Palestine, dilemmas of decolonization
After its defeat in the First World War the territories of the Ottoman Empire in Syria (today Syria and Lebanon), Mesopotamia (today Iraq) and Palestine were divided in 1920 between France and Great Britain by means of the San Remo Conference, under the authority of the League of Nations. The British Mandate over Palestine incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917, under which the British government had undertaken, in a completely arbitrary manner, to establish a Jewish national state on the territory of Palestine. 30 years after the Balfour Declaration, on November 29th 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 authorizing the partition of Palestine and thus emerged the state of Israel. There was no democratic consultation process with the native Arab population of Palestine, which at that time numbered twice the Jewish population.



