The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Part 2: Building Tension in Palestine 1918-1939

Purpose: To situate a modern conflict in its historical, cultural, and

geographic context To understand the connection among the broken promises

made to Arabs and Jews during World War I and current challenges in the Middle East

To analyze primary source documents and establish a historical understanding of competing claims to an ancient land

To determine the meaning of words and phrases used in a text To determine the central ideas or information from a primary

source

Introductory Information

Zionism and Arab Nationalism: Essential Information Both Zionism and Arab Nationalism are nationalist ideologies that emerged in the late 19th century. Nationalism is the belief that nations should be proud of their national identity and celebrate it. A nation is a large group of people who are associated with a particular territory and believe that they share common attributes, such as a shared language, history, and culture that make them a distinct group. Nation is not a synonym for country or state. Country and state refer to defined geographic areas with political boundaries that have sovereign (independent) governments. Nationalism often includes the belief that nations should have their own states. Note: Some countries, such as the United States of America, also use the word state to refer to smaller internal political units.

Zionism began in late 19th century Europe where nationalism had become popular. The Zionist movement came to believe that the only solution to the horrific persecution that Jews faced was the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the historic homeland. The Israelites, ancestors of the Jewish people, first established a kingdom around 1020 BCE. Periods of Israelite and Jewish sovereignty in the region existed over the next thousand years. The Jewish state Judea became a Roman province in 6 CE. When Jews tried to regain their independence in 135 CE, most were killed, exiled, or sold into slavery, while a small number remained. The Jews who were forced

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out maintained their connection to this land and to their capital, Jerusalem, where their Temple had once stood. The centrality of the land of Israel and the hope to return was expressed by Jews through prayer, psalms from the Hebrew Bible, folktales, artwork, and song. Over time, small groups of Jews returned to the land and the small indigenous Jewish community. In the 19th century, the ancient Jewish homeland was part of the Ottoman Empire. Informally, the region was often called Palestine based on the name given to the area by the Romans in 135 CE.

Arab Nationalism also began in the late 19th century. At this time, most Arabs lived in the Ottoman Empire, which was Turkish. The majority of Arabs shared the Muslim religion with the Turks. However, the Turks were not Arabs and nationalist ideas began to spread to Arabs in the late 19th century. Arab interest in nationalism began as a literary and cultural movement to reestablish the prominence of Arab culture and to promote a positive ethnic identity. As time passed, Arabs increasingly felt that they should have greater self-rule. During World War I, many Arabs felt greatly mistreated by the Ottoman government and Arab nationalists popularized the idea of independent Arab rule. Muslims feel a strong connection to the region, and Jerusalem, in particular, because they believe that their prophet, Muhammad, ascended to heaven from there. When Muslim armies conquered the region in the 7th century CE, they built the Dome of the Rock on the spot where they believe Muhammad ascended, which was also the location where the Jewish Temple had once stood.

In 1913, a group of young Arabs who were students in European universities met at the First Arab Congress and demanded more rights and autonomy for Arabs in the empire. Arab nationalists of different religious backgrounds were united by their goal of greater Arab autonomy and by their opposition to Zionism. The League of Arab States, or Arab League, was founded in 1945 to improve coordination among its members on matters of common interest. The concept of a united Arab political unit, based on shared linguistic, cultural, and historical experience, is at the heart of the Arab League's charter.

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1914-1918 The First World War

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Palestine was a part of the Turkish Empire, which also included Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and western Arabia. Turkey came into the war on the side of Germany and Austria, shortly after the war had commenced. 

The major British concern at that time was the protection of the British sea route to India and the British Empire east of Suez, including Australia. There was also the possibility of a British-controlled railway from Baghdad to the port of Haifa in Palestine.

On 25 April 1915 the British launched a massive naval invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli. The British expected a rapid victory, which would be followed by an overland march to Istanbul and the collapse of the Turkish Empire. Even while the Gallipoli campaign was still in its planning stages, the British cabinet debated its “war aims”, in effect the future carve-up of Turkey’s Middle Eastern possessions between the Allied powers. 

