The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict
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The Jews told King and Crane that they wanted an affirmation of the Balfour Declaration. The Arabs saw that declaration as the antithesis of Wilson’s 14 points; it granted the Zionists the means to dispossess them and deny them their right to self-determination in Palestine. Zionism could be justified, however, in Wilsonian terms because the Jewish people, like all other nations, had a right to self-determination. Having been exiled from their ancestral homeland, the Jews could not effectively exercise that right, Zionists argued, until they once again became rulers of their country.
The King-Crane Commission presented its report on August 28, 1919. In it they supported the mandatory system as a temporary measure until Syria, Iraq, and Palestine could become self-governing. It also recommended abandoning the idea of a Jewish state and incorporating Palestine into Syria.
The Middle East into Mandates
The commission’s findings proved to be irrelevant because the European powers had no intention of adhering to its recommendations. Great Britain and France had already divvied up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire in a secret agreement signed on May 16, 1916 by Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Francois Picot. Under the agreement, Armenia and a huge area of the Iranian-Russian border was ceded to the Russians to entice them to engage in war with the Turks along their northern border. The agreement also provided incentive for French assistance by offering to France control of Syria, Lebanon, and the oil-rich Mosul area of Iraq. Great Britain was to keep the rest of Iraq and Palestine. Later the agreement was modified so that Great Britain also got Mosul in exchange for giving the French rights to buy oil from the Iraqi wells.
After World War I ended, a peace conference was convened on April 24, 1920, at San Remo, Italy. France and Great Britain then implemented the Sykes-Picot Agreement, assigning France the mandate for Syria, and giving Great Britain the mandate for Iraq and Palestine. The mandate for Palestine formalized by the League of Nations on September 23, 1922, explicitly stated that the Allied powers agreed that Britain would implement the Balfour Declaration.
The New Pharaoh
The British recognized that the mandates contradicted their agreements with the Arabs, and they tried to placate the Arab leaders. Faisal, who had been proclaimed king of Syria, was deposed by the French, so the British offered him the throne of Iraq, which he accepted. In a far more audacious move, Great Britain created an entirely new province by severing almost 80 percent of historic Palestine on the eastern bank of the Jordan River (some 35,000 square miles) and establishing the emirate of Transjordan (present-day Jordan) in its place. Faisal’s brother Abdullah was installed as that new nation’s ruler on April 1, 1921.
The Jewish reaction to the mandate was mixed. One group loudly protested against the partition of Palestine that created Transjordan. Moreover, they were incensed by the provision of the mandate for Palestine (Article 25) that excluded Transjordan from the purview of the Balfour Declaration. According to the provision, western Palestinian Arabs as well as Jews were prohibited from buying land or settling in Transjordan. The Permanent Mandates Commission, charged with overseeing the administration of the mandates, considered the British policy discriminatory. Many Jews regarded it as a denial of their right to settle in their ancestral homeland. These Jews became the proponents of the Revisionist program that advocated the restoration of the Jewish people to the entire homeland.
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Ask the Sphinx
During the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 (see Chapter 10), Abdullah’s forces took control of the West Bank of the Jordan River. On April 24, 1950, Abdullah formally merged all of Arab-held Palestine with Transjordan and granted citizenship to West Bank residents. The kingdom was no longer across the river, so the prefix trans (meaning “across”) was dropped, and henceforth it became known as Jordan.
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Great Britain’s division of the mandated area of Palestine. (Credit: AICE)
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Tut Tut!
Anti-Zionists maintain that the Jewish people are not a nation but a religious group. Therefore, Jews are not entitled to self-determination. This argument raises the difficult question of what constitutes a nation. By virtually any common definition, however, the Jewish people can be identified as a nation. They share a common culture, a common language, and a common homeland—three accepted prerequisites for any nation.
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The leader of the Revisionists was a Russian Jew named Vladimir Jabotinsky, who had been the leading proponent of the creation of a Jewish Legion during World War I. The declared goals of Revisionist ideology included relentless pressure on Great Britain for Jewish statehood on both banks of the Jordan River, a Jewish majority in Palestine, re-establishment of the Jewish regiments, and military training for youth. A small minority of Israelis remain Revisionists and oppose the creation of a Palestinian state on the ground that one already exists—that is, Jordan.
The majority of Jews, however, were satisfied with the mandatory arrangement. The fact that Great Britain was advancing its imperial interests did not detract from the Balfour Declaration’s recognition of the Jewish people’s right to establish a national home. The ratification of the British Mandate for Palestine by the 52 governments represented in the League of Nations was a tacit confirmation of the legitimacy of the Balfour Declaration, and provided the Zionist movement with the international recognition it required to justify its aims.
