ABSTRACT
The years of British mandatory authority represented a period in which communal relations in Jerusalem were reconfigured as essentially political rather than social and economic, to the especial detriment of relations between Jews and Arabs but also negatively affecting relations between Palestine’s Muslim and Christian communities. From the mid-nineteenth century, British evangelicals had constructed a vision of Palestine as a “Holy Land” that belonged spiritually – and politically – to Western Christians, especially Protestants. Ironically, the British re-categorization of Palestine’s Muslims and Christians under British rule came precisely at a moment when many urban elites of both communities were expressing a new and intense interest in cross-communal secular nationalism. As the mandate wore on, British support for Zionism was articulated into structures of governance and legal practice in Palestine that effectively promoted communal divisions.
