1

In what ways did British policies shape the ArabZionist conflict before and leading to 1948?
Abstract
The Balfour Declaration was the root cause of the real conflict between Arabs of Palestine and the Zionists. It flared already existing placid conflict into a violent one. It was not a well thought out decision, even after it was approved; Lloyd George was ready to abandon it for the sake of a separate peace with the Turks. The incongruous policies aiming to secure the establishment of a Jewish national home while safeguarding the rights of the country's inhabitants further shaped the conflict which persists to this day. The Mandate system constituted the negation of Palestinian national existence while facilitating the Jewish national home in Palestine, hence, posed an inescapable dilemma for the British Officials and the Palestinians. Palestinians could not participate in the system without denying themselves the very rights they were struggling for and British officials could not implement the policy without resorting to Machiavellian methods. The Palestinian reaction was perceived as transitory by the British as Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies and head of the Middle East Division John Shuckburgh opined, ... if once they (Palestinian) realise that we mean business, may be expected to acquiesce.1 As early as 1923, it became obvious even to Shuchburgh that no solution can be found while continue to pursue the British policy but no change was forthcoming. Still this failing policy held sway until the very end of the British Mandate sustaining the Arab-Zionist conflict. It might be stated without exaggeration that if it was not for the Belfour Declaration, Zionism might have remained a dream and Arabs of Palestine might have had their own sovereign state.

The conflict between the Arabs of Palestine and the Jewish settlers surfaced almost as soon as Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers from Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia in 1880s. Almost three decades before the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, on 24 June 1891, the Arabs of Palestine lodged their first protest against the Jewish settlement in Palestine, demanding the Ottoman Grand Vizier to halt the Jewish immigration into Palestine and stop their land purchases. Local merchants and craftsmen feared economic competition as a result of Jewish immigration. In 1914, Raghib AlNashashibi, was elected to the Ottoman Parliament by an overwhelming majority on a slogan of doing away with the damage and threat of the Zionists and

Sahar Huneidi; Was Balfour Policy Reversible? The Colonial Office and Palestine, 1921-23, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No.2 (Winter, 1998), pp.23-41:p28

2 Zionism.2 But violence had not taken roots in the Arab-Jewish was only when Jewish immigration became integral part of the that violence erupted. Therefore the Balfour Declaration was starting point in Arab-Zionist conflict as it was a turning point, conflict into a violent one. discourse yet. It British Mandate not so much a turning a placid

The British Mandate had seeds of Arab Zionist conflict built in it with its double undertaking ... to the Jewish people on the one hand, and to the non-Jewish population on the other3; it gave new meaning to the Arab-Zionist conflict and shaped its future course by its paradoxical policy of securing the establishment of a Jewish national home while safeguarding the rights of the country's inhabitants. There is no evidence that any member of the War Cabinet took time to consider the long term implications of the Balfour Declaration 4. Mark Levene argues that the Balfour Declaration was a product not of assessment but of perception 5. There was hardly any time during the severe pressures of war to give serious consideration to the Zionist project. One can understand the acuteness of these pressures by knowing that discussions on the Zionist project could only be tabled as late agenda items, in only four out of 261 War Cabinet meetings which took place between December 1916 and 2 November 1917. Stephen Roskill, biographer of the head of the War Cabinet secretariat, Sir Maurice Hankey, notes how Hankeys diaries for early November made no mention of the Declaration, explaining the seemingly casual way in which it was approved by the fact that all the War Cabinet were at the time deeply involved in preparing for the historic Rapallo conference. The following day, the British delegation under Lloyd George left for Italy, where, a week before, the 2nd Italian Army was defeated by Austro-Hungarian forcesa disaster of the first magnitude, in Hankeys words 6. In Shuckburghs opinion the promises were made during the stress and strain of war and nobody in the Cabinet thought we should have to meet these promises.7

Victor Kattan; From Coexistence To Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949, Pluto Press, London,2009:p79
3

The Road to Rebellion Arab Palestine in the 1930's by W. F. Abboushi, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.6, No.3 (Spring,1977),pp.23-46:p23
4

Michael J. Cohen;Was the Balfour Declaration at risk in 1923? Zionism and British Imperialism, the Journal of Israel Studies, Vol. 29 No. 1 March 2010.pp.79-98:p92
5

Mark Levene;the Balfour Declaration: the Case of Mistaken Identity, The English Historical Review, Vol.107,No.422 (Jan.,1992),pp.54-77:p76 6 William M. Mathew;War-Time Contingency and the Balfour Declaration of 1917: An Improbable Regression, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol.40, No.2 (Winter 2011), pp.26-42:p31
7

