Depth Study 2: Palestine
Depth Study 2: Palestine
The status and causes of the Zionist-Palestinian problem by 1914
Evaluate the interpretations in both passages and explain which you think is more convincing in explaining…
the causes of the Zionist-Palestine problem by 1914.
the nature of the claims prior to 1914.
5.1 Jewish claim to Palestine (historic claim, persecution, treatment under Ottomans)
The Jewish people lived in the land of Palestine from about 1500BC.
In AD 70 and again in AD 135, Jewish people rebelled against their Roman rulers. Roman soldiers crushed both revolts, destroyed the Jewish temple, the City of Jerusalem and expelled most Jews.
Many thousands fled to neighbouring countries and the Jews thus became a scattered people and only a few thousand remained in Palestine.
By the 19th century, the country with the largest Jewish population was Russia.
When the Tsar was assassinated in 1881, the Jews that had settled in Russia faced anti-Jewish riots. Many people in the government blamed the Jews for the assassination and the new Tsar’s government encouraged the persecution of Jews.
Nicholas II was personally anti-Jewish and pursued many of the same hostile policies as his father, Alexander III, though the number of pogroms increased sharply, as ultra-conservative Russian nationalists in the ‘Black Hundreds’ were encouraged by the Tsar’s stance.
Pogroms in Russia from 1881-82 led to the ‘The First Aliyah’ (1882-1903). This was the first wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine. Between 25,000-35,000 Jews emigrated from Russia and Romania.
In 1881 the Diskin Orphanage was founded in Jerusalem for the arrival of Jewish children orphaned by Russian pogroms.
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jew living in Paris, published a book entitled ‘The Jewish State’ arguing Jews should be granted ‘a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation’.
By the beginning of the 20th century, many Jews were demanding a Jewish national home. Those people who believed in a Jewish national homeland were called Zionists.
Herzl laid the foundations of the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) in Palestine. The Second Aliyah started in 1904 and lasted until 1913. By 1914, 60,000 Jewish people had settled in Palestine.
1901: Jewish National Fund established to buy land and settle Jews in Palestine.
By 1914, Zionists agreed the homeland would have to be in Palestine - this was the ‘Promised land’, where the Jews had lived some 2,000 years before and where thousands remained. Jews traditionally prayed for ‘next year in Jerusalem’.
5.2 Arab claim to Palestine:
In the Middle Ages, the Muslim Arabs produced one of the world’s richest civilisations. From their homeland in Arabia, they swept across the Middle East and North Africa. Palestine was one of the countries they took over.
Then, in the 16th century, the Ottoman Turks (who were also Muslim, but not Arabs) conquered much of the Middle East. Thus, the Arabs had been conquered and Palestine was under Ottoman rule.
In the late 19th century, the Arabs tried several times to remove their Turkish leaders. Their aim was to re-establish Arab rule in the Middle East, including Palestine.
Arab nationalism that drew ideas from Western nationalism began to spread from the start of the 20th century. Arabs looked to the nationalist movements of the Slavic (and mostly Christian) minorities of the Ottoman Balkan territories, which had, by the end of 1912, all won their independence.
There were 3 core concepts that embodied Arab nationalism: 1) A strong anti-Turkish sentiment as a reaction to centuries of Ottoman control. 2) The entrance of European colonial powers and foreign control of Arab land led to anti-colonial and anti-imperialist sentiments. 3) Interaction and competition with Zionism also provided it with an anti-Zionist ideology.
In 1913, the first Arab National Congress was held and a year later the Arab National Manifesto was published. This called for independence from Turkey and unity among the Arabs.
According to historian Ernest Dawn, there were 126 members of Arab nationalist societies by 1914 of whom 22 were Palestinian.
The Arabs believed that as they dominated Palestine, they had the stronger claim to the land. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 60,000 Jews.
5.3 Young Turk Revolution
On July 24, 1908, the Ottoman Empire went through a dramatic series of changes due to the seizure of power by a group of Turkish officers (Young Turks).
The most widespread reform initiated by the Young Turks was the reinstatement of the Constitution. This reinstatement impacted the Zionist-Palestinian conflict because press censorship was repealed, and new political parties were permitted to form.
These developments increased the ability to express and expand anti-Zionist sentiments.
While the official gazette of the Ottoman Empire had been the only Arab-language paper available in Palestine before 1908, thirty-five Arab newspapers began circulation in Palestine during the first year after the Young Turk Revolution.
One such paper was Al-Asma'i, which was founded in Jaffa in 1908. In 1908 it reported that the Zionist immigrants ‘harm the local population and wrong them’
A vehemently anti-Zionist newspaper was founded in Haifa in 1908. Al-Karmil ran 134 articles about Zionism between 1908 and 1913.
5.4 Arab-Jewish hostilities in Palestine pre-1914:
There is evidence that Palestinian peasants were relatively cordial to their new Jewish neighbours/landowner. Even in cases where Jews had purchased all the surrounding land, there were usually too few of them to successfully farm all of it. In many cases, Jewish settlers in Palestine hired five to ten times as many Palestinians as Jews to work the lands.
According to historian Benny Morris, among the first recorded violent incidents between Arabs and the newly immigrated Jews in Palestine was the accidental shooting death of an Arab man in Safed, during a wedding in December 1882, by a Jewish guard of the newly formed Rosh Pinna (a new town established in 1878 by Jews). In response, about 200 Arabs descended on the Jewish settlement throwing stones and vandalising property.
