ABSTRACT
Egypt’s formal status as an independent nation began in 1922. At that time, the British government unilaterally declared that its protectorate there, in force since the beginning of World War I in 1914, was over. The situation became more complex when the Wafd party won the first real parliamentary elections held in independent Egypt with an overwhelming majority in January 1924. The relationship of Egyptian women with the Wafd was shaped by Huda Sharawi, one of the founders of Egyptian feminism. Particular those uprooted by economic upheavals and displacement in the 1920s and 1930s, turned to a new organization: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Palestinian Arab leadership continually asked the British to grant their people national and political rights, such as representative government, in the part of the Palestine Mandate that had been designated to include a Jewish homeland. The British adopted a top-down management style for the Palestinian Arabs, dealing only with the elite instead of the middle or lower classes.
