Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years...xii Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years Palestine, 1945–1948 (London, 2000) and Ireland and the Palestine Question,

Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years

Edited by

Rory Miller

Britain, Palestine and emPire: the mandate Years

This page has been left blank intentionally

Britain, Palestine and empire: the mandate Years

edited byrorY miller

King’s College London, UK

V

© editor and contributors 2010

all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

rory miller has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataBritain, Palestine and empire : the mandate years. 1. mandates – Palestine. 2. Palestine – Politics and government – 1917–1948. 3. Palestine – history – 1917–1948. i. miller, rory, 1971– 956.9’404–dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Datamiller, rory, 1971– Britain, Palestine, and empire : the mandate years / rory miller. p. cm. includes index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6808-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Palestine—History—1917–1948. 2. Mandates—Palestine—History—20th century. 3. Palestine—Politics and government—1917–1948. 4. Palestine—Economic conditions—1917–1948. 5. Politics and culture—Palestine—History—20th century. 6. Great Britain—Foreign relations—Palestine. 7. Palestine—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 8. Imperialism—History—20th century. i. title. ds126.m54 2010 956.94’04—dc222010021508

ISBN 9780754668084 (hbk)ISBN 9781409424598 (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgements viiAbbreviations ixAbout the Contributors xi

introduction: Britain, Palestine and empire: the mandate Years 1Rory Miller

1 Flawed Foundations: the Balfour declaration and the Palestine mandate 15

James Renton

2 the impact of league oversight on British Policy in Palestine 39 Susan Pedersen

3 ‘our Jerusalem’: Bertha spafford Vester and Christianity in Palestine during the British mandate 67

Heleen Murre-van den Berg

4 Views of Palestine in British art in Wartime and Peacetime, 1914–1948 85

Antoine Capet

5 no holy statistics for the holy land: the Fallacy of Growth in the Palestinian rural economy, 1920s–1930s 101

Amos Nadan

6 the Peel Commission and Partition, 1936–1938 119 Penny Sinanoglou

7 lawlessness was the law: British armed Forces, the legal system and the repression of the arab revolt in Palestine, 1936–1939 141

Matthew Hughes

8 ‘An Oriental Ireland’: Thinking about Palestine in Terms of the Irish Question during the mandatory era 157

Rory Miller

9 Palestine, 1945–1948: a View from the High Commissioner’s Office 177 Motti Golani

Index 189

Acknowledgements

this volume was born out of a two-day public conference at King’s College London, in May 2008, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the British withdrawal from the Palestine mandate. the conference, which was attended by her royal highness, the Princess royal, who is both patron of the British empire and Commonwealth museum and Chancellor of the University of london, brought together senior scholars and younger historians, and a number of them appear in these pages.

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the conference and the book. The conference was convened at the instigation of the British Empire and Commonwealth museum and in partnership with King’s College london, and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Financial support was kindly provided by the MBI Al Jaber Foundation. The organization of the conference was undertaken by Dr Gareth Griffiths, Director of the Museum, Dr Sarah Stockwell, Professor robert holland, and Professor andrew Porter, with the administrative assistance of Marylyn Whaymand. I would also like to thank Dr Sarah Stockwell for all the help and encouragement she gave me in the preparation of this volume and Dr Gareth Griffiths and the staff at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum for providing the cover picture for this volume.

rory miller, london, June 2009

abbreviations

Bna British national archivesCAB Cabinet (papers)Cid Criminal investigation departmentCiGs Chief of the imperial General staffCms Church missionary society CO Colonial OfficeCP Cunningham PapersCZa Central Zionist archivesdFa department of Foreign affairsdJma dublin Jewish museum archive FO Foreign OfficeFrUs Foreign relations of the United states ira irish republican armyisa israel state archivesiWm imperial War museumiWmd imperial War museum department of documentsiWmsa imperial War museum sound archivelPCW the letters and Papers of Chaim WeizmannmeCa middle east Centre archives. mP member of ParliamentmPBlo modern Papers, Bodleian library, oxfordnai national archives, irelandnam national army museum, london nara ii national archives and records administration ii, College Park MD, USAnas national archives of scotlandnnP net national ProductOIOC Oriental and India Office CollectionPmC Permanent mandates CommissionPoW Prisoner of WarPP Parliamentary Papers PREM Prime Minister’s OfficetFP total Factor Productivity Growthtna the national archives, KewWaaC War artists’ advisory CommitteeWO War Office

about the Contributors

Antoine Capet, Frhists, teaches British studies at the University of rouen (France). After submitting his Doctorat d’État on The British Governing Classes and Social Reform (1931–1951), he continued to concentrate his research on Britain in the second World War, with an increasing interest in the pictorial representation of the war: the home Front (What do WW II British Official Artists Teach Us?, 2005), but also the liberation of the camps (The Liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Camp as seen by some British Official War Artists in 1945, 2006). H-Museum, Historians of British Art and La Tribune de l’Art have published many of his reviews of recent exhibitions of British art in Glasgow, london, manchester and Paris. he is in charge of the ‘Britain since 1914’ section of the royal historical society Bibliography and sits on the editorial Board of Twentieth Century British History.

Motti Golani is a historian of the British mandate and the state of israel at the University of haifa, israel. he is a former senior member at st. antony’s College, oxford. Professor Golani is the author of ‘There Will Be A War Next Summer…’, Israel on the road to Sinai Campaign (1997); Israel in Search of a War, Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956 (1998); and Wars Don’t Just Happen, Israeli Memory, Power and Free Will (2002). He has just completed two books: The End of the British Mandate in Palestine, 1948, to be published in st antony’s College series by Palgrave macmillan and The Last Commissioner of Judea: Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham in Palestine, 1945–1948, to be published by the Weizmann institute of tel aviv University.

Matthew Hughes is reader in history and Politics at Brunel University and from 2008 to 2010 holds the Major-General Matthew C. Horner Chair in Military theory at the Us marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia, funded by the marine Corps University Foundation through the gift of mr and mrs thomas a. Saunders. His previous publications include Matthew Hughes (ed.), Allenby in Palestine: the Middle East Correspondence of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, June 1917–October 1919 (London, Army Records Society, 2004) and Matthew hughes, ‘Collusion across the litani? lebanon and the 1948 War’, in eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge, 2007).

Rory Miller is Professor of middle east and mediterranean studies at King’s College london, where he teaches courses on Us and european involvement in the middle east and on the history of Zionism and anti-Zionism. he is the author of two books: Divided Against Zion: Opposition in Britain to a Jewish State in

Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Yearsxii

Palestine, 1945–1948 (London, 2000) and Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1948–2004 (London, 2005). His next book Inglorious Disarray: Europe, Israel and the Palestinians will be published in 2011. His edited books include Ireland and the Middle East: Trade, Society and Peace (Dublin, 2007) and Israel at Sixty: Rethinking the birth of the Jewish State (2009). He has written widely in the international media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and Commentary magazine.

Heleen Murre-van den Berg has been teaching at leiden University (Faculty of Religious Studies) in the field of World Christianity since 1995. Since June 2008 she has been Full Professor ‘for the history of modern World Christianity, in particular in the middle east’. she has published widely on the history of the assyrian Church of the east in the pre-modern and modern period (especially in Iraq), as well as on the history of Protestant missions in the Middle East. Recent publications include the conference volume, New Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries [Studies in Christian Missions 32] (Leiden, 2006), and ‘The Syriac Churches’, in Ken Parry, The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity (malden/oxford/Victoria, 2007).

Amos Nadan, PhD (London School of Economics, 2002), is a Senior Research Fellow at the moshe dayan Center for middle eastern and african studies, tel Aviv University. His field of specialization is economic history and political economy of the middle east. dr nadan is the author of The Palestinian Peasant Economy under the Mandate: A Story of Colonial Bungling (Cambridge, Mass., 2006) and co-editor of Islam in Africa and the Middle East: Studies on Conversion and Renewal (Farnham, 2006), and has published more than a dozen scholarly articles.

Susan Pedersen is Professor of history and James P. shenton Professor of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University. She has written on subjects ranging from the evolution of welfare states, to the impact of women’s movements on politics, to the nature of British imperial rule in Kenya and hong Kong. her most recent book, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (New Haven, 2004), recovers the life and work of Eleanor Rathbone, the feminist, social reformer and Member of Parliament who became one of the fiercest critics of appeasement and most effective advocates for refugees from fascism and nazism in the 1930s and 1940s. Pedersen taught for many years and served as dean of Undergraduate Education at Harvard University before joining the Columbia faculty in 2003. She is currently writing a book about the role played by the League of Nations in the twentieth-century transition from a global order based on formal empires to one based on formally sovereign nation-states.