A major clash between Jewish settlers and Palestinian peasants took place in March 1886, when a mob of Palestinians from the village of Yahudiya attacked the Jewish settlement of Petah Tikva.
The first response to the influx of Jews into the towns occurred in 1891. On June 24th, 1891, a group of Arab Jerusalem notables sent a telegram to the Sultan's grand vizier which requested a halt to the immigration of Jews into Palestine and a ban on the purchase of land by Jews.
The First World War and the Balfour Declaration
Evaluate the interpretations in both passages and explain which you think is more convincing in explaining…
the impact of WWI on Palestine.
the role of WWI in shaping British policy towards Palestine.
the nature of British policy towards Palestine during WWI.
the reasons for British policy towards Palestine.
6.1 McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, 1915
In July 1915, Hussein, Sharif of Mecca (most important Muslim leader), sent a letter to the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert McMahon detailing the conditions under which he would consider a partnership with the British.
Hussein stated that he required Britain to ‘acknowledge the independence of the Arab countries’.
McMahon, however, insisted that certain areas falling within the French sphere of influence would not be included, and stipulated that certain rules had to govern British activity in Baghdad and Basra.
He did, however, state that if the Arabs fought against the Ottomans that Britain would ‘when the situation allows, assist the Arabs to establish what may appear to be the most suitable forms of government in those various territories.’
The correspondence effectively traded British support of an independent Arab state for Arab assistance in opposing the Ottoman Empire.
In the end, the matters were set aside for discussion later. Ultimately, the highly ambiguous correspondence was in no way a formal treaty, and disagreements on several points persisted unresolved.
6.2 The role of Palestine in WW1
Turkey, who had conquered Palestine, fought on the German side in WWI (against Britain).
The British were afraid their supplies of oil from Persia (modern day Iran) might be cut off by the Turks. They therefore encouraged the Arabs to rebel and seek independence from their Turkish rulers. (McMahon-Hussein Correspondence - 1915).
Based on the understanding that the Arabs would eventually receive independence, Hussein (Sharif of Mecca) had brought the Arabs of the Hejaz (Saudi Arabia) into revolt against the Turks in June 1916.
In June 1916 an Arab army of some 30,000 men, financed by Britain and led by Faisal I (son of Hussein), moved against Turkish forces.
By September 1916, assisted by British naval and air support, they had taken the Red Sea ports of Jeddah, Rabigh and Yanbu. They had also taken Mecca and Ta’if and had captured 6,000 Ottoman prisoners.
They captured Aqabah in July 1917 and cut the Hejaz railway, a vital strategic link through the Arab peninsula which ran from Damascus to Medina. This enabled British troops to advance into Palestine and Syria.
The Arab rebels then aided British attacks on the Ottoman defensive line in Gaza-Beersheba and the Yarmuk River valley, which led to the British capture of Jerusalem in December 1917.
By 1918, the British were paying their Arab allies £220,000 a month in gold to fight the Ottoman Turks
With the capture of Damascus (1 October 1918), Turkish hold on the Middle East ended.
6.3 The Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916
The Sykes-Picot Agreement, also called Asia Minor Agreement (May 1916), was a secret treaty between the UK and France that defined their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in the eventual dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
In its designated sphere, each country was allowed to establish direct or indirect administration or control.
The agreement led to the division of Turkish held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French and British administered areas.
The agreement stated that Britain would take direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, around the Baghdad and Basra provinces. Palestine would have an international administration.
The Sykes-Picot agreement was made in secret and directly contradicted the British promises made in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence.
6.4 The role of the Jewish community in WWI
Jews from Palestine, Russia, Turkey and elsewhere lobbied the British government to be allowed to join up despite not being British nationals. Eventually, they were formed into the Zion Mule Corps and went on to serve in Gallipoli, receiving praise from the British authorities.
Once the Dardanelles (known as Gallipoli) campaign ended, the Corps was disbanded but many wished it to continue in some form, in particular the Jewish Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky.
Jabotinsky and others lobbied the British authorities once again to be allowed to form a Jewish fighting group – a Jewish legion that would give Jews a role in the Middle Eastern campaign and the liberation of Palestine from Turkish forces.
The Jewish Legion was formed in August 1917 (before the Balfour Declaration) and made into the 38th, 39th, 40th and 42nd Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.
A recruitment campaign to join the battalions in the USA led to many American Jews joining the British force with the ideal of travelling to Palestine.
On 3 February 1918, the battalions left London for the Middle East.
The 40th Battalion was made up of mainly Palestinian Jews who saw their loyalty and support of the British war effort as a way of persuading the British to enforce a Jewish homeland in Palestine. By 1918, more than 1,000 Palestinian Jews enlisted.
Amongst the men who served in the 40th regiment were David Ben Gurion and Isac Ben Zevie, founders of the State of Israel in 1948.
The battalions were disbanded between 1919 and 1921 with many of the Zionists staying in Palestine, while others returned home to London and elsewhere.
6.5 The Balfour Declaration, November 1917
During WWI, British Zionists, led by Chaim Weizmann, worked hard to win the support of the British government for a Jewish homeland.
By late 1917, Britain was drained through fighting in WWI and two of Britain’s allies were not fully engaged in the war: the USA and Russia. British ignorance led them to believe there would be propaganda benefits amongst the worldwide Jewish community if they issued support for a Jewish homeland, and that Jews in America specifically could influence their governments actions.
