It is 90 years since the Palestine mandate was set up. We look at a photographic show displaying some of the period’s landmark moments
Amid all the excitement generated by Israel’s 60th anniversary, commemoration of the 90 years since Britain’s conquest of Palestine has passed relatively unnoticed. Spiro Ark is addressing this deficit with a photographic exhibition on the 30 eventful years that followed four centuries of Ottoman rule and led to the birth of modern Israel.
The exhibition was launched earlier this month at the Bafta Theatre in London with a screening of the hour-long Israeli-made documentary film, Till We Have Built Jerusalem. Among the guests watching was the 3rd Viscount Allenby of Megiddo, nephew of General Allenby who led the British forces occupying the city in December 1917.
The iconic image of General Allenby entering Jerusalem on foot in 1917
The film, directed by Yaakov Gross and Eli Cohen, shows that the taking of Jerusalem was actually something of an anti-climax. What the general intended as a Christmas present to King George V was delivered on Chanucah. The Turks had fled, as had all but 20,000 of the city’s 50,000 mainly impoverished inhabitants. The only casualty was the Arab mayor, who fashioned a surrender flag out of two sheets, and succumbed to a cold a few days later.