About the Contributors xiii

James Renton is senior lecturer in history at edge hill University and an honorary research associate in the department of hebrew and Jewish studies, University College London (UCL). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he obtained his Phd at UCl in 2003, and has held post-doctoral fellowships from the Cecil and irene roth memorial trust and the hanadiv Charitable Foundation, and a grant from the British academy. he is the author of The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke, 2007).

Penny Sinanoglou is a lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton University. she received her Ph.d. in history from harvard University, and was a lecturer in harvard’s Program in history and literature.

introduction

Britain, Palestine and empire: the mandate Years

rory miller

History, it has been said, is what one age finds interesting in another. The contributors to this volume, leading scholars working in the United Kingdom, the United states, France, israel and the netherlands, all came together in may 2008 at a London conference convened to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s withdrawal from its Palestine mandate. Both at that meeting, and again in this volume, all the contributors have focused on what they find most interesting about the three decades of British rule in Palestine between 1917 and 1948. in doing so they have all greatly enhanced our understanding of the economic, political, cultural and religious history of Palestine, as well as its place in the international arena during these three turbulent decades.

the collection begins with James renton’s challenging re-assessment of the Balfour declaration of november 1917. named after lord Balfour, Britain’s Foreign secretary, it was issued in the form of a letter to lord rothschild, the leading figure in Anglo-Jewry. The Balfour Declaration called for the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ and pledged that Great Britain would ‘use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.1

renton argues that the widely-held assumption that the Balfour declaration was a profession of genuine support for the aims of political Zionism is incorrect. many Jews at the time believed that the British Government intended that it would lead to the establishment of a Jewish state. this view was echoed in the public pronouncements of certain British politicians of the time, and in the assessment of some historians. However, Renton takes issue with this in his chapter, going so far as to argue that this was never the case. the Balfour declaration, he contends, was not designed to be the basis for British rule in Palestine; it was not a blueprint, or even a sketch, of principles for governance. Instead, it was intended principally as a piece of wartime propaganda, the aims of which had little to do with the holy land and its future.

as such, renton argues that although the mandate went beyond the Balfour Declaration in the firm obligations that it placed upon Britain regarding Zionism,

1 Quoted in david Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase (Oxford, 1987), pp. 291–2.

Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years2

the terms of the declaration were at its heart and as a document for ruling Palestine it was simply not fit for purpose.

no doubt renton’s most controversial argument is that arthur Balfour was influenced in his attitude to Zionism first and foremost by his belief in its propaganda value to British interests and was, as such, uncommitted to a Jewish state in Palestine until the early 1920s. this is challenged by many authors, including some in this same volume, who have long noted Balfour’s commitment to the merits of Jewish nationalism – Zionism – from as far back as 1918; while others still have pointed to his long memorandum of august 1919 on Britain’s future role in the middle east, which showed a total commitment to a Jewish state.

the territory of Palestine, to which Balfour’s declaration referred, was a geographic area that includes both present-day israel and Jordan. it had been part of the vast possessions of the ottoman empire since 1516. From this time until the end of the First World War, Palestine did not exist as a unified geopolitical entity. it was divided between the ottoman province of Beirut in the north and the district of Jerusalem in the south. The Muslim inhabitants of Palestine, the vast majority of the population, were subjects of the Ottoman sultan-caliph, the religious and temporal head of the islamic world, and local governors were appointed by the ottoman court in Constantinople.

there had been a dwindling Jewish presence in Palestine since biblical times when this area comprised a Jewish state. in august 1897, the First Zionist Congress was held in the swiss town of Basle, under the chairmanship of theodor herzl, a renowned Viennese journalist. This meeting defined the aim of Zionism as ‘the creation of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine to be secured by public law’. By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Palestine’s Jewish community (commonly known as the Yishuv), numbered 75,000–95,000, almost twice its size at the turn of the century and about ten percent of the total population.

Following the ottoman decision to enter the First World War on the side of Germany in November 1914, the Zionist movement looked to Great Britain, the leading anti-Ottoman power in the Middle East, for political support in its objective of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.2

In November 1917, the Zionists finally achieved their goal when the British government issued the Balfour declaration. the following month Britain became the de facto ruler of Palestine when the British army under the command of General sir edmund allenby captured the holy city of Jerusalem from the ottomans. allenby’s triumphant march through the old City of Jerusalem underlined the paramount position of Britain in the middle east and the wider mediterranean at the end of the war. Before 1914 only egypt and Cyprus were under direct British control. By 1918, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Transjordan had been added to the list, as well as a client state in the Hijaz.

2 isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations. 1914–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2nd edn 1992), pp. 11–13.

Introduction: Britain, Palestine and Empire 3

in april 1920, the British position in Palestine was greatly consolidated when it was appointed the mandatory power in the country by the league of nations. the mandate was formalized, in July 1922, when the league of nations Council meeting in London ratified the text for this former Ottoman possession and, in september 1923, the mandate was brought into effect.

much to the delight of the many pro-Zionist members of the British political elite at this time, the key clauses of the Balfour Declaration were directly incorporated into the mandate. however, even in the 1920s, a period when one could be forgiven for assuming that the Zionists had free reign in Britain, there was a significant group of British Arabists opposed to the Mandate and its terms, who did their best to promote the arab cause both inside and outside parliament. in 1922, for example, opponents of Zionism in the house of lords succeeded in passing a motion (by 60 votes to 29) against the Palestine Mandate.3 While in 1923, 111 Conservative MPs (40 percent of Conservative backbenchers) signed a pro-arab ‘memorial’ calling on the government to ‘reconsider the Palestine question in the light of the arab demands’.4 this should be compared with the 37 Conservatives (10 percent of the party’s backbenchers) who joined an all-party parliamentary committee founded in the wake of the 1923 elections in support of the Balfour declaration.

in Palestine, and across the wider arab world, neither the Balfour declaration nor the substitution of British for Turkish rule generated any immediate antagonism. It was a full year after Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild was made public that the first manifestation of local opposition emerged. This took the form of a petition by a group of arab dignitaries and nationalists demanding Palestine’s incorporation into syria and proclaiming their loyalty to the Arab kingdom established in Damascus in the wake of the First World War.5 However, in 1921 the first Palestinian Arab delegation travelled to london to lobby against Zionism and continued Jewish immigration into Palestine.6 Similar delegations would make regular visits to the capital city of the mandatory power from this time onwards in order to present the arab case, most notably in 1922, 1930 and 1936.

international diplomacy aside, the primary instrument available to the arabs of Palestine for opposing the Zionist project was violence. In April 1920, the month

3 david Cesarani, ‘anti-Zionist Politics and Political anti-semitism in Britain, 1920–1924’, Patterns of Prejudice, 23/1 (1989): 40.

4 harry defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews, 1900–1950 (london, Portland Or., 2001), p. 102.

5 For early protests over the Balfour declaration, see Wathaiq al-Muqawama al-Filastiniyya al-Arabiyya did al-Ihtilal al-Baritani wa-l-Sihyuniyya (Beirut, 1968), pp. 1–13.

6 izzat tannous, The Palestinians: A Detailed, Documented Eye-Witness History of Palestine under the Mandate (New York, 1988), p. 241. See also the Palestine Arab delegation’s The Holy Land: The Moslem-Christian Case Against Zionist Aggression (London, 1921) and Doreen Ingrams, Palestine Papers, 1917–1922, Seeds of Conflict (London, 1972), pp. 137–51.


that Britain was appointed the mandatory power for Palestine, the first organized violence by arab nationalists against the Yishuv occurred with the outbreak of a three-day attack on Jerusalem’s ancient and largely non-Zionist Jewish community. Further arab unrest followed in 1921–22.

in response, the British government issued a White Paper as a means of addressing both Arab and Jewish criticism of its nascent role. This statement (known as the Churchill White Paper after the colonial secretary of the time) restricted Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews, two key areas where the Yishuv looked to consolidate and expand its position. it also gave authority to the march 1921 decision by the British government to exclude the territory of Transjordan from the prospective Jewish National Home (though not from the Palestine Mandate), making Emir Abdullah ibn hussein of the hashemite family, the effective ruler of this territory.