In November 1917, the British government declared support for a Jewish homeland. The declaration was made in the form of a letter from the UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leading British Jew. It became known as the ‘Balfour Declaration’.
The opening words of the declaration represented the first public expression of support for Zionism by a major political power.
However, the British were very careful with their wording in the declaration- they expressed their support for a Jewish homeland, not a Jewish state. The term "national home" had no precedent in international law and was intentionally vague.
The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified, and the British government later confirmed that the words "in Palestine" meant that the Jewish national home was not intended to cover all of Palestine.
The Declaration also called for safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, British Zionist Chaim Weizmann was asked what was meant by a Jewish national home. He replied: ‘to make Palestine as Jewish as England is English’.
With the Balfour Declaration, the contradictory nature of British policy was glaringly obvious. Both Arabs and Zionists felt that Palestine had been promised to them.
The British Mandate and issues in the interwar period including uprisings and immigration
and their consequences
Evaluate the interpretations in both passages and explain which you think is more convincing in explaining…
the nature of British policy during the Mandate.
the impact of British policy during the Mandate.
how effectively Britain ruled Palestine during the Mandate.
the reasons for the escalating tensions and uprisings in the inter-war period.
the nature of tensions during the Mandate.
the importance of the issue of immigration in the inter-war period.
how far the issue of Palestine affected Britain’s position in the world in the inter-war period.
7.0 The British Mandate of Palestine:
Under the Treaty of Versailles, Britain and France were given mandates, or orders, to govern certain countries in the Middle East until the Arab people were considered ready to govern themselves.
Britain was given mandates over Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. France was granted mandates over Syria and Lebanon and sent troops to take control.
Britain was granted a Mandate for Palestine on 25 April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and, on 24 July 1922, this mandate was approved by the League of Nations. The British were given a "dual mandate", that is, on behalf of Palestine’s inhabitants on the one hand, and on behalf of "international society" on the other.
The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the second article of the Mandate for Palestine.
The League of Nations confirmed that the mandate would ‘secure the establishment of a Jewish national home’ whilst also ‘safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine no matter what their race or religion’.
The Mandate led to resentment amongst the Arabs of Palestine as they felt that they had simply exchanged Turkish rulers for British ones. Similarly, many Jews had the expectation that Britain would stay true to its promise of a national homeland. British policy was therefore caught between conflicting promises and attempts to satisfy the requirements of Zionists as well as Arabs. Arab and Jewish suspicions of each other and of British intentions flourished in such an environment.
Issues in the interwar years: 1920s
7.1 British Policy in the 1920s:
The British administration in Palestine appointed well known Zionists to influential positions. For example, Sir Herbert Samuel (a well-known Zionist leader) took up his appointment on the first day of July 1920, as High Commissioner for Palestine. It fell upon him to establish the Civil Administration, and he changed many of the existing laws.
British administration – first under Samuel Herbert and then his successor Lord Plumer (1925-1928) – was favourable to Jews in many ways. The Arabs were a majority but their percentage representation in government posts was less than their percentage of the total population.
In August 1922, the British unveiled a draft constitution for Palestine. There would be a legislative council made up of 8 Muslims, 2 Christians, and 2 Jews. This proposal was however boycotted by the Muslims and Christians because they were denied the right to advise on matters concerning Zionists.
In 1921, on a visit to Palestine, Churchill was asked by a group of Arab leaders to refute the Balfour Declaration and stop immigration. He responded with ‘This is not in my power, and it is not my wish’.
However, in 1922, Winston Churchill issued a White Paper which revised the 1917 Balfour Declaration to make it clear that, whilst "the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration”, the British did not support the imposition of a Jewish state on Arab inhabitants of Palestine.
The 1920 Land Transfer Ordinance made it easier for Jews to buy large tracts of land from Arabs although it also required any new landlords to provide for Arab peasants who worked their land.
The Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 (commonly known as the Shaw Commission) found that the fundamental cause of violence at the end of the 1920s was the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews, arising from Jewish immigration and purchases of land, which impacted Arab livelihoods.
7.2 Arab actions in the 1920s
The Jaffa Riots: began on May Day 1921 when two rival Jewish labour groups clashed, arousing the interest of Arab onlookers. When the police fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd, the Arabs thought the Jews were shooting at them and lashed out using clubs, knives, and pistols to break into Jewish buildings and murder the inhabitants while women followed behind and looted. Armed Arab police soon joined the fray, attacking a hostel where Jewish immigrants were lodged, killing 13 Jews and wounding 24 others.
The Jaffa Riots: A few miles away, Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature, was murdered along with several of his housemates. As the violence spread, the British called in air support to bomb Arab crowds attacking Jewish settlements.
The Jaffa Riots: When the violence subsided a week later, 47 Jews and 48 Arabs had been killed (95 total)—most of the latter by the British—and another 146 Jews and 73 Arabs (219 total) had been wounded.
7.3 Jewish immigration
The Third Aliyah (1919-1923): In total, the Third Aliyah saw the arrival of approximately 40,000 Jewish people to Palestine.
The Fourth Aliyah (1924– 1928): The immigration wave of the 1920s peaked in 1925, consisting of 34,386 immigrants. This was the largest single-year influx relative to the size of the resident Jewish population over the entire Mandate period. In total, the Fourth Aliyah saw the arrival of more than 67,000 Jewish people to Palestine.
