French Mandate of Palestine

Say in the Treaty of Sèvres, France received Palestine while the UK got Syria. What would the Nazis/Vichy government/Free French do with the territory? How would France deal with the Zionist movement?
 
Well, I'm actually completely ignorant of Mandate history so I can't help you with the Zionism question, but I can say two things:

You need a POD before the Balfour declaration, since with it Britain assumed responsibility for creatinga Zionist state in Palestine.

Nazi and Vichy plans won't amount to anything because Vichy Palestine will get stomped on in a second. There would be no strategic reason for France to garrison the mandate anything more than police forces before the war, and by nature Palestine is a grave threat to the Suez canal. Syria, by comparison, was invaded over reports that the Axis might use it to bomb Iraqi oil supplies, hardly a threat of the same magnitude as a chunk of potentially hostile territory within a dash from the British Empire's jugular vein.
 
Parsleymagnet

I think the basic problems are:

a) As "I Blame Communism" says Palestine is very close to the Suez Canal and I can't see Britain being willing to accept another major power controlling it.

b) France seems to have claimed a special interest in Syria, based on long trading interests I believe? Hence and in the interests of better relations with them it was transferred to a French mandate, which fouled up attempts to organise a larger Arab state that might have avoided a lot of problems later on. As such either the French get Syria or Britain gets both and France possibly gets a mandate elsewhere.

Steve
 
It seems like France would still want at least Lebanon, since they had long interests there. (Not so sure about the rest of Syria)
 
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