PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE WESTERN WALL

2: The British Mandate (1918-1948)

The period of the British Mandate in Eretz Yisrael saw the already strained relations between the Jews and Arabs steadily disintegrate. The British policy in Eretz Yisrael enforced the degrading Turkish status-quo vis-a-vis the Kotel, pending the formation of “a special committee which would examine, define and fix the rights and claims regarding the holy places,.” The committee was never formed.

During this period a “tradition” arose among the Arabs that the Kotel was actually the place where the Prophet Mohammed tethered his wondrous horse, Al-Buraq, when he ascended to Heaven. This invention was used by the Moslems to contest the Jews’ rights to the area. The Kotel had heretofore held no religious significance to the Moslems, and had frequently been desecrated by Arab hooligans who threw rocks and garbage into the prayer area. As the tension heightened, the Kotel was the scene of ongoing, increasingly violent harassment of the Jews by the Arabs, while the British authorities looked on. The British policy of appeasement towards the Arabs limited their intervention to arresting Jews who dared to sound the Shofar, or set up benches or a partition for worship.

This period saw the bloody Arab riots of 1929 and 1936 in which many Jews were murdered throughout Eretz Yisrael. In a misguided attempt to appease the Arabs, the British issued a "White Paper" limiting Jewish Immigration to a trickle. This did little to pacify the Arabs, but it effectively cut off European Jews, desperate to escape the Nazi death machine, from their only place of refuge. The Kotel was the scene of mass prayer vigils as news of the Holocaust cast a shadow over Jewry the world over.