Historians have often discussed the process of Zionist settlement in Ottoman and mandate Palestine as if it occurred in isolation from, and without impact on, the indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Revisionist scholars, including Gershon Shafir and Gabriel Piterberg, have challenged this portrayal. They argue that the presence of the Palestinian Arabs on the land, as well as their participation in the labour market, had a fundamental influence on the development of divergent Zionist settlement strategies. This thesis complements and supports this argument through analysis of the participation of two influential Zionists, Alexander Aaronsohn and Norman Bentwich, in a series of legal actions known as the “Zeita Lands Case”. The case itself, which took place under the British mandate between 1923 and 1931, is discussed in detail. The lives and background of Bentwich and Aaronsohn are examined in order to contextualize their participation in the case. / Graduate

This diploma thesis deals with the withdrawal of Great Britain from Palestine and the reactions of the Zionist movement on her mandatory policy. In 1937, the British planed to divide the mandate between the Arabs and the Jews, terminate the administration and establish an alliance with the successor states. Disapproval of the Arab world, worsened security in Palestine and the threat of a war in Europe led the mandatory power to prolong the administration and restrict the jewish immigration.These meassures caused a deterioration of Anglo-Zionist relations. During the Second World War, the Zionist Organization put forward a request for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. No long after, the British restored their preparations for the termination of the mandate. As before the war, they sought for the pernament teritorial solution for postmandatory Palestine and new allies. Due to unstable geopolitical situation and the loss of her hegemonic position, Great Britain had to consider the attitudes of the Arab world and the United States of America.

This thesis examines the ways in which the British mandate conceptualised, encountered, and sought to manage mental illness in Palestine between 1920 and 1948. The subject of mental illness has hitherto received partial consideration by historians interested in the Yishuv, who treat this period as formative for the Israeli mental health service. This thesis shifts the focus from European Jewish psychiatrists to the British mandate's engagements with mental illness, thus contributing to the well-developed literature on colonial psychiatry. Where this thesis departs from many of these institutionally-focussed histories of colonial psychiatry is in its source base; lacking hospital case files or articles in psychiatric journals, this thesis draws on an eclectic range of material from census reports and folklore research to petitions and prison records. In bringing together these strands of the story of psychiatry and mental illness, this thesis seeks to move beyond the continued emphasis in the historiography of Palestine on politics, nationalism, and state-building, and to develop our understanding of state and society by examining how they interacted in relation to the question of mental illness. This thesis thus widens the cast of historical actors from psychiatric experts alone to take in policemen, census officials, and families. In addition, this thesis seeks to situate Palestine within wider mandatory, British imperial, and global contexts, not to elide specificities, but to resist a persistent historiographical tendency to treat Palestine as exceptional. The first part traces the development of British mandatory conceptualisations of mental illness through the census of 1931 and then through a focus on specific causes of mental illness thought to be at work in Palestine. The second part examines two contexts in which the mandate was brought into contact with the mentally ill: the law and petitions. The final part of the thesis explores two distinct therapeutic regimes introduced in this period: patient work and somatic treatments.