British Mandate Archives - CrossFireArarbia

Israel Punishes Britain, a State that Led to its Creation

marwan
September 10, 2026

By Naela Alwaari

On 8 September 2026, the British government announced that it considers the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories to be illegal, and that it would prohibit the import of products from illegal settlements, ban the promotion of settlement properties in Britain, and take measures against individuals and companies that support, facilitate, or benefit from settlement activity. It also imposed sanctions on extremist settlers who supported or participated in acts of violence against Palestinians.

The British government went further than in its previous positions when it agreed to describe what is taking place in parts of the West Bank as the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by settler groups, amid the silence of the Israeli government or the support of some of its members for acts of forced displacement.

This position, however, came after a long period of British silence and inconsistent positions toward Palestinian suffering, particularly during the war on Gaza, when British policies and measures failed to correspond to the scale of the killing, starvation, displacement, and destruction inflicted upon the Palestinian people. The significance of the current step therefore does not erase that history, nor does it absolve Britain of its political and moral responsibility for what has happened, and continues to happen, in Palestine.

Israel’s response was swift and angry. It announced the closure of the British Consulate-General in East Jerusalem and the termination of several forms of cooperation with Britain. The decision to close the consulate was not merely an administrative measure, but a clear political punishment for London’s move—albeit a partial one—from statements of condemnation to measures that directly affect the settlement project and the interests of those who support it.

The deeper irony is that Israel is today punishing the very country whose consulate historically played a role in protecting Jewish immigrants, before Britain, during the Mandate period, went on to sponsor the Zionist project and create the political and administrative conditions for its establishment in Palestine.

Yet the significance of this development goes beyond the fate of the consulate itself. Britain, together with other Western countries that contributed to the formulation and protection of the Zionist project, is beginning to confront the consequences that resulted from it. The entity whose establishment was celebrated as a solution to the Jewish question in Europe was created on the land of another people. Its successive policies subsequently revealed an expansionist settler-colonial character that did not stop at the borders of 1948 or 1967, but extended to the confiscation of land, demolition of homes, expansion of settlements, and displacement of the Palestinians—the owners of the land and its indigenous inhabitants.

To understand the significance of Britain’s present position, it is necessary to return to the beginnings of the British presence in Palestine. British interest in Palestine emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century, within the context of European competition over the Ottoman Empire and its possessions, particularly Greater Syria. The system of foreign privileges granted European powers opportunities to expand their commercial, religious, and political activities, while giving their consuls considerable scope to intervene and provide protection to individuals and communities associated with their respective countries.

On 11 November 1837, British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston sent a letter to the British ambassador in Istanbul, Lord Ponsonby, explaining the importance of appointing a British consul in Jerusalem. Following negotiations with the Ottoman Empire, an imperial decree was issued in 1838 establishing the consulate, and William Young was appointed Britain’s first consul in the city.

This occurred shortly before the London Conference of 1840 and the resulting changes in the regional balance of power, including the end of the rule of Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha in Greater Syria. From that period onward, European influence—and British influence in particular—expanded in Palestine through consulates and religious, commercial, and exploratory missions.

The choice of Jerusalem was not arbitrary. Britain sought a foothold in a city of exceptional religious and political importance, as well as a centre from which to protect its interests and receive its citizens and visitors, while supporting and expanding the Protestant presence. The activities of the consulate, however, went beyond these objectives to include the sponsorship and protection of Jews, particularly those arriving from Russia and Eastern Europe.

The documents on which I relied in my book, The Role of Foreign Consulates in Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine, 1840–1914, reveal that British consuls in Jerusalem, during the period preceding the Balfour Declaration, received instructions to extend British protection to Jews, assist their immigration, and increase the number settling in Jerusalem.

British Consul James Finn expanded this policy even further. He received at the port of Haifa ships carrying immigrants from Europe. The consulate prepared special files on Russian Jews, counted their numbers, registered them in separate records, and worked to bring them under British consular protection.