In November 1921, the Palestine Zionist Executive was formed. Chaim Weizmann, as head of this organisation, spent most of the period fundraising to allow Jews to buy land in Palestine.
In 1920 Jews bought a total of 262 acres. In 1925 they bought 44,000 acres.
Between 1921 and 1925, the Jewish National Fund and the American Zionist Commonwealth purchased 240,000 dunams (about 100 square miles) of Palestinian land from the wealth Arab Sursuq family. This purchase left some 8,000 Arab peasants landless, as the Zionist buyers wanted to settle on the land themselves.
By the end of 1928 there were about 100 Jewish settlements in the country.
7.4 Zionist actions
The Haganah was established by Vladimir Jabotinsky on June 15th, 1920. It was the underground military organisation for the Jewish community in Palestine.
In 1925 Vladimir Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist Party - an extreme nationalist group whose policies called for the use of force, if necessary, to establish a Jewish state. Jabotinsky believed that Zionists should focus solely on the creation of a Jewish state, not just in Palestine but also in Transjordan.
Jabotinsky’s youth wing – Betar – aimed to educate the Jewish youth in a militant and national spirit. They were drilled in military tactics.
The first Betar instructors’ school was set up in Tel Aviv in 1928, and its trainees took part in the violence that erupted in 1929 in Palestine.
7.5 Western Wall Incident, 1928-29 (evidence of Arab actions, Jewish actions, and British policy)
Fighting began over Jewish access to the Western Wall, known as Al-Buraq Wall in Arabic or HaKotel in Hebrew, an important holy site to people of both faiths.
For Jews, the wall was the last remnant of the outer wall that had surrounded Herod’s temple. It was thus a relic of the sanctuary of ancient Israel, the most holy place in Judaism and a focal point of religious and national pride.
For Muslims, the wall was the outer perimeter of the Haram-al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam.
Weizmann pursued efforts to buy the wall and had collected £61,000 by December 1928.
On the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) - September 24th, 1928, Jews brought a screen to the wall to divide male and female worshippers.
Arab complaints led to the British police removing the screen the next day, which had to be done forcibly due to resistance from Jewish worshippers.
Jewish demands that the wall be turned over to them persisted. In response, Hajj Amin al-Husyani (head of the Supreme Muslim Council) led to the formation of an Arab committee to defend the wall.
Weizmann wrote in an open letter to the Yishuv (Jewish population in Palestine) in November 1928 that the only feasible solution to the problem of the Western Wall was to ‘pour Jews into Palestine’ and gain control of their ancient homeland. (He implied once Jewish sovereignty was established the wall issue would be resolved). Linking the wall issue with Jewish sovereignty was to Muslim’s proof of their initial suspicions- the wall issue was now even more politicised.
On August 15th, 1929, members of the Betar, the Revisionist Party’s Youth organisation, marched to the wall, raised the Zionist flag, and sang the Zionist anthem.
On August 16th, thousands of Arabs marched to the wall to burn the slips of paper inscribed with prayers inserted by Jews.
On August 23rd, rumours spread that the Jews were planning an attack on the al-Aqsa mosque. Militants poured in, inspired by radical speakers, to defend the mosque. It resulted in the Hebron massacre, which saw 67 Jewish lives taken.
Zionist groups retaliated, at one point invading a mosque in Jaffa and killing a religious figure and 6 others.
The rampage lasted nearly a whole week. 133 Jews had been killed, and 116 Arabs.
Issues in the interwar years: 1930s
8.1 British policy:
British policy was inconsistent and incoherent throughout the 1930s as they changed their priorities based on what was politically expedient (e.g., when they needed Arab support, they favoured the Arab community).
After the riots of 1929, the Hope Simpson Report was established in October 1930. The report made several recommendations (some of which were adopted in the 1930 Passfield White Paper). For example, it recommended putting a limit on Jewish immigration based on the development of the country’s economy and the effect it would have on the livelihood of current residents (Arabs).
In October 1930 the British issued the Passfield White Paper. It criticised Zionist colonialism and limited Jewish immigration in addition to condemning the actions of the Jewish Agency, especially the expulsion of Arabs from newly purchased land.
However, facing predictable hostility from the Zionists the British prime minister Ramsey MacDonald sent a letter to Weizmann clarifying his position. The ‘MacDonald Letter’ was widely regarded as a withdrawal of the Passfield White Paper: it confirmed that British policy was to support Jewish immigration and land purchases. This letter was dubbed the ‘black paper’ by the Arabs.
From 1931-1933, the British government set up the Landless Arab Enquiry to investigate the problem of Arab peasants being moved off land by Jewish buyers. However, due to pressure from the Jewish Agency only 900 of a potential 4,000 claims of landlessness were accepted.
In July 1937 the Peel Commission proposed that Palestine be partitioned into three zones: an Arab state, a Jewish state, and a neutral territory containing the holy sites. The Twentieth Zionist Congress rejected the proposed boundaries but agreed in principle to partition. Palestinian Arab nationalists rejected any kind of partition.
However, the Woodhead Commission reversed the Peel Commission's findings and reported in November 1937 that partition was impracticable; this view was then accepted and became part of British policy.
1939 White Paper: Britain's dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and therefore the need for Arab goodwill during a potential war with Nazi Germany, loomed increasingly large in its strategic thinking. Whereas the British knew that Jews would have no choice but to support the British against the Nazis. The 1939 White Paper proposed: 1) limiting Jewish immigration to 10,000. 2) Arabs to have control over Jewish immigration in 5 years. 3) An independent Palestine in 10 years.
