ac-
knowledged and, at the same time, relegated to the unspeakable and
politically irrelevant.
The Paris system continued to recognize intercommunal difference,
of course, but the main form of difference that it repeatedly legitimated
was that of the “nation” (after all, this system created the league of
Nations). There were cases in which the league deemed even “national-
ity” to be an illegitimate basis for discrimination— requiring, in various
treaties, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey “to assure full and complete
protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants of Bulgaria without
distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion.” Tellingly,
however, the authors of the Palestine Mandate do not mention birth
and nationality.
(^27) Article 64, Treaty of Trianon, 1920.
(^28) See, e.g., Article 149, Treaty of Sevres, 1920.
(^29) Articles 86 and 93, Treaty of Versailles, 1919. The same was demanded in 1920
of the Serb- Croat Slovene state, Roumania, and Hungary at Trianon, and of Greece and
Armenia at Sevres. Articles 44, 47, 58, Treaty of Trianon, 1920; Articles 86, 93, Treaty
of Sevres, 1920.