This protection was not confined to legal matters. It extended to improving their living conditions, facilitating their permanent settlement, and granting some of them travel documents or a legal status connected with Britain. The consulate was therefore not simply a neutral observer of Jewish immigration; it played a role in providing political and legal cover for it.

The British presence assumed other forms as well. In the 1870s, Britain dispatched a technical mission that conducted an extensive survey of the territory of Palestine from north to south. These surveying and exploratory activities were not separate from colonial competition. They provided detailed knowledge of the land, population, roads, and resources—knowledge that subsequently acquired political, military, and settlement-related value.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was therefore not the sudden beginning of an entirely new British policy. Rather, it represented the culmination of a long trajectory that preceded the emergence of the Zionist movement as a global political organisation. The protection, encouragement, and facilitation of immigration undertaken by the British consulate during the 19th century helped prepare the political and legal ground for Britain’s subsequent position.

With Britain’s occupation of Palestine and the subsequent imposition of the Mandate, London no longer needed to pursue its policy through the window of a foreign consulate. Britain itself had become the ruling and administrative authority, and its role shifted from indirect consular protection to the official sponsorship of the Zionist project.

The Mandate for Palestine obliged Britain to create the conditions necessary for the establishment of the “Jewish national home.” Article 6 stipulated the facilitation of Jewish immigration and encouraged the settlement of Jews on the land, including state lands and lands not required for public purposes. The initiatives that had begun with consular protection were thus transformed into official policies implemented by the Mandate authorities through their administrative, legislative, and security institutions.

What Britain today describes as ethnic cleansing is not an event disconnected from the past. Rather, it is an extension of a logic that began with protected immigration and organised settlement, and subsequently developed into the continuing uprooting of the indigenous population and their replacement by settlers.

Nevertheless, Britain’s latest position should not be given more significance than it warrants, nor should it be regarded as a rupture with Israel or a complete reversal of British policy. The British Embassy remains in Tel Aviv, and political, commercial, and security relations between the two countries continue. This may be a positive political step, but it has not, so far, reached the level of a strategic transformation in British policy toward Israel and the Palestinian question.

The British government itself has stressed that its measures target settlements and the economic activities associated with them, rather than Israel itself, and that it remains committed to maintaining trade as well as academic, scientific, and investment relations with Israel. It has also declared its opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

The step should therefore be viewed with both a degree of welcome and caution: Welcome because it moves opposition to settlement activity beyond words toward certain practical measures; caution because it does not mean that Britain has decided to sever its relationship with Israel or undertake a comprehensive reassessment of its historical policy.

We, as Palestinians and Arabs, are often quick to celebrate any international position that challenges Israel, because of our sense that the world has left the Palestinians alone for far too long. Experience, however, teaches us not to build great hopes upon a single step, and not to rely excessively on a position that may change with governments, elections, and in response to the crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

The real measure is not speeches or angry Israeli reactions, but whether these measures continue, expand, and are transformed into a permanent and binding policy that holds the occupation accountable for settlement activity, displacement, and crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

Any international shift derives its significance not from the degree of Israeli anger it provokes, but from the extent to which it provides genuine protection for the rights of the Palestinian people on their land.

This article was originally written in Arabic and appeared in Akhbar Al Baled in Jerusalem. Dr Naela Alwaari is a historian and an expert researcher on Palestinian affairs with particular focus on Jerusalem anf has written many books on the subject. This article appears in crossfirearabia.com

Culture

Palestinian Photographer Khalil Raad With Family in Early 20th Century

CrossFireArabia
August 22, 2026

Palestinian littérateur Newspaper (صحيفة المثقف الفلسطيني)

A rare photograph of the Palestinian photographer Khalil Raad with his family in the early 20th century.

Khalil Raad is considered one of the first Palestinian photographers to document life in Palestine at the end of the Ottoman era and during the British Mandate. His collection of more than 3,000 photographs documents social life in Palestinian cities and villages. Raad began his work from a studio he established on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem in 1890, which was destroyed by Zionist militias. He managed to save 1,230 of the 3,000 photographs in the studio with the help of a friend from Italy who was living in Jaffa.

