Discussion Group Report

In the October issue of The Utah Humanist we presented the chronological first half of the genesis of the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here we are describing the last half, based on the discussion of the topic by David Schafer in the September-October, 2002, issue of The Humanist.

In 1920 The League of Nations bestowed on Great Britain a mandate to administrate Palestine and Transjordan (present-day Jordan). France was given a similar mandate over Syria and Lebanon. The British mandate, taking effect 3 1/2 years later, lasted a quarter of a century and left an indelible imprint upon the future course of events in the area. The League made preparation for self-government a principal goal of the mandates. The establishment of Britain as the ruling power inevitably led to increasing resentment by the Palestinians toward their new overlords. Up to World War I Britain had been primarily concerned in the Near East with maintaining its access to petroleum and other natural resources there, as well as control of sea and land routes to India and the Far East. Its policies in Palestine required attempting to balance the aspirations of the indigenous Arabs against those of ever-growing numbers of immigrant Jews, but this balance was never fully achieved. Arabs came to view Jewish immigration as a conspiracy between the British government and the Jews to create a colonialist Jewish state out of the whole of Palestine, excluding most Arabs.

Palestine's Arab neighbors were angry about the situation, and various discords occurred among them. In general Arabs were hostile toward Zionist intrusions into "their" Palestine. With an eye to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's emphasis on self-determination, Colonel Edward Mandel House, his aide, wrote of the British plan for Palestine, "It is all bad and I told [Lord Alfred] Balfour so. They are making the [Middle East] a breeding place for future war." David Ben-Gurion told leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish settlers), "...not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution!...We as a nation want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs."

The Yishuv had some distinct advantages over the Arabs. The latter were disunited, comparatively uneducated, and unused to European thoughts styles of thought and organization. Many of the Jews had the benefits of European education and experience in various kinds of work.

Unprecedented rioting took place April 4-7, 1920 in which six Jews were killed and over 200 injured. The Zionists began to strengthen their militia, the Haganah. Renewed violence on May 1 claimed the lives of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs and wounded 146 Jews and 73 Arabs. British colonial secretary Winston Churchill sought to soothe Arab feelings by declaring that it was right that the scattered Jews should have a national center and home in Palestine. This would be good for the world, the Jews, the British Empire, and the Arabs in Palestine, since the Arabs could share in the benefits and progress of Zionism. He asked the Zionists to consider "the great alarm" the Arabs were feeling. The Jews organized the Herut Party, which later became the Likud.

Palestine enjoyed relative quiet, prosperity and development between the summers of 1921 and 1928,while Jewish immigration rates remained low. The quiet was broken September, 1928, in a dispute revolving around the Wailing Wall, the most sacred place in the world to Jews and the third most sacred place, after Mecca and Medina, to the Arabs. Within a week 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed and many more wounded. A British investigation concluded the Arabs had caused the violence, and trials condemned 25 Arabs to death. The British then issued a White Paper of 1930, intended to slow Jewish immigration. After pressure from the Zionists the White Paper was reversed. A deceptive calm fell over Palestine for several years. Both Jews and Arabs had learned they couldn't depend on the British to defend them. With the rise of Adolph Hitler to power some Arab leaders welcomed the new regime and hoped for the extension of the fascist, antidemocratic governmental system to other countries. Secret Jihad societies arose, composed mostly of poor peasants. They conducted minor raids, killing a few Jews at a time. After a general strike in April, 1936, terrorism spread rapidly throughout the countryside. Britain brought in 20,000 soldiers and provided arms to Jewish settlements and 2.700 extra Jewish police. The Zionists became the soul of compromise and reasonableness. The Palestinians, confident of the righteousness of their cause and convinced that nothing but total victory for their side would do, pleaded the justice of their case in absolute terms, saying, "There is no compromise." Repeated efforts by the British to settle the hostilities failed. Then the Jewish defense forces abandoned their "reasonableness" in favor of "aggressive defense" and counterterrorism, resorting for the first time to suicide bombings to kill Arab civilians.

The British used severe measures to suppress the rebellion, resulting in the Palestinians' being worse off than they had ever been, becoming wards of the Arab states. A number of concerted attempts by the British during World War II to resolve the hostilities failed. Toward the end of the war, the Jews looked for an opportunity to resume their revolt against Britain. In February 1944, a Jewish terrorist organization, the Irgun, now led by Menachem Begin, began to blow up or attack British government buildings in Palestine; and another Jewish group, the Stern Gang, assassinated Lord Moyne, the British minister resident in the Middle East and a close friend of Prime Minister Churchill. Up until then the British had been promoting a policy of partitioning Palestine between the Jews and the Palestinians, but now Churchill withdrew support for that stance.

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April, 1945. The British then ousted Churchill from the prime ministership in July. These two leadership changes made the United States much more receptive to Zionist claims and Britain much less. Britain wanted to avoid offending the Arab nations. It was fatigued and its empire on the verge of decline as its colonies asserted their desire for independence. "The United States, by contrast, was just beginning to feel like one of the world's superpowers and thus only too happy to show the British how things should be done," says Schafer.

After Germany's surrender, the Irgun and the Stern Gang in effect resumed war against Britain when the British foreign minister, Ernest Bevin hinted he was going to follow a pro-Arab line. The United Nations set up a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) of eleven neutral nations. The Committee recommended the termination of the British mandate and independence for Palestine after a transitional period. Seven states favored partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state and an international Jerusalem. Three favored an independent federal state, and one abstained. The Jews accepted the majority report but the Arabs threatened war if either report was accepted. In November, 1947, the General Assembly barely passed Resolution 181, allowing for partitioning Palestine into an Arab state of 4,500 square miles with about 800,000 Arabs and 20,000 Jews, and a Jewish state of 5,500 square miles with 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs. In January, 1948, a volunteer "Arab liberation army," mostly from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, started to enter Palestine and secured some of its infrastructure. Then the Haganah came in and swiftly turned events around. After a particularly infamous massacre of an Arab village near Jerusalem and an Arab retaliation in kind, the Haganah took by force most of the territory allotted to the new Jewish state by Resolution 181.

On May 14,1948, the Union Jack was hauled down and the British mandate came to an end. David Ben-Gurion read the Proclamation of Independence, announcing the establishment of Israel, to the Yishuv. A new chapter had begun in the history of the Middle East--unfortunately with new hostilities initiated the very next day by Israel's Arab neighbors.