Once it became clear that the Gallipoli campaign would fail, an alternative strategy was developed, which involved an approach to Istanbul from the south, through Palestine and Syria. Britain therefore sought an alliance with the Arab subjects of the Turkish Empire. 

In 1915 Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, opened a correspondence with the Sherif of Mecca, who claimed descent from Mohammed as the leader of the Hashemite dynasty which ruled the Hejaz in Western Arabia. The British government promised military support for an Arab revolt against the Turks, and British recognition of Arab independence after a successful uprising. The area of Arab rule was ambiguously described, and the British Government later denied any promise that Arab independence would extend to Palestine.5 

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McMahon-Hussein Letter 1915

This letter is part of the correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon, the British Ambassador in Cairo, and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca. Hussein was the ruler of the Hejaz, the western part of the Arabian peninsula, which includes Mecca, Medina and Jedda, and his Hashemite dynasty claims descent from the Prophet Mohammed. King Abdullah of Jordan is the great-great-grandson of Hussein.

 At the time this letter was written, the Allied assault on Gallipoli had failed, and the British were hoping to promote an Arab uprising against Turkish rule. That Arab revolt later began in the Hejaz, with the participation of T.E Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") as one of a number of British military advisers. 

The description of the regions to be excluded from future Arab independence was ambiguous in its application to Palestine. Lebanon is clearly to the west of the "districts" of the Turkish Empire referred to, while Palestine is to the south-west of those districts. 

 

McMahon- Hussein Letter 1915

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“I have received your letter of the 29th Shawal, 1333, with much pleasure and your expressions of friendliness and sincerity have given me the greatest satisfaction.                                     I regret that you should have received from my last letter the impression that I regarded the question of limits and boundaries with coldness and hesitation; such was not the case, but it appeared to me that the time had not yet come when that question could be discussed in a conclusive manner.                          

I have realised, however, from your last letter that you regard this question as one of vital and urgent importance. I have, therefore, lost no time in informing the Government of Great Britain of the contents of your letter, and it is with great pleasure that I communicate to you on their behalf the following statement, which I am confident you will receive with satisfaction.                         

The two districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the limits demanded.                         

With the above modification, and without prejudice to our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept those limits.                     

As for those regions lying within those frontiers wherein Great Britain is free to act without detriment to the interests of her ally, France, I am empowered in the name of the Government of Great Britain to give the following assurances and make the following reply to your letter:           

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1. Subject to the above modifications, Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca.

2. Great Britain will guarantee the Holy Places against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability.

3. When the situation admits, Great Britain will give to the Arabs her advice and will assist them to establish what may appear to be the most suitable forms of government in those various territories.

4. On the other hand, it is understood that the Arabs have decided to seek the advice and guidance of Great Britain only, and that such European advisers and officials as may be required for the formation of a sound form of administration will be British.

5. With regard to the vilayets of Baghdad and Basra, the Arabs will recognise that the established position and interests of Great Britain necessitate special administrative arrangements in order to secure these territories from foreign aggression to promote the welfare of the local populations and to safeguard our mutual economic interests.

I am convinced that this declaration will assure you beyond all possible doubt of the sympathy of Great Britain towards the aspirations of her friends the Arabs and will result in a firm and lasting alliance, the immediate results of which will be the expulsion of the Turks from the Arab countries and the freeing of the Arab peoples from the Turkish yoke, which for so many years has pressed heavily upon them. 

I have confined myself in this letter to the more vital and important questions, and if there are any other matters dealt with in your letters which 1 have omitted to mention, we may discuss them at some convenient date in the future. 

It was with very great relief and satisfaction that I heard of the safe arrival of the Holy Carpet and the accompanying offerings which, thanks to the clearness of your directions and the excellence of your arrangements, were landed without trouble or mishap in spite of the dangers and difficulties occasioned by the present sad war.  May God soon bring a lasting peace and freedom of all peoples. 