Evyatar Friesel;British Officials on the Situation in Palestine,1923: Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.23, No.2 (Apr.,1987),pp.194-210:p201

3 The fate of the Balfour Declaration was uncertain even after it was approved. It seems that there were times when Lloyd George would have discarded it as conveniently as it was hatched, had there been a prospect for separate peace with Turkey. Hence, the most convincing reason for Balfour Declaration was Lloyd Georges assertion that it was part of our propaganda strategy for mobilizing every opinion and force throughout the world which would weaken the enemy and improve the allied chances. 8

The following episode sheds some light into the seriousness with which Lloyd George took the prospect of the separate treaty with the Turks. He assigned this project to Zacharias Basileios Zaharoff, an infamous arms merchant. When Russia renounced its ambition for Constantinople in May 1917, Lloyd George sent for Zaharoff, to come over as soon as you could possibly manage it and undertook to see you directly you arrived and to give you as much time as you require for discussion of the project. We know how difficult it had been for Chaim Weizmann to see the prime minister, that their brief meetings were arranged by P C Scott in the interstices of the day. 9 Enver Pashas emissary informed Zaharoff that they want as a retaining fee $2,000,000 Lloyd George made the money available to Zaharoff for the transaction. The propitious moment to make the payment came on 12 December 1917 when Balfour Declaration was already published. 10 On 9 January 1918, Lloyd George gave Zaharoff negotiating instructions which included: Palestine will not be annexed or incorporated in the British Empire. In mid-January 1918, Lloyd George told Zaharoff to reassure Envers emissary that the Turkish flag could continue to fly over Palestine. 11 Lloyd George was prepared to risk Zionist goodwill for the sake of a separate peace with Turkey. Before Balfour Declaration made its way into the Mandate, Sahar Huneidi argues that, there were times that the policy could have been overturned12

The British government did not even contemplate a possibility of Arab opposition to their policy of Jewish national home in Palestine which is evident from the
8

Jonathan Schneer;The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2011
9

Ibid:p294 Ibid:p296 Ibid:p357 Huneidi;1998:p23

10 11 12

4 manner in which Balfour Declaration was approved. British government seemed pretty hopeful that the Arabs would eventually come round to co-operate with them in implementing Balfour Declaration.

British Colonial Secretary told the Permanent Mandates Commission in 1937, The Balfour Declaration was the expression of a hope then existing that the Jews and Arabs would compose their differences and eventually coalesce into a single commonwealth united in Palestinian citizenship. 13 The warnings of trouble were ignored perhaps thinking that insignificant Arabs can be ignored without any consequence. While the Arab image was damaging to the Arab case, the Jewish image was useful to the Zionist case. 14 Its evident from Balfours confidential 1919 memo stating that Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhibit that ancient land.15 Herbert Asquith had already explained that the British policies in the region were based on a number of fragile, precarious, crumbling hypotheses, among them the very large hypothesis that the Jews and the Arabs are going to live side by side in Palestine. He warned that the likelihood was that Britain would be replicating an Irish-style problem in the Middle East. 16 The Haycraft Commission of Inquiry, established by Samuel after the Jaffa riots of 1st May 1921, reported in simple terms that had there been no Jewish question, the government would have had no political difficulty of any importance to deal with so far as domestic affairs are concerned. 17 General Congreve, commander of the British forces in Egypt and Palestine, forewarned in June 1921 that "unless Arab aspirations are attended to ... and Zionist aspirations ... greatly curbed, it would not be surprising if something yet more serious developed.18 For Shuckburgh, it was clear right at the beginning of the Mandate that there was no way leading the Arabs towards political collaboration The seeds of the ultimate conflict in Palestine was already sprouting. Sydney Moody, District Officer in Safed was fairly sure that, you can do nothing with the Arab
13 14 15

Kattan;2009:p255 Abboushi;1977:P33 Kattan;2010:p123 Mathew;2011:p30 Kattan;2010:p86 Huneidi;1998:p26

16

17
18

5 population of Palestine until you have first disposed in some way or other of the Balfour Declaration.19

