Fools never differ
So this is the centenary of the famous (some will say
infamous) Balfour Declaration. And these
days, anything to do with Zionism and Israel causes a real furore. Journalists waste tons of hapless ink,
activists work themselves into a frenzy and politicians exploit the opportunity
to attract a few votes – or at least some attention.
The lines seem to be clearly drawn: if you are pro-Israel,
you celebrate; if you are anti-Israel – you mourn, accuse, threaten to sue and
demand apologies. It depends whether one
thinks that the birth of the Jewish state was a good outcome – or a very bad deed.
But on one thing everybody seems to agree: that the
Declaration was a momentous event, one which set in motion a process leading
directly to the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
The none-too-friendly (from an Israeli point of view) The
Guardian writes:
The promise by Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, led to
the British mandate, mass Jewish immigration and eventually to the creation of Israel
in the wake of the second world war and the Holocaust, and to the Palestinian
‘Nakba’ (catastrophe).
Israel’s supporters appear to agree (except for the Nakba
bit, obviously). In a recent tweet,
Matthew Offord, Tory MP for Hendon, states:
Proud to lead the debate on the Centenary of the Balfour
Declaration, a document which led to birth of Israel.
So it’s obvious, ‘innit?
The Balfour Declaration led to the creation of the State of Israel. Oh wow!
Rarely have I seen more poignant evidence that ‘fools never differ’. So let’s demolish a few myths here.
What was the Balfour Declaration?
Let’s start with what it wasn’t: it was not an international
instrument, an agreement between states.
Or any kind of agreement, for that matter: signed by then Foreign
Secretary Arthur James Balfour and addressed to Jewish magnate Lionel Walter
Rothschild, this was a unilateral statement.
Of course, unilateral undertakings can sometimes constitute unbreakable
commitments. Except this one wasn’t unbreakable
– in fact it wasn’t even a commitment.
It’s worth reading again the text of the ‘Declaration’:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Note the ‘woolly’ quality of the terms: “view with
favour”, rather than ‘supports’; “will use their best endeavours to
facilitate the achievement of this object”, rather than ‘will secure this objective’. And what the heck is “a national home”
(except, that is, an ill-defined euphemism never used before or since, except
in a Jewish context)?
The wording (carefully chiselled over a few months) is
designed to obfuscate. This becomes even
more obvious if one examines the evolution of the document through a number of
drafts: the clear commitment initially proposed by the Zionists is gradually
diluted with each subsequent version – until it morphs into the final ‘woolly’
product. To give just one example, the
term 'state' employed in the early drafts becomes ‘homeland’ and finally turns into ‘national home’.
 |
The Declaration was drafted and re-drafted over several months,
being constantly watered down in the process. |
Let’s also point out that the Declaration was bereft of any
practical details: it said nothing about how “this object” was to
be achieved, or when. No plan of
action reinforced the vague, feeble statement of intention.
In its final, official form, the Declaration was very far
from an enforceable commitment; it wasn’t even a clear-cut promise. In fact, His Majesty’s Government was in no
position to promise anything – even if they genuinely wanted to: progressing
north from Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula, the British forces had barely
reached a front line stretching from the small coastal town of Gaza to the even
smaller oasis settlement of Beer Sheba in the Negev Desert. The bulk of ‘Palestine’ (the populated and
fertile landmass, including the major towns) was still under Ottoman control
and there was no certainty that it could be taken by the British Army. But even if that happened, it still was no
foregone conclusion that His Majesty’s Government could dispose as they pleased
of that (ill-defined) piece of territory.
Like the entire Levant, ‘Palestine’ was subject to some half-baked
understandings with the French, as well as – arguably – with the British
Empire’s newly-found ally, Hussein the Sharif (Lord) of Mecca.
 |
| Campaign map showing the front line near Gaza, on 1 November 1917. |
In other words, the British Government was ‘offering’ the
Jews something it did not yet possess and that was arguably not in its gift
anyway. But the truth is that the Declaration
was not actually offering anything; this was the oldest trick in the book: if
you want a dog to run, dangle some prized bait in front of its eager nose. The Jews were the dog in this instance; but where
to exactly were they expected to run?
Why was the Declaration issued?
Much has been written, in the intervening century, about the
British government’s motivations in issuing the declaration. Some of these writings are really touching – but
only because of their enormous stupidity.
Take, for instance an article hammered a few years ago by a certain Josh
Glancy for the Jewish Chronicle and entitled ‘Chaim Weizmann and how the
Balfour Declaration was made in Manchester’.
