The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict_A Very Short Introduction

by Martin Bunton

  Foreign Office

  2nd November 1917

  Dear Lord Rothschild,

  I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

  ‘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.’

  I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

  Yours sincerely,

  Arthur James Balfour

  The history and purpose of the Balfour Declaration remain controversial subjects. At heart, the aligning of British interests with those of Zionism was underpinned by two racialized beliefs. One was the conception that Jews constituted a nation. A second fundamental precept of British policy was that Palestine’s Arab inhabitants themselves did not merit attention beyond an idealized consideration of the improvements European colonization brought to backward areas. These cultural preconceptions are boldly captured in Lord Balfour’s own famous justification of his declaration: ‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad,’ he wrote in 1922, was ‘rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs and future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’

  In addition to wartime strategic interests, a complex combination of motives led to the final decision to issue the Balfour Declaration. Contemporary explanations tended to stress the Biblical romanticism of British officials’ interest in the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine and their sympathy for the plight of Jews in eastern Europe. The first scholarly accounts focused more on the political and diplomatic context in which British officials came to see Zionism as an ally. These early interpretations stressed the Balfour Declaration as a product of the activities of the Zionist Organization, or specifically of Dr Chaim Weizmann, the most prominent Zionist spokesman. Weizmann was engaged during the war in biochemical research for Britain’s Ministry of Munitions. His influential contacts and skilful persistence were credited with convincing British officials of the wartime propaganda value that a gesture of support for Zionism would carry in the United States and Russia, where Jews were believed to wield great power.

  As government sources became more widely available, historians shifted the focus away from Zionist leaders and instead laid more stress on the actions of those British officials who in fact searched out Zionist support in pursuit of their own interests in Palestine. Their main aim was to keep the French out. Within a year of having negotiated the terms of the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement which called for the international administration of Palestine, Britain came round to fearing any foreign presence so close to the Suez Canal. As Mayir Vereté conjectured: ‘had there been no Zionists in those days the British would have had to invent them’.

  Historians in recent years have again shifted their attention. From an emphasis on the presumed rationales that motivated the decision-making process, they have begun to analyse more fully the prejudices that belied British support for Zionism. These studies argue that, in order for British officials to even consider using Zionism in any sort of strategic way, they had to draw upon a reserve of mistaken, even anti-Semitic, ideas and of a homogenized Jewish ‘nation’, all of which tended to greatly exaggerate the power and influence of world Jewry. Such notions ignored the multitude of identities that constituted modern Jewish politics in which, as was discussed in the first chapter, Zionists were only a small minority.

  In the month following Balfour’s declaration, British forces occupied Jerusalem. Now in charge of large parts of Palestine, British authorities on the ground tried to tone down the effect of their government’s pro-Zionist policy. Much to the chagrin of the Zionist leadership, no practical initiatives were allowed by the military administration as it tried to restore order and stability to a war-torn landscape. But as word of the Balfour Declaration made its way to Palestine, its Arab population became increasingly wary of the evident challenge Zionism posed. In November 1918, on the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which coincided with the final end to the war and an opening up of political activity, Arab dignitaries and representatives petitioned the British, denouncing the Balfour Day parade that was held in Jerusalem. From this point on, Zionism became the chief factor in the articulation of a Palestinian Arab nationalist identity.

  But the hostility directed towards Zionism in Palestine did not deter the British government in London, which maintained its support for Zionism. This was especially important when, at the 1920 San Remo conference, the Supreme Allied Council awarded Britain the ‘mandate’ for Palestine. The genesis of the mandate idea lies in the tension that emerged between the Allies’ desire for the spoils of war, and President Wilson’s call for an end to the secret diplomacy of European empires. The wartime slogan most closely associated with President Wilson, ‘the war to make the world safe for democracy’, both greatly bolstered the Allied war effort, by endowing it with a noble rationale, and gravely threatened the Allied war aims in the region, which focused on expansion of European rule into the Arab lands of the former Ottoman Empire.

  Britain’s status as mandatory ruler for Palestine was officially recognized in 1923 by the newly formed Council of the League of Nations. The League demarcated different classes of mandates. Whereas for ‘B’ and ‘C’ mandates longer periods of trusteeship were proposed, ‘A’ mandates constituted countries judged by the council to have already ‘reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone’. The Arab lands of the former Ottoman Empire, including Palestine, were all defined as ‘A’ mandates. In many ways, the invention of the mandate system was the means by which Britain and France also disguised old-fashioned imperial acquisition as enlightened tutelage. Nonetheless, by accepting the mandate system, Britain and France officially accepted responsibility for preparing these new states for self-determination, even as they were at the same time trying to protect their own strategic interests.