Jews Move from Farms to Cities
The Arabs were repulsed by the outcome of the San Remo peace conference. The denial of their independence left them with a contempt for the Western powers and served to revitalize the nationalist movement throughout the Arab world. They were further angered by the resurgence of Jewish immigration to Palestine, motivated by the promise of the Balfour Declaration and the need to escape pogroms in postrevolutionary Russia and elsewhere.
Jewish Immigrants to Palestine, 1919–1929
1919
1,806
1920
8,223
1921
8,294
1922
8,685
1923
8,175
1924
13,892
1925
34,386
1926
13,855
1927
3,034
1928
2,178
1929
5,249
More Aliyahs
The third aliyah—Jewish immigration to Palestine—began after World War I ended and lasted until 1924. This wave of roughly 40,000 newcomers consisted of many young people, entrepreneurs, and speculators who came to Palestine to help the Jewish community evolve from agricultural settlers to urban industrialists. The Jewish population more than doubled during this period. It reached a total of 160,000 after a record 34,000 Jews immigrated in 1925.
This influx marked the beginning of the fourth aliyah, which was characterized by the immigration of the intellectuals, professionals, and bureaucrats who would build the political foundation for a Jewish state in Palestine. In the latter half of the 1920s, however, an economic crisis led to a reduction in immigration and actually stimulated emigration. This trend was not reversed until the mid-1930s.
Too Many Jews, Not Enough Space
The surge in the Jewish population occurred during the tenure of Sir Herbert Samuel (July 1920–June 1925), a British Jew, as the first high commissioner of Palestine. Samuel recognized the Vaad Leumi (National Council), Elected Assembly, and local council as representatives of the Jewish community in Palestine and established Hebrew as the official language.
Although Samuel was a Jew, he appointed many ardent anti-Zionist British officials to important government positions in Palestine. It was Samuel who placed restrictions on Jewish immigration in response to Arab complaints and concerns about overpopulating the country.
More for Less or Less Is More
Arab concern about overpopulation was to become a recurring theme throughout the mandate peri
od. The British enlisted “experts” who asserted that little or no cultivable land was left in Palestine and that the country was already overpopulated. The influx of Jewish settlers was said to be forcing the Arab fellaheen (the plural of fellah, an Arab “peasant or laborer”) from their land. The Zionist reply to these allegations was that the use of more-sophisticated farming techniques would enable the fellaheen to live on smaller tracts of land.
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Tut Tut!
In the 1920s, when the Arabs and British claimed that Palestine couldn’t support the population, fewer than a million lived there. Today, this land supports nearly nine million. Nearly one million immigrants have come to Israel in the last decade, and the Palestinians now say that two to four million will move to their expected state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But no one suggests that the population capacity of the land has been reached.
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The Arabs rejected the Zionist suggestion that they introduce new farming techniques to increase the economic capacity of the country on the grounds that it would jeopardize the “traditional Arab position” in Palestine. The “traditional position” of the Arabs in Palestine was not jeopardized by Jewish settlement, however, according to Sherif Hussein:
The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1,000 years. At the same time, we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, and America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (abna’ihi-lasliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles ( jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades, and in all things connected with toil and labor.
Hussein’s description spoils the impression of a people deeply attached to their land that the Palestinians wished to create. This lack of attachment also helps explain the absence of a nationalist movement among the majority of Palestinians.
Selective Flood Control
To pacify the Arabs, the British placed restrictions on Jewish immigration but still allowed Arabs to enter the country freely. (Apparently, the British did not believe that a flood of Arab immigrants would affect the country’s perceived population problem!)
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Hieroglyphics
The Jewish Agency was established in 1929 as the formal representative of the Jewish community to the mandatory British government. It gradually became a government in all but name. After the establishment of the state of Israel, the Jewish Agency became a division of the government that focused on issues common to the state and to Jewish communities abroad.
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In addition, the British placed restrictions on Jewish land purchases in direct contradiction to the provision of the mandate’s provision that “the Administration of Palestine…shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency close settlement of Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes” (Article 6). Instead, the British allotted the Jews only 17,000 dunams out of the 750,000 dunams of cultivable land; in comparison, they allotted the Arabs 350,000. (A dunam is a unit of measure used in the Middle East. Four dunams equal one acre.) Such responses by the British were typical of how they ignored facts and obligations throughout the duration of the mandate to avoid controversy and conflict with the Arabs.
