It's hard to answer your question because you are using the verb
"prejudically." A preducial opinion is one that has been delivered
before all relevant facts have been heard. But who decides what the
relevant facts are and how do you know if they have been heard or not?
However, I will try and answer a simpler question: Did the British, by
issuing
the
Balfour declaration,
that the preamble to the mandatory document is based on, side with
the Zionists?
The answer to that question yes and I will explain why.
First of all, the Balfour declaration was drafted by Lord Walter
Rotschild, a leader of the British community and Chaim Weizmann, both
convinced Zionists in close coperation with officials of the British
government. The declaration was delivered as a letter to Rotschild and
was published in the British press on 9 November 1917. Notably absent
from the drafting process were representatives of the Arab
population of Palestine.
At the time the declaration was issued, the population of Palestine
was 78% Muslim, 10% Christian and 11% Jewish.
The second argument is the phrase "with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The wording of
this phrase was intentially left vague, to placate the Arabs who were
hostile towards the Zionist plan. A "national home" wasn't and isn't a
precisely defined term. But in private, many British officials
acknowledged that a Jewish state was inteded with the phrase.
In August 1919, in a memorandum on Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia
Balfour wrote:
The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy
of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the independent
nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of
Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the
form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the
country, though the American Commission [the 1919 King-Crane
Commission] has been through the form of asking what they are. The
four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right
or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present
needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and
prejudices [sic] of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.
Later during the three decades of Mandatory Palestine, British policy
towards the region shifted as other geopolitical goals gained
precedence. For example, in 1939 in a move that greatly angered the
Zionists, the
British
severly restricted Jewish
immigration to Palestine.
Last year, Abbas tried to get the British government
to
apologize for
issuing the declaration. He threatened to sue if it didn't comply with
his request. His attempt didn't go so well, and he was widely
ridiculed for it. But it caused some British citizens to create
a petition
calling upon the government to apologize for the declaration.
The government declied to apologize, but the response it drew
included
two noteworthy statements from
British foreign office.
We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task
now is to encourage moves towards peace.
One can infer from this that the Foreign office consider that the
Balfour declaration had a role in creating the State of Israel. If so,
it must be admitted that the declaration sided with the Zionists.
the Declaration should have called for the protection of political
rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly
their right to self-determination
Which could be seen as an admittance that the declaration was flawed
because it contradicted the inhabitants right to self-determination.