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Source        :U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
Source key    :AR
Program       :ARMY AREA HANDBOOKS
Program key   :AR ARMAN
Update sched. :Occasionally
ID number     :AR ARMAN  ISRAELCH1.05
Title         :Chapter 1.05: EVENTS IN PALESTINE, 1908-48
Data type     :TEXT
End year      :1994
Date of record:02/22/1994
Country       :
| Israel
Text          :

EVENTS IN PALESTINE, 1908-48

Arab Nationalism



 Before the Second Aliyah, the indigenous Arab population of
Palestine had worked for and generally cooperated with the small
number of Jewish settlements. The increased Jewish presence and
the different policies of the new settlers of the Second Aliyah
aroused Arab hostility. The increasing tension between Jewish
settler and Arab peasant did not, however, lead to the
establishment of Arab nationalist organizations. In the
Ottoman-controlled Arab lands the Arab masses were bound by
family, tribal, and Islamic ties; the concepts of nationalism and
nation-state were viewed as alien Western categories. Thus, an
imbalance evolved between the highly organized and nationalistic
settlers of the Second Aliyah and the indigenous Arab population,
who lacked the organizational sophistication of the Zionists.

 There were, however, small groups of Western-educated Arab
intellectuals and military officers who formed nationalist
organizations demanding greater local autonomy. The primary
moving force behind this nascent Arab nationalist movement was
the Committee of Union and Progress, a loose umbrella
organization of officers and officials within the Ottoman Empire
in opposition to the policies of Sultan Abdul Hamid. The removal
of Sultan Abdul Hamid by the Committee of Union and Progress in
1908 was widely supported by both Arab nationalists and Zionists.
The committee's program of constitutional reform and promised
autonomy aroused hope of independence on the part of various
nationalities throughout the Ottoman Empire.

 After 1908, however, it quickly became clear to Zionists and
Arabs alike that the nationalism of Abdul Hamid's successors was
Turkish nationalism, bent on Turkification of the Ottoman domain
rather than granting local autonomy. In response, Arab
intellectuals in Beirut and Damascus formed clandestine political
societies, such as the Ottoman Decentralization Party, based in
Cairo; Al Ahd (The Covenant Society), formed primarily by army
officers in 1914; and Al Fatat (The Young Arabs), formed by
students in 1911. The Arab nationalism espoused by these groups
lacked support, however, among the Arab masses.

World War I: Diplomacy and Intrigue

 On the eve of World War I, the anticipated break-up of the
enfeebled Ottoman Empire raised hopes among both Zionists and
Arab nationalists. The Zionists hoped to attain support from one
of the Great Powers for increased Jewish immigration and eventual
sovereignty in Palestine, whereas the Arab nationalists wanted an
independent Arab state covering all the Ottoman Arab domains.
From a purely demographic standpoint, the Zionist argument was
not very strong--in 1914 they comprised only 12 percent of the
total population of Palestine. The nationalist ideal, however,
was weak among the Arabs, and even among articulate Arabs
competing visions of Arab nationalism--Islamic, pan-Arab, and
statism--inhibited coordinated efforts to achieve independence.

 A major asset to Zionism was that its chief spokesman, Chaim
Weizmann, was an astute statesman and a scientist widely
respected in Britain and he was well versed in European
diplomacy. Weizmann understood better than the Arab leaders at
the time that the future map of the Middle East would be
determined less by the desires of its inhabitants than by Great
Power rivalries, European strategic thinking, and domestic


British politics. Britain, in possession of the Suez Canal and
playing a dominant role in India and Egypt, attached great
strategic importance to the region. British Middle East policy,
however, espoused conflicting objectives, and as a result London
became involved in three distinct and contradictory negotiations
concerning the fate of the region.

 The earliest British discussions of the Middle East question
revolved around Sharif Husayn ibn Ali, scion of the Hashimite
(also seen as Hashemite) family that claimed descent from the
Prophet and acted as the traditional guardians of Islam's most
holy sites of Mecca and Medina in the Arabian province of Hijaz.
In February 1914, Amir Abdullah, son of Sharif Husayn, went to
Cairo to visit Lord Kitchener, British agent and consul general
in Egypt, where he inquired about the possibility of British
support should his father stage a revolt against Turkey. Turkey
and Germany were not yet formally allied, and Germany and Britain
were not yet at war; Kitchener's reply was, therefore,
noncommittal.

 Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in August 1914,
Kitchener was recalled to London as secretary of state for war.
By 1915, as British military fortunes in the Middle East
deteriorated, Kitchener saw the usefulness of transferring the
Islamic caliphate--the caliph, or successor to the Prophet
Muhammad, was the traditional leader of the Islamic world--to an
Arab candidate indebted to Britain, and he energetically sought
Arab support for the war against Turkey. In Cairo Sir Henry
McMahon, the first British high commissioner in Egypt, conducted
an extensive correspondence from July 1915 to January 1916 with
Husayn, two of whose sons--Abdullah, later king of Jordan, and
Faysal, later king of Syria (ejected by the French in 1920) and
of Iraq (1921-33)--were to figure prominently in subsequent
events.