I am sending this letter by the hand of your trusted and excellent messenger, Sheikh Mohammed ibn Arif ibn Uraifan, and he will inform you of the various matters of interest, but of less vital importance, which I have not mentioned in this letter.”

Compliments,A. HENRY McMAHON

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Title of DocumentSource How do you know?

Cite specific evidence in the text

SpeakerWho is the speaker?What can you tell or what do you know about the speaker that helps you understand the point of view expressed?

OccasionWhat is the time and place of the piece?What is the current situation (that prompted the writing)?Is this a political event, a celebration, an observation, or a critique?Identify the context of the text.

AudienceWho are the readers to whom this piece is directed? It may be one person or a specific group.Does the speaker specify

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an audience?What assumptions exist in the text about the intended audience?

PurposeWhat is the purpose behind the text? (Why did the author write it? What is his goal?)What is the message?How does the speaker convey this message?

SubjectWhat topic, content, and ideas are included in the text? State the subject in a few words or a short phrase.

ToneWhat is the attitude of the author?Is the author emotional, objective, neutral, or biased about this

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topic?What types of diction (choice of words), syntax (sentence structure), and imagery (metaphors, similes, and other types of figurative language) help reflect the tone?

Sykes- Picot Agreement 1916

The original secret Sykes-Picot map of 1916: "A" would go to France, "B" to Britain.

A map marked with crude chinagraph-pencil in the second decade of the 20th Century shows the ambition - and folly - of

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the 100-year old British-French plan that helped create the modern-day Middle East.

Straight lines make uncomplicated borders. Most probably that was the reason why most of the lines that Mark Sykes, representing the British government, and Francois Georges-Picot, from the French government, agreed upon in 1916 were straight ones.

At a meeting in Downing Street, Mark Sykes pointed to a map and told the prime minister: "I should like to draw a line from the "e" in Acre to the last "k" in Kirkuk."

Sykes and Picot were quintessential "empire men". Both were aristocrats, seasoned in colonial administration, and crucially believers in the notion that the people of the region would be better off under the European empires.

Both men also had intimate knowledge of the Middle East.

The key tenets of the agreement they had negotiated in relative haste amidst the turmoil of the World War One continue to influence the region to this day. But while Sykes-Picot's straight lines had proved significantly helpful to Britain and France in the first half of the twentieth century, their impact on the region's peoples was quite different.

The map that the two men drew divided the land that had been under Ottoman rule since the early 16th Century into new countries - and relegated these political entities to two spheres of influence:

Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine under British influence Syria and Lebanon under French influence

The two men were not mandated to redraw the borders of the Arab countries in North Africa, but the division of influence existed there as well, with Egypt under British rule, and France controlling the Maghreb.

A secret deal

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But there were three problems with the geo-political order that emerged from the Sykes-Picot agreement.

First, it was secret without any Arabic knowledge, and it negated the main promise that Britain had made to the Arabs in the 1910s - that if they rebelled against the Ottomans, the fall of that empire would bring them independence.

When that independence did not materialise after World War One, and as these colonial powers, in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, continued to exert immense influence over the Arab world, the thrust of Arab politics - in North Africa and in the eastern Mediterranean - gradually but decisively shifted from building liberal constitutional governance systems (as Egypt, Syria, and Iraq had witnessed in the early decades of the 20th Century) to assertive nationalism whose main objective was getting rid of the colonialists and the ruling systems that worked with them.

This was a key factor behind the rise of the militarist regimes that had come to dominate many Arab countries from the 1950s until the 2011 Arab uprisings.

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Tribal lines

The second problem lay in the tendency to draw straight lines.

The newly created borders did not correspond to the actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions on the ground

Sykes-Picot intended to divide the Levant on a sectarian basis:

Lebanon was envisioned as a haven for Christians (especially Maronites) and Druze

Palestine with a sizable Jewish community the Bekaa valley, on the border between the two countries,

effectively left to Shia Muslims Syria with the region's largest sectarian demographic, Sunni

Muslims

Geography helped.