Apart from explaining the division of the Palestine Mandate, the 1922 (Churchill) White Paper set out the principle of economic absorptive capacity. this allowed Jewish immigration into Palestine to be decided on the basis of economic rather than political criteria, as the key consideration was the number of extra immigrants that it was believed that the economy of Palestine could adequately support at any given time.7 it also gave assurances that the terms of the Balfour declaration, which had been re-affirmed at San Remo and in the Treaty of Sèvres were ‘not susceptible of change’ and restated British support for the ‘development of the Jewish national home, as defined in the preamble, and of self-governing institutions’.

this was vague enough to ensure a number of years of tranquillity. the calm ended in 1929, when arab violence targeted the ancient Jewish community of hebron. as in the case of the earlier unrest, it was followed by a White Paper, the Passfield White Paper of October 1930. Its attempt to address what were increasingly coming to be viewed by British officials in the Palestine administration and Whitehall as legitimate arab grievances received much criticism from those British statesmen who had been involved in framing the Balfour declaration, the mandate and the 1922 White Paper. it was also harshly condemned by the Zionist movement, which took particular offence at the recommendation that the principle of economic absorptive capacity for deciding Jewish immigration be abandoned.

In the face of significant pressure, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald provided Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann with a letter, which was read to parliament in February 1931, restating the British commitment to the Jewish national home as set out in the mandate.8

Commitments like this and the underlying stability and order provided by the mandate allowed the Yishuv to develop extensive educational and welfare services

7 Cmd. 1700, Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organisation. And a Statement of British Policy on Palestine (london: hmso, June 1922).

8 see ramsay macdonald to Chaim Weizmann, 13 Feb. 1931. a copy of this letter can be found in appendix 3 in norman rose’s Lewis Namier and Zionism (Oxford, 1980), pp. 171–6.


and to acquire large parcels of land from arab landowners, absentee landlords and peasants. Furthermore, it allowed the Yishuv to develop rapidly the construction, industrial and agricultural sectors in a period of rising Jewish immigration.9

in her chapter, susan Pedersen examines how the attitude of the league of nations, especially those members of the Palestine mandates Commission (PMC), influenced British policy in Palestine towards both the Yishuv and the Arab community. The author, drawing on her extensive knowledge of the wider mandates system, provides an illuminating study of the Palestine mandate. as she notes, though the league’s oversight apparatus features only as a secondary subject of interest in most historical studies of mandatory Palestine, in no case, except possibly iraq, did this system have a greater impact. Using a wide array of archival sources, Pedersen charts the evolution of official British and ‘Genevan’ thinking about the appropriate policy to be pursued in Palestine. She shows how, as this occurred, British and league attitudes towards the best approach to the Palestine mandate diverged and how, as this occurred, tensions inherent in the oversight system came increasingly to the fore.

Pedersen’s chapter is followed by heleen murre-van den Berg’s examination of Bertha spafford Vester. drawing primarily on Vester’s own writings we are introduced to the life of the central figure in the famed Christian mission, the american Colony in Jerusalem, during the mandatory period.

no less importantly, her considered and affectionate study of Vester has the secondary benefit of providing us with a fascinating insight into Christian society in Jerusalem and the relationship between Christians and the larger Jewish and muslim populations with whom they have co-existed, with varying levels of success, under ottoman, British and israeli rule.

if heleen murre-van den Berg succeeds in shining a much-needed light on the oft-neglected, and often controversial, issue of the place of Christians in the holy land, then antoine Capet provides an equally fascinating insight into how British artists captured Palestine on canvas from the First World War until the end of the mandate. interesting as this is, the real value of Capet’s chapter is his success in clearly showing how the shifting focus in style and subject-matter by artists and their patrons (whether Zionist or British) mirrored the shifting political realities on the ground in Palestine, as well as the fluctuating political and cultural interest in the holy land across British society over the three decades covered by this study.

Conventional wisdom in much of the existing scholarship is that the mandate provided for the economic development of Palestine primarily by allowing the Yishuv to expand and develop rapidly the economic and social sectors, thus bringing material benefits to all of Palestine’s population, whether Arabs, Jews or Christians. In his chapter, amos nadan challenges this view, at least in the context of the Palestinian rural economy during the 1920s and 1930s. nadan draws on his expertise as an economic historian to present a picture at odds with the standard view that the

9 according to the 1922 census, the total estimated population of Palestine was 752,048, of which muslims numbered 589,177 and Jews numbered 83,790.


Mandate had a ‘general beneficient effect’ on Arab rural society, as the Royal Commission on Palestine (the Peel Commission) termed it.10

The same report, published in July 1937, also acknowledged that

…though the Arabs have benefited by the development of the country owing to Jewish immigration, this has had no conciliatory effect. on the contrary, improvement in the economic situation in Palestine has meant the deterioration of the political situation…. With almost mathematical precision the betterment of the economic situation in Palestine meant the deterioration of the political situation.11

the reality of this ultimately led the Peel Commission to recommend that the mandate be abrogated and that Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and arab states with Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and a corridor leading to the mediterranean sea remaining in a modified British mandatory zone.12

Penny sinanoglou’s study of the Peel Commission draws on all the available archival sources to illuminate how the six Commissioners ultimately came to this decision. As she shows, the final report issued by the Commission may have been both comprehensive and elegant, but the process behind it was anything but smooth. there was certainly no unanimity over either the need to end the mandate or the suitability of replacing it with partition, a recommendation that ultimately won out due to the force of personality and argument of those Commissioners who favoured the idea.

on publication, the Peel Commission’s call for partition faced vehement opposition from across the arab world. the Zionist leadership only gave it grudging and qualified support, and then only after a very divisive debate within Zionist ranks. Even back in Westminster’s corridors of power there was no great appetite for the idea of partition. With the exception of Baffy dugdale, Walter Elliot and Leo Amery, most of the leading Gentile Zionists in Britain—Captain Victor Cazalet, Winston Churchill, Colonel Josiah Wedgewood and sir archibald Sinclair—rejected partition on the grounds that it represented a betrayal of the Balfour declaration and an appeasement of arab violence.13

The vast majority of senior British diplomats serving in the Arab world, as well as mandarins in Whitehall overseeing middle east policy, opposed partition on the grounds that British support for a Jewish state would further damage both anglo-arab relations and British imperial interests. this was particularly true of

10 Cmd. 5479, Palestine Royal Commission Report (London: HMSO; hereafter Peel Commission Report), p. 93 (vii).

11 Peel Commission Report, pp. 63, 271.12 Peel Commission Report, pp. 271–5.13 t.G. Fraser, ‘a Crisis of leadership: Weizmann and the Zionist reactions to the

Peel Commission’s Proposals, 1937–8’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988): 657–80, 665.


the Foreign Office, which increasingly dominated Palestine policy at the expense of the Colonial Office from the mid-1930s onwards.14 For some this hostility towards a Jewish state was driven by animus towards Zionism, and in some cases Jews, but for the majority of those British officials dealing with Palestine and the wider Middle East in these years, the primary influence on their attitudes was the perceived impact on British interests of a Jewish state in Palestine. as one mid-level British diplomat stationed in alexandria, egypt, put it, in 1938, in a letter back to the Foreign Office, ‘Please don’t think I am pro-Arab or anti-Jew. I think them each as loathsome as each other. there is only one people on earth that i am thoroughly “pro” and that’s British’.15

in the uncertainty of the postwar world this view was even more widely subscribed to. sir edward spears, minister plenipotentiary in the levant states between 1941 and 1944, spoke for most of the British diplomatic, missionary and business community with an interest in the region, when he wrote in the national press in 1945, that ‘peace and tranquillity in the middle east are essential to British interests … we cannot have them except through peace and friendship with the arab peoples’, adding that the ‘… friendship of the arab world is vital to the British empire’.16

In November 1938, the Peel Commission’s partition proposal was rejected as unworkable by the Palestine Partition Commission, headed by Sir John Woodhead and charged with re-evaluating the Peel recommendations. overshadowing the work and findings of both the Peel and Woodhead Commissions was the fact that, from mid-april 1936, the British had been faced with a Palestinian uprising, known as the Arab Revolt, which lasted until late 1938.

As Matthew Hughes shows in his thought-provoking contribution to this volume, the British response to the arab revolt was a prolonged imperial policing operation (which as hughes points out would be familiar to today’s audience as a counter-insurgency campaign) that involved, at its height in 1938, an immense force built around two full infantry divisions comprising some 25,000 servicemen. This large contingent engaged in an officially sanctioned policy of destruction, punishment, reprisal and brutality that fractured and impoverished the Palestinian population.