8.2 Jewish immigration and land issues:
The Fifth Aliyah (1929-1939): Jewish population in Palestine rose from 160,000 in 1929 to 430,000 in 1939.
With the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler from 1933 in Germany, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased from 4,075 in 1931 to 61,854 in 1935. The immigration flow intensified in 1933 to constitute the second massive influx of 228,170 people from 1933-39.
After the 1929 disturbances, in which Jewish lives and property were destroyed, the Jewish National Fund, and other Jewish land-purchasing institutions and individuals increasingly acquired lands closer to existing Jewish population concentrations. Creating strings of Jewish settlements attached to one another now become more essential, thus increasing the divide between the Jewish and Arab communities.
The Jewish Agency took care that resident Arab tenants who received monetary compensation from either the purchaser or seller, to vacate the land they once worked, would not be physically resettled between existing Jewish settlements.
When the issue of Arab landlessness caused by the land sale process was raised in the early 1930s, the Jewish Agency took the position, and effectively influenced the British Government in London, against resettling or transferring Arab peasants from the hill regions of Palestine to the low-lying plain and valley regions, the focus of Jewish land acquisition.
Nahum Sokolow, the president of World Zionist Organization, enthusiastically supported a policy in 1931 preventing the resettlement of landless Arabs in Jewish districts.
650,000 dunums were held by Jewish organisations in 1920, at the end of 1946 the figure had reached 1,625,000 dunums – an increase of about 250% and Jewish settlement had displaced large numbers of Palestinian Arab peasants. Even so, this area represented only 6.2% of the total area of Palestine and 12% of the cultivable land.
8.3 Zionist Actions
In 1931, Irgun was formed. It was founded by a group of Haganah commanders, who rejected the ‘restraint’ policy of the Haganah.
In 1936, the Irgun became an instrument of the Revisionist Party, an extreme nationalist group whose policies called for the use of force, if necessary, to establish a Jewish state.
As Jewish immigration to Palestine became increasingly harder due to British policy, illegal immigration supported by Zionist terrorist groups began to arise.
The Jewish Agency opposed illegal immigration until 1938 as it was feared that illegal immigration would affect the granting of certificates for legal immigrants, but this stance changed in the face of increasing Nazi persecution.
Increasing numbers of Jews arrived as ‘tourists’ and never returned to their countries of origin. In 1935, close to 5,000 Jews entered the country in this way.
In June 1938, a convoy of three boats carried 381 illegal immigrants from Vienna who disembarked at Tantura where Irgun members loaded them onto buses and dispersed them throughout the country.
By the beginning of WWI, around 24,000 Jewish people had been brought into Palestine as illegal immigrants. Of these, about 18,000 were brought by the Revisionist and Irgun.
June 19th, 1939: 18 Arabs were killed by explosives mounted on a donkey at a marketplace in Haifa by the Irgun gang.
8.4 Arab Revolt and British response to it
First phase of the Arab Revolt: began on 15th April 1936 with the murder of a Jew near the town of Nablus in response to Jewish immigration.
Six prominent Arab leaders overcame their rivalries and joined forces to protest Zionist advances in Palestine. The Arab Higher Committee, as the group was known, was formed in April 1936. It was led by the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and represented Arab interests in Palestine.
The Arab Higher Committee (AHC) declared a national strike in support of three basic demands: cessation of Jewish immigration, an end to all further land sales to the Jews, and the establishment of an Arab national government. Eighty Jews were murdered by terrorist acts during the labour strike.
Simultaneously with the strike, Arab rebels, joined by volunteers from neighbouring Arab countries, took to the hills, attacking Jewish settlements in the northern part of the country.
The British Government announced the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the causes of the “disturbances” and turned to the rulers of other Arab States for mediation, which eventually led to the strike being called off in October 1936. The official count of casualties was 275 dead and 1,112 wounded.
Second phase of the Arab Revolt, September 1937: The issue of the Royal Commission’s report brought an almost immediate renewal of violence, starting with the assassination of a British District Commissioner.
In the face of renewed violence, the British showed a firmer response. They shut down the Arab Higher Committee by deporting its prominent leaders to the Seychelles Islands, while the Mufti of Jerusalem was able to escape to Lebanon, from where he continued to direct the rebellion.
Military courts were established, awarding 58 death sentences by the end of 1938, as well as numerous life imprisonments.
Charles Orde Wingate, a Zionist officer in the British army, organised Special Night Squads of Jewish volunteers to combat the attackers. He was an effective military commander but a very cruel and repressive one. For example, he carried out executions of suspected rebels without trial.
The British shipped more than 20,000 troops into Palestine and by 1939 the Zionists had armed more than 15,000 Jews in their own nationalist movement.
Though the British administration did not officially recognise the Haganah, they cooperated with it during the Arab revolt. They helped to train and organise the Haganah (this later formed the basis of the Israeli army).
A total of 415 Jewish deaths were recorded during the whole 1936-1939 Arab Revolt period. The toll on the Arabs was estimated to be roughly 5,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and 5,600 imprisoned.
1940s + Reasons for and immediate consequences of partition in 1948
Evaluate the interpretations in both passages and explain which you think is more convincing in explaining…
the reasons for the decision to partition Palestine.
the reasons for British withdrawal from Palestine.
the impact of the decision to partition Palestine.
the causes of the Palestinian Civil War.
the nature of the conflict that followed the decision to partition Palestine.
the causes of the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Overview:
On September 26th, 1947, the British announced they would leave Palestine the following year in May.