According to Josh (or, rather, according to the third rate ‘sources’ he
recycled), there were three main reasons why the Declaration was granted:
- David Lloyd George and
Balfour were ‘Christian Zionists’ – they wanted to help the Jews out of
religious conviction;
- Chaim Weizmann (who
happened to be a talented chemist as well as an ardent Zionist) helped the
British war effort by inventing a process to make acetone – a substance used to
make high explosives.
- Chaim Weizmann was a
charming individual able to ‘schmooze’ the British political elite into
granting him personal favours.
The irony is that the statements above are all basically true –
if a bit overstated. But the notion that
hard-nosed British politicians award territories based on messianic impulses,
gratitude for services rendered and/or feelings of personal sympathy – that
notion is just ludicrous.
In fact, one does not have to use psychoanalysis (nor to
recycle fanciful theories) to find the motivations that drove the likes of Lloyd
George and Balfour. The latter explained
his reasoning himself clearly enough – for those who, unlike Josh Glancy,
bother to read the minutes of the 31 October 1917 meeting of the British War
Cabinet, which approved the Declaration.
Those minutes record as follows:
The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [Balfour] stated that […] from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was
desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish
nationalists should now be made. The
vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the world,
now appeared to be favourable to Zionism.
If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be
able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.
So there we are: the Declaration was motivated by “purely
diplomatic and political” considerations.
But what kind of “extremely useful propaganda” was Balfour intent
on carrying on? And why “in Russia
and America”, of all places?
Well, it’s 31 October 1917; the world is convulsed by the
greatest, bloodiest military confrontation ever known – World War I. It is a war of empires: the British, French
and Russian Empires (the so-called Entente Cordiale) have taken on the German,
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires (a.k.a. the Central Powers). It’s not just about who fights better, but
also about which of the blocs can attract strong allies to fight on their
side. In April 1917, USA formally enters
the war. But it does so gingerly and half-heartedly. It declares war on Germany, but not on
Germany’s allies. Many American
politicians are reluctant to send ‘American boys’ to die in what they see as
‘somebody else’s war’. In the East, another
mighty ally – Russia – is in the throes of revolution; for the new powers that
be in Petrograd – and especially for the Bolsheviks – this is also ‘somebody
else’s war’. Britain needs one ally –
USA – to fully join the battle; it needs the other ally – Russia – to battle
on.
And in the rather antisemitic minds
of ‘Christian Zionists’ Lloyd George and Balfour, Jews hold enormous power in
both America and Russia. Enough power to
push the former full speed into the war and prevent the latter from bailing out.
If only, of course, one could dangle a suitable bait in
front of those Jewish noses…
How ‘momentous’ was the Declaration?
If we are to believe Ian Black, Middle East Editor at The
Guardian the Balfour Declaration “led to the British mandate [of
Palestine]”.
Did it, really, Mr. Black? True,
the Declaration was referenced in the text of the Mandate – which would seem to
vindicate Mr. Black’s contention. But
only if one ignores the much more ‘momentous’
Sykes-Picot
Agreement, which was already being negotiated 2 years prior to the
Declaration, under Lloyd George’s and Balfour’s predecessors. Finally signed in May 1916, the Sykes-Picot
Agreement included much of the future Mandate of Palestine in the ‘British Sphere
[of influence]’, with the rest an ill-defined ‘International Sphere’ (which, in
diplomatic terms of the time, probably meant ‘we’ll see about that later’).
 |
| The Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Levant into 'spheres of influence'. |
In reality, European/Christian powers (Britain, France,
Italy, as well as Germany and Russia) have long coveted ‘Palestine’ – not for
its potential as ‘Jewish national home’, but because of the putative prestige
imparted by control of the Christian holy sites.
But by 1917 religion was becoming less important in European
politics; and prestige has always been a rather intangible asset. Britain had a more pragmatic reason: in the minds
of early 20th century politicians, who thought in terms of land and
sea (rather than aerial) journeys, ‘Palestine’ sat across the route linking the
British Isles with the all-important jewel of the imperial crown – India. So did ‘Mesopotamia’ (future Iraq) – which is
why that territory was also included in the ‘British Sphere’. In fact, when the British diplomats
eventually drafted the mandates, they included ‘Palestine’ and ‘Mesopotamia’ in
one document; both were, after all, supposed to serve the same imperial
interest.
 |
The British Empire in 1921. Note how the mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia
sit on the shortest land & sea route linking Britain with India |
Needless to say, nobody bothered to write a Balfour-like declaration
concerning Mesopotamia, or concerning any of the other 10 territories wrestled
away from the defeated powers and awarded as ‘League of Nations Mandates’ to
the victors.