14 As Elie Kedourie has shown the Foreign Office figure most responsible for shaping Palestine policy in the late 1930s was the head of its eastern department, George rendel. He believed that Arab nationalist sentiment in Palestine marked the beginnings of an ‘all engulfing pan-Arab movement’, and as such Britain would have to adopt a ‘global’ Arab policy that was free from arab animosity towards Britain over its role in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. see elie Kedourie, ‘Great Britain, the other Powers, and the Middle East before and after World War I’, in Urial Dann (ed.), The Great Powers in the Middle East 1919–1939 (New York, London, 1988), pp. 3–11.

15 Bateman, alexandria, to sir lancelot oliphant, Fo, 30 aug. 1938, British national Archives (hereafter, BNA), Foreign Office (hereafter, FO) 371/45238.

16 see sir edward spears, ‘our duty to the arabs’, Sunday Express, 27 may 1945.


many of the security tactics used by the British during the arab revolt had been first applied in Ireland during the anti-British rebellion between 1919 and 1921. As in ireland, police units operated in the front line and there was a centralisation of the security apparatus, as well as an emphasis on intelligence gathering and the use of specialist units, which engaged in non-conventional counter-insurgency operations.

as i show in my chapter, the parallels between the irish and Palestine problems were not limited to the period of the arab revolt in the late 1930s. in fact, the irish analogy had been used by British government officials and senior military officers, as well as Zionists, Arabs and the Irish themselves, as far back as 1919, and continued to be used up until the end of the mandate in 1948. indeed, for a whole generation of British soldiers, policemen, politicians and colonial officials tasked with upholding the Palestine mandate in British interests, events in ireland were a defining professional experience. Thus, it is not surprising that the Irish revolt against British rule and the subsequent peace treaty and partition of the island were never far from the minds of these officials, from the first inter-communal troubles in Palestine in the early 1920s, through the key events of the Mandate—the Peel Commission’s call for partition, the arab revolt of the late 1930s and the Zionist insurrection a decade later.

The final stage of the Arab Revolt coincided with the acceleration of Nazi efforts to expand their influence across Europe, by way of the annexation of Austria and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. In this context, Britain’s primary concern in the middle east was to win over the arab world in its regional rivalry with nazi Germany and Fascist italy. in January 1939, with this goal in mind, Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, concluded that ‘active measures must be taken’ to improve anglo-arab relations.17 on 17 may 1939, the British government went further, by introducing the Palestine White Paper. this document provided for ‘the admission, as from the beginning of april [1939], of some 75,000 immigrants over the next five years … . After the period of five years no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it’.18

also imposing severe restrictions on the Jewish purchase of land, the White Paper envisaged an independent state in Palestine in which the Jews would comprise no more than one-third of the total population. the following July, macdonald announced that all Jewish emigration into Palestine would be suspended from october 1939 until march 1940. 19

Until the introduction of the White Paper, Jewish immigration into Palestine, as noted above, was based on the principle of economic absorptive capacity as set

17 See Colonial Office memorandum, ‘Suggestions for increased propaganda for Palestine to deal with German and Italian propaganda’, sent to Rushbrook Williams of the Ministry of Information, 20 Jan. 1939, BNA, Colonial Office (hereafter, CO) 733/387/20. see also owen tweedy’s memorandum, ‘Publicity: Propaganda in the middle east’, 29 nov. 1938, Bna, Co 733/387/2.

18 Palestine, Statement of Policy, Cmd. 6019 (London: HMSO, 1939).19 ibid.


out in the 1922 White Paper.20 this principle was problematic, and adherence to it depended on existing political circumstances (for example, during the arab revolt the Palestine administration took political, as well as economic, considerations into account when deciding levels of Jewish immigration). However, it was still primarily perceived as a non-political approach to a controversial issue and, as such, was viewed by Zionists as a relatively fair approach to the issue.

it should never be forgotten that, as Ben halpern has eloquently noted, the Jewish national home, whether as a ‘strict legal conception or a symbol rich in the associations of the Zionist myth’21 was always closely linked with the aim of solving the Jewish problem. the White Paper, as well as directly challenging Zionist political ambitions, ignored this completely and thus led to a severe breakdown in relations between the British, the Zionists and much of world Jewry, who viewed this policy as a subversion of the Jewish national revival in Palestine and the abandonment of european Jewry to their nazi persecutor.

Chief rabbi herzog of Palestine wrote to The Times, that the White Paper was ‘a sin against the spirit of God and the soul of Man’; Chaim Weizmann, called it a ‘liquidation of the Jewish national home’; while the leading American Zionist leader, rabbi stephen s. Wise, denounced it as a policy that ‘repudiates the letter and the spirit of the mandate’.22

the Zionist movement’s view of the White Paper as a total renunciation by Britain of its mandatory obligation to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home did not alter the fact that its wartime priority was to put its by now insurmountable differences with the British government aside, and join forces in order to contribute to the defeat of the nazis. in a letter to neville Chamberlain, on 29 august 1939, three days before the German invasion of Poland, Weizmann reaffirmed that Jews worldwide ‘stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies’ and offered full Jewish cooperation with the war effort.23

However, one major consequence of the Anglo-Zionist split over the White Paper, which would have major implications after the war, was a shift in Zionist efforts from london to the United states where the american Jewish community, appalled by both the White Paper and the suffering of co-religionists in europe, was increasingly united behind the Zionist cause.

this unprecedented Zionist mobilization in the United states, and the support it was gaining at a political level, was not lost on British officials who viewed

20 ibid.21 Ben halpern, The Idea of a Jewish State (Cambridge, Mass, 2nd edn, 1969) p. 288.22 The Times, 16 May 1939; Chaim Weizmann to Mr Justice Louis D. Brandeis,

8 may 1939, Foreign relations of the United states (hereafter, FRUS), 1939, vol. IV, The Far East, Near East and Africa, p. 749; Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to the Secretary of State, 22 may 1939, ibid., p. 761.

23 Chaim Weizmann to neville Chamberlain, aug. 29, 1939, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (hereafter, LPCW), Series A, vol. 19, Jan. 1939–Jun. 1940 (New Brunswick and Jerusalem, 1977), p. 145.


harmonious anglo-american relations, or at the very least, ‘benevolent neutrality’ in the time before the United states entered the war,24 as the key to victory over the axis Powers. By mid-1941, the British embassy in Washington was continually appealing to the state department to control the anti-White Paper efforts of Zionist and non-Zionist bodies, as they would be seized on by axis forces to ‘further stir up difficulties with the British in Iraq and other Arab countries’.25

Despite gaining a sympathetic hearing from State Department officials who shared the British belief in the strategic importance of the arab world and who saw the White Paper as a ‘necessity of Great Britain in the present uncertain state … of cementing its position in the near east’,26 the roosevelt administration was unwilling to take stringent action against domestic opposition to Britain’s White Paper policy. as the acting secretary of state, sumner Welles, explained in 1941, the United states and Britain faced different realities over Palestine:

the political strength of Zionists in england is offset to a greater or less extent … by considerations of empire involving the arabs and the moslems generally. in the United states there is no such offset … . this country, consequently, can hardly be expected to adopt an attitude or policy which is more pro-arab than the British.27

In May 1942, a meeting of Zionists at the Biltmore Hotel, New York, attended by the leader of the Yishuv, David Ben-Gurion, officially called for the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. the Biltmore decision was viewed by Whitehall as part of a long-planned Zionist strategy of creating ‘considerable pressure and publicity in America’ as a means of influencing the Roosevelt administration to force concessions over the White Paper from Britain. such behaviour was deemed unacceptable, or as the British embassy in Washington put it, ‘a vile sport, unworthy of a self-respecting movement’.28

24 nicholas J. Cull, ‘the munich Crisis and British Propaganda Policy in the United States’, in Igor Lukes and Erik Goldstein (eds), The Munich Crisis, 1938: Prelude to World War II (London, 1999), pp. 216–35.

25 see memorandum by murray, chief of the division of near eastern affairs, 10 april 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. iii, the British Commonwealth, the near east and africa, p. 596.

26 see memorandum by murray, chief of the division of near eastern affairs to the secretary of state, 15 may 1939, FRUS, 1939, vol. iV, the Far east, the near east and Africa, p. 756; memorandum by Murray to assistant Secretary of State Berle, under-secretary Welles and the secretary of state, 10 april 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. iii, the British Commonwealth, the near east and africa, p. 596.

27 Welles, acting Secretary of State to Kirk, minister in Egypt, 15 July 1941, FRUS, 1941, vol. iii, the British Commonwealth, the near east and africa, p. 582.

