The 1920 San Remo Conference: How the Mandate System Redrew Palestine

In April 1920, the Allied powers gathered in the Italian Riviera town of San Remo to finalize the division of the Ottoman Empire. This episode dives into the four-day conference that awarded the Mandate for Palestine to Britain, enshrined the Balfour Declaration in international law, and drew the borders that still haunt the region. We follow the key players: British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, French Premier Alexandre Millerand, Zionist representative Chaim Weizmann, and the absent voices of the Palestinian Arab delegation. We examine the secret diplomacy that preceded San Remo — the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Hussein-McMahon correspondence — and the conference's decisions on Syria, Mesopotamia, and the French Mandate. The episode also unpacks Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, the concept of 'sacred trust of civilization', and how the mandate system created a legal framework for occupation. We look at the immediate aftermath: riots in Jerusalem, the appointment of Herbert Samuel as High Commissioner, and the growing Palestinian resistance. This is the moment when the vague promises of World War I became concrete political boundaries.

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