The Balfour Declaration did not lead to the British Mandate;
what led to the mandate was imperial interests and the age-old custom of
dividing the ‘spoils of war’ among the victors.
A custom for which the League of Nations mandates provided just a modern
veneer.
But what about Mr. Black’s next assumption, that the Balfour
Declaration
“led to […]
mass Jewish immigration”? Unsurprisingly, that statement is also
demonstrably false. What Europeans called
‘Palestine’ the Jews have called, for thousands of years ‘Land of Israel’. It was frequently mentioned in the Judaic
scriptures, traditions and daily prayers.
As individuals and small groups,
Jews have always tried to reach
‘Palestine’ and settle there. But what
about ‘mass immigration’? Historically,
there have been 5 waves of Jewish ‘mass immigration’ (i.e. thousands and tens
of thousands of people) before the establishment of the State of Israel. The first such wave (known as the
First Aliyah in Zionist
chronology) took place between 1882 and 1903 and saw the arrival in ‘Palestine’
of around 30,000 Jews – mainly from Eastern Europe and Yemen. The Second Aliyah lasted between 1904 and
1914, bringing to ‘Palestine circa 35,000 Jews, mostly from the Russian Empire
and Yemen.
 |
| Second Aliyah (1904-1914) pioneers |
The Balfour Declaration could not have led to these waves of
‘mass immigration’ – unless, that is, Mr. Black believes that those 65,000 Jews
that settled in the Land of Israel between 1882 and 1914 had somehow foreseen the Declaration issued
in November 1917.
The “mass Jewish immigration” started long before the
Declaration, when ‘Palestine’ was a rather nondescript, under-developed part of
the Ottoman Empire. It practically stopped
during the Great War and resumed afterwards.
The Ottomans, by the way, did not lift a finger to stop that
immigration. They could not be suspected
of ‘Christian Zionism’; they simply did not share the European obsession with
Jews – one way or another. There was
plenty of nationalism which threatened to break up their multi-ethnic,
multi-faith empire: Greek, Armenian, Slavic, Egyptian, Levantine and Bedouin-Arab… The Jewish flavour of it – Zionism – was at
the bottom of the Sultan’s long list of worries.
No, Mr. Black: the Balfour Declaration did not lead to “mass
Jewish immigration”. Sorry to disabuse you of the notion that thousands of people move to distant, under-developed territories on the say-so of the British Foreign Office. Jews immigrated
to ‘Palestine’ not because His Majesty’s Government declared the place a ‘national
home for the Jews’; but because they (the Jews) felt it was their homeland.
And what about the Mandate?
But didn’t the League of Nations Mandate require the British
Government to establish the Jewish National Home and help grow it into an
independent state? It certainly did; but
that requirement was simply not fulfilled.
In fact, the British Government repeatedly ignored, deliberately twisted
and, ultimately, blatantly violated the terms of the Mandate.
Let us examine the text – and juxtapose the facts.
In its all-important preamble, the Mandate explained that
recognition has thereby been given to the historical
connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for
reconstituting their national home in that country;
‘Historical connection’ and ‘reconstituting’ are key terms
here. This was not conceived as a gift
to the Jews – but as restitution of a homeland that had been unjustly taken
away from them. The Preamble also nominated
His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for Palestine.
Article 1 of the Mandate gave the Mandatory wide powers –
but also curtailed them:
The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of
administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this mandate.
In effect, Article 1 makes the text of the Mandate into a
kind of Constitution, curbing the legislative and executive powers of the
Mandatory. Britain was authorised to rule Palestine, but only within the terms of the 'Constitution'.
So what were the main limitations and the rigid requirements
included in that ‘Constitution’?
Article 5 required the Mandatory to maintain the territorial
integrity of the Mandate:
The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no
Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the
control of the Government of any foreign Power.
Except that the territory of ‘Palestine’ referred to by the
Mandate extended on both banks of the Jordan River, i.e. it included
today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
In fact, soon after the Mandate was issued, the British
government separated the area east of the River – which comprised three
quarters of the Mandate of Palestine – into a different entity called
‘Transjordan’. It did so by using a
provision it managed to sneak into the Mandate precisely for that purpose:
Article 25.
In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern
boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be
entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone
or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider
inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for
the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those
conditions…
Note that Article 25 empowers the Mandatory “to postpone
or withhold the application” of Mandate provisions, but not to change or
violate them; it certainly did not empower it to violate Article 5 –
territorial integrity.
 |
The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine included Trans-Jordan.
But the British Government decided to effect an immediate partition.