Culture

Shukri Badr Qutaina: A Journalist Fighting The British Mandate

CrossFireArabia
July 5, 2026

It is the photo of the Palestinian martyr Shukri Badr Qutaina who was born in Jerusalem. He had worked in journalism in the 1920s during the British Mandate period, and contributed to the founding of several news publications, including the newspaper called Falastin (Palestine).

He was among 136 prominent Palestinian figures from Jerusalem—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, and union leaders—who issued a document on 1 May, 1936, a week after the declaration of the Great General Strike. In it, they called upon Palestinian society to engage in civil disobedience and refuse to pay taxes to the British Mandate authorities.

Akram Zu’ayter said: “This call to refrain from paying taxes was the first serious political step that had to be taken at this stage of the struggle, knowing that the country was heading towards armed revolution and that revolutionary sentiment was rising at an astonishing rate.”

Journalist and activist Shukri Qutaina was martyred on 13 April, 1948, after participating in the attack on the Zionist Hadassah convoy. Palestinian fighters from the Army of the Holy War (Arab Destruction Brigade) ambushed a Zionist convoy transporting fighters, supplies, and medical equipment to Zionist settlements east of Jerusalem (Mount Scopus and the Hebrew University), killing 78 Zionists.

This battle was in retaliation for the martyrs of al-Qastal and Deir Yassin earlier that week. It played a significant role in halting the Zionist offensive on the eastern neighborhoods and villages of Jerusalem. Twelve fighters were martyred in the battle, as documented by Bahjat Abu Gharbiya in his book.

If you are in Jerusalem and wish to know the location of this great battle in the history of the Palestinian struggle, it is opposite the Nashashibi Ambulance House in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Jerusalem.

Culture Features

Meet Karimeh Abbud – First ‘Lady Photographer’ of Palestine

CrossFireArabia
June 22, 2026

Ahmad Mrowat’s collection

Late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir once unashamedly said the Palestinians don’t exist and Israel was established on empty lands.

It was a view repeated time and again to justify the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and their subsequent grab of more Arab territories.

The photographs of Karimeh Abbud (1893-1940), the first Palestinian woman photographer, debunks that view and makes Israelis like Meir eat their words.

Google honoured her legacy by celebrating Abbud’s 123rd birthday with a Google doodle in 2016 two years before this article was first published.

“Abbud captured vast landscapes, many of which don’t exist today. Through her art, we’re able to experience the beauty of these regions as she saw them nearly 100 years ago,” said Google on November 18, 2016. “Thank you, Karimeh, for making art that endures.”

Only upon closer inspection it is clear that the tree is in fact painted on the negative, curving around her head and through her hands

Google also dwelled on her “photographs of family, friends and the surrounding landscape of Bethlehem, Palestine.”

Darat Al Funun of the Khaled Shoman Foundation in Amman presented the first comprehensive exhibition of photographs by Karimeh Abbud in late 2018 to continue January 11, 2019.

Documentary

The exhibition also included a short documentary on Karimeh’s life and work by Mahasen Nasser-Eldin.

Many art critics have commented on the impressive nature of her photography. In a tribute to Abbud Palestinian art critic Tammam Al Akhal said “she is friend of the light and sun… there is an artistic sense of the equilibrium inside her pictures. She was a true artist when taking a photograph.”

Al Akhal was giving a short presentation on the artistic poise in Abbud’s photographs as the Karimeh Abbud Photography Competition Prize was being launched by Dar Al Kalima University College of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem, Palestine, in 2016. The competition has since become an annual event designed to encourage young talent in art, culture and photography.

The Lady Photographer of Palestine

In her time, she established herself amongst the great photographers of the time with Al Akhal referring to her as standing as “tall as the skyscraper.”

Abbud was born in Bethlehem on November 18, 1893, in a Christian family which had settled in Palestine in the latter half of the 19th century. Her father was Said Abbud, an Anglican-Lutheran priest, who used to travel all over Palestine and take Abbud with him wherever he went.

