Palestine under the Ottoman Empire & British mandate

A letter from Lord Raglan (1885-1964) appeared in the Yorkshire Post on 7th April 1925. The letter was a reply to EP Hewitt KC (Kings Counsel - a senior lawyer) who had said that under the British mandate for Palestine “The position of the Arab has been greatly improved. When the Turks held control the Arabs of Palestine were a subject race; under the Mandate they are a free people, enjoying far higher rights than under the Turks they ever possessed”

Lord Raglan replied: “This is entirely untrue. Under the Turks they elected three members to the parliament at Constantinople; now they have no representation. Under the Turks there were elected bodies corresponding to our County and Rural District Councils these have been abolished."

"Under the Turks they were admitted to the Civil Service on the same terms as Turks, and often reached high rank, not only in Palestine, but all over the Turkish empire; now the high posts are reserved for Englishmen and Jews.....They were [under the Ottomans] a subject race much to the same extant as the Welsh are a subject race."

"They are now the helots of an Anglo-Jewish domination with which they are entirely out of sympathy, and are far more anxious to get the Turks back than they ever were to get rid of them. They regard the Zionists just as Englishmen would regard Chinese whom some alien conqueror might settle in the country and treat preferentially”