Trans-Jordan was separated from the remaining Palestine.
Jewish immigration, settlement and land acquisition were prohibited in Trans-Jordan. |
In theory, Transjordan was still Mandate; yet in practice
the British Government created Transjordan an Emirate and handed it over to the
Hashemite family. In 1946, Britain did
away with even the appearance of compliance: Transjordan was given its
independence as a separate state. The
British Government not only proceeded to recognise the new Hashemite Kingdom of
Transjordan (in blatant violation of Article 5); they immediately signed a
Treaty of Alliance with it.
But if you think that the mandate provisions were applied at
least in the remaining quarter of the Mandate of Palestine – think again.
Article 6 required:
The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights
and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall
facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in
co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement
by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for
public purposes.
Moreover, Article 24 required the Mandatory to report
annually to the Council of the League of Nations on the implementation of
Mandate provisions. No doubt irked by
attempts to obfuscate information in these reports, the Council even required
specific questions to be answered. This
is fortunate, as the historian is provided with an account (compiled by the
British Administration itself) documenting its lack of compliance.
Let’s examine, for instance the Report issued in 1930 – 13
years after the territory passed under British control and circa 10 years into
the Mandate regime.
Referring obviously to Article 6, the Council asked the Mandatory:
What measures have been taken to facilitate Jewish Immigration?
And also
What are the effects of these measures?
The response to this question stretches over two pages of
the Report – and is therefore too long to reproduce here. Suffice to say, however, that nothing in that
response can be interpreted as ‘facilitating’ Jewish immigration. At best, the British authorities seemed to understand
‘facilitating’ as merely ‘permitting’: Jews were allowed to immigrate to the
British Mandate of Palestine – just as they had been to the Ottoman sanjaks that
preceded it. In fact, the British
immigration policy was distinctly more restrictive than the Ottoman one: under
Arab pressure, the British Government adopted the principle that immigration to
Palestine should be limited to the territory’s ‘economic absorptive
capacity’. This ‘principle’ (never
mentioned in the Mandate and not employed anywhere else in the vast dominions
of the British Empire) oddly ignored the reality – that Jewish immigration
brought economic growth and increased prosperity – in favour of a hypothetic
danger. The Peel Commission report was
to conclude, a few years later:
The Arab population shows a remarkable increase since 1920, and
it has had some share in the increased prosperity of Palestine. Many Arab
landowners have benefited from the sale of land and the profitable investment
of the purchase money. The fellaheen are better off on the whole than they were
in 1920. This Arab progress has been partly due to the import of Jewish capital
into Palestine and other factors associated with the growth of the National
Home. In particular, the Arabs have benefited from social services which could
not have been provided on the existing scale without the revenue obtained from
the Jews.
While on one hand the mandatory limited Jewish immigration
purportedly to avoid exceeding the ‘economic absorptive capacity’, on the other
hand it allowed non-Jewish immigration – including illegal immigration. As the Report states, in 1930
6,433 immigrants were admitted to Palestine, that is 3,386 men,
2,116 women, and 931 children, of whom 2,550 men, 1,700 women, and 694 children
were Jewish. Included are 695 Jews, 493 Christians, 112 Moslems, and 6 Druze
who had entered without permission but were allowed to remain.
But of course, the ‘economic absorptive capacity’ was
nothing but a convenient excuse. The
Arab opposition to Jewish immigration was caused by nationalist/religious resentment
– not by genuine economic worries. The
British authorities adopted the same excuse, which allowed them to restrict Jewish
immigration to try and appease the Arabs, while still claiming to comply with
the terms of the Mandate.
Again with reference to Article 6, the League of Nations
Council queried:
What measures have been taken in co-operation with the Jewish
Agency to encourage the close settlement by Jews on the land (give figures)? […] What
are the effects of these measures?
The response of the Mandatory is most enlightening. It lists a total of 5 (five) cases in which –
in its own estimation – it had fulfilled the mandate requirement to
encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to
in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and
waste lands not required for public purposes.
It is worth examining these cases, one by one:
(1) An area of approximately 45,000 dunums (a dunum is
approximately a quarter of an acre), consisting of the Athlit marshes, the Zor
Kabbara and Mallaha and the Caesarea sand dunes was leased in December, 1921,
to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association for a period of one hundred
years, at a rental nominal at first but subject to reassessment by agreement or
arbitration at intervals of thirty-three years.
We are talking here about waste land (marshes and sand dunes),
which had never been claimed before – because it was considered unusable and
lacking any value. Yet the lease came
with strict conditions:
The lessees, under the agreement of lease with the Palestine
Government, were required to complete, within eight years, the drainage of all
swamps within the area leased and within a period of twenty years to reclaim
and plant the sand dunes.