Ivana Peric wrote that when Abbud was little she would accompany her father on his travels to distant places to serve his congregations in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Haifa and Nazareth “and this constant travel to Palestinian cities and villages allowed [Abbud] to see the diverse landscape of her homeland first-hand. She wanted to see more and capture the beauty she encountered.”

Reverend Mitri Al Raheb — who became a sort of unofficial biographer of Karimeh Abbud and her family — said when he came to Palestine, her father travelled to many places from Gaza in the south to Shaffa Amer in the north and then finally settled in Bethlehem in 1890. However, the family finally put down roots in Nazareth and this is where Abbud grew up, going to primary school there, then to Jerusalem and later to the American University in Beirut where she studied Arabic literature.

However her true passion was photography. She was merely 17 when her father gave her a camera and she started clicking there and then and didn’t stop until her death. She was buried in the Bethlehem Church where her father preached from the early 1900s until 1947 when he retired and left Palestine in January 1948 because of the troubles in Palestine and returned to Marj Ayoun in southern Lebanon where he originally came from.

During this period, however, the second of his six children quickly established herself by becoming a highly competent photographer, competing in a man’s world alongside such old hacks as Khalil Raad, Hanna Safieh and Fadil Saba and a handful of Armenian photographers who dominated the profession.

Ahmad Mrowat, the director of the Nazareth Archive Project devoted to collecting the works of the “Lady Photographer”, said Saba, the local photographer, moved to Haifa in the early 1930s and this made the emerging photographer a household name. He was invited to cover events all over Palestine, including one celebration in Hebron.

Social revolution

Abbud created a social revolution in photography. Unlike the male photographers who worked out of their own studios, Abbud did much more. She had two studios, one in Nazareth where she also had a laboratory for processing the photos and keeping the negatives in a safe place and adding colour to some of them, and a studio in Haifa. However, she visited homes to take photographs of women and children which male photographers could not do.

Abbud went into the homes of well-to-do and middle class families as Al Raheb points out. Increasingly, these people wanted her to come to their homes because of prevailing social constraints that made it inappropriate for them to venture outside their houses, especially to be photographed in studios.

So Abbud photographed women and children at different social occasions, during parties and marriage ceremonies. Her reputation was quickly cemented in the 1920s and 1930s when she took up the profession full time. In Al Carmel, a local newspaper, she advertised herself as “the only national photographer in Palestine [who] learned this beautiful art by well-known photographic personalities and is specialist in the service of women at reasonable prices…”

There are two points here to consider that could actually be inter-related. Jinan Abdo stresses the national element in this advertisement. She states in a 2012 documentary on Abbud made by Mahasen Nasser-Eldin: “when she calls herself a national photographer that feeds into the national context that was present at the time. In the 1920s, after the British Mandate began, Muslim and Christian associations started to counter the idea that we are sectarian groups and not a nation and to support the idea of the unification of our nation, so the rational element was essential and I think we can look at Karimeh through this national context,” Abdo says.

Dr Issam Nassar, an academic at Illinois State University who teaches Middle East history, focuses on the “micro” element in her photography. “Taking portraits in studios at that time required preparations” whilst “in the clients’ homes… it was more relaxing because people felt at ease in their natural sorroundings.”

Hani Hourani, a social science researcher who studied art and photography, says: “If we look at the family and group photos [taken by Karimeh Abbud] the viewer doesn’t see the traditional style of the setting, the background décor and the fixed distribution of light but the onlooker sees such marked diversity in all these elements.

“The home was an opportunity for more improvisation and diversity in the styles captured by the photo leading many to suggest Karimeh Abbud was a non-traditional photographer calling for change in the way she clicked photos.”

Abbud’s photographs on show at Darat Al Funun were recently acquired accidentally after much cajoling.

Mrowat answered an advertisement placed in an Arab newspaper by an antiquarian Jewish collector named Boki Boazz calling for more information about Karimeh Abbud. That was in 2006.

Mrowat says at first the collector was not willing to divulge any information but after being pressed, it turned out that he had 4,000 photographs which he got hold of in one of the houses in the Qatamon district in Jerusalem after their owners fled in 1948; the photographs, he adds were of Karimeh Abbud because her name was initialled on each of the photographs — the first signed picture postcard belonging to her was dated October 1919.