 In a letter to McMahon enclosed with a letter dated July 14,
1915, from Abdullah, Husayn specified an area for Arab
independence under the "Sharifian Arab Government" consisting of
the Arabian Peninsula (except Aden) and the Fertile Crescent of
Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. In his letter of October 24,
1915, to Husayn, McMahon, on behalf of the British government,
declared British support for postwar Arab independence, subject
to certain reservations and exclusions of territory not entirely
Arab or concerning which Britain was not free "to act without
detriment to the interests of her ally, France." The territories
assessed by the British as not purely Arab included: "The
districts of Mersin and Alexandretta, and portions of Syria lying
to the west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and
Aleppo." As with the later Balfour Declaration, the exact meaning
was not clear, although Arab spokesmen since then have usually
maintained that Palestine was within the pledged area of
independence. Although the Husayn-McMahon correspondence was not
legally binding on either side, on June 5, 1916, Husayn launched
the Arab Revolt against Turkey and in October declared himself
"King of the Arabs."

 While Husayn and McMahon corresponded over the fate of the
Middle East, the British were conducting negotiations with the
French over the same territory. Following the British military
defeat at the Dardanelles in 1915, the Foreign Office sought a


new offensive in the Middle East, which it thought could only be
carried out by reassuring the French of Britain's intentions in
the region. In February 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement
(officially the "Asia Minor Agreement") was signed, which,
contrary to the contents of the Husayn-McMahon correspondence,
proposed to partition the Middle East into French and British
zones of control and interest. Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement,
Palestine was to be administered by an international
"condominium" of the British, French, and Russians (also
signatories to the agreement).

 The final British pledge, and the one that formally committed
the British to the Zionist cause, was the Balfour Declaration of
November 1917. Before the emergence of David Lloyd George as
prime minister and Arthur James Balfour as foreign secretary in
December 1916, the Liberal Herbert Asquith government had viewed
a Jewish entity in Palestine as detrimental to British strategic
aims in the Middle East. Lloyd George and his Tory supporters,
however, saw British control over Palestine as much more
attractive than the proposed British-French condominium. Since
the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Palestine had taken on increased
strategic importance because of its proximity to the Suez Canal,
where the British garrison had reached 300,000 men, and because
of a planned British attack on Ottoman Syria originating from
Egypt. Lloyd George was determined, as early as March 1917, that
Palestine should become British and that he would rely on its
conquest by British troops to obtain the abrogation of the
Sykes-Picot Agreement.

 In the new British strategic thinking, the Zionists appeared as
a potential ally capable of safeguarding British imperial
interests in the region. Furthermore, as British war prospects
dimmed throughout 1917, the War Cabinet calculated that
supporting a Jewish entity in Palestine would mobilize America's
influential Jewish community to support United States
intervention in the war and sway the large number of Jewish
Bolsheviks who participated in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to
keep Russia in the war. Fears were also voiced in the Foreign
Office that if Britain did not come out in favor of a Jewish
entity in Palestine the Germans would preempt them. Finally, both
Lloyd George and Balfour were devout churchgoers who attached
great religious significance to the proposed reinstatement of the
Jews in their ancient homeland.

 The negotiations for a Jewish entity were carried out by
Weizmann, who greatly impressed Balfour and maintained important
links with the British media. In support of the Zionist cause,
his protracted and skillful negotiations with the Foreign Office
were climaxed on November 2, 1917, by the letter from the foreign
secretary to Lord Rothschild, which became known as the Balfour
Declaration. This document declared the British government's
"sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations," viewed with favor
"the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish
People," and announced an intent to facilitate the achievement of
this objective. The letter added the provision of "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."



 The Balfour Declaration radically changed the status of the
Zionist movement. It promised support from a major world power
and gave the Zionists international recognition. Zionism was
transformed by the British pledge from a quixotic dream into a
legitimate and achievable undertaking. For these reasons, the
Balfour Declaration was widely criticized throughout the Arab
world, and especially in Palestine, as contrary to the spirit of
British pledges contained in the Husayn-McMahon correspondence.
The wording of the document itself, although painstakingly
devised, was interpreted differently by different people,
according to their interests. Ultimately, it was found to contain
two incompatible undertakings: establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jews and preservation of the rights of
existing non-Jewish communities, i.e., the Arabs. The
incompatibility sharpened over the succeeding years and became
irreconcilable.

 On December 9, 1917, five weeks after the Balfour Declaration,
British troops led by General Sir Edmund Allenby took Jerusalem
from the Turks; Turkish forces in Syria were subsequently
defeated; an armistice was concluded with Turkey on October 31,
1918; and all of Palestine came under British military rule.
British policy in the Arab lands of the now moribund Ottoman
Empire was guided by a need to reduce military commitments, hold
down expenditures, prevent a renewal of Turkish hegemony in the
region, and safeguard Britain's strategic interest in the Suez
Canal. The conflicting promises issued between 1915 and 1918
complicated the attainment of these objectives.

 Between January 1919 and January 1920, the Allied Powers met in
Paris to negotiate peace treaties with the Central Powers. At the
conference, Amir Faysal, representing the Arabs, and Weizmann,
representing the Zionists, presented their cases. Although
Weizmann and Faysal reached a separate agreement on January 3,
1919, pledging the two parties to cordial cooperation, the latter
wrote a proviso on the document in Arabic that his signature was
tied to Allied war pledges regarding Arab independence. Since
these pledges were not fulfilled to Arab satisfaction after the
war, most Arab leaders and spokesmen have not considered the
Faysal-Weizmann agreement as binding.