For the period from the end of the Crusades up until the arrival of the European powers in the 19th Century, and despite the region's vibrant trading culture, the different sects effectively lived separately from each other.

But the thinking behind Sykes-Picot did not translate into practice. That meant the newly created borders did not correspond to the actual sectarian, tribal, or ethnic distinctions on the ground.

Summary: What was the Sykes-Picot agreement?

The Sykes-Picot agreement is a secret understanding concluded in May 1916, during World War One, between Great Britain and France, with the assent of Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire

The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French and British-administered areas. The agreement took its name from its negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and Georges Picot of France.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25299553 [accessed Friday, April 3rd, 2015]

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THE BALFOUR DECLARATION,  2 NOVEMBER 1917

 

Lord Balfour

Foreign OfficeNovember 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

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

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"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

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

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

Source A: Balfour Declaration

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Title of DocumentSource How do you know?

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Cite specific evidence in the text

SpeakerWho is the speaker?What can you tell or what do you know about the speaker that helps you understand the point of view expressed?

OccasionWhat is the time and place of the piece?What is the current situation (that prompted the writing)?Is this a political event, a celebration, an observation, or a critique?Identify the context of the text.

AudienceWho are the readers to whom this piece is directed? It may be one person or a specific group.Does the speaker specify an audience?What

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assumptions exist in the text about the intended audience?

PurposeWhat is the purpose behind the text? (Why did the author write it? What is his goal?)What is the message?How does the speaker convey this message?

SubjectWhat topic, content, and ideas are included in the text? State the subject in a few words or a short phrase.

ToneWhat is the attitude of the author?Is the author emotional, objective, neutral, or biased about this topic?What types of

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diction (choice of words), syntax (sentence structure), and imagery (metaphors, similes, and other types of figurative language) help reflect the tone?

A leading figure in seeking the Declaration was Chaim Weizmann, a Jewish research chemist from Russia who had represented the British Zionist Federation in the negotiations. As chief scientist working for the British Admiralty, Weizmann had invented a process for synthesizing acetone, an essential component in the production of cordite for munitions. As a result he had the opportunity to personally convey the intensity and urgency of Jewish feeling on the issue to Prime Minister Lloyd George and Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, both of whom were men with a knowledge of the Biblical history, and essentially in sympathy with the Zionist cause.

Most importantly, the British government saw the Balfour Declaration as providing a legitimate basis for a British protectorate over Palestine after the War. However they also sought support for the Allies among the five million Jews of Russia after the Social Democratic February revolution of 1917; as well as the Jews of the United States.  (As it happened, the Bolshevik revolution of 7 November 1917 came five days after the Balfour Declaration, and Soviet Russia unilaterally ceased hostilities against Germany almost immediately.)

The Initial Arab Response

In December 1918 Weizmann met the Emir Faisal, the leader of the Arab forces in the war and the son of Hussein, the Sherif of Mecca, at Ma'an in southern Transjordan. Weizmann and Faisal reached an

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agreement. The document written in January 1919 contained the following preamble:

“mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realising that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations, is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine, and being desirous further of confirming the good understanding which exists between them, have agreed upon the following articles:”

The agreement contemplated the drawing of new national boundaries between Palestine and “the Arab State” which would be negotiated as part of the post-war settlement. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 Faisal conveyed the spirit of the agreement in a letter which he sent to United States Justice Frankfurter, leader of the American Zionist delegation: “The Jewish movement is national and not imperialist, and there is room in Syria for us both...We shall welcome the Jews back home.”  

Nevertheless, in March 1920, a Syrian congress held in Damascus rejected the Balfour Declaration and elected Faisal King of a united Syria which was to include Palestine. The French then deposed Faisal in July 1920, and he later became King of Iraq under a British mandate.