28 see memorandum on ‘developments in Palestine during recent months’, nd, 1942, BNA, FO 37/35034; memorandum ‘Dr Weizmann’s Policies’, British Embassy, Washington to eastern department, Fo, 9 July 1942, Bna, Fo 371/31379.


For the rest of the war relations between the Zionists, and world Jewry for that matter, and the British mandatory power deteriorated further, most notably when it became known, in April 1944, that despite European Jewry’s desperate need for refuge, 30,000 of the 75,000 visas available to Jewish immigrants under the White Paper had not been filled.

It was facts like this that led the 22nd Zionist Congress of December 1946, the first to convene since 1939, to categorically reject any compromise on Palestine, ‘which might postpone the establishment of a Jewish state, based upon full equality of rights for all inhabitants without distinction of religion or race, with every community exercising autonomy in religious, educational, social, and cultural affairs’.

in may 1939, the arabs of Palestine and the wider region, still hopeful of a complete victory on the Palestine issue, were not overly enthused by the White Paper and were wary of it, with the arab higher Committee stating at the time that the White Paper policy ‘does not satisfy arab demands’.29 however, in the more precarious days after 1945, there was a general arab acceptance that the document was the main impediment to Zionist national aspirations and, as such, had to be upheld. An early postwar pamphlet distributed by the London office of the Arab League clearly set out the Arab position. The White Paper had put ‘a final limit on immigration’ and the abrogation of that document would result in unlimited Jewish immigration, which in turn would result in the ‘conversion of the country into a Jewish national state’.30 Thus, ironically, like the Zionist movement, the arabs viewed all postwar British initiatives on Palestine in terms of how they affected the White Paper’s position on limiting Jewish immigration.31

The final contribution to this volume by Motti Golani provides an illuminating and touching portrait of how the last Palestine high Commissioner, General sir alan Cunningham, managed the winding down of the mandate and the British withdrawal from Palestine between november 1945 and may 1948.

in november 1941, Cunningham had been dismissed from his post as commander of the British 8th Army, which spearheaded the allied counter-attack against the axis forces in north africa, and which subsequently found fame and glory under the lead of Cunningham’s successor Bernard montgomery. as such, he arrived in Palestine with a personal point to prove about his worthiness in a position of command. as Golani convincingly shows throughout his study, this

29 see The Reply of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine to the White Paper (Jerusalem, 1939), p. 13.

30 Arab Office, Statement of the Present Arab Attitude Over the Palestine Question (London, 1945), p. 1.

31 See, for example, the editorial in the first issue of the Arab News Bulletin, 1, 28 Nov. 1945, p. 1 and the article by Arab League official Burhan Dajani, ‘National movements for Freedom in india and Palestine’, India Quarterly, III/1 (Jan.–March 1947): 135–43.


haunted Cunningham and influenced significantly his approach to his mandatory task in the most difficult of circumstances.

Cunningham arrived in Palestine at a time of unprecedented arab antagonism and Zionist insurgency that struck at the heart of British rule in Palestine (most notably with the bombing of the administration’s headquarters in the King david Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, which left 91 dead).

His term in office also began in the immediate wake of the unexpected Labour election victory back home. In November 1945, the new British foreign secretary, ernest Bevin, announced the establishment of the anglo-american Committee of inquiry into Palestine and the Jewish Question. made up of six members each from Britain and the United states, the committee’s terms of reference were to examine conditions in Palestine as they related to the issues of Jewish immigration and settlement and to examine the position of europe’s Jewish population that had survived the holocaust. Viewed as the crucial forum for deciding the fate of Palestine in the final mandatory era, its hearings were held in several locations (most notably, Washington, London and Jerusalem) from November 1945 until March 1946.32

Cunningham had to deal with the repercussions of the anglo-american Committee, as well as other plans to quell the growing anarchy in Palestine dictated by london, most of which were indifferent to either the arguments of the high Commissioner or the interests of the people of Palestine. in late July 1946, for example, within weeks of the publication of the Anglo-American Committee report, the labour government announced the morrison proposal, named after the lord President of the Council, herbert morrison. it called for the division of Palestine into four autonomous (but not independent) entities – a Jewish province (comprising some 17 percent of Palestine’s territory), an Arab province (40 percent of the country), and the British-controlled districts of Jerusalem and the Negev (53 percent of Palestine).

But neither this nor any other proposal could change the fact that, as Golani notes in his chapter, by the end of 1946, Britain had decided in principle on the evacuation of Palestine, as well as india, Burma, Greece and egypt. From this point on, it was only a matter of time, and that time came in 1947, when in the face of ever-increasing arab and Jewish hostility, Britain turned the Palestine problem over to the United Nations (UN). The British government gave assurances that its intention was to go to the Un ‘for their advice as to how the mandate can be administered. if the mandate cannot be administered in its present form we are asking how it can be amended’.

in reality, however, the British position was somewhat different. the labour government was open to Un advice on how to administer the mandate, but it had

32 On the Anglo-American Committee, see Amikam Nachmani, Great Power Discord in Palestine: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945–1946 (London, 1986) and Alan H. Podet’s, The Success and Failure of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1945–46: The Last Chance in Palestine (Lewiston & Queenston, 1986).


no intention of attempting to enforce any Un recommendations, even ones that it agreed with, on its own, without the aid of the Un, and preferably the United states. it also went without saying that if the Un gave Britain advice that it did not want to hear, it would not do anything to implement it.

On 29 November, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 (II) calling for the partition of Palestine into two independent states – one Jewish, the other Arab – linked in an economic union. The City of Jerusalem was to be placed under an international regime, with its residents given the right to citizenship in either the Jewish or the arab state. thirty-three Un members supported the resolution, 13 voted against, and 10, including Britain, abstained.

Britain also refused to do anything to help put this plan into effect, and was unwilling to cooperate with the UN Commission tasked with coordinating the move to partition, even refusing to allow it to enter Palestine until the final stage of its own withdrawal was complete.

From November 1947 until the final British withdrawal and abandonment of Palestine on 15 may 1948, high Commissioner Cunningham did his best to achieve some order and harmony in the face of the increasingly violent conflict between arabs and Jews on the ground, and the seething resentment of British officials in both Palestine and London over the turn of events.

despite instructions from london for him to leave Palestine well before the may withdrawal deadline, Cunningham insisted on remaining in his post until the final day of British rule. But despite his best efforts the end of the Mandate was mired in ‘shame and humiliation’33 as one long-serving diplomat put it, and the withdrawal from Palestine was, by all accounts, a low point in the annals of British imperial retreat. as david Vital, one of the most authoritative historians of the mandate era has summed up:

There was no ceremonial lowering and raising of flags in May 1948, no bands playing national anthems, no dignitaries exchanging salutes and pious messages of hope and amity, no be-medalled and tiaraed representatives of the British royal family present. Palestine, a political unit unknown before the British arrived, was simply evacuated and, upon evacuation, dissolved.34

For the arabs, the British abandonment of the mandate did little to reduce the sense of betrayal towards those who had issued the Balfour declaration, propped up the Yishuv under the terms of the mandate, harshly suppressed rebellion and overseen the Un’s decision to establish a Jewish state. the Jews, for their part, felt little more sympathy for the ex-mandatory power. on the last day of British rule, an Ha’aretz editorial summed up the collective Jewish view. ‘today is the end of the British mandate in Palestine, the mandate for which the Jewish people held

33 anthony Parsons, From Cold War to Hot Peace: UN Interventions 1947–1994 (London, 1995), p. 3.

34 david Vital, ‘From “state within a state” to state’, Israel Affairs, 5/4 (1999): 32–42.


out tremendous hopes – almost messianic hopes – a quarter of a century ago, but which over the years came to symbolize a great moral failure’.35

Undoubtedly, unlike in the case of the Arabs of Palestine, this disappointment was greatly compensated for by the fact that as the British departed, david Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the state of israel. this was soon followed by the invasion of the nascent Jewish state by the combined armies of egypt, iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Israel was victorious in the subsequent war, known as the War of independence by israel and al-Nakba (the catastrophe) by the Arabs. But that, as they say, is a different story, albeit one that even today has its roots in the three decades of British rule between 1917 and 1948.