 The conferees faced the nearly impossible task of finding a
compromise between the generally accepted idea of
self-determination, wartime promises, and plans for a division of
the spoils. They ultimately decided upon a mandate system whose
details were laid out at the San Remo Conference of April 1920.
The terms of the British Mandate were approved by the League of
Nations Council on July 24, 1922, although they were technically
not official until September 29, 1923. The United States was not
a member of the League of Nations, but a joint resolution of the
United States Congress on June 30, 1922, endorsed the concept of
the Jewish national home.

 The Mandate's terms recognized the "historical connection of the
Jewish people with Palestine," called upon the mandatory power to
"secure establishment of the Jewish National Home," and
recognized "an appropriate Jewish agency" for advice and
cooperation to that end. The WZO, which was specifically
recognized as the appropriate vehicle, formally established the
Jewish Agency (see Glossary) in 1929. Jewish immigration was to


be facilitated, while ensuring that the "rights and position of
other sections of the population are not prejudiced." English,
Arabic, and Hebrew were all to be official languages. At the San
Remo Conference, the French also were assured of a mandate over
Syria. They drove Faysal out of Damascus in the summer; the
British provided him with a throne in Iraq a year later. In March
1921, Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, established
Abdullah as ruler of Transjordan under a separate British
mandate.

 To the WZO, which by 1921 had a worldwide membership of about
770,000, the recognition in the Mandate was seen as a welcome
first step. Although not all Zionists and not all Jews were
committed at that time to conversion of the Jewish national home
into a separate political state, this conversion became firm
Zionist policy during the next twenty-five years. The patterns
developed during these years strongly influenced the State of
Israel proclaimed in 1948.

 Arab spokesmen, such as Husayn and his sons, opposed the
Mandate's terms because the Covenant of the League of Nations had
endorsed popular determination and thereby, they maintained,
supported the cause of the Arab majority in Palestine. Further,
the covenant specifically declared that all other obligations and
understandings inconsistent with it were abrogated. Therefore,
Arab argument held that both the Balfour Declaration and the
Sykes-Picot Agreement were null and void. Arab leaders
particularly objected to the Mandate's numerous references to the
"Jewish community," whereas the Arab people, then constituting
about 88 percent of the Palestinian population, were acknowledged
only as "the other sections."

 Prior to the Paris Peace Conference, Palestinian Arab
nationalists had worked for a Greater Syria (see Glossary) under
Faysal. The British military occupation authority in Palestine,
fearing an Arab rebellion, published an Anglo-French Joint
Declaration, issued after the armistice with Turkey in November
1918, which called for self-determination for the indigenous
people of the region. By the end of 1919, the British had
withdrawn from Syria (exclusive of Palestine), but the French had
not yet entered (except in Lebanon) and Faysal had not been
explicitly repudiated by Britain. In March 1920, a General Syrian
Congress meeting in Damascus elected Faysal king of a united
Syria, which included Palestine. This raised the hope of the
Palestinian Arab population that the Balfour Declaration would be
rescinded, setting off a feverish series of demonstrations in
Palestine in the spring of 1920. From April 4 to 8, Arab rioters
attacked the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. Faysal's ouster by the
French in the summer of 1920 led to further rioting in Jaffa
(contemporary Yafo) as a large number of Palestinian Arabs who
had been with Faysal returned to Palestine to fight against the
establishment of a Jewish nation.

 The end of Faysal's Greater Syria experiment and the application
of the mandate system, which artificially carved up the Arab East
into new nation-states, had a profound effect on the history of
the region in general and Palestine in particular. The mandate
system created an identity crisis among Arab nationalists that
led to the growth of competing nationalisms: Arab versus Islamic
versus the more parochial nationalisms of the newly created


states. It also created a serious legitimacy problem for the new
Arab elites, whose authority ultimately rested with their
European benefactors. The combination of narrowly based
leadership and the emergence of competing nationalisms stymied
the Arab response to the Zionist challenge in Palestine.

 To British authorities, burdened with heavy responsibilities and
commitments after World War I, the objective of the Mandate
administration was peaceful accommodation and development of
Palestine by Arabs and Jews under British control. Sir Herbert
Samuels, the first high commissioner of Palestine, was
responsible for keeping some semblance of order between the two
antagonistic communities. In pursuit of this goal, Samuels, a
Jew, was guided by two contradictory principles: liberalism and
Zionism. He called for open Jewish immigration and land
acquisition, which enabled thousands of highly committed and
well-trained socialist Zionists to enter Palestine between 1919
and 1923. The Third Aliyah, as it was called, made important
contributions to the development of Jewish agriculture,
especially collective farming. Samuels, however, also promised
representative institutions, which, if they had emerged in the
1920s, would have had as their first objective the curtailment of
Jewish immigration. According to the census of 1922, the Jews
numbered only 84,000, or 11 percent of the population of
Palestine. The Zionists, moreover, could not openly oppose the
establishment of democratic structures, which was clearly in
accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations and the
mandatory system.