1920 The Treaty of San Remo and the Palestine Mandate

At the allied conference at San Remo, in April 1920, at which the Allied Powers determined the fate of the former Turkish possessions, the Balfour Declaration was approved, and it was agreed that a mandate to Britain should be formally given by the League of Nations over the area which now comprises Israel, Jordan and the Golan Heights, which was to be called the "Mandate of Palestine". The Balfour Declaration was to apply to the whole of the mandated territory. The Treaty also contemplated an “appropriate Jewish agency” to represent the Jewish population and this was established as the elected Jewish authority in Palestine under the title of “the Jewish Agency”.   

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British Mandate for Palestine, The League of Nations, July 24th

1922

Britain and the Hashemite dynasty

Meanwhile, the Hashemite dynasty of Hussein of Mecca faced difficulties in Arabia. Between 1919 and 1925 King Ibn Sa'ud recovered his ancient family kingdom in Riyadh in central Arabia, defeated the Hashemites and annexed their kingdom of the Hejaz on the Western coast. The newly created Kingdom of Sa’udi Arabia opened its doors to the American oil companies and developed a close relationship with the United States.        Unable to fulfil their commitments to the Hashemites on the Arabian Peninsula, the British decided to divide the area of the Palestine Mandate in 1922 by establishing a Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan on the eastern bank of the Jordan under the Emir Abdullah, a son of the Sherif Hussain of Mecca. At the same time his brother Faisal was to become King of Iraq under another British Mandate  The treaty of San Remo which was ratified by the League of Nations in July 1922 was therefore amended in September 1922. The British Mandate still extended over the whole of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River, but a clause was added excluding Transjordan from the operation of the Balfour Declaration, which was therefore now limited to the western side of the river. The British then installed the Emir Abdullah as ruler of Transjordan under British tutelage.1 In 1946 Transjordan gained its independence as "The Hashemite

The British Mandate for Palestine was a legal commission for the administration of the territory of Greater Syria within the Ottoman Empire. The mandate, based on the San Remo Resolution from 1920, incorporated the Balfour Declaration, established a Jewish national home and encompassed land on both sides of the Jordan River. The British Mandate for Palestine, published as a legal document in 1922, established clear boundaries for the first time as there had not been a distinct political unit previously.

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Kingdom of Transjordan" In 1923 the Golan Heights was ceded by Britain from Palestine to the French Mandate of Syria, in exchange for an adjacent region on what was to become the Lebanese border. 

The British Mandate 1922 – 1948

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Great Britain's Division of the Mandated Area,1921 – 1923

The Jewish Response to the Balfour Declaration – Immigration to Palestine

Between 1919 and 1923, some 40,000 Jews, mainly from Eastern Europe, arrived in Palestine. Many had been trained in agriculture in the European Zionist movements and established settlements of the type pioneered by the early arrivals, and on land purchased with funds raised by Jewish communities throughout the world.2  The dominant ideology was socialist, and this found expression in the development of unique social and economic enterprises, such as the Kibbutzim3, the Moshavim4 and the Histadrut.5 During this period malarial swamps were drained and converted to agricultural use, and national institutions such as an elected Jewish assembly and the Haganah voluntry defence force were established.         Between 1924 and 1929, 82,000 Jews arrived, mainly as a result of anti-semitic outbreaks in Poland and Hungary, and at a time when the immigration quotas of the United States kept Jews out. This group contained many middle class families who moved to the growing towns, establishing small businesses and light industry. Of these approximately 23,000 left the country to escape the harsh economic conditions. Between 1929 and 1939, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, a new wave of some 250,000 immigrants arrived. Of these about 174,000 arrived between 1933 and 1936, after which the British imposed increasing restrictions on Jewish immigration. Many of those who fled from Germany as Nazi racial laws were introduced, were qualified professionals. Refugee architects introduced the “modern” style which characterised Tel Aviv as it rose from the sand dunes, and refugee musicians founded the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra. The port at Haifa and its oil refineries were completed and new industrial development transformed the economy.         The Jewish population in Palestine thus increased from about 85,000 in 1919 to 678,000 by 1946.  uring the same period, the development of the country attracted substantial Arab immigration, and the Arab population doubled from about 600,000 to 1,269,000.