In other words, the Jews were required to develop the land
and make it valuable. For which efforts
they were to be charged a rent “nominal at first but subject to
reassessment” (needless to say, the rent could only sharply increase, since
the land was being developed).
Still, according to the letter of the Mandate (if not its spirit), it
would seem that the Mandatory authorities were doing what they were supposed
to. Until, that is, one notices that
this was no new initiative of the British administration. In fact it was just the completion of a deal
already made with the Ottoman government!
In this case an uncompleted concession of a similar nature for
part of the area leased had been under negotiation at the outbreak of war by
the lessees with the Turkish Government.
But let us proceed to the next case of British compliance
with Article 6 provisions:
(2) A grant to the inhabitants of Rishon-le-Zion of an area of
21,000 dunums of sand dunes adjoining the village, on the coast south of Jaffa,
was made during the War by the Mejlis Idara (Administrative Council) of
Jerusalem. This grant has been confirmed, and the area has been set aside as
‘Metrukeh’ (common) land for the benefit of the inhabitants of the village in
common.
Mejlis Idara was the Ottoman equivalent of a County
Council. In this case, too, the British
mandatory administration claims credit for a transaction made with the Ottoman
authorities that preceded it.
On to the next ‘case’:
(3) A lease for a hundred years to the Township of Tel-Aviv of
a plot of land on the seashore abutting on Tel-Aviv for the purpose of erecting
a bathing establishment, restaurant and esplanade.
This lease deals with the establishment of a public
entertainment facility (a beach) of the type any local government is supposed
to provide for its citizens. Clearly,
this is not what the Mandate intended by “close settlement by Jews on the
land”.
(4) A lease to the inhabitants of Petach-Tikvah for fifty
years, renewable under fixed conditions, of the Bassa swamps adjoining the
village land, on requirement to drain the swamps within five years, and
cultivate or afforest the land.
Again, we are talking here about land previously seen as
unusable and valueless, which the Jews were supposed to make valuable within 5
years.
And finally:
(5) A lease of 6,000 dunums at Tel-Arad, near Hebron, to Jewish
ex-soldiers. In this case, lack of water led to the abandonment of the plan of
colonization.
“Jewish ex-soldiers” – just to make it ultra-clear –
did not mean, in 1930, IDF veterans. It
meant ‘British soldiers of Jewish persuasion’.
The British authorities – emulating perhaps the practices of another
empire, the Roman one – rewarded their own soldiers with a piece of (waste)
land and tried to portray this as fulfilling the Mandate requirement to “encourage
[…] close settlement by Jews on the land”. Except that the land so generously leased
proved in this case genuinely unusable.
And that’s it. In 10
years of Mandatory regime, the British authorities have
- ‘confirmed’ two
transactions already made with the Ottomans;
- allowed the establishment
of a beach facility;
- leased a swamp under
draconic conditions; and
- leased a totally unusable
plot of land to a group of British soldiers.
Over the 1921-1930 decade, that’s the entire extent of the
Mandatory compliance with the Mandate requirement to “encourage […] close
settlement by Jews on the land”.
But violating the Mandate provisions by omission only
is hardly the entire story. In reality,
almost immediately upon being granted the Mandate, Her Majesty’s Government
began to adopt policies in complete contradiction first with its spirit and
ultimately with its letter, as well. The
more transparent portion of those policies was contained in the so-called White
Papers – in effect a series of colonial decrees that (under Arab political
pressure stiffened by periodic outbursts of mass violence) grew progressively
harsher and departed more and more from the purpose and conditions of the
Mandate.
The process culminated with the White Paper of 1939, which:
- Strictly limited Jewish
immigration between 1939 and 1944 and prohibited it completely from 1945
onwards;
- Prohibited the sale of land
to Jews (but not to non-Jews) in the vast majority of the Mandate.
- In effect, condemned the
Jewish community in the Mandate to the status of an isolated ethno-religious
and linguistic minority in an Arab Muslim state.
One cannot overstate the extent to which the 1939 White
Paper violated the provisions and the very purpose of the Mandate. But the consequences of that draconic decree
should not be seen only in the cold light of the law. Let us remember, instead, that this was May 1939:
six months after Kristallnacht, four months before the Nazi invasion of Poland. The vast majority of the Jewish immigrants
that His Majesty’s Government was so determined to keep out of Palestine were
in effect refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and who had nowhere else to go. We will never know how many of the 6 million
Jews murdered in the Holocaust (including my maternal grandmother’s entire
family) could have been saved – had the White Paper not been issued; but it is
not unreasonable to assume that that number would have been in the hundreds of
thousands.
