Writing for Salon.com, Juan Cole had an excellent article about the history of Israeli and Palestinian territories, containing a broader context in the Middle East. His explanation shows how the League of Nations, today the United Nations, instituted in San Francisco in 1943 to deal with issues facing a post-WWII world, was approaching Palestine and the problem of refugees from concentration camps (and other Jewish survivors of WWII) from a 19th Century historical perspective. British colonialism, French colonialism and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire all played a role.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/16-6
Published on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 by Salon.com
The Unmaking of the Palestinian Nation
by Juan Cole
That is, the purpose of the later British Mandate of Palestine, of the French Mandate of Syria, of the British Mandate of Iraq, was to 'render administrative advice and assistance" to these peoples in preparation for their becoming independent states, an achievement that they were recognized as not far from attaining. The Covenant was written before the actual Mandates were established, but Palestine was a Class A Mandate and so the language of the Covenant was applicable to it. The territory that formed the British Mandate of Iraq was the same territory that became independent Iraq, and the same could have been expected of the British Mandate of Palestine. (Even class B Mandates like Togo have become nation-states, but the poor Palestini
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