No. of Recommendations: 2
You seem to be saying the Palestinian Jews are at least marginal allies to the British. But the British were contending with Jewish terrorists, and (I think) Menachem Begin spent time in a British prison for such actions. Doesn't sound like they were very chummy. The Mandate originated in 1920, and the Germans never conquered it. So the Brits had a continual presence in the region until 1948.
I wasn't aware of the French, but I knew it was a British protectorate (of sorts), as their colonial empire continued to shrink.
Yes. Both happened. The mandate lasted decades - there were different phases.
The Brits courted Jewish support (really, any support they could get) during WWI. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was a key part of that. So too were all the promises they made to Arab power brokers in the region (also in 1917) for an independent Arab state (not Palestinian - we're talking Syria and Iraq and Jordan and the north half of Saudi Arabia) after the war. The Arabs legitimately felt betrayed after the revelation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement carving up the area between Britain and France, not an independent state.
So, during the League of Nations interwar era you had Britain controlling the Palestinian and Transjordanian portion of the mandate, with France controlling the general area of Syria and Lebanon. This led to all kinds of political conflict with the Arab populations in those areas, which swelled into violent uprising by the late 1920's. But during the 1920's and 1930's, the Jewish population was working with the British towards fulfilling the (to them) promises of the Balfour Declaration to create a separate, independent Jewish state within Mandatory Palestine. That led to all kinds of violence between the Arabs and the Jews, of course - but also the Arabs fighting the Brits.
The decades pass, and by the mid-1930's the Arab population of Mandatory Palestine has engaged in open revolt. From 1936-1939, many thousands of Palestinians were killed or driven from their homes, while the British were devoting a lot of resources to quell the ongoing rebellions. For reasons you don't need me to explain, by 1939 the UK had determined that it just needed the fighting to stop. So they pivoted from the Balfour Declaration, and issued a new policy: the Jewish homeland would be part of an independent Arab state that encompassed all of Palestine (a one-state solution), Jewish immigration to the area would henceforth be restricted, and most important policy decisions would require majority Arab support. Like most things Chamberlain, this did not achieve peace in the area: the Arabs rejected it as insufficient to meet their priorities, and the Jews regarded it as a betrayal of the promises of Balfour. So everyone started to attack the Brits, seeking independence in the chaos leading into WWII.
So while the Jews eventually were fighting against the Brits, from about 1916 to 1940 they were viewed by the Arabs in the region as siding with the Brits against first the Ottomans, then the Arabs. So we were starting to get really unpopular in the area long before the actual partition.