Many things changed after the Holocaust, of course; but not
the Mandatory attitude. The Jewish
community in ‘Palestine’ may have contributed to the Ally war effort – not in
the least by enrolling in the Jewish Brigade; conversely, the Arab world –
initially at least – sympathised with the Axis.
But there were many Arabs and much fewer Jews – and the British
Government continued to prioritise perceived interests over commitments and
humanity.
Europe was heaving with ‘displaced persons’ – a euphemism
that, when it came to Jews, mostly meant concentration camp survivors. Many were still kept in overcrowded camps,
others were roaming like ghosts upon war-devastated lands. There was overwhelming evidence that a huge
majority of these wretched survivors wanted to join the Jewish National Home;
they did not wish to stay in Germany or Poland; nor did they wish to return and
live among former neighbours who had delivered them to be slaughtered.
A 'protest meeting' held by survivors at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in November 1945 sent the British Government the following desperate message:
We assembled Jews former inmates of Concentration Camps demand that the British Government do not prolong our bitter existence in Camps.
Give us the possibility to live free lives in our home in ERETZ ISRAEL (Palestine).
We shall not rest until the White Paper restrictions be removed.
We shall enter ERETZ ISRAEL by any means.
Enough Jewish blood has been shed.
You will bear the responsibility for those innocent victims who will fall as a result of your cruel decree if you do not open widely the gates of Palestine.
We wish to return to a peaceful creative life upon our own soil in ERETZ ISRAEL and this is our only possible way.
But the British government had no interest in the desires of
Jewish survivors; its prominent ministers advocated the ‘resettlement’ of those
‘displaced persons’ in Europe – though not in Britain of course – or even their transportation to South America. Excerpts from a 31 July 1946 contribution to a House of Commons debate, by Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morisson:
[B]y assisting to reestablish political and economic stability in Europe, we should continue to contribute to the restoration of those basic conditions which will make possible the reintegration in Europe of a substantial number of displaced persons, including Jews. [...]
But, when all that is possible has been done in Europe, it is clear that new homes must be found overseas for many whose ties with their former communities have been irreparably broken. [...]
Plans are in preparation, in cooperation with the nations concerned, for resettling large numbers of displaced persons in Brazil and other South American countries.
Many Jewish refugees were, however, reluctant to rely on the tender love and care of Mr. Morisson's colleagues. They did not wait to be shipped off to South America, but instead tried to reach the Mandate of Palestine illegally. They were hunted down and, if caught, interned in detention camps. By May 1948, there were tens of thousands of Jews
detained in British camps in Cyprus, Jews guilty of trying to illegally enter
the Jewish National Home…
 |
British detention camp in Cyprus. These were not concentration camps.
Still, conditions were harsh. |
Meanwhile, the ‘Jewel of the British Imperial Crown’ – India
– was in the process of gaining its independence. By 1947, from the point of view of British
interests, the Mandate of Palestine had outlived its purpose and His Majesty’s
Government swiftly and unceremoniously dropped it in the lap of the
newly-formed United Nations Organisation.
But in November 1947, when the UN voted on a solution to the
conflict, the United Kingdom abstained.
The Partition Resolution was nonetheless adopted. This was no mere Declaration: it sketched a practical implementation plan,
including the formation of a UN Commission charged with organising and managing
the transition between the Mandate and the two independent states. To enable that, the UN Resolution required
the Mandatory to cooperate with the UN Commission:
The [British] administration
of Palestine shall, as the mandatory Power withdraws its armed forces, be
progressively turned over to the Commission, which shall act in conformity with
the recommendations of the General Assembly, under the guidance of the Security
Council. The mandatory Power shall to the fullest possible extent coordinate
its plans for withdrawal with the plans of the Commission to take over and
administer areas which have been evacuated.
In the discharge of this administrative responsibility the
Commission shall have authority to issue necessary regulations and take other
measures as required.
The mandatory Power shall not take any action to prevent,
obstruct or delay the implementation by the Commission of the measures
recommended by the General Assembly.
But the mandatory Power did nothing of the kind. Far from cooperating with the Commission, it did
not even allow it to enter the territory.
In January 1948, Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent
Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, bluntly informed the UN
Commission that
His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom would not regard
favourably any proposal by the Commission to proceed to Palestine earlier than
two weeks before the date of the termination of the Mandate.
