San Remo conference - Definition and Overview

The San Remo conference (19-26 April 1920) of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled Arab lands of the Middle East by the victorious powers. Britain received the mandate for Palestine (including part of modern Jordan) and Iraq, while France gained control of Syria including present-day Lebanon, subsequently intervening militarily to depose (24 July 1920) the government which had been established in Damascus by Arab nationalists.

The conference broadly reaffirmed the terms of the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement of 16 May 1916 for the region's partition and the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, under which the British government had undertaken to favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine without prejudice to the rights of the territory's then Arab majority. The conference's decisions were finally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922.

See:

• British Mandate of Palestine
• Zionism, History of Israel

Links:

• view the text of the Palestine Mandate (http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918p/sanremo.html)
• Palestine under the British Mandate, 1923-1948 (http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/1923-1948-british-mandate.html) (map)