35 Ha’aretz, 15 may 1948.

Chapter 1

Flawed Foundations: the Balfour declaration and

the Palestine mandate*

James renton

on 2 november 1917 a.J. Balfour, the British Foreign secretary, wrote to lord rothschild, the anglo-Jewish figurehead, to inform him of the Cabinet’s declaration of sympathy with Zionist aspirations. the British Government, Balfour stated, ‘view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object’. This statement was followed by the caveat, ‘it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities’.

the Balfour declaration has long been seen as a watershed in the history of Zionism and Palestine. it often has been assumed that the declaration was a profession of genuine support for the aims of political Zionism. many Jews at the time believed that the British Government intended that it would lead to the establishment of a Jewish state. this view was echoed in the public pronouncements of certain British politicians just after the War, and in the assessment of some historians.1 even though many have not gone so far, the presiding view over the years has been that the declaration was the beginning, and for some the high point, of an intimate alliance between Britain and Zionism, and was of tremendous significance.2

recently, however, the importance of the Balfour declaration has been called into question. it has been argued that Balfour’s letter did not legally commit the

* this chapter is based on a paper that was given at the near and middle east history Seminar at SOAS. I would like to thank the participants for their comments and questions. For their help, i am also most grateful to monica Gonzalez-Correa, anthony Grant, Keith neilson and Jacob norris.

1 isaiah Friedman, The Question of Palestine: British-Jewish-Arab Relations: 1914–1918 (New Brunswick, NJ, 2nd edn, 1992), pp. 311–32; Jon Kimche, The Unromantics: The Great Powers and the Balfour Declaration (London, 1968), p. 48.

2 Malcolm Yapp, ‘The Making of the Palestine Mandate’, Middle Eastern Lectures, 1 (1995), pp. 10–12. For an exception, see the nuanced assessment in david Vital, Zionism: The Crucial Phase (Oxford, 1987), pp. 293, 301, 367.


British Government to anything, and could have been revoked as a basis for policy in Palestine before the mandate came into force in september 1923.3 the real achievement for the Zionists, it has been suggested, was obtaining the pro-Zionist terms of the mandate, to which the British Government was obliged to adhere.4

not only was the mandate a legally binding document, but its commitments to Zionism were more far-reaching than those expressed in the declaration. the preamble stated that the mandatory was responsible for putting the declaration into effect. Going beyond the declaration, the text then went on to recognise the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, along with the ‘grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country’. the articles of the mandate specified that Britain had to secure—not facilitate as per the Declaration—the establishment of ‘the Jewish national home’ (Article 2); be advised by and cooperate with the Zionist organisation to that end (Article 4); and ‘facilitate’ Jewish immigration and ‘encourage’ settlement (Article 6).5 these articles gave the Zionist movement a legal framework that enabled it to build the foundations for statehood. The Mandatory was also responsible, however, for developing self-governing institutions for the whole population of Palestine, not just Jews, and for ‘safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine’ (Article 2).6

the mandate was undoubtedly a more important achievement for the Zionists than the Balfour declaration. nonetheless, the mandate did not surpass the Declaration;7 it built upon it. this is a crucial distinction. the concepts that were enunciated in the Declaration—the ‘national home’ and the protection of the civil and religious rights of the ‘non-Jewish communities’—lay at the very heart of the mandate for Palestine. the problem, however, was that neither the declaration nor the Mandate defined the ‘national home’. Similarly, the rights of the ‘non-Jewish’ population, how they might be affected by the creation of the ‘national home’, and how they were to be ‘safeguarded’, were not specified. Without any definitions, these loose terms did not provide clear guidelines as to how the country should be governed, or its essential purpose. This ambiguity was a fundamental deficiency of the text of the mandate, which was inherited from the Balfour declaration.

this underlying problem stemmed from the fact that the declaration was not designed to be the basis for British rule in Palestine; it was not a blueprint, or even a sketch, of principles for governance. Instead, the Balfour Declaration was intended principally as a piece of wartime propaganda, the aims of which had little to do with the holy land and its future. the reality that faced British policy-

3 sahar huneidi, A Broken Trust: Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians (London, 2001), ch. 3.

4 Yapp, ‘The Making of the Palestine Mandate’, pp. 9–27.5 The League of Nations. Mandate for Palestine, together with a Note by the

Secretary-General relating to its application to the Territory known as Trans-Jordan, under the provisions of Article 25, Cmd. 1785 (1923).

6 ibid.7 This has been argued by Yapp, ‘The Making of the Palestine Mandate’, p. 9.

Flawed Foundations: The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate 17

makers in Palestine was that their founding text—the Balfour Declaration—which they had to interpret, had no clear meaning in the first place.8 the declaration was, in short, not fit for the purpose with which it was eventually ascribed.

As the Zionist leader, Nahum Sokolow, was attempting to compose the first draft of the declaration in July 1917 he explained its purpose to a Zionist colleague. it was not, he wrote, an agreement, nor was it a ‘full programme’. rather, the goal for the Zionists was to obtain a ‘general approval’ of their aims that would be very short, but ‘as pregnant as possible’. It was important, Sokolow believed, that the Zionists did not ask for more than the Government would be willing to give. But once a ‘sympathetic declaration’ was in hand, he hoped that they would ‘gradually get more and more’.9 In contrast to Sokolow’s hopes for the future, however, the British War Cabinet only intended to give a very qualified and limited assurance of sympathy for Zionism, which, in the end, was even more circumscribed than the Zionist leader had imagined.

For the British, the principal aim of the Balfour declaration was to win the allegiance of world Jewry to the allied cause, especially in the United states and Russia. American financial and material support had been critical to the war effort since 1914. Following the entrance of the United States into the conflict in april 1917, the need to maximise its engagement with the War only grew in significance. With regard to Russia, Britain was faced with the threat of her falling out of the War completely. since the march revolution, Whitehall was increasingly concerned with the spread of pacifism and revolutionary socialism in the country. Significantly, key members of the British foreign policy-making elite—in the Foreign Office, the War Cabinet, and the Cabinet’s Secretariat— believed that Jews wielded tremendous influence in American society and politics, and amongst Russian revolutionary, pacifist circles. If the Jews could be persuaded that the entente was committed to securing their interests, then, it was thought, the British Government would win a powerful pro-war ally, not just in Russia and the United states, but wherever Jews were to be found. support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine was believed to be the best means of achieving this goal.10

the belief that Jews were powerful and predominantly Zionist was, however, completely erroneous. this picture of Jewry stemmed in part from longstanding antisemitic myths of Jewish power and unity.11 it also belonged to a much wider trend in Whitehall of viewing ethnic groups as anti-allied, powerful races focused on

8 For similar views, see John J. mctague, British Policy in Palestine, 1917–1922 (Lanham, NY, 1983), p. 240; Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration (Jerusalem and London, 1961), p. 552; Yapp, ‘The Making of the Palestine Mandate’, p. 9.

9 Nahum Sokolow to Harry Sacher, 10 July 1917, London Zionist Bureau Papers, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem (hereafter, CZA) Z4/120.

10 James renton The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914–1918 (Basingstoke, 2007), chs 3–4.

11 See Mark Levene, ‘The Balfour Declaration: A Case of Mistaken Identity’, English Historical Review, 107/422 (Jan. 1992): 54–77; Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, transl. by H. Watzmann (London, 2000), pp. 33–49.


the goal of national self-determination. the result of these perceptions was a series of nationalist propaganda policies during the War that were designed to win over supposed racial power, especially in the United states and europe.12 the Balfour declaration was a part of this bigger story, and was intended to be the start of a pro-war propaganda campaign across world Jewry. as such, a Jewish section in the department of information was promptly set up in december 1917, which established a far-reaching propaganda operation using press, pamphlets, books and film.13

The Government’s backing for Zionism was endorsed further for Jewish eyes with the arrival of the Jewish legion, the Zionist Commission, and the american Zionist medical Unit in Palestine in 1918, following British military victories in the south of Palestine and the capture of Jerusalem in december 1917.14 But despite this public rhetoric and performance the British Government had not formulated any clear policy for the future of Zionism in Palestine. after all, their main interest was not in the actual development of the movement in the holy land, but the ways in which it could be used to win the imagined global war-asset of Jewish power.