The Palestinian Civil War began straight after the UN Partition Plan was voted for (November 30th, 1947 - May 14th, 1948)
The British OFFICIALLY left Palestine on May 14th, 1948 (this is when the state of Israel was born)
As soon as the British left, the Arab Israeli War began (15th May 1948 – 10th March 1949)
The Refugee Crisis began during the civil war but exacerbated during the Arab Israeli War.
Reasons for British withdrawal from Palestine
9.1 Moral imperative/international influence
When the war ended in 1945, the British announced there would be no change to their policy in Palestine (no big increase in Jewish immigration and no separate Jewish state). However, the war had toughened the Zionists: six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust and the Zionists were not in a mood to be patient. They were convinced that they had justice on their side and that international opinion would support a separate Jewish state.
The Struma (December 1941): sailed from Constanza in Romania with 769 Jewish refugees aboard. The vessel, commissioned by the New Zionist Organization and the Irgun, aimed to anchor in Turkey, and from there to await immigration certificates for Palestine. The ship sailed for three days, just making it to Istanbul before the engine died.
The Struma (December 1941): The Turkish authorities prevented the disembarkation (process of leaving a ship) of the passengers for fear that the British would not give them certificates and Turkey would be forced to give them refuge. The ship remained docked in Istanbul for 70 days.
The Struma (December 1941): The British refused to grant permission for the passengers to enter Palestine – in keeping with the terms of the 1939 White Paper - and the Turks would not let them repair the engine, disembark, or remain in Turkey. Despite the despairing appeals of the captain that the ship was unable to continue its way, the Turkish authorities sent the ship back to the Black Sea on February 23, 1942. The following day, a mighty explosion was heard, and the ship went down. Much later it was determined the ship had been sunk by a torpedo from a Russian submarine. Only one passenger survived. Among the dead were 103 children.
Summer 1947: A ship called The Exodus was carrying 4,500 refugees from Europe. It was prevented, by the British authorities, from landing its passengers in Palestine and sent back to Europe. This event attracted widespread publicity, winning much sympathy for the Jewish refugees, and was thus a huge propaganda success for the Zionists. The British authorities came in for worldwide criticism.
9.2 Zionist actions:
November 1944: To the Zionists, the sinking of the Struma was proof of British untrustworthiness and those seen as responsible – Harold MacMichael, High Commissioner in Palestine, and Lord Moyne, Colonial Secretary – were targeted for assassination. In November 1944, an attempt of Lord Moyne’s life by the Jewish terror group LEHI (Fighting for the Freedom of Israel) was successful.
In August 1945, the Zionist conference decided on a policy of active opposition to British rule in Palestine. Their leaders ordered the Haganah, the Jewish Defense Force, to cooperate with the Irgun and Stern gang, two secret, underground Jewish organisations.
British military bases, railways, trains, and bridges in Palestine became the target of these terrorist groups.
In April 1946, six British soldiers were murdered in one incident.
On 28 June 1946, 17,000 British troops carried out Operation Agatha in Jerusalem. The Jewish Agency offices and other buildings were raided, and arms caches discovered.
July 1946: Irgun attack on the King David hotel in Jerusalem. This hotel housed the British military headquarters in Palestine. At noon on 22nd July 1946, a lorry drove up to the entrance of the hotel kitchen. Men dressed as Arabs got out and unloaded their cargo of milk churns. No one guessed that the milk churns contained high explosives or that the ‘Arabs’ were members or Irgun. At 12:37pm the explosion tore through the building killing 88 people, including 15 Jews.
February 1947: killing of 20 British soldiers in the officers’ club in Jerusalem
Summer 1947: Two British soldiers were hanged in revenge for the execution of three Irgun members: a photograph of the two men hanging from a tree appeared in the front page of several British newspapers. The impact on British public opinion was massive, with the Manchester Guardian suggesting that it was “time to go”.
By October 1947, Zionist attacks had killed 127 British soldiers and wounded 133 others.
9.3 British economic weakness/changing Labour ideology
WWII had devastated the British economy. By 1945 Britain was overspending by £2 billion per year. Bread was rationed until 1948. Crisis was abetted by the freezing winter of 1946-7 which placed further strain on energy supplies.
By 1947, the cost of maintaining the British force in Palestine cost nearly £40 million per year.
The new Labour government’s commitment to constructing a welfare state – new schools, homes, and the NHS - further increased government spending. Between 1948 and 1951, Attlee’s government increased spending on health by 80%.
Labour had historically been opposed to imperial expansion and in the 1945 manifesto called for “the advancement of India to responsible self-government” and appointed Lord Mountbatten – a known reluctant imperialist – as Viceroy.
However, Ernest Bevin – Labour’s Foreign Secretary – was in no mood to give up the Empire. The Middle East remained strategically vital because of British reliance on oil (Labour hoped that 82% of UK oil would come from British-owned companies in the Middle East by 1951) and the military bases at Aden and southern Asia.
The Middle East was important strategically because of its oil fields, communication routes, and military bases, and because it provided a possible base from which to launch an attack on the Soviet Union and its southern oil fields.
Bevin’s failure to reach a solution that allowed the continuation of British rule in Palestine led to him passing the issue on to the United Nations in February 1947. Bevin hoped that the UN would legitimise British rule in Palestine and nullify any US objections.