Instead of disposing of the Balfour Declaration, British government pressed ahead with implementing it so managing conflict became the main plank of British policy. Shuckburgh reveals the way it was done: we were telling them two opposed and different things. To the Arabs that the Zionist policy of the Government was not such a serious matter, that they were exaggerating its importance; to the Jews that the toning down of the Balfour Declaration did not mean a diminution of their hopes but was rather to the advantage of the Zionist movement Moodys confession was more direct, I have also had the feeling of saying one thing to the Jews and another to the Moslems. I have often found the maxims of Machiavelli's Prince more useful and certainly more immediately applicable20 The Mandate system constituted the negation of Palestinian national existence as a sovereign people while providing a legal framework for Jewish national home to emerge. The British designed this system through its peculiar legal structure producing almost inescapable dilemmas for the British Mandate Officials as well as for the Palestinians. Right after the British occupation, Palestinian Arabs started pressing the British government to grant them the national rights, but each time they were told to accept the terms of the Mandate as a precondition for any negotiations. Rashid Khalidi used the following example to illustrate this Palestinian predicament. When the British Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield met a Palestinian delegation visiting London in May 1930, and faced with their demand for a parliament elected by the people in proportion to their numbers, irrespective of race or creed, he responded as follows: Of course, this parliament as you call it that you ask for, would have to have as its duty the carrying out of a Mandate the Mandatory power, that is the British government, could not create any council except within the terms of the Mandate and for the purpose of carrying out the Mandate. That is the limit of our power would you mind considering our difficulty that we cannot create a Parliament which would not be responsible and feel itself responsible for carrying out the Mandate. 21

19 20 21

Friesel;1987:p203 Friesel;1987:p204

Rashid Khalidi; The Iron Cage: The Story of Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, Boston,2006:p34

6 The French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand commented that the position of England seems to be the height of illogic.22 In the wake of the Jaffa riots in May 1921, an Arab delegation proceeded to London. Even before the delegation arrived, Shuckburgh had spelled out, in a memorandum dated August 1921, that the Arabs "must accept as the basis of all discussion" that it was the "fixed intention" of the British government to fulfil its pledges regarding the Balfour Declaration. In a memorandum dated 7 November 1921, Shuckburgh asserted that since the Arabs failed to realize that abandonment of the Balfour Declaration was "out of the question," any discussion with them in London was "a mere waste of time." 23 Mr. Churchill had told them bluntly that the British Government was going to carry out the Balfour Declaration and that they had better go and see Dr. Weizmann 24 Sir Ronald Storrs, military governor of Jerusalem in 1917 and civil governor of Jerusalem and Judea in 1926, observed that the Palestinian Arabs, in making pleas for political justice, had about as much chance as had the Dervishes before Kitcheners machine guns at Omdurman. 25 The principle of majority rule was finally conceded in the White Paper of 1939, which envisaged an independent Palestine after ten years but the substance of any such concession to the Palestinians were made totally depended on the consent of a Jewish minority.

In order to implement its policy of a Jewish national home in Palestine against the opposition of the majority of the population, the British facilitated Jews to build their semi government full-fledged representative institutions with virtually total internal autonomy.26 Palestinians were not allowed to build their own institutions. They had no international sanction for their identity, no accepted and agreed context within which their putative nationhood and independence could express itself, and their representatives had no access whatsoever to any of the levers of state power.27 The British consistently denied the representative recognition to Palestinian delegates, unless they accepted the policy of the Jewish national home as a precondition. When Herbert Samuel met with the Arab Executive elected by the Congress, and stressed that they must accept the Jewish national home policy embodied in the Mandate as a condition of recognition by the government,
22

Ibid:p34 Huneidi;1998:p27 Friesel;1987:p199 Mathew;2011:p27 Khalidi;2006:p37 Ibid:p46

23 24
25 26 27

7 they reminded him that he had accepted to meet with them in spite of their protests against this policy. Samuel stated: Yes, but I met with you in a private capacity only.28 Rashid Khalidi concluded that Palestinian notables could never get out of the iron cage fashioned by their British masters. 29 Moody concurred, at present I think the Jews have a balance of advantage because the Balfour Declaration is a definite promise which we have made ... This promise has our official backing and we have tried and are trying our best to carry it out. 30

The period of the British Mandate up to the Arab revolt 1936-39 could be depicted as the recurring cycles that characterized the preceding events. Diplomacy and violence alternated in strikingly certain simple patterns. The Palestinian Arabs would use political means to obtain what they considered to be their legitimate claims threatened by the Zionists. These efforts would fail and rioting would result. Commissions of inquiry would produce reports sympathetic to the Arabs. The Zionists would use their superior political influence in Britain to annul the influence of these reports and to reestablish a situation in Palestine favorable to them. And so the pattern went on. 31 All the commission reports, the Mandate government produced, confirms that Arab position was clear to the British but they still persisted in their efforts to get Arabs to cooperate in implementing Balfour Declaration. The Jerusalem riots of 1920 broke out during the Nebi Musa pilgrimage protesting the policy of Balfour Declaration. The Court of Inquiry established by the British military authorities concluded among other causes: Inability to reconcile the Allies declared policy of self-determination with the Balfour Declaration, giving rise to a sense of betrayal and intense anxiety for their future. Fear of Jewish competition and domination, justified by experience and the apparent control exercised by the Zionists over the administration. The Shaw Commission of Inquiry investigating the 1928-1929 Riots over the Western Wall concluded that Arab grievances concerned Jewish immigration, Jewish land purchase and Palestines Constitutional provisions, which gave preference to the Zionists.
28