The Commission protested bitterly:
… the proposal of your Government that the Commission should
not proceed to Palestine earlier than two weeks before the date on which the
Mandate is to be terminated is entirely unacceptable.
The Commission is convinced that this limitation on its arrival
in Palestine would make it impossible for the Commission to discharge the
responsibilities entrusted to it by the resolution of the General Assembly. The
Commission has been informed that the Mandatory Power proposes to relinquish
its responsibility for the Government of Palestine as a whole and not
piecemeal. In consequence, the Commission, in two short weeks in Palestine,
would he required to prepare itself to assume responsibility, under most
difficult circumstances, for the full burden of a complex administrative
structure and for maintaining law and order in the country.
But the protests were met with contempt; faced with what was
obviously an impossible task, the Commission adjourned sine-die and disappeared
in the ample archive of failed UN projects.
We will never know whether full cooperation by the Mandatory
administration with the UN Commission could have prevented the war and (at
least some of) the human suffering that followed. But one thing is clear: given the situation
on the ground, the British administration’s sabotage of the Commission’s role
rendered violence in Palestine unavoidable.
On the diplomatic front, the British government of the time
attempted to surreptitiously overturn (or at least subvert or make ineffective)
the Partition Resolution; among other things, by lobbying the US administration
to withdraw its support from the Resolution.
Finally, it attempted (both by omission and commission) to
influence the outcome of the military confrontation to the detriment of the
Jewish community and the nascent Jewish state.
Thus, the British administration in Palestine did nothing
(in either diplomatic or military terms) to prevent or stop the infiltration of
‘irregular’ Arab forces from Iraq, Syria and Egypt into Palestine. That infiltration started as early as
December 1947 and continued in 1948.
Although formally not part of the regular armies of the Arab states,
these ‘volunteers’ were typically armed, trained and officered by those
states. The presence of the ‘irregulars’
– who did not just attack Jewish settlements and traffic themselves, but often
bullied local Arab villages into joining such attacks – had a huge
destabilising effect and exercised a major aggravating influence on the extent
and intensity of violence.
The conduct of the British administration and army during
the last months of the Mandate was far from neutral. Officially, the overriding aim was to
maintain ‘peace and order’ – at least to the extent necessary to maximise the
safety of British withdrawal. In
practice, however, various officials and officers followed their own political
preferences. And, given the clash
between the Jewish Yishuv and the British administration that characterised the
previous months and years, those sympathies, more often than not, tended to
favour the Arab side. Numerous instances
are documented in which British troops failed to intervene or were slow to
intervene when Jews were attacked ‘under their noses’; strategic positions
evacuated by the withdrawing British army were handed over to Arab
irregulars. There were even cases when
Jewish guerrillas were captured by British soldiers, disarmed and handed over
to Arab irregulars or villagers, who promptly lynched them.
But arguably the most blatant British intervention was
related to the so-called Arab Legion.
Established in the 1920s by British ‘advisors’ to the Hashemite court,
the Legion became in 1946 Transjordan’s official, regular army. It was armed, trained and at least partially
funded by Britain. The upper commanding
echelon was staffed with British officers, including the Commander-in-Chief,
General John Bagot Glubb. The latter
nominally reported to Transjordan’s monarch, but in reality often got his
marching orders from London. Although
modest in numbers, the Legion was by far the most effective Arab force in terms
of training, discipline, command-and-control and weaponry.
 |
| Gen. John Bagot Glubb with King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. |
As the army of Transjordan – an Arab state rejecting the
Partition Resolution – the Arab Legion was, from the point of view of the
Jewish Yishuv, a hostile force. Yet the
British administration had deployed this force across Palestine, ostensibly as
an auxiliary to the British army. It was
withdrawn from Palestine very late in the process and only under heavy American
pressure. It re-entered Palestine on 16
May 1948 as part of the coordinated Arab attack on the newly-declared State of
Israel and engaged with it in some of the toughest, most costly battles of the
1948-1949 war. It was the Arab Legion
that besieged Jerusalem; it managed to occupy the eastern neighbourhoods of
Jerusalem including the Old City. It even
conquered the Jewish Quarter and expelled its civilian population. All the while using British weapons and
munitions and under the command of British officers.
In conclusion: it is absurd to claim – as the Middle East
Editor at the Guardian did – that the British Mandate led to the creation of
Israel. In reality, the random twists
and turns of history caused the winds of British imperialism to blow into the
sails of Jewish nationalism – for just a short, fleeting moment. They soon veered however and turned into
headwinds; far from contributing to the creation of Israel, the British
governments in the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s did everything in their power to
prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.
Why does this ‘ancient history’ matter now?
