A broken trust

"Herbert Samuel was the first British high commissioner in Mandatory Palestine (1920-1925). He has been generally regarded by traditional British historians as an impartial administrator in the emerging conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Zionist." "Sahar Huneidi argues that most of the measures Samuel took during his tenure in Palestine were designed to prepare the ground not simply for the 'Jewish national home' promised in both the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine, but also for a fully-fledged Jewish state. Using a wide range of primary sources, both English and Arabic, published and unpublished, Huneidi charts Samuel's career in Palestine against the complex background of British policy in the region, the Zionist movement at its inception and the emergent Palestinian Arab nationalist movement." "Huneidi's revisionist history of the first years of the Palestine Mandate provides many fresh insights into the intractable history of conflict between European Jewish settlers and Palestinians. It is for specialists in the Middle East, International Relations and British diplomatic history as well as general readers interested in the Arab-Israeli confrontation."--Jacket.