 The Arabs of Palestine, however, believing that participation in
Mandate-sanctioned institutions would signify their acquiescence
to the Mandate and thus to the Balfour Declaration, refused to
participate. As a result, Samuels's proposals for a legislative
council, an advisory council, and an Arab agency envisioned as
similar to the Jewish Agency, were all rejected by the Arabs.
After the collapse of the bid for representative institutions,
any possibility of joint consultation between the two communities
ended.

The Arab Community During the Mandate

 The British Mandate and the intensification of Jewish settlement
in Palestine significantly altered Palestinian leadership
structures and transformed the socioeconomic base of Palestinian
Arab society. First, British policy in Palestine, as elsewhere in
the Middle East, was based on patronage. This policy entailed
granting wide powers to a small group of competing traditional
elites whose authority would depend upon the British high
commissioner. In Palestine, Samuels granted the most important
posts to two competing families, the Husaynis (also seen as
Husseinis) and the Nashashibis. Of the two clans, the Husaynis
were given the most powerful posts, many of which had no
precedent under Ottoman rule. In 1921 Samuels appointed Hajj Amin
al Husayni, an ardent anti-Zionist and a major figure behind the
April 1920 riots, as mufti (chief Muslim religious jurist) of
Jerusalem. In 1922 he augmented Hajj Amin's power by appointing
him president of the newly constituted Supreme Muslim Council
(SMC), which was given wide powers over the disbursement of funds
from religious endowments, fees, and the like.



 By heading the SMC, Hajj Amin controlled a vast patronage
network, giving him power over a large constituency. This new
patronage system competed with and threatened the traditional
family-clan and Islamic ties that existed under the Ottoman
Empire. Traditional Arab elites hailing from other locales, such
as Hebron and Haifa, resented the monopoly of power of the
British-supported Jerusalem-based elite. Furthermore, as an
agricultural depression pushed many Arabs westward into the
coastal cities, a new urban-based elite emerged that challenged
the Nashashibis and Husaynis.

 Tension between members of Arab elites was exacerbated because
Hajj Amin, who was not an elected official, increasingly
attempted to dictate Palestinian politics. The competition
between the major families and the increased use of the Zionist
threat as a political tool in interelite struggles placed a
premium on extremism. Hajj Amin frequently incited his followers
against the Nashashibis by referring to the latter as Zionist
collaborators. As a result, Palestinian leadership during the
Mandate was fragmented and unable to develop a coherent policy to
deal with the growing Zionist movement.

 The other major transformation in Palestinian Arab society
during the Mandate concerned the issue of land ownership. During
the years of Ottoman rule, the question of private property
rights was never fully articulated. The tenuous nature of private
property rights enabled the Zionist movement to acquire large
tracts of land that had been Arab owned. The sale of land to
Jewish settlers, which occurred even during the most intense
phases of the Palestinian Revolt, reflected the lack of national
cohesion and institutional structure that might have enabled the
Palestinian Arabs to withstand the lure of quick profits.
Instead, when increased Jewish land purchases caused property
prices to spiral, both the Arab landowning class and absentee
landlords, many of whom resided outside Palestine, were quick to
sell for unprecedented profits. In the 1930s, when Palestine was
beset by a severe economic depression, large numbers of Arab
peasants, unable to pay either their Arab landlords or taxes to
the government, sold their land. The British did not intervene in
the land purchases mainly because they needed the influx of
Jewish capital to pay for Jewish social services and to maintain
the Jewish economy.

The Jewish Community under the Mandate

 The greatest asset brought by the Zionists settling Palestine
was their organizational acumen, which allowed for the
institutionalization of the movement despite deep ideological
cleavages. The WZO established an executive office in Palestine,
thus implementing the language of the Mandate prescribing such an
agency. In August 1929, the formalized Jewish Agency was
established with a council, administrative committee, and
executive. Each of these bodies consisted of an equal number of
Zionist and nominally non-Zionist Jews. The president of the WZO
was, however, ex officio president of the agency. Thereafter, the
WZO continued to conduct external diplomatic, informational, and
cultural activities, and the operational Jewish Agency took over
fundraising, activities in Palestine, and local relations with
the British Mandate Authority (administered by the colonial
secretary). In time, the World Zionist Organization and the


Jewish Agency became two different names for virtually the same
organization.

 Other landmark developments by the WZO and the Jewish Agency
under the Mandate included creation of the Asefat Hanivharim
(Elected Assembly--see Glossary) and the Vaad Leumi (National
Council) in 1920 to promote religious, educational, and welfare
services; establishment of the chief rabbinate in 1921;
centralized Zionist control of the Hebrew school system in 1919,
opening of the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa
in 1924, and dedication of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in
1925; and continued acquisition of land--largely via purchases by
the Jewish National Fund--increasing from 60,120 hectares in 1922
to about 155,140 hectares in 1939, and the concurrent growth of
Jewish urban and village centers.

 The architect of the centralized organizational structure that
dominated the Yishuv throughout the Mandate and afterward was
Ben-Gurion. To achieve a centralized Jewish economic
infrastructure in Palestine, he set out to form a large-scale
organized Jewish labor movement including both urban and
agricultural laborers. In 1919 he founded the first united Labor
Zionist party, Ahdut HaAvodah (Unity of Labor), which included
Poalei Tziyyon and affiliated socialist groups. This achievement
was followed in 1920 by the formation of the Histadrut, or
HaHistadrut HaKlalit shel HaOvdim B'Eretz Yisrael (General
Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel).