Mrowat says his heart was set on obtaining the collection which he felt were a very important part of Palestinian heritage, finally persuading Boazz to give up his collection by offering him an old edition of the Torah printed in the Palestinian city of Safad in 1860.

The photos on show form only a part of the collection at Darat Al Funun and are only a fraction of the huge number of photographs said to number 9,000 still believed to be in the possession of the Israeli army as an article in the Haaretz newspaper stated.

The photos present a narrative of the Palestinian society and travel before 1948. Abbud took photos of cities and villages that flourished in the early part of the 20th century.

It was easy for Abbud to get around, Mrowat says, as she was probably the first woman to have an automobile and a driving licence in Palestine and the Arab world. She used to travel frequently to photograph Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tiberias and Haifa. Many photos were taken of beaches, markets, mosques and churches, providing a unique glimpse of Palestinian life.

Mrowat, Dr Nassar and others suggest she would act, at times, as a tour guide, accompanying visitors to many tourist locations including the Jordan River and Yarmouk River as well as many other places. In between these, she was interested also in photographing the daily lives of Palestinian women, the different stitches they would make as they embroidered their garments which represented different villages, farming, women carrying water and wood as well as other scenes in both the countryside and in towns and cities.

Nassar puts it in another way when he says that Abbud was able to bring out the human aspects of the personalities she was photographing and this added value to her work and individuality because she succeeded in preserving the modesty and humanity of the Palestinian existence “through what professional photographers call the “aura” of the photograph and its phantasmical imagination.”

Al Akhal agrees, saying this is why Abbud’s photographs surpassed time. It was the “professionalism”, “creativity” and “high quality” that produced good negatives and in turn excellent photographs that “allowed her work to continue to be seen long after,” she says. “Through these pictures she [Karimeh Abbud] talks to us in silence, we build a dialogue with her, become friendly with her and construct strong relations with her.”

Through her images, Abbud provided a pictorial documentation of Palestinian life.

Nasser-Eldin, also coordinator of the the Karimeh Abbud Photograph Competition Prize, says “Abbud started what we can call ‘documentary photography’ documenting the lives of people through her studios and through her movement in the country carrying her bulky tripod and her camera wherever she went.

“Through her lens we got to know the forms of Palestinians living in Palestine before 1948. Her photos give us a change concept, a new picture of windows and images of Palestine and Palestinians, totally different from the pictures of orientalists who showed our country [Palestine] was empty of people and/or showed images of people spread out and not as an integrated community with civilisation and culture living in towns and cities and in modernity at that time,” Nasser Eldin added.

Her photos were well-taken and are a vital part of history, so at various times Israel has sought to adopt her as one of its own. This is what one book, published in 2011, titled Karimeh Abbud: Israeli Portrait and Wedding Photography by Monica Millian tried to do. Many have questioned its credibility as it is primarily sourced from Wikipedia and other online resources.

It can easily be understood why Israel would want to “cash in” on such an historic cultural figure, but Abbud is a Palestinian through and through as judged by historical evidence.

Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a Phd in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK. This article originally written for and appeared in Gulf News and is now reprinted in crossfirearabia.com.

Culture

Jerusalem Signs: Identity and Political Power

CrossFireArabia
January 24, 2025

At a recent lecture hosted by the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Yasir Suleiman, professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge guided the audience through the intricate linguistic landscape of Jerusalem. Exploring the Holy City’s street signs, Suleiman revealed how these seemingly mundane markers act as silent witnesses to history and power struggles, charting the evolution of identity and conflict in the region.

“Language is important, not because it gives you information, but because it stands for something that is beyond language,” Suleiman explained. “Road signs, anywhere in the world, do tell a story. They present you with a narrative, a cultural map, a linguistic map, and a political map.”