9.4 US influence:
May 1942: The American Zionist Conference had declared support for a ‘Jewish commonwealth’ in all of Palestine. This became known as the Biltmore Declaration.
American Zionists launched a propaganda offensive, they addressed meetings, held rallies, placed advertisements, and above all, lobbied members of the US government in congress.
In the 1944 presidential elections, both Democrat and Republican election platforms endorsed the Biltmore Declaration.
The King of Saudi Arabia expressed his concern in a letter to US President Roosevelt outlining that the US support for Zionism will infringe on the rights of the Arabs of Palestine. On April 5, 1945, the President replied in a letter to the King that ‘I would take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive Branch of this Government, which might prove hostile to the Arab people’.
The 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was focused upon increasing Jewish immigration to Palestine as well as ending restrictions on land purchases.
In April 1946, the US president, Harry Truman, called on the British government to allow the immediate entry of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine. Six months later, he came out in support of the partition of Palestine. Attlee and his foreign secretary Ernest Bevin were outraged, but they could do nothing: Britain needed US financial assistance. The Anglo-American loan of 1946 was for $3.75 billion and was not paid off until 2006.
The Anglo-American loan, negotiated in 1947, gained Britain a $3.75 billion loan to rebuild but came with two catches: first, Britain was now even further dependent on the US; second, the Americans demanded that sterling (£) become fully convertible into dollars, meaning that British currency reserves plummeted in value.
9.5 UN Partition Plan:
In February 1947, Britain submitted the Palestine problem to the newly formed United Nations.
In July 1947, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that: 1) the British leave 2) Palestine be partitioned into an Arab state, a Jewish state, and an international government of Jerusalem.
56.47% of land would go towards creating a Jewish state (this land included 498,000 Jews and 325,000 Arabs). 43.53% of the land would go to the Arabs (this land included 807,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews)
The Jewish Agency accepted the plan, and nearly all Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news.
The partition plan was rejected out of hand by Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population.
Britain announced that it would accept the partition plan but refused to enforce it. In September 1947, the British government announced that the Mandate for Palestine would end at midnight on May 14, 1948.
On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, to adopt a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition.
14 May 1948: at midnight, the British Mandate was terminated, and David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the birth of the new state of Israel.
10.1 Civil War (November 30th, 1947 - May 14th, 1948)
The 1947–1948 civil war in Palestine broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29th November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
The next day, on November 30th, the Arab Higher Committee called for protests and a strike from 2nd -4th December. Arab gunmen ambushed two Jewish buses near the city of Petah Tikva, killing seven, and Arab snipers shot at buses and pedestrians in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. The civil war had begun.
In December 1947 the Arab League (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen) pledged its support to the Palestinian Arabs at a meeting in Cairo. They adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict and organised a force of 3,000 volunteers.
When hostilities commenced, the Haganah had: 10,000 rifles, 3,500 submarine guns, 775 light machine guns, 157 medium machine guns, 670 two-inch mortars, and 84 three-inch mortars.
The Haganah had a force of 2,000-3,000 members. From November 1947-May 1947 it was transformed from a militia into an army.
Between December 1947-February 1948, a 4,000 strong force of well-equipped volunteers (most of them Syrians and Iraqis) known as the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) were sent in to support the Palestinian cause.
On 10th March 1948 Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv, and formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). It was a plan for military operations.
Plan D or Dalet has become one of the most controversial documents of the 1948 war. Israelis have portrayed it as a set of defensive military measures, while Palestinians see it as proof of a systematic strategy of ethnic cleansing.
Plan D: ‘the purpose conveyed in this programme is domination over the area of the Jewish state, and the protection of its border’.
Plan D: The Plan explicitly stated that operations would include ‘destruction of villages, (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines and debris), especially those population centres which are difficult to control continuously’.
Plan D: ‘in the event of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state’
The Haganah launched military operations under Plan Dalet at the beginning of April 1948.
From April 1948, Jewish forces began the forcible expulsion of Arabs from villages inside what was to become the Jewish states. Nearly all the villages from along the coast from Tel Aviv to Haifa were cleared of their Arab populations.
Jewish forces also took over the mixed Arab-Jewish town Haifa on 22nd April. Explosions were set off by Jewish forces in Arab areas of the city- nearly all the Arab population of 10,000 fled.
9th April 1948: Zionist troops (Irgun) went on a killing spree in Deir Yassin. 107 women and children were killed.
Alan Cunningham, the British high commissioner in Palestine, acknowledged that a “deliberate mass murder of innocent civilians” occurred during Deir Yassin, yet argued that the British forces were “not in a position to take action in the matter owing to their failing strength and increasing commitments.”
Following the Deir Yassin massacre, the Palestinian National Committee under the leadership of Dr Hussein Fakri El Khalidi attempted to Make Arab governments send troops by exaggerating the massacre in a subsequent radio broadcast. ‘We want you to say that the Jews slaughtered people, committed atrocities, raped, and stole gold’. The broadcasts had a devastating effect and triggered the mass Arab flight.
13th April 1948: a civilian convoy, escorted by the Haganah militia, bringing medical supplies to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus as ambushed by Arab forces. 79 Jews were killed by gunfire during the ambush or were burnt when several vehicles were set alight.
By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces.
By May 1948, between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians had already been expelled from their homes and communities, including most of the population of major Palestinian communities such as Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa.