Culture Shock
It wasn’t just the Arabs’ fear of being displaced that led to their hostility toward the Jews after the third aliyah. The Palestinian Arabs’ opposition to Jewish immigration also stemmed from their perception of progress as a secular evil meant to undermine traditional Arab and Islamic values. This attitude is similar to that expressed in modern-day Iran, where Western influence has been castigated as a menace that corrupts Islam.
Although the fellaheen actually benefited economically from Jewish settlement, they didn’t appreciate these improvements because they had a negative view of progress. Instead, they listened to their leaders, who continued to preach the immorality of progress and the dangers the progressive Jews posed to Arab culture.
Hear No Evil
The Zionists did make efforts to explain their position to the Arabs and made numerous attempts to reach agreements with Arab leaders. There is little question, though, that the energy the Jews expended on reaching agreement with the Arabs was trivial compared to that directed toward the non-Arabs. The efforts to reach an agreement became increasingly difficult in the 1920s as conflicting forces became more involved in the negotiations. The British discouraged the Arabs from negotiating with the Zionists and, ironically, the Zionists minimized their negotiations with the Arabs because they didn’t want to alienate themselves from the British. The Zionists depended on the British to implement the Balfour Declaration, and they feared that any further attempts to negotiate with the Arabs might endanger their relations with the British.
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Sage Sayings
Another mistake that continually surprised me was that so much money and time and paper and ink were wasted on propaganda to explain Zionism to the Western nations. If only even the thousandth part of this effort were expended to clarify Zionism to the ArabsI suspect that you will not find a single leaflet in Arabic in which Zionists explain their needs, their rights, their claims
—M. R. Achtar, editor of Falastin, speaking to a group of Jews on November 26, 1930
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When the Zionists did make an effort to reach an understanding with the Arabs, they met with very small groups of Arab leaders, and no attempt was made to explain Zionism to the Arab masses and solicit their support. In fact, it wasn’t until David Ben-Gurion outlined the policy of his Labor Party in 1925 that the Zionists acknowledged a need to reach out to the Arab masses. Ben-Gurion admitted that “there was a time when the Zionist movement completely ignored the question of the Arab community in Palestine and made its calculations as if Palestine were completely uninhabited. The time for such naive Zionists is long past, never to return.” As Ben-Gurion himself acknowledged, however, there were “individual Zionists like Jabotinsky” who were not interested in reaching agreement with the Arabs. This complicated negotiations and caused a schism in the Zionist movement.
As Ben-Gurion noted, Jabotinsky’s Revisionists considered the Arab community in Palestine “a mistake that can be corrected.” The Revisionists made it impossible for moderate Zionist leaders to present the Arabs with a consensus on Zionist aims. Arab propagandists capitalized on the Revisionists’ extremism and made every effort to advertise the Revisionist position as that of the Zionist movement as a whole. By this time, however, Arab opposition to Jewish settlement had begun to manifest itself in violence, and Arab extremists assumed influence in Palestine.
Lawrence’s Offspring
The British officers and administrators in Palestine were primarily Arabists who had spent most of their careers in Arab countries. (An Arabist is someone with expertise in the Arab world. The term is usually applied pejoratively to diplomats and bureaucrats in the British Foreign Ministry and U.S. State Department who believe that their nations’ interests in the Arab world are more important than maintaining good relations with Israel.) These men saw Palestine as but a small part of a larger design for expanding Great Britain’s influence throughout the Middle East. The Arabists believed that Great Britain’s imperial interests were best served by creating Arab regimes. These regimes, they figured, would be allowed to retain sufficient autonomy to appease Arab nationalists while Great Britain maintained actual control over the country.
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Mysteries of the Desert
&
nbsp; David Ben-Gurion arrived in Palestine from his native Poland in 1906 and became the dominant figure in Zionist politics for nearly half a century. He helped create the first agricultural workers’ commune (which evolved into the kibbutz), and the first Jewish self-defense group. After World War I, Ben-Gurion helped found the national trade federation, the Histadrut, and later headed the two main political bodies campaigning for Jewish statehood, the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence in May 1948 and served as prime minister and defense minister. In late 1953, he left the government and retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. He returned to political life in 1955, assuming the post of defense minister and, later that same year, the premiership. In 1963, Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister citing personal reasons, but remained politically active until 1970. He died in 1973.
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The First Arab Riots
Arab nationalists were unsure how best to react to British authority. The two preeminent Jerusalem clans—the el-Husainis and the Nashashibis—battled for influence throughout the mandate, as they had for decades before. The former was militantly anti-British, whereas the latter favored a more conciliatory policy.