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This thesis principally concerns the illegal immigration campaign launched by a secret organisation, the Mossad FAliyah Bet (The Mossad), to breach the British naval blockade of Palestine and thereby enable the entry of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. My primary objective is to prove that from late 1945 to April 1948 this campaign was largely facilitated by the covert help of elements within the French coalition Governments, without which it would not have succeeded. Crucially, France takes centre stage because this was the location, par excellence, chosen by the Mossad from which to carry out its operational activities. Whilst the overall historiography of illegal immigration to Palestine is vast and has included many archival references to French involvement, this has not been clearly substantiated. On the basis of archive sources, some only recently made available, and despite the paucity of direct evidence of French complicity, I will illustrate that there is a wealth of documentation which, taken as a whole, provides compelling circumstantial evidence that mis involvement was extensive. Furthermore, I will argue that French cooperation with Zionist leaders extended to political issues and military aid as well. Amongst other issues, I will focus on the rather free environment in France, in the post-war era, which proved to be so conducive to the operations of the Mossad. This includes considerations such as the political make-up of the French Government, the partisan approach of some of its ministers and civil servants, the Jewish community's attitude towards Zionism and the work of intermediaries between certain Government ministers and the Mossad. I will also examine the effects of British diplomatic pressure on the French Ministries involved and the attempts of its Secret Service to prevent illegal ships leaving France.

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This thesis examines how ideals of trusteeship influenced British administration of the Palestine mandate. The Covenant of the League of Nations described the mandate system as a 'sacred trust of civilisation'; because of this, the powers who held mandates were obligated to govern the territories they occupied during the First World War with the long-term aim of establishing them as independent members of the international community. British fulfilment of that trust drew on wider influences that had informed its rule elsewhere in the colonial empire; notions of liberalism, utilitarianism, and rationalism, core elements in a British philosophy of colonial rule, profoundly shaped British governance in Palestine. In utilising a model of trusteeship to explore the Palestine mandate, this study also explores how colonial policy-making was shaped by Orientalist representations. Cultural preconceptions enabled the basic premise of trusteeship by providing a binary image of 'backward', inferior subject populations in need of assistance and of progressive, superior Western powers capable of delivering the required 'tutelage'. The influence of trusteeship and Orientalism in Palestine is examined in five key administrative areas: self-government, immigration, land, education, and law and order. Under trusteeship, various forms of local and communal self-government were advanced to provide administrative experience and create a foundation for eventual participation in national self-government; reform ofland tenure and the facilitation of Jewish immigration were intended to promote economic growth and increase prosperity amongst all sections of the population; the government school system was expanded to encourage basic levels of mass literacy and develop vocational knowledge of modern agricultural techniques; and the mandatory administration sought to create local, self-sufficient civilian forces to uphold public security. Such policies allowed British officials to justify their presence in Palestine through discourses of 'progress' and 'improvement', which were required irrespective of any British commitments made to support Zionism.

The diplomatic and political deadlock in what has come to be known as the Palestine/Israel conflict, has led to the re-emergence of an anti-partition discourse that draws its arguments from the reality on the ground and/or from anti-Zionism. Why such a re-emergence? Actually, anti-partitionism as an antagonism depends on its corollary, partitionism, and as such, they have existed for the same period of time. Furthermore, the debate between antipartitionists and pro-partitionists – nowadays often referred to as a debate between the one-state and the two-state solution – is not peculiar to the period around 2000. It echoes the situation in the late 1910s when the British were settling in Palestine and authorising the Zionist settler colonial movement to build a Jewish homeland thus introducing the seeds of partition and arousing expressions of anti-partitionism. This dissertation aims to articulate a political history of the antipartitionist perspectives against the backdrop of an increasing acceptance of Palestine's partition as a solution. This account runs from 1915 and the first partition – that of the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire – to 1988 and the Palestinian recognition of the principle of partition. Thus, I argue that the antipartitionist perspectives have persisted throughout history. Such a historical perspective enabled me to consider the acceptance of partition as the result of a shift from a “national and territorial liberation” strategy to the search for “sovereignty and national independence”, a shift that was operated in the Palestinian national movement as well as in the Zionist movement, and which made statehood the main objective. In this regard, the Palestinian acceptance of the principle of partition and of a two-state solution may be regarded as a legitimation of the Israeli colonial settler state.