244 • CONCluSION
In identifying race, religion, and language as categories the manda-
tory power must ignore in relating to the local population, the Pales-
tine Mandate reflected the Allies’ sense that these were the fundamen-
tal differences between the communities in Palestine. Beyond merely
reflecting the Allies’ assessment, the mandate document also had pre-
scriptive implications. By not naming “nationality” as an illegitimate
category of legal distinction (and by following Balfour’s language of
“a national home for the Jewish people”), the mandate effectively per-
mitted distinction and advocacy of distinction based on this category.
This would help to shape claims and tensions around the category of
nation— one that, incidentally, for many Jews and Arabs seemed to
fuse religion and race— in the years to come.
All parties appealed to the terms of the mandate throughout the
years of British rule in Palestine; indeed, the language of the mandate
document became the subject of intensive exegesis. In explaining, de-
fending, or, as they often did, modifying or reversing their policies,
the British would regularly cite their responsibilities as dictated by the
text of the mandate. Thus, for instance, in 1931, British prime minister
Ramsay MacDonald aimed to clarify the meaning of Article 2 of the
mandate, particularly the phrase “safeguarding the civil and religious
rights of all inhabitants of Palestine irrespective of race and religion.”
MacDonald insisted that “the key to the true purpose and meaning of
the sentence is to be found in these concluding words of the article.”
This “protective provision applies equally to Jews, Arabs, and all sec-
tions of the population,” MacDonald insisted, implying again that these
communities were defined and distinguished by these two categories.^30
Similarly, the phrase “irrespective of race and religion” was quoted
and highlighted in the 1939 White Paper’s restatement of the primary
obligations of the mandate.^31 Given the persistent British appeal to
this phrase, it is perhaps unsurprising that the parties themselves also
cited it in seeking to legitimize their own positions and to challenge
the legitimacy of their antagonists’ demands. For example, as late as
1946, in its statement to the Anglo- American Committee of Inquiry,
the Arab Office called for a representative government in Palestine
that “should be based upon the principle of absolute equality of all
citizens irrespective of race and religion.”^32 Using the terminology of
(^30) British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald: The MacDonald letter (February 13,
1931), in Laqueur and Rubin, The Israel- Arab Reader, 38.
(^31) The British Government: The White Paper (May 17, 1939), in ibid., 44.
(^32) The Arab Office: The Arab Case for Palestine (March 1946), in ibid., 60. For a dis-
cussion of this meeting and for the text of Albert Hourani’s testimony to the committee,
see Khalidi, “On Albert Hourani, the Arab Office, and the Anglo- American Committee of
1946”; Hourani, “The Case against a Jewish State in Palestine.”