Certainly, there were those in the foreign policy elite who wished to use Government support for Zionism to help secure postwar British control of Palestine. They included Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the influential Middle East adviser Sir Mark Sykes, a member of the War Cabinet Secretariat. By April 1917, it was widely felt by policy-makers in Whitehall that Palestine had to be controlled exclusively by Britain after the War, due to its strategic significance as a bulwark to protect Egypt from the German threat.15 however, the inter-allied Agreement of May 1916 on the future of the Middle East, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, stipulated that Palestine was to come under an international administration. France was determined, according to British policy-makers, to hold Britain to the Agreement, and secure her influence in the Holy Land. In addition, by the summer of 1917 it appeared that the principles of non-annexation and national self-determination, championed by american President Woodrow Wilson and elements in the russian Provisional Government, were to wield tremendous influence at the postwar peace conference. The proposed solution to these problems was to present Britain as the protector of the Zionist movement, an outcome which the Zionist leadership in london was pushing for. so the argument ran amongst policy-makers, this idea dovetailed with the new zeitgeist and would thus help to justify British rule in the Holy Land.16

this motive for publicly supporting Zionism did not lead, however, to the formulation of a precisely worked out policy on the development of the movement

12 renton, Zionist Masquerade, chs 1–2.13 ibid., ch. 5.14 ibid., ch. 7.15 ‘minutes of the third meeting of the sub-Committee of the imperial War Cabinet

on territorial desiderata in the terms of Peace’, 19 apr. 1917, ‘report of Committee on Terms of Peace (Territorial Desiderata)’, 28 Apr. 1917, BNA, CAB 21/77.

16 renton, Zionist Masquerade, pp. 62–3.


in Palestine. Even in this instance, the primary concern of most policy-makers during the War was to use the idea of Zionism for propaganda purposes—to present Britain as the champion of Zionism to world Jewry and the international community. also, the question of Palestine’s future was far from being the dominant consideration behind either Sykes’ or Lloyd George’s interest in Zionism. Sykes became concerned with this use for Zionism more than a year after he was seized by his initial interest in the perceived power of the movement, and its significance for the allied cause, in early 1916. it was only after lloyd George told him in April 1917 that Palestine had to come under British auspices alone that Sykes began working to that end.17 With regard to lloyd George, he was, without doubt, adamant that Palestine had to be retained by Britain after the War.18 at the same time, however, he also considered that the general issue of propaganda was of tremendous significance for the war effort.19 The only keen advocate of Government support for Zionism whose primary concern was its benefit for British interests in Palestine was the young arch-imperialist, Leopold Amery, a colleague of Sykes in the secretariat.20

Significantly, the question of whether support for Zionism might be used to secure British interests in Palestine was not discussed by the War Cabinet or the Foreign Office. Balfour did not even consider that Britain should have exclusive control of Palestine, and preferred the idea of a shared protectorate with the United states, if not a solely american trusteeship.21

at the end of 1917, British policy on who should govern Palestine after the War was far from being set in stone, as we shall see. This lack of concrete planning reflected a wider trend in the Government, in which there was no clearly worked out, coherent policy for the future of the middle east as a whole. had there been a carefully considered and finalised policy on the future of Palestine it would have been an exceptional feat, out of step with the inter-departmental wrangling and confusion that marked Middle East policy during the War.22 in 1917, the only

17 Sir Mark Sykes to Herbert Samuel, 26 Feb. 1916, Herbert Samuel Papers, Israel State Archives (hereafter, ISA), copies, Parliamentary Archives, London SAM/H/1; Sykes to Arthur Nicolson, 18 Mar. 1916, Nicolson Papers, BNA, FO 800/381; ‘Notes of a conference held at 10 Downing Street’, No. 40, 3 Apr. 1917, Sykes Collection, Middle East Centre Archives, St Antony’s College, Oxford (hereafter, MECA); Sykes to Sir Maurice Hankey, 7 Apr. 1917, No. 42, Sykes Collection, MECA.

18 Bertie of thame, The Diary of Lord Bertie of Thame 1914–1918, vol. ii (london, 1924), p. 123.

19 Gary s. messenger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester, 1992), pp. 4, 33–4, 49.

20 leopold s. amery to sir edward Carson, 4 sept. 1917, quoted in John Barnes and David Nicholson (eds), The Leo Amery Diaries, Vol. I, 1896–1929 (London, 1980), pp. 170–71.

21 stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 605–6.22 John Fisher, Curzon and British Imperialism in the Middle East 1916–9 (london

and Portland, OR, 1999), passim.


firm principle adopted by the War Cabinet with regard to Zionism was to use the movement as a means of swaying Jewish influence behind the Allies, whilst committing itself to as little as possible in Palestine itself.23

During the Mandate years, British policy-makers came to believe that, in certain respects, there was a symbiotic relationship between British imperial interests and the Zionist project.24 this close bond was not, however, apparent to the majority of senior policy-makers concerned with the Empire during the Great War. the grandees of the British empire in the War Cabinet, lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of india, and lord milner, the former high Commissioner for south africa, were in fact amongst the most cautious members of the Cabinet when the Balfour declaration was being drafted and debated. this should not be surprising. Zionism was a nationalist movement, and nationalism was one of the great historical threats to the empire, which had to be carefully managed and controlled in line with British concerns. to be sure, there were those in the Government who viewed Zionism as a pro-British civilising force in the orient that would strengthen Britain’s position in Palestine and the middle east. such views were held by the young Sykes, Amery and William Ormsby-Gore, another member of the secretariat.25 also, by the end of 1917, pro-Zionism served to endorse the Government’s presentation of the empire as the pre-eminent champion of national self-determination in the middle east, which was intended to show that Britain was committed to Wilsonian ideals.26 Sykes for one was a genuine, heartfelt supporter of the principle of nationality, and believed that it was the key to a stable postwar middle east.27 But such feelings were not shared by senior colleagues such as Curzon, who supported nationalist causes only to the extent that they served British interests.28 thus, Philip Kerr, lloyd George’s foreign affairs adviser, assured the Foreign Office that ‘the British Government can affirm their sympathy for Zionist ideals without committing themselves to the full Zionist programme’.29 this was certainly the principle that won out in the Cabinet.

As the Foreign Office was primarily concerned with impressing world Jewry, Zionist leaders themselves, rather than British officials, were asked to write the proposed declaration. the Zionist draft, penned in July 1917, stated,

23 War Cabinet minutes, 261, 31 oct. 1917, Bna, CaB 23/4.24 See, for example, Michael Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and

Statecraft (New Haven, CT, 2007), ch. 4.25 Sykes to François Georges-Picot, 28 Feb. 1917, Sykes Collection, no. 32. c, MECA;

Sykes memo. n.d., BNA, FO 371/3083/207407; Amery to Carson, 4 Sept. 1917, quoted in Barnes and nicholson, The Leo Amery Diaries, p. 170; Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman (Oxford, 1993), p. 238.

26 James renton, ‘Changing languages of empire and the orient: Britain and the invention of the middle east, 1917–1918’, The Historical Journal, 50/3 (2007), pp. 650–54.

27 See Sykes to Eric Drummond, 20 July 1917, Sykes Collection, MECA.28 Fisher, Curzon and British Imperialism, pp. 26, 201, 237.29 Philip Kerr to sir ronald Graham, 5 may 1917, Bna, Fo 371/3101/81775.


1. His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people.

2. His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist organisation.30

the term ‘national home’ had no precedent in international law or an established meaning.31 it derived from the founding document of political Zionism, the Basle Programme, which declared that ‘[t]he aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law’.32 in 1897, this wording had been a deliberately vague compromise between those Zionists who wished to push for a Jewish Commonwealth, and those who considered such a declared aim to be impolitic.33 The innovation by Sokolow was to add the word ‘National’, which, at a time when the ideology of racial nationalism had a strong influence on international political thought, clarified the national status, and therefore rights, of the Jewish people in Palestine.34

the terms of the second part of the formula put forward by the Zionists were to be echoed in the articles of the mandate for Palestine, with the promise to ‘secure’ the establishment of the ‘national home’, and the appointment of the Zionist organisation as an official consultative body in partnership with the Government. In August, the Foreign Office, which was pre-occupied with satisfying world Jewry, only altered this second sentence. it substituted ‘will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist organisation’ with ‘will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them’.35

this revision did not go far enough for milner, whose draft in late august introduced significant qualifying terms. Ormsby-Gore, his Parliamentary Private Secretary, explained, ‘[h]e thinks the word “reconstituted” is much too strong, and also the word “secure”’.36 the result was the stipulation that a home for the Jewish people should be established ‘in’ Palestine, as opposed to the whole country being reconstituted as the ‘national home’. he also introduced the very vague and noncommittal statement that the Government would ‘facilitate’, rather than ‘secure’, the ‘achievement of this object’. Finally, Milner took out the term ‘National’, although it was re-inserted in a later draft, so that the Government was merely

30 enclosure to lord rothschild to Balfour, copy, 18 July 1917, Bna, CaB 21/58.31 Report to the General Assembly by the United Nations Special Committee on

Palestine (London, 1947), p. 49.32 Walter Laqueur (ed.), The Israel/Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the

