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Source: https://jcpa.org/the-british-mandate-began-100-years-ago-june-30-1920-a-photo-essay/
The British Mandate Began 100 Years Ago - A Photo Essay
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Lenny Ben-David - On June 30, 1920, 100 years ago, Herbert Samuel landed in Palestine to assume his duties as Britain's High Commissioner of the Mandate. Samuel was a committed Zionist. At the beginning of World War I, then serving in the Home Office, he drafted a memorandum on "The Future of Palestine" in which he proposed a Jewish state as a "foundation of enlightenment." In his 1921 Annual Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine, Samuel wrote: "The country was before the War, and is now, undeveloped and under-populated. The methods of agriculture are, for the most part, primitive; the area of land now cultivated could yield a far greater product. There are in addition large cultivable areas that are left untilled. The summits and slopes of the hills are admirably suited to the growth of trees, but there are no forests. Miles of sand dunes that could be redeemed are untouched." The writer, former deputy chief of mission at Israel's Embassy in Washington, is the author of American Interests in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs.