Britain took the territory of Palestine from the Turkish Empire and decided to stay when World War I ended, in the face of opposition from the population. Once in control, Britain began to promote immigration of Jews on the basis of its commitment to foster the development of a Jewish national home. Britain ultimately had to pronounce this policy a failure and asked the United Nations to recommend a solution for the governance of Palestine. The General Assembly suggested dividing Palestine, leading to hostilities. The General Assembly then backtracked on partition and worked on a possible trusteeship for Palestine that would function under the United Nations for a limited time while a permanent solution was negotiated. That plan was under consideration when Britain withdrew its forces and a council declared a Jewish state. During the hostilities, which continued until the end of 1948, most of Palestine’s Arab population fled, dramatically altering the demography of the country.

Britain and France were pressured not to take over the Arab territories of the Turkish Empire as colonies. Those territories had been governed under Turkey not as colonies, but as participants in the Turkish Empire, with representation in the Turkish Parliament. The World War I Allies, as part of the peace treaty with Germany, wrote what they called a covenant for a new international organization that would hopefully keep the peace, the League of Nations. This covenant set up a system whereby states taking territories from Germany and Turkey might opt to govern them by committing to promote the interests of the populations. For the Arab territories being taken from Turkey, the covenant said they should be deemed provisionally independent. France and Britain both opted for this system, France taking Syria, and Britain taking Iraq and Palestine. The populations in all three objected that their independence should be immediate. They asserted a right of self-determination and deemed the provisional independence mentioned in the covenant to violate that right.