 The Histadrut was the linchpin of Ben-Gurion's reorganization of
the Yishuv. He designed the Histadrut to form a tightly
controlled autonomous Jewish economic state within the
Palestinian economy. It functioned as much more than a
traditional labor union, providing the Yishuv with social
services and security, setting up training centers, helping
absorb new immigrants, and instructing them in Hebrew. Its
membership was all-inclusive: any Jewish laborer was entitled to
belong and to obtain shares in the organization's assets. It
established a general fund supported by workers' dues that
provided all members with social services previously provided by
individual political parties. The Histadrut also set up Hevrat
HaOvdim (Society of Workers) to fund and manage large-scale
agricultural and industrial enterprises. Within a year of its
establishment in 1921, Hevrat HaOvdim had set up Tenuvah, the
agriculture marketing cooperative; Bank HaPoalim, the workers'
bank; and Soleh Boneh, the construction firm. Originally
established by Ahdut HaAvodah after the Arab riots in 1920, the
Haganah under the Histadrut rapidly became the major Jewish
defense force (see Historical Background, ch. 5).

 From the beginning, Ben-Gurion and Ahdut HaAvodah dominated the
Histadrut and through it the Yishuv. As secretary general of the
Histadrut, Ben-Gurion oversaw the development of the Jewish
economy and defense forces in the Yishuv. This centralized
control enabled the Yishuv to endure both severe economic
hardship and frequent skirmishes with the Arabs and British in
the late 1920s. The resilience of the Histadrut in the face of
economic depression enabled Ben-Gurion to consolidate his control
over the Yishuv. In 1929 many private entrepreneurs were forced
to look to Ahdut HaAvodah to pull them through hard economic
times. In 1930 Ahdut HaAvodah was powerful enough to absorb its


old ideological rival, HaPoel HaTzair. They merged to form
Mifleget Poalei Eretz Yisrael (better known by its acronym
Mapai), which would dominate political life of the State of
Israel for the next two generations (see Multiparty System, ch.
4).

 The hegemony of Ben-Gurion's Labor Zionism in the Yishuv did not
go unchallenged. The other major contenders for power were the
Revisionist Zionists led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, who espoused a
more liberal economic structure and a more zealous defense policy
than the Labor movement. Jabotinsky, who had become a hero to the
Yishuv because of his role in the defense of the Jews of
Jerusalem during the riots of April 1920, believed that there was
an inherent conflict between Zionist objectives and the
aspirations of Palestinian Arabs. He called for the establishment
of a strong Jewish military force capable of compelling the Arabs
to accept Zionist claims to Palestine. Jabotinsky also thought
that Ben-Gurion's focus on building a socialist Jewish economy in
Palestine needlessly diverted the Zionist movement from its true
goal: the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

 The appeal of Revisionist Zionism grew between 1924 and 1930 as
a result of an influx of Polish immigrants and the escalating
conflict with the Arabs. In the mid-1920s, a political and
economic crisis in Poland and the Johnson-Lodge Immigration Act
passed by the United States Congress, which curtailed mass
immigration to America, spurred Polish-Jewish immigration to
Israel. Between 1924 and 1931, approximately 80,000 Jews arrived
in Palestine from Central Europe. The Fourth Aliyah, as it was
called, differed from previous waves of Jewish immigration. The
new Polish immigrants, unlike the Bolshevik-minded immigrants of
the Second Aliyah, were primarily petty merchants and small-time
industrialists with their own capital to invest. Not attracted to
the Labor Party's collective settlements, they migrated to the
cities where they established the first semblance of an
industrialized urban Jewish economy in Palestine. Within five
years, the Jewish populations of Jerusalem and Haifa doubled, and
the city of Tel Aviv emerged. These new immigrants disdained the
socialism of the Histadrut and increasingly identified with the
laissez-faire economics espoused by Jabotinsky.

 Another reason for Jabotinsky's increasing appeal was the
escalation of Jewish-Arab violence. Jabotinsky's belief in the
inevitable conflict between Jews and Arabs and his call for the
establishment of an "iron wall" that would force the Arabs to
accept Zionism were vindicated in the minds of many Jews after a
confrontation over Jewish access to the Wailing Wall in August
1929 turned into a violent Arab attack on Jews in Hebron and
Jerusalem. By the time the fighting ended, 133 Jews had been
killed and 339 wounded. The causes of the disturbances were
varied: an inter-Palestinian power struggle, a significant
cutback in British military presence in Palestine, and a more
conciliatory posture by the new British authorities toward the
Arab position.

 The inability of the Haganah to protect Jewish civilians during
the 1929 riots led Jewish Polish immigrants who supported
Jabotinsky to break away from the Labor-dominated Haganah. They
were members of Betar, an activist Zionist movement founded in
1923 in Riga, Latvia, under the influence of Jabotinsky. The


first Betar congress met at Danzig in 1931 and elected Jabotinsky
as its leader. In 1937, a group of Haganah members left the
organization in protest against its "defensive" orientation and
joined forces with Betar to set up a new and more militant armed
underground organization, known as the Irgun. The formal name of
the Irgun was the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military
Organization), sometimes also called by the acronym, Etzel, from
the initial letters of the Hebrew name. The more extreme
terrorist group, known to the British as the Stern Gang, split
off from the Irgun in 1939. The Stern Gang was formally known as
the Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters for Israel's Freedom),
sometimes identified by the acronym Lehi (see Glossary). Betar
(which later formed a nucleus for Herut--see Appendix B) and
Irgun rejected the Histadrut/Haganah doctrine of havlaga
(self-restraint) and favored retaliation.

