MacDonald Does In The Jews in 1939

What was the understanding of the phrase "civil and religious rights" contained in the League of Nations Mandate decision of 1922?

That Mandate decision's preamble, in part, reads

the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, 

Let's review the person in charge in 1939, Malcolm MacDonald, the then Colonial Secretary, responsible for the infamous White Paper of that year.  While the new policy radically altered the Mandate's premise, severely restricted Jewish immigration and limited land purchases, MacDonald was confronted by the commission members' questions regarding the obvious distinction made by the original Mandate decision between the rights and privileges of the two ocommunities residing in the country.

Here is from his statement on June 15, 1939 at the Permanent Mandates Commission in Geneva:

The authors of the Balfour Declaration and of the mandate who envisaged duties towards the Jews and duties towards the Arabs, which should be of equal weight, cannot have supposed that those duties would be in conflict, but that they would be mutually reconcilable. They cannot have intended that these two sets of obligations should contradict each other, and meet only in a violent clash. What then are these obligations? On the one hand was the promise of "the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people" and on the other was the assurance that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine"...

But they could contradict as the intentions of the framers was that the country become the Jewish National Home. 

Let me examine these undertakings further. First, the term "National Home" which is used throughout the Declaration and the mandate, is somewhat ambiguous and has been open to various interpretations. It has been claimed that it meant that Palestine should ultimately become a Jewish State. There can be no doubt that the possibility of a Jewish State was not excluded; it was regarded as a definite possibility by some of the leading statesmen who were familiar with the intentions of those who drew up the Balfour Declaration. Thus President Wilson spoke early in 1919 of laying in Palestine "the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth", and General Smuts towards the end of the same year foretold an increasing stream of Jewish immigration into the country and "in generations to come a great Jewish State rising there once more". His Majesty's Government accept that the possibility of Palestine becoming a Jewish State was not precluded.

The obvious become "ambiguous". 

Yet in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate the terms Jewish State and Jewish Commonwealth are not employed. Instead, a term which was without precedent in constitutional charters, a term which lacked clear definition, the term "Jewish National Home" was used. It was deliberately used...Those responsible for the Balfour Declaration and the mandate were aware of these uncertainties hidden in the future, and so they chose deliberately to describe this part of their objective in Palestine by a phrase--"a Jewish National Home"--which might mean either a Jewish State or else something very much less.

Might. 

...From the beginning, the Balfour Declaration recognised certain duties to the non-Jewish population. While promising the Jewish people a National Home, it declared that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". This principle is reflected in the operative clauses of the mandate where--for example, in Article 2--it is laid down that "the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants" are to be safeguarded, and in Article 6 that "the rights and position" of the non-Jewish sections of the population are not to be prejudiced.

However, since nothing comparable to a "national home" was promised to the non-Jewish residents, it would seem obvious that the Jews were awarded a certain political primacy. 

There has sometimes been controversy as to what these phrases were intended to mean. Some exponents have sought to minimise the significance of the words and to suggest, for instance, that "civil rights" meant little more than civic rights. That is an untenable position...

Why untenable? 

And he goes off to discussing an irrelvelant document. Gibberash, actually.

...That assurance to the Arabs [referring to the Hogarth mission] must surely mean that Palestine could not one day become a Jewish State against the will of the Arabs in the country.

He continues to misinterpret the phrase: 

The words of the Balfour Declaration on the matter are strong. "Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities". The mandate says that the Administration "while ensuring that the rights and position of the other section of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate immigration under suitable conditions". The rights referred to are the normal political rights of a people. And, normally, those rights would include the power to have their voice heard against a flow of immigration which threatened to relegate them to a position of virtual inferiority in their own country. It seems to His Majesty's Government that the rights guaranteed to the Arabs in the mandate would be definitely prejudiced if, now that immigration has made the Jewish population a vast proportion of the whole population, and given it a position already of economic dominance, the mandatory Power were to continue to permit indefinitely a flow of further immigration against a strong national protest which is supported by every articulate section of Arab opinion.

Note: immigration of...Jews.  Settlement on the land by...Jews.  Obviously there is a distinction.  The whole idea behind the Mandate was, indeed, to turn it into a Jewish national home.

Perfidious Albion.

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