Language Layers of Jerusalem

Jerusalem’s street signs have long served as a battleground for identity and political power, reflecting the city’s historical transformations, from the Ottoman period through the British Mandate and into the present day. Suleiman traced this history, showing how language has shaped and been shaped by competing claims over the city’s public space.

https://twitter.com/CBRL_news/status/1878758921340678444

Before the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, Jerusalem’s signs prominently featured Ottoman Turkish (written in Arabic script) alongside English and occasionally French. Hebrew was largely absent. For instance, an original 1892 sign at the Jerusalem-Jaffa train station displayed the name of “Jerusalem” in English and Ottoman Turkish, with Hebrew was only added post-1948.

This marked a time when Hebrew was largely absent from Jerusalem’s linguistic landscape, reflecting its limited presence in the population’s daily life, while Arabic script was present, but the Arabic language itself was absent.

However, the rise of the Zionist movement sought to change this, prioritising Hebrew revival as a cornerstone of its political and cultural agenda.

Three Languages, One Hierarchy

Under British Mandate, it was decided that English, Arabic and Hebrew were all required on street signs. Yet, their arrangement revealed the prevailing power dynamics: English appeared at the top, Arabic in the middle, and Hebrew at the bottom, as stipulated by British authorities.

This vertical hierarchy symbolised the ruling power, with English taking precedence and Arabic reflecting the majority population (around 90% of the people in Palestine were Arabic-speakers, including the Jews and Christians). Hebrew’s lower placement underscored its marginal status at the time.

The Zionist movement, unhappy with this arrangement, lobbied for horizontal signs, where all three languages appeared side-by-side. Even so, Arabic retained a visual advantage because its right-to-left orientation naturally positioned it above Hebrew in terms of linguistic flow, as any right-to-left script placed on the right takes visual precedence over one positioned on the left.

Three Languages, Three Names

Suleiman highlighted how different languages on street signs often tell different stories about the same location. For instance, the famous Damascus Gate is labelled in Arabic “Bab el-’Amoud,” referencing Roman pillars in the area, while in Hebrew, it is called “Bab Nablus,” acknowledging Nablus’s religious significance for Jews, and in English, it is “Damascus Gate,” reflecting the trade connexions to the Syrian capital. Each language offers a distinct historical or cultural claim to the place, underscoring the city’s layered identity.

Three languages, Two Boxes

The 1948-1967 Jordanian control of Jerusalem brought changes to Jerusalem’s signs. With almost no Jewish presence within the Old City’s walls, the Jordanian authorities only put street signs in Arabic and English.

Arabic was placed above English, with the English text mirroring the Arabic perfectly (e.g., “Al-Malak Road”). This reflected a shift in status: English was no longer the language of the ruling power but had become merely a lingua franca, while Arabic took precedence as the dominant language.

However, after the Israelis occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the linguistic order shifted again. New signs were introduced, with Hebrew taking the top position, symbolising Israeli sovereignty. Arabic and English were relegated below it, marking a significant reordering of visual and political priorities.

By 1980, when the Israeli Knesset declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the street signs further evolved to reflect political realities. A single box now contained all three languages, with Hebrew firmly at the top. Arabic began to diminish in influence, with English morphology increasingly aligning with Hebrew rather than Arabic conventions. For instance, “Ha-Malak Road” replaced “Al-Malak Road,” subtly asserting Hebrew’s dominance over Arabic.

Signs of Power

This dynamic became even more pronounced in 2018 when the Israeli Knesset stripped Arabic of its status as an official language. On modern street signs like “Nablus Road,” Hebrew now appears on top of the three languages and often in its fully pointed form, a form traditionally reserved for sacred texts, emphasising its elevated status in Israel’s narrative of Jerusalem.

Suleiman underscored how Jerusalem’s street signs are not just tools for navigation, they are symbols of power. “These signs are not about informing you where you are, they tell you who owns the place, who calls the shots.”

Street signs of Jerusalem have become a linguistic archaeology, with layers of history etched into their evolving forms. From the Ottoman period to the present day, they quietly tell the story of a city at the centre of competing claims over its identity.

This article was written by Sophie Constantin and appeared in the Jordan Times