 Although the 1929 riots intensified the Labor-Revisionist split
over the tactics necessary to attain Jewish sovereignty in
Palestine, their respective visions of the indigenous Arab
population coalesced. Ben-Gurion, like Jabotinsky, came to
realize that the conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalisms
was irreconcilable and therefore that the Yishuv needed to
prepare for an eventual military confrontation with the Arabs. He
differed with Jabotinsky, however, on the need to make tactical
compromises in the short term to attain Jewish statehood at a
more propitious time. Whereas Jabotinsky adamantly put forth
maximalist demands, such as the immediate proclamation of
statehood in all of historic Palestine--on both banks of the
Jordan River--Ben-Gurion operated within the confines of the
Mandate. He understood better than Jabotinsky that timing was the
key to the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. The Yishuv in the
1930s lacked the necessary military or economic power to carry
out Jabotinsky's vision in the face of Arab and British
opposition.

 Another development resulting from the 1929 riots was the
growing animosity between the British Mandate Authority and the
Yishuv. The inactivity of the British while Arab bands were
attacking Jewish settlers strengthened Zionist anti-British
forces. Following the riots, the British set up the Shaw
Commission to determine the cause of the disturbances. The
commission report, dated March 30, 1930, refrained from blaming
either community but focused on Arab apprehensions about Jewish
labor practices and land purchases. The commission's allegations
were investigated by an agrarian expert, Sir John Hope Simpson,
who concluded that about 30 percent of the Arab population was
already landless and that the amount of land remaining in Arab
hands would be insufficient to divide among their offspring. This
led to the Passfield White Paper (October 1930), which
recommended that Jewish immigration be stopped if it prevented
Arabs from obtaining employment and that Jewish land purchases be
curtailed. Although the Passfield White Paper was publicly
repudiated by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, it served
to alienate further the Yishuv from the British.

 The year 1929 also saw the beginning of a severe economic crisis
in Germany that launched the rise of Adolf Hitler. Although both
Germany and Austria had long histories of anti-Semitism, the
genocide policies preached by Hitler were unprecedented. When in
January 1930 he became chancellor of the Reich, a massive wave of


mostly German Jewish immigration to Palestine ensued. Recorded
Jewish immigration was 37,000 in 1933, 45,000 in 1934, and an
all-time record for the Yishu of 61,000 in 1935. In addition, the
British estimated that a total of 40,000 Jews had entered
Palestine without legal certificates during the period from 1920
to 1939. Between 1929, the year of the Wailing Wall disturbances,
and 1936, the year the Palestinian Revolt began, the Jewish
population of Palestine increased from 170,000 or 17 percent of
the population, to 400,000, or approximately 31 percent of the
total. The immigration of thousands of German Jews accelerated
the pace of industrialization and made the concept of a Jewish
state in Palestine a more formidable reality.

The Palestinian Revolt, 1936-39

 By 1936 the increase in Jewish immigration and land acquisition,
the growing power of Hajj Amin al Husayni, and general Arab
frustration at the continuation of European rule, radicalized
increasing numbers of Palestinian Arabs. Thus, in April 1936 an
Arab attack on a Jewish bus led to a series of incidents that
escalated into a major Palestinian rebellion. An Arab Higher
Committee (AHC), a loose coalition of recently formed Arab
political parties, was created. It declared a national strike in
support of three basic demands: cessation of Jewish immigration,
an end to all further land sales to the Jews, and the
establishment of an Arab national government.

 The intensity of the Palestinian Revolt, at a time when Britain
was preparing for the possibility of another world war, led the
British to reorient their policy in Palestine. As war with
Germany became imminent, Britain's dependence on Middle Eastern
oil, and therefore the need for Arab goodwill, loomed
increasingly large in its strategic thinking. Jewish leverage in
the Foreign Office, on the other hand, had waned; the
pro-Zionists, Balfour and Samuels, had left the Foreign Office
and the new administration was not inclined toward the Zionist
position. Furthermore, the Jews had little choice but to support
Britain against Nazi Germany. Thus, Britain's commitment to a
Jewish homeland in Palestine dissipated, and the Mandate
authorities pursued a policy of appeasement with respect to the
Arabs.

 Britain's policy change in Palestine was not, however, easily
implemented. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration, successive
British governments had supported (or at least not rejected) a
Jewish national home in Palestine. The Mandate itself was
premised on that pledge. By the mid-1930s, the Yishuv had grown
to about 400,000, and the Jewish economic and political
structures in Palestine were well ensconced. The extent of the
Jewish presence and the rapidly deteriorating fate of European
Jewry meant that the British would have an extremely difficult
time extricating themselves from the Balfour Declaration.
Furthermore, the existing Palestinian leadership, dominated by
Hajj Amin al Husayni, was unwilling to grant members of the
Jewish community citizenship or to guarantee their safety if a
new Arab entity were to emerge. Thus, for the British the real
options were to impose partition, to pull out and leave the Jews
and Arabs to fight it out, or to stay and improvise.