  A tricky balancing act throughout the region, the mandate system was especially problematic in Palestine, the mandate for which incorporated the entire text of the Balfour Declaration, thus placing the small Jewish minority, composing about 10 per cent of the population, in a uniquely privileged position. The mandate also included several articles specifying the obligation of Britain, as mandatory power, to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine (for example, facilitating Jewish immigration and encouraging Jewish settlement on the land). Meanwhile, as was the case with the Balfour Declaration itself, not once was the Palestinian Arab population mentioned by name. Once the Balfour Declaration was written into the terms of the mandate that sanctioned British rule in Palestine, one of several competing wartime promises was turned into a more binding contract mediated by the League of Nations. As the British administration in Palestine came to feel the pressure of being caught in the escalating conflict between the mutually exclusive nationalist demands of the Jewish and the Arab communities, many officials wanted to reconsider the promise of imposing a Jewish national home on an Arab majority. However, Britain also felt the constraints imposed by the internationally monitored mandate document and found it highly problematic to rescind the promise.

  British administration

  Though Palestine was recognized as an ‘A’ mandate, Britain effectively ran it as a ‘Crown colony’ for its first two decades (see Illustration 4). In Jerusalem, governing power was limited to the
appointed high commissioner and his own council of British officials (mostly ex-officers who had arrived as part of the military operations of the First World War). Meanwhile, in London control passed in 1921 from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office, where officials of a Middle East department assisted the Secretary of State for the Colonies in managing affairs, all of whom operated under the watchful eye of the British Treasury. London’s prominent place in the policy-making process meant that British rule in Palestine was frequently subject to the mediation and pressure exercised by external political parties and groups.

  The deliberate ambiguity of the term ‘Jewish national home’ as raised in the Balfour Declaration meant that nobody really knew what in fact London had in mind for Palestine. Zionist leaders, for their part, were clear that a national home meant a Jewish state and expected the British to accept this to be the mandate’s raison d’être. But the British had not committed themselves to such an interpretation, and failed at first to give much thought to precisely when they might regard a ‘home’ as being established. It seemed that Britain envisaged the establishment of a unitary Arab-Jewish state. In theory, this policy was seen as resulting from a ‘dual obligation’. If only implicitly, it recognized the potential for intercommunal conflict. But it was common imperial practice to manipulate often-conflicting religious, ethnic, and other groups to maintain British interests.

  4. The boundaries of the Palestine mandate

  What was unique in Palestine was the general failure to draw its cohabiting populations into basic mechanisms of government, such as a legislative assembly. Negotiations over some type of representative council were continually tripped up by the Palestinian Arab demand for power to control Zionist immigration and land purchase. This was something that the British were unprepared to concede. Britain demanded Arab acceptance of the terms of the mandate. Arabs feared that participation on such terms would be seen as tacit acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the Balfour Declaration. The only Middle Eastern colony to be denied a legislative council, Palestine was also, interestingly enough, the only newly crafted state in the region not to survive British decolonization intact. The failure to create a legislative council in Palestine represents a key turning point in the country’s history. As D. K. Fieldhouse has observed, ‘Seen in the larger context of British imperial history, legislative councils had been a crucial means of transferring power from the executive to representatives of the colonial population, even if the transition from official to non-official majority, and then to a government responsible to a legislature, was in most cases slow.’

  For the first two decades of British rule, the power structures among the Arab population in Palestine remained dominated by traditional patron–client networks of local notables. Notables willingly acted as intermediaries with the British authorities as they had with the Ottomans. Meanwhile, leaders in neighbouring Arab states were increasingly accorded the powers of a national government, the potential sovereignty of which was never in doubt. Iraq, for example, gained formal independence in 1932, while in Egypt the consuming desire for independence was partially fulfilled in 1936.

  The Yishuv

  In contrast to the absence of any formally recognized body of Arab representatives, the mandate specifically enjoined Britain to establish a Jewish Agency for the purpose of empowering it with governmental institutions. Through the development of its own organizations in Palestine, the Jewish community (known as the Yishuv) constructed a European-style economy and society increasingly distinct from the indigenous Arab community. At the beginning of the mandate there were approximately 70,000 Jews out of a total settled population of over 700,000 inhabitants. Accordingly, large-scale Jewish immigration was considered crucial to achieve a significant demographic constituency. Zionism now benefited from British assistance, but Palestine still faced difficulty attracting large numbers. The actual number of immigrants at first disappointed, and at times embarrassed, Zionist leaders. By the end of the first decade, only 100,000 chose to immigrate to Palestine (in fact, from 1927 to 1928 Jewish emigration exceeded immigration). By contrast, between 1933 and 1936 approximately 170,000 Jews fled European anti-Semitism, especially in Germany and Poland. Known as the fifth aliyah, this wave of immigration effectively doubled the number of Jews living in Palestine, raising it to 30 per cent of the population. This fifth aliyah gave the Yishuv the numbers necessary to fulfil the Zionist dream. Composed of a higher number of professionals than earlier waves of immigrants, this aliyah also tended to prefer the coastal cities to the central hills.