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1920 -1939 The Arab Response to Jewish Immigration

In April 1920, during the British Military Occupation which preceded the Mandate, the Arabs of Palestine rioted in protest against Jewish settlement. In Jerusalem the riots took the form of violent attacks on the Jewish population. In Galilee, armed groups attacked Jewish settlers.          On 1 May 1921 a Jewish Labour Day march was attacked and 47 Jews were killed. 

In August 1929 a dispute at the Western Wall6 in Jerusalem flared into riots which spread throughout the country. The Jewish community in Hebron (the burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) was wiped out. In all 133 Jews were killed and many hundreds were wounded.

In December 1931 a Muslim Conference in Jerusalem attended by 22 countries denounced Zionism, and in 1933 a boycott of British and Zionist goods was proclaimed.

In April 1936 the Arab political parties formed an Arab Higher Committee under the presidency of Haj Amin El Husseini, the Mufti [7] of Jerusalem and head of the influential Husseini clan.  A general strike was proclaimed, which lasted for six months. Armed groups were again organised to attack Jewish settlements, and the violence developed into revolt against the British and a war against the Jews which became known as the "Great Uprising" of 1936-1939.           In 1937, when the British outlawed the Arab Higher Committee, the Mufti fled from Palestine to Nazi Germany where he established close relations with the government. Here he endorsed and offered assistance in Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish problem.

1920-1939 The British reaction

The emergence of the economic centrality of oil in the 1920’s, and the discovery of vast oil fields in the Persian Gulf area, added a further crucial dimension to the strategic significance of the Middle East as a whole.  From now on, the maintenance of an economic and military presence in the area became even more essential to British policy.

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This required both friendly relations with the Arab world and the maintenance of strategic bases in the Middle East.

In Palestine this strategic necessity was translated by the Mandatory administration into a need to find a balance between maintaining good relations with the Arab world and at the same time continuing the Mandate on the basis of the Balfour Declaration.            The British therefore responded to the Arab riots of 1921, 1929 and 1936-8 by instituting commissions of inquiry, holding Royal Commissions and issuing policy statements in the form of “White Papers”, which gradually and progressively closed the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration and settlement. The 1922 Churchill White Paper limited immigration to the “economic absorptive capacity of the country”. The 1930 policy statement restricted the transfer of land to Jews.

Source: http://www.ijs.org.au/The-Balfour-Declaration/default.aspx [accessed Friday, April 3rd, 2015]

Peel Commision 1937

At the height of the 1936-39 disturbances, a royal commission of inquiry came to Palestine from London to investigate the roots of the Arab-Jewish conflict and to propose solutions. The commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, heard a great deal of testimony in Palestine, and in July 1937 issued its recommendations: to abolish the Mandate and partition the country between the two peoples. Only a zone between Jaffa and Jerusalem would remain under the British mandate and international supervision.

The Jewish state would include the coastal strip stretching from Mount Carmel to south of Be'er Tuvia, as well as the Jezreel Valley and the Galilee. The Arab state was to include the hill regions, Judea and Samaria, and the Negev. Until the establishment of the two states, the commission recommended, Jews should be prohibited from purchasing land in the area allocated to the Arab state.To overcome demarcation problems, it was proposed that land exchanges be carried out concurrently with the transfer of population from one area to the other. Demarcation of the precise borders of the states was entrusted to a technical partition committee. The Peel Commission did not believe that Jewish

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immigration was detrimental to the financial well-being of the Arab population and assumed that the issue of Jewish immigration would be resolved within the Jewish state.

The British government accepted the recommendations of the Peel Commission regarding the partition of Palestine, and the announcement was endorsed by Parliament in London. Among the Jews, bitter disagreements erupted between supporters and opponents, while the Arabs rejected the proposal and refused to regard it as a solution. The plan was ultimately shelved.

Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/peel.html [accessed Friday, April 3rd, 2015]

Peel Commission Partition Plan 1937

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Source: Martin Gilbert, from The Arab-Israel Conflict - Its History in Maps

The McDonald White Paper of 1939

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Arabs and Jews were called by Britain in 1939 for a conference where they were to discuss different issues relating to each other. The Arab and Jewish delegations came together to look for a solution to their internal differences in the Round Table Conference in 1939, a meeting which is also known as The St. James Conference. Chaim Weizmann came as a representative of Jews with groups of both Zionist and non-Zionist agencies while the Arab delegation came under the supervision of Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and also included the renowned al-Nashashibi family. Apart from the Palestinian Arabs, the conference was also attended by the delegations of other Arab countries like Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The conference took off with a bad start. The Arab delegates refused to recognize the authenticity of the Jewish agency and therefore denied the direct and formal meeting with Jewish representatives. Resultantly, the British took up negotiating with each party individually and when both these would not agree to the same terms, the British formed the final policy itself.

Named after the British Colonial Secretary Malcolm McDonald,  McDonald White Paper  is also known as The British White Paper of 1939 and Parliamentary Document 6019, issued as a result of the St. James Conference by the British. The conference failed to produce the desired results of bringing peace in Palestine; therefore, the British adopted a new policy to handle the drastic situation prevailing in the region.

The 1939 White Paper laid out permanent limitation on Jewish immigration. It allowed the entrance of 75,000 Jewish immigrants over a period of five years, after that, the immigration would need Arab consent. Although McDonald White Paper laid out lenient strategies for the Arabs and Jews were agitated over it, but Arabs still objected to it, stating that it does not imply the formation of an all-Arab state which was unacceptable to them.

The key provisions laid out in the McDonald White Paper of 1939 were:

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It is the not the will of the British to form a Jewish state in Palestine.

The Palestinian territories lying West of the Jordan River were to be considered excluded from the decrees of the McMahon correspondence.

After the interim period, British forces two independent states in Palestine of Arabs and Jews, sharing a government in a way where the interests of both the nations are safeguarded.

Transfer of the Arab land to the Jews in most of the regions of the country is to be severely controlled.

Keeping in view the Arab apprehension regarding the Jewish immigration, the five year allowance of 75,000 Jews in Palestine was implemented so that the population of Jews in Palestine remains under one-third of the total.

From the start of the World War II till the end of the mandate, the White Paper remained the basis to set out British policies and all other stood irrelevant. Jews in Palestine as well as in the rest of the places were outraged, considering The White Paper a betrayal by the British. Therefore, right with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the decrees of the White Paper were rescinded.

Source: http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_whitepaper_1939.php [accessed Sunday April 3rd, 2015]

Review Questions

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1: Jewish immigration figures to Palestine, 1931-1939

Year Number of immigrants1931 40751932 95531933 303271934 423591935 618541936 297271937 105361938 128681939 16405Total 217704

Figures taken from the ESCO foundation – an organisation working for a Palestinian state shared by Jews and Palestinians, published in 1947.

(a) Create a line graph with the information above (b) What can you tell from this source about Jewish

immigration to Palestine? Support your answer with reference to the source.

2: Construct a detailed timeline of events in Palestine 1919 to 1939

3: Using the information in Table 7, complete the table that follows on % of total population in Palestine accounted for by Muslims, Jews, Christians & others

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Number in population as a % of the total populationMuslims Jews Christians Others

1922192419261928193019321934193519361937

4: Define each of the following terms: the Arab Revolt, Peel Partition Plan, and the White Paper.

In your definition, make sure to provide the year that each happened, what happened or what it was, and the significance of each term.

5: In your opinion which of the following documents was most instrumental in laying the seeds for the Arab-Israeli Conflict?

The McMahon Letter The Sykes-Picot Agreement The Balfour Declaration

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