Ibid:p42 Ibid:p47 Friesel;1987:p205 Abboushi;1977:p23

29 30 31

8 It also noted that in less than ten years three serious attacks were made on Jews by Arabs - Jerusalem in 1920, Jaffa in 1921, and Jerusalem, Hebron and Safed in 1929. Yet for eighty years before that there had been no recorded instance of any similar incident. It must be British policies which changed all that. 32 The Hope-Simpson Report One of the recommendations of the Shaw Commission was that a scientific study should examine land cultivation and settlement possibilities in Palestine. Consequently, Sir John Hope-Simpson conducted such a study in which he concluded that there was no room for a single additional Jewish settler if the standard of life of the Arab villager was to remain at existing levels. White Paper 1930 The British Government issued its White Paper in 1930 which included most of Hope-Simpsons recommendation, provoking a storm of protest from Dr Weizmann calling the White Paper inconsistent with the terms of the Mandate and marked a reversal of policy. As a result of this pressure, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, published a letter reaffirming Britains intention to stand by the Mandate, to uphold the policy of the Jewish national home by further land settlement and immigration. Palestine Arabs referred it as Black Letter regarding it as plain proof of the power which world Jewry could exercise in London. On 25 November 1935, the leaders of five Arab political parties presented a memorandum to the British High Commissioner demanding: The establishment of democratic government; The prohibition of the transfer of Arab land to the Jews; and The immediate cessation of Jewish immigration

Upon receiving this memorandum, the High Commissioner proposed a Legislative Council with a safeguard that the validity of the Mandate was not to be questioned. Although the proposals were criticized in the Arab press, the Arab political parties did not reject them. However, the Jewish leaders and both Houses of Parliament in Britain rejected them.33

The Great Arab Revolt of 1936 1939

32 33

Kattan;2009:p88 Kattan;2009:p93

9 The massive demographic shift in the size of Palestines Jewish population caused by the sharp increase in immigration in the 1930s led the Palestinian leaders to call for a general strike in April 1936, followed by six weeks of rioting in Jaffa, Haifa and Nablus. The Royal Commission of Inquiry appointed by the British Government concluded that the underlying causes of the disturbances were the desire of the Arabs for national independence and their fear of the establishment of the Jewish national home. The Commission recommended that Britain terminate its mandate over Palestine and partition it between an Arab and a Jewish state with the exception of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee which would remain under British Control. In September 1937, violence intensified. Arab irregulars murdered the Acting District Commissioner of the Galilee District, and his police escort. In response, the British mandatory authorities outlawed the Arab Higher Committee and deported six leading Arab politicians to the Seychelles. Haj Amin al-Husseini escaped to Lebanon. The Second World War and subsequent events irrevocably nullified the impact of the 1939 White Paper, the major Palestinian Arab achievement of the Mandate period, further changing the ground rules in favor of Zionists. Shuckburgh explained the situation which was a result of the War, an evil result and furnished an explanation but not a justification for prolonging it 34. The British Mandate decided to relinquish its mandatory responsibilities when it could prolong it no more. Sir Henry Gurney, the government's last chief secretary, deplored the failure despite the vast accumulation of facts and figures to discover an answer for the Palestine problem. "If all the books of statistics prepared for the nineteen commissions that have had a shot at the problem were placed on top of one another they would reach as high as the King David Hotel. What a pity, thought Gurney that no one had yet discovered what all this material proved.35

The British officials claim, in explanation of their failure, that they stand mid-way between two mutually irreconcilable and uncompromising extreme nationalist movements disregards the fact that it was British who created this Kafkaesque situation at the first place. As Schneer observes, it was unpredictable and characterized by contradictions, deceptions, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking, the lead-up to the Balfour
34 35

Friesel;1987:p201

Martin Bunton; Mandate Daze: Stories of British Rule in Palestine,1917-48, International Journal of Middle East Studies,Vol.35,No.3, (Aug.,2003),pp.485-492:p491

10 Declaration sowed dragons teeth. It produced a murderous harvest, and we go on harvesting even today.36

36

Schneer;2011:p370