  The Jewish community in Palestine remained throughout the mandate a largely urban one. The acquisition of agricultural land on which to found rural settlements continued nonetheless to be a major focus of Zionist efforts. The image of the autonomous farming collective became a powerful symbol though less than 15 per cent of the Yishuv worked in agriculture. During the 1920s, Jewish landholdings nearly doubled, from 162,000 acres to almost 300,000. By the end of the mandate in 1947 another 175,000 acres were purchased, resulting in approximately 7 per cent of Palestine being acquired by Jewish land purchasing agencies. Though limited in scope, the transfer of land from Arab to Jewish ownership nevertheless had a demoralizing effect on the Palestinian Arab national movement. Together with ‘the conquest of land’, ‘the conquest of labour’ continued to be a central feature of Zionist activity in Palestine: land purchased by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) was leased exclusively to Jews. British officials never properly counted the number of Arab peasants evicted from their lands, but given the limited agricultural potential of the country, control over land became a focus of Palestinian nationalist activism in the 1930s.

  The significance of these land purchases lies also, as will be recalled from the previous chapter, in their location: the fertile lands along the coast and in the inland valleys. This was where the best opportunities lay for Jewish land purchasing agencies. The high prices offered for land appealed especially to absentee Arab owners, such as the Sursuq family of Beirut, who had expanded their landholdings in the late 19th century but now found themselves on the wrong side of a new international border. Understandably, Arab notables were keen to make a profit on their late 19th-century investments in land. Jewish land purchases in the valleys and plains, as shown in Illustration 5, left an indelible stamp on the future of Palestine by the fact that they are so closely reflected in the shape given to Palestine’s partition in 1947.

  In addition to the JNF, several other organizations aimed at building the self-sufficiency of the Yishuv. The Jewish community in Palestine had its own taxation system, managed its own health care and education, and revived modern Hebrew as a living language (replacing Yiddish as the native language of most East European immigrants). One of the most important institutions of the Yishuv was Histadrut, the Federation of Jewish Labour. At first, its main role was to promote the employment of Jewish labour in Jewish enterprises, and to this end it instituted a boycott that targeted Arab workers. It continually expanded its activities until, by the end of the mandate, it was second only to the Palestine government as an employer of labour. Histadrut also took over more and more responsibility for defence, with its own military force known as Haganah. Though this force was illegal, the British rulers of Palestine lacked the will or capacity to do anything about it.

  5. Jewish land purchases

  At the head of Histadrut, David Ben Gurion’s Mapai party wielded a great deal of influence. Chaim Weizmann continued to play a significant role in influencing British policy-making, but not all Zionist groups adhered to his strategy of working within Britain’s security umbrella to build an independent state. Of the various political organizations that competed with Ben Gurion’s labour Zionism, three stand out. From one side of the spectrum, labour Zionism was contested by ultra-orthodox Jews who argued that Zionism itself was a heresy; from another, it was challenged from bi-nationalists, such as Judah Magnes, who campaigned for a more equal distribution of power in Palestine betw
een Arabs and Jews. The most militant opposition came from Vladimir Jabotinsky, who in 1925 founded Revisionist Zionism. Jabotinsky challenged both Ben Gurion’s socialist ideologies and Weizmann’s more cautious reliance on Britain. He founded his own underground militia, the Irgun Zvei Leumi (generally referred to by its Hebrew acronym Etzel, but known to the British as Irgun) and called for Britain’s immediate withdrawal and the proclamation of a Jewish commonwealth in both Palestine and Transjordan. Revisionists were particularly upset about the way in which borders had been established, arguing that in 1921 Transjordan was unfairly sliced off Palestine. This charge would develop into a powerful political myth, however baseless in fact. Before mandatory rule, there had, of course, been no formal state of Palestine from which the lands of Transjordan could have been severed. (As Bernard Wasserstein observes, it is more appropriate to view Transjordan as being added to the mandatory governance of Palestine than as severed from it.)

  The Palestinian Arab community

  In contrast to the structured and well connected Jewish leadership, the Palestinian Arab leadership suffered from paralysing divisions. While the Jewish Agency was left to build up its own para-state structures, the British played upon Arab rivalries by following well honed strategies of divide and rule that had successfully structured collaborative relationships with indigenous peoples in other colonial administrations. The building of these collaborative relationships was facilitated in Palestine by the desire of notable families who, having solidified their position in the late 19th century thanks to Ottoman policies such as the 1858 land law, were eager to secure their interests in the post-war period by continuing to act as intermediaries. Thus, the notables faced the daunting challenge of having to work within the mandate system at the same time as opposing the Zionist goals to which that system was bound.