 In 1937 the British, working with their regional Arab allies,


Amir Abdullah of Transjordan, King Ghazi of Iraq, and King Abdul
Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, mediated an end to the revolt with
the AHC. A Royal Commission on Palestine (known as the Peel
Commission) was immediately dispatched to Palestine. Its report,
issued in July 1937, described the Arab and Zionist positions and
the British obligation to each as irreconcilable and the existing
Mandate as unworkable. It recommended partition of Palestine into
Jewish and Arab states, with a retained British Mandate over
Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem and a corridor from Jerusalem
to the coast (see fig. 3).

 In 1937 the Twentieth Zionist Congress rejected the proposed
boundaries but agreed in principle to partition. Palestinian Arab
nationalists rejected any kind of partition. The British
government approved the idea of partition and sent a technical
team to make a detailed plan. This group, the Woodhead
Commission, reversed the Peel Commission's findings and reported
in November 1937 that partition was impracticable; this view in
its turn was accepted. The Palestinian Revolt broke out again in
the autumn of 1937. The British put down the revolt using harsh
measures, shutting down the AHC and deporting many Palestinian
Arab leaders.

 With their leadership residing outside Palestine, the Arabs were
unable to match the Zionists' highly sophisticated organization.
Another outcome of the Palestinian Revolt was the involvement of
the Arab states as advocates of the Palestinian Arabs. Whereas
Britain had previously tended to deal with its commitments in
Palestine as separate from its commitments elsewhere in the
Middle East, by 1939 pan-Arab pressure carried increasing weight
in London.

 In the Yishuv, the Palestinian Revolt reinforced the already
firm belief in the need for a strong Jewish defense network.
Finally, the Arab agricultural boycott that began in 1936 forced
the Jewish economy into even greater self-sufficiency.

World War II and Zionism

 In May 1939, the British published a White Paper that marked the
end of its commitment to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration.
It provided for the establishment of a Palestinian (Arab) state
within ten years and the appointment of Palestinian ministers to
begin taking over the government as soon as "peace and order"
were restored to Palestine; 75,000 Jews would be allowed into
Palestine over the next five years, after which all immigration
would be subject to Arab consent; all further land sales would be
severely restricted. The 1939 White Paper met a mixed Arab
reception and was rejected by the AHC. The Jewish Agency rejected
it emphatically, branding it as a total repudiation of Balfour
and Mandate obligations. In September 1939, at the outset of
World War II, Ben-Gurion, then chairman of the Jewish Agency,
declared: "We shall fight the war against Hitler as if there were
no White Paper, and we shall fight the White Paper as if there
were no war."

 Ben-Gurion's statement of 1939 set the tone for Jewish Agency
policy and operations during World War II. In May 1940, however,
when Winston Churchill, a longtime Zionist sympathizer, became
prime minister, it appeared that the 1939 White Paper might be


rescinded. A brief period of close British-Jewish military
cooperation ensued, and there was talk (which never came to
fruition) of establishing a Jewish division within the British
Army. The British trained Jewish commando units, the first
elements of the famous Palmach (Pelugot Mahatz--Shock Forces--see
Glossary)--the strategic reserve of the Haganah--and they also
gave Jewish volunteers intensive training in sabotage,
demolition, and partisan warfare. Ironically, this training
proved indispensable in the Yishuv's efforts after the war to
force the British to withdraw from Palestine.

 The entry of Italy into the war in May 1940, which brought the
war closer to the Middle East, convinced Churchill and his
military advisers that the immigration provisions of the White
Paper needed to be enforced so as not to antagonize the Arabs.
Thus, the British strictly enforced the immigration limits at a
time when European Jewry sought desperately to reach the shores
of Palestine. Despite rising British-Jewish tensions, thousands
of Jewish volunteers served in the British army, and on September
14, 1944, the Jewish Brigade was established.

 The event that did the most to turn the Zionist movement against
Churchill's Britain was the Struma affair. The Struma, a ship
carrying Jewish refugees from Romania, was denied entry into
Palestine, after which the ship sank in the Black Sea leaving all
but two of its passengers dead. In the aftermath of the loss of
the Struma in April 1942, young Menachem Begin, then a soldier in
the Polish army-in-exile, first came to Palestine. Begin was a
disciple of Jabotinsky, but he rejected Jabotinsky's pro-British
sympathies. Upon entering Palestine, Begin immediately set out to
draw together the whole underground, including Lehi, in
preparation for a Jewish war of liberation against the British.

 By 1943 as news regarding Nazi persecution of Jews in Europe
increased, the Irgun and Stern Gang stepped up harassment of
British forces in an attempt to obtain unrestricted Jewish
immigration. In November 1944, Lord Moyne, the British
minister-resident in Cairo and a close personal friend of
Churchill, was assassinated by Lehi. Lord Moyne's assassination
alienated the British prime minister, who until then had
supported a Jewish national home in Palestine. Subsequently, no
British government considered setting up a Jewish state in
Palestine. The assassination also led the Jewish Agency's
clandestine military arm, Haganah, to cooperate with the British
against the Irgun.