One of the most intractable challenges related to the
Arab-Israeli conflict is the stubborn refusal of the Arab side to recognise the
connection between the Jewish people and ‘Palestine’ or the Land of
Israel. For those like me, who do not
believe that people can coexist in close proximity in peace and freedom, while
believing in diametrically opposed narratives, this is the major obstacle to
peace. Because, whatever else occurred,
a 3000 year-long connection with that land implies – at the very least – some obvious moral
rights. And once the conflict comes to
be seen as one of right-vs.-right (rather than right vs. wrong), it becomes
amenable to solutions based on reason and accommodation.
Now, I have no doubt that Arab leaders – at least some Arab
leaders – understand that connection.
But they see mileage in denying it, both to gain external support and
stiffen the internal one.
But if there is no connection between Jews and the Land of
Israel, how does one explain the six and a half million Jews who live
there? Simply: it’s the work of external
factors. It’s not love of Zion that
drove Jews to dream up Zionism and settle in Rishon-le-Zion; it’s the Balfour
Declaration; it’s British colonialism, American imperialism, European racism –
anything but Jewish nationalism, because to admit the latter is to admit that
‘the other’ is but a mirror image of one’s own humanity.
Blaming ‘external factors’ (especially when those factors
already have a poor reputation) is a magic strategy. It is easy to grasp; it is just as convincing
for the illiterate fellah in the Nile Delta as it is for the Middle East Editor
of The Guardian: the former had no opportunity to study history; the latter is
too lazy to bother. Like any conspiracy
theory, the ‘externality explanation’ can be embraced both by fanatics animated
by hate and by scholars perpetually in love with their own intellectual
phantasms.
Just google ‘Zionist settler colonialism’ and you’ll find
hundreds of thousands of articles, web pages, blogs and social media hubs
claiming that Jewish settlement in places like Tel Aviv and Zikhron Yaakov is
entirely similar to the European colonisation of Australia, Africa and the
Americas. That is a very handy and
attractive explanation, having only one tiny downside: that it’s untrue.
But discovering the truth takes some dedication, patience,
honesty and intellectual curiosity – commodities that are in short supply in
Guardian Editors, in many of our politicians and – let’s face it – in your
average Joe on the street.
Which makes the clear and uncompromising enunciation of that
truth even more imperative. But when
stupid Israeli ‘diplomats’ and hapless pro-Israel MPs wish to ‘celebrate
Balfour’ (with or without ‘pride’), they inadvertently reinforce that most
toxic anti-Israel narrative. The one
that not only denies the legitimacy of the State of Israel, but denies the morality
of making peace with it.
I can understand the desire to showcase legitimacy,
especially when it is under attack; I get the craving for friends and allies –
especially when they are scarce. But
this is counter-productive.
States are not created by imperial Declarations; nor by League
of Nations Mandates or by UN Resolutions.
Recognition by the ‘international community’ (whatever that oft-used
cliché means) is usually post-factum; it acknowledges the reality, it does not
create it.
The only thing that creates a state is the will of a nation. What gives a state legitimacy (and enough social solidarity to make it stable and successful) is the national aspiration upon which it is built.
The Balfour Declaration was not a philanthropic gesture –
nor was it motivated by noble ethics; it was an act of political expediency,
which only coincidentally served a higher purpose. The same can be said about the British
Mandate for Palestine. Don't get me wrong: there is
nothing particularly evil in either, in the context of the time. In issuing the Declaration and engineering
the Mandate, the British Government did what most governments did then (and
still do most of the time these days): pursued their own country’s selfish interests, as
perceived by them at a particular moment in history.
Neither the Declaration nor the Mandate created (or, in deceitful journalistic jargon, ‘led to the creation of’) the State of Israel. What ‘created Israel’ was an age-old longing preserved through generations in the Jewish people’s faith, culture and identity. That was the itch that ‘created’ the scratch. Of course, like any other historical process, the re-emergence of Jewish statehood did not happen in a political vacuum; on the contrary, it happened in the midst of political tumult. And, out of the thousands of historical acts and events that interacted with that process, some helped it along, others hindered it. There is as little point in ‘celebrating’ the former as in ‘mourning’ the latter. They are but collateral, incidental externalities.
The State of Israel exists in the Jewish ancestral homeland; it’s once again populated by Jews who speak Hebrew, pray to the One God and further develop their own culture, their particular flavour of humanity. All that did not happen because of the Balfour Declaration, or because of the British mandate, or because of UN resolutions; but because of Jewish collective longing, because of treasured national memory, because of perennial desire for freedom and human dignity. And that is what we should celebrate.
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