Middle East Conflict (London, 1969), p. 11; Friedman, Question of Palestine, p. 248.33 Friedman, Question of Palestine, pp. 248–9.34 ibid.35 draft reply to lord rothschild from mr Balfour, aug. 1917, Bna, CaB 21/58.36 William Ormsby-Gore to Hankey, 23 Aug. 1917, BNA, CAB 21/58.


said to favour ‘a home’ for the Jewish people.37 According to Claude Montefiore, a staunch Jewish opponent of political Zionism and a friend of milner’s, the former proconsul ‘seemed to favour’ an autonomous Jewish community (though milner did not clarify to him what he meant by this terminology) in Palestine, or parts of Palestine, under a British protectorate. he did not want a Jewish state.38

a further proviso regarding the fate of Palestine was added to the declaration due to concerns about the arab population. this change was made at milner’s request on 4 october shortly before a meeting of the War Cabinet, and was most likely due to his awareness of the views of Lord Curzon.39 at the meeting, Curzon, who was chairman of the Cabinet committee on the middle east, outlined a number of problems regarding the situation in Palestine itself. no believer in the capacities of the ‘so-called arabs’ in Palestine,40 as he later called them, any more than he was a fan of Zionism, Curzon informed the Cabinet that the country was, ‘from his recollection … for the most part, barren and desolate’, and that ‘a less propitious seat for the future Jewish race could not be imagined’. moreover, he asked his colleagues, ‘[h]ow was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of mussulman inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place?’ also, Curzon wondered, ‘[h]ow many would be willing to return and on what pursuits would they engage?’ a much better alternative policy, he believed, would be ‘[t]o secure for the Jews already in Palestine equal civil and religious rights’, rather than ‘to aim at repatriation on a large scale’. the latter, Curzon maintained, was ‘sentimental idealism, which would never be realised, and that His Majesty’s Government should have nothing to do with it’.41

in light of such views, the new draft of the declaration requested by milner and put before the Cabinet provided the safeguard: ‘it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.42 This description of the majority arab population of the holy land as a plurality of ‘non-Jewish communities’ had significant implications. The terminology reflected the belief at the time amongst British middle east specialists that a single community of arabs did not exist in the area known as Palestine. The population was often viewed in racial terms as a mixed, and therefore degenerate, bunch of peoples who were not authentic arabs.43 By not referring to this population except in relation to the Jews, it was positioned by implication as a minority concern, without a recognisable name or

37 ibid.38 ‘Interview with Lord Milner’, 16 May 1917, Claude Montefiore Papers, CZA AK 46/1.39 mctague, British Policy in Palestine, p. 18.40 Eastern Committee (EC) 41st Minutes, 5 Dec. 1918, Annex, ‘Shorthand Notes of a

meeting of the eastern Committee’, Bna, CaB 27/24.41 War Cabinet minutes, 245, 4 oct. 1917, Bna, CaB 23/4.42 ibid.43 Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the

Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917–1929 (Oxford, 2nd edn 1991), pp. 12–14.


identity. During a period when racial, nationalist ideas were of such significance, this lack of recognition was telling, but also important in and of itself. It meant that only one group, the Jews, were raised to the status of a nation and, therefore, had the chance to obtain the rights and standing accorded to nations by the international community. As per the outlook of the day in Europe, those without a clear nationality, as so-called assimilated Jews were frequently accused of being in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were lesser, suspicious beings.

despite the loaded nature of its terminology, the exact meaning of the declaration, and thus its intended outcome in Palestine, were not debated in the Foreign Office, and were not discussed in the Cabinet until Curzon raised the matter in a memorandum, ‘the Future of Palestine’, on 26 october 1917. this was just five days before the Declaration was approved. He wished to establish the meaning of the words ‘a national home for the Jewish race’ (the term ‘race’ had been inserted in the draft of 4 october, but was later replaced with ‘people’ at the request of the Zionists44). He also wanted to clarify the precise obligation that such a principle, if accepted as policy, would place upon the Government.45 the fact that these issues had not been raised in the Cabinet earlier demonstrates how far the future of Zionism in Palestine was from its concerns. had it not been for Curzon’s personal interest in the affairs of the middle east, they may not have been raised at all.

a particular cause for concern that prompted Curzon to write the memorandum was the declared aim of some Zionists to establish a Jewish state. in addition, he feared that such a goal could readily be implied from the phrase, ‘[a] national home for the Jewish race or people’. ‘such a state’, he observed, ‘might naturally be expected’ to possess a capital, government and institutions of its own, and would ‘possess the soil or the greater part of the soil of the country’.

However, the challenges that stood in the way of this objective were manifold, according to the former Viceroy. he drew particular attention to the supposedly desolate and backward state of the country, and the existence of the indigenous population. the best that could be hoped for, Curzon believed, was a considerable increase in the Jewish population, supported by large amounts of investment; the slow improvement of the ‘productiveness and health’ of the country, aided by science and enterprise; and a free Jewish community with equal rights that ‘may become prosperous and even powerful’. But, asked Curzon, is this what the Government had in mind by the formula, ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish race’?

if not, he questioned whether it was ‘wise to use language which suggests so much more’. If the Turks were to be defeated and thrown out of Palestine, the ‘maximum policy that we can possibly hope to realise’, he argued, would involve the establishment of a European administration; the creation of machinery to safeguard Christian, Muslim and Jewish Holy Places; equal civil and religious

44 Friedman, Question of Palestine, p. 279.45 lord Curzon, ‘the Future of Palestine’, 26 oct. 1917, Bna, CaB 24/30/Gt 2406.


rights for the Jews and the rest of the population; and to ‘[a]rrange as far as possible for land purchase and [the] settlement of returning Jews’.46

The only recorded response in the Cabinet regarding the definition of the term ‘national home’ came from Balfour at the meeting when the Declaration finally was approved on 31 october. he began by commenting that the Zionists attached much importance to this phrase. Balfour did not mention, however, its significance to anybody else. he thus implied that its exact meaning was not of great concern to the British Government. Balfour then gave his personal interpretation of the term, which was very vague. the Foreign secretary ‘understood’ it to be,

some form of British, american, or other protectorate, under which full facilities would be given to the Jews to work out their own salvation and to build up, by means of education, agriculture, and industry, a real centre of national culture and focus of national life.

Responding to Curzon’s specific concern that some Zionists wished to form a Jewish state, Balfour suggested that this process ‘did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish state, which was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution’.47

What Balfour meant exactly by the ‘early establishment’ of a Jewish state is not clear. there is no doubt that he personally hoped that a Jewish state would eventually come into being.48 he was, as he announced to the imperial War Cabinet in march 1917, ‘a Zionist’.49 But his comment about statehood should be read as speculation about the possibilities for Zionism at some point in the future, in response to Curzon’s concerns, rather than reflecting an aim of Government policy.

Balfour was quite aware that his own hopes for Zionism diverged from what had been agreed to by the Cabinet, and even during the War how he, as Foreign secretary, considered that policy should be implemented. the Cabinet did not decide in 1917 that Jewish statehood was an aim of the British Government, either in the short or the long term. indeed, the collective decision of the Cabinet was to approve a pro-Zionist declaration that deliberately watered down the Zionists’ original proposal, which itself made no mention of such an eventuality. in fact, Sokolow had resisted making any reference to a Jewish State as he did not wish to put forward terms that went beyond what he felt would be endorsed by the Government. he was, it is important to note, in regular discussions with the Foreign Office whilst he prepared the text.50

46 ibid.47 War Cabinet minutes, 261, 31 oct. 1917, Bna, CaB 23/4.48 Col. richard meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary 1917–1956 (London, 1959), entry

for 17 Feb. 1918, p. 9.49 imperial War Cabinet minutes, 2, 22 march 1917, Bna, CaB 23/43.50 stein, The Balfour Declaration, pp. 466–8.


in July 1921 Balfour and lloyd George claimed during a meeting with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann that by the declaration they had always meant an eventual Jewish state.51 this assertion was intended to re-assure Weizmann in light of the Palestine administration’s response to the Jaffa riots in may of that year. such a claim, however, is not borne out by evidence from closer to the time of the declaration. in 1918, Balfour’s principal concern was to use Zionism for propaganda purposes. the aim was to foster the impression amongst world Jewry of the Government’s profound support for the movement. this was to be done without taking any steps in Palestine that would commit Britain beyond the words of the declaration or alienate the arab population. that year the Zionists proposed a land acquisition scheme in southern Palestine, the purchase of the site of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, and the foundation of the hebrew University on mount scopus.52 Revealingly, Balfour rejected the first two, politically significant, proposals. He told Weizmann that a university was a sufficient �

Documents

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