10.2 Arab-Israeli War (15 May 1948 – 10 Mar 1949)
On 14th May 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the birth of the new state of Israel. The next day armed forces from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt invaded.
The state of Israel was thus born in war and its first aim was survival. However, it is argued that the war became a war of conquest for the Israeli’s.
Following the creation of Israel, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the “Transfer Committee”. The main aims of the committee were: 1. The eviction of the Palestinian people. 2. Blocking their return. 3. The destruction and expropriation of their homes.
In a report presented to Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the committee called for “the destruction of villages as much as possible during the military operation”.
15th May 1548: In the south an Egyptian army of 10,000 men crossed the border near the coast and attacked the soon to be Arab state.
In the north, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese troops crossed the border but were resisted by the Jewish settlers and most of the invaders were forced to withdraw.
The first major conflict was the Battle for Jerusalem. King Abdallah of Transjordan moved his Arab Legion (the army of Transjordan) to defend the eastern part of Jerusalem. The Israelis were not able to defeat the Legions and the Israeli offensive was halted and they failed to gain Eastern Jerusalem. However, the Israelis did gain control of West Jerusalem without a big struggle.
On 10th June 1948, the UN persuaded the warring parties to agree to a ceasefire. The Jordanians and Lebanese were willing to open peace talks, but the Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis were not.
During the lull, the Israelis secured fresh supplies of weapons from Eastern Europe, mainly from the Czechs. The Israelis used the ceasefire to recruit more men as well as reorganise and rearm their forces. This gave them a significant advantage and, when the Egyptians broke the truce, the Israelis went on the offensive and seized the initiative from the Arab forces.
In the second phase of fighting (July 1948), Israeli priority was to try and widen the corridor leading to Jerusalem, taking land allocated to the Arabs in the process. They were largely successful, but the Arab Legion held onto the old city of Jerusalem (eastern Jerusalem)- the Arab Legion did not attempt to seize land that was allocated to the Jewish state.
In the North, the Israelis gained control of the entire Galilee region, including land that had been allocated to the Arabs.
September 1948: a second truce was announced. The special UN mediator, Count Bernadotte from Sweden produced a peace plan: it gave added land to the Arabs in the South and more land to the Israelis in the north, Jerusalem was still to be an international city under UN control, and Arab refugees were to have the right to return home.
The following day, Bernadotte was assassinated by the Stern gang. The new Israeli government intended to maintain international support and ordered the dissolution of the Stern Gang and Irgun. Some of their members were then incorporated into the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
In mid-October, Israel broke the second ceasefire, and the third phase of fighting began. They concentrated on defeating the Egyptians in the South. They did this successfully, even pursuing the Egyptian army over the border into Europe.
They agreed, under American pressure, to withdraw from Egyptian territory. However, Israel remained in control of the Negev when the final ceasefire was arranged.
10.3 Results of the war
The new nation of Israel had lost 6,000 lives, which amounted to 1% of the entire Jewish population of 650,000.
The Israeli’s now controlled 79% of what had been the British mandate of Palestine rather than the 55% allocated to the new state by the UN. (War of conquest?)
For Israel, the war had been one of national liberation. They had survived their first great test and were confident of their future as an independent nation.
The West Bank would be controlled by Jordan, the Gaza Strip by Egypt, and the city of Jerusalem was divided between the western Israeli portion and the eastern Arab section.
For the Arabs, the 1948-49 war became known as the ‘Nakbah’, the catastrophe or disaster.
10.4 Refugee Crisis:
The Palestinian refugee crisis effectively began when it was announced that Palestine would be partitioned. The escalation of violence in the last part of the British Mandate, the Civil War, and the Arab Israeli War, initially saw Palestinians displaced as they looked for safety in the face of heightened tensions and they were later forcibly removed by the Israeli state.
By the end of the war 750,000 Palestinian Arabs had become refugees, having fled, or driven out of their homes. Most ended up in Gaza or what became known as the West Bank.
In 1948, only about 150,000 Palestinians remained in the area that became the State of Israel.
10.5 Role of the Israeli state:
A report from the military intelligence of the Haganah entitled "The emigration of Palestinian Arabs in the period 1/12/1947 – 1/6/1948", dated 30th June 1948 affirmed that up to 1st June 1948:
"At least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our (Haganah/IDF) operations."
The operations of the Irgun and Lehi, which "directly (caused) some 15%... of the emigration".
A further 2% was attributed to explicit expulsion orders issued by Israeli troops, and 1% to their psychological warfare. This leads to a figure of 73% for departures caused directly by the Israelis.
In addition, the report attributes 22% of the departures to "fears" and "a crisis of confidence" affecting the Palestinian population.
As for Arab calls for flight, these were reckoned to be “significant in only 5% of cases...”
On July 12th, 1948, Israeli soldiers battling the Arab Legion and local irregulars in the towns of Lydda and Ramle were given orders by Lieutenant-Colonel Yitzhak Rabin to expel the inhabitants. Over two days, between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants were driven from their homes.
10.6. Role of Arab states:
Some historians argue that Arab leaders encouraged the flight of Arabs. For example, leaders like the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri declared: ‘we will smash the country without guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down’.
Lebanon and Syria both denied residency permits to males of military age to encourage them to stay and fight during the war, thus showing that Arab states did not encourage the mass exodus.
Israeli historian Benny Morris analysed the exodus from 392 settlements and determined that Arab orders were only a significant factor in 6 of them.