 Another result of the anti-Zionist trend in British policy was
the Yishuv's increasing reliance on the United States. In May
1942, Zionist policy and objectives were clarified at a
conference of Zionist parties held at the Biltmore Hotel in New
York City. This conference was called at the initiative of
Ben-Gurion, who had come to solicit the support of American Jews.
Ben-Gurion was determined to seek a resolution that Jewish
immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state
would proceed despite British opposition. Weizmann, who objected
to the idea of severing ties with Britain, was outflanked at the
conference. The Biltmore Program adopted at the conference and
approved by the Zionist General Council in November 1942 called
for unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine and control of
immigration by the Jewish commonwealth, the word commonwealth


thus replacing homeland.

The Holocaust

 The impact of the Holocaust on world Jewry, either on
contemporaries of the horror or on succeeding generations, cannot
be exaggerated. The scope of Hitler's genocidal efforts can be
quickly summarized. In 1939 about 10 million of the estimated 16
million Jews in the world lived in Europe. By 1945 almost 6
million had been killed, most of them in the nineteen main
concentration camps. Of prewar Czechoslovakia's 281,000 Jews,
about 4,000 survived. Before the German conquest and occupation,
the Jewish population of Greece was estimated to be between
65,000 and 72,000; about 2,000 survived. Only 5,000 of Austria's
prewar Jewish community of 70,000 escaped. In addition, an
estimated 4.6 million Jews were killed in Poland and in those
areas of the Soviet Union seized and occupied by the Germans.

 The magnitude of the Holocaust cast a deep gloom over the Jewish
people and tormented the spirit of Judaism. The faith of
observant Jews was shaken, and the hope of the assimilationists
smashed. Not only had 6 million Jews perished, but the Allies,
who by 1944 could have easily disrupted the operation of the
death camps, did nothing. In this spiritual vacuum, Zionism alone
emerged as a viable Jewish response to this demonic
anti-Semitism. Zionist thinkers since the days of Pinsker had
made dire predictions concerning the fate of European Jewry. For
much of world Jewry that had suffered centuries of persecution,
Zionism and its call for a Jewish national home and for the
radical transformation of the Jew from passive victim to
self-sufficient citizen residing in his own homeland became the
only possible positive response to the Holocaust. Zionism unified
the Jewish people, entered deeply into the Jewish spirit, and
became an integral part of Jewish identity and religious
experience.

Prelude to Statehood

 The British position in Palestine at the end of World War II was
becoming increasingly untenable. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish
Holocaust survivors temporarily housed in displaced persons camps
in Europe were clamoring to be settled in Palestine. The fate of
these refugees aroused international public opinion against
British policy. Moreover, the administration of President Harry S
Truman, feeling morally bound to help the Jewish refugees and
exhorted by a large and vocal Jewish community, pressured Britain
to change its course in Palestine. Postwar Britain depended on
American economic aid to reconstruct its war-torn economy.
Furthermore, Britain's staying power in its old colonial holdings
was waning; in 1947 British rule in India came to an end and
Britain informed Washington that London could no longer carry the
military burden of strengthening Greece and Turkey against
communist encroachment.

 In May 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry unanimously
declared its opposition to the White Paper of 1939 and proposed,
among other recommendations, that the immigration to Palestine of
100,000 European Jews be authorized at once. The British Mandate
Authority rejected the proposal, stating that such immigration
was impossible while armed organizations in Palestine--both Arab


and Jewish--were fighting the authority and disrupting public
order.

 Despite American, Jewish, and international pressure and the
recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the
new Labour Party government of Prime Minister Clement Atlee and
his foreign minister, Ernest Bevin, continued to enforce the
policy articulated in the White Paper. British adamancy on
immigration radicalized the Yishuv. Under Ben-Gurion's direction,
the Jewish Agency decided in October 1945 to unite with Jewish
dissident groups in a combined rebellion against the British
administration in Palestine. The combined Jewish resistance
movement organized illegal immigration and kidnapping of British
officials in Palestine and sabotaged the British infrastructure
in Palestine. In response Bevin ordered a crackdown on the
Haganah and arrested many of its leaders. While the British
concentrated their efforts on the Haganah, the Irgun and Lehi
carried out terrorist attacks against British forces, the most
spectacular of which was the bombing of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem in July 1946. The latter event led Ben-Gurion to sever
his relationship with the Irgun and Lehi.

 By 1947 Palestine was a major trouble spot in the British
Empire, requiring some 100,000 troops and a huge maintenance
budget. On February 18, 1947, Bevin informed the House of Commons
of the government's decision to present the Palestine problem to
the United Nations (UN). On May 15, 1947, a special session of
the UN General Assembly established the United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), consisting of eleven members.
The UNSCOP reported on August 31 that a majority of its members
supported a geographically complex system of partition into
separate Arab and Jewish states, a special international status
for Jerusalem, and an economic union linking the three members.
Backed by both the United States and the Soviet Union, the plan
was adopted after two months of intense deliberations as the UN
General Assembly Resolution of November 29, 1947. Although
considering the plan defective in terms of their expectations
from the League of Nations Mandate twenty-five years earlier, the
Zionist General Council stated willingness in principle to accept
partition. The League of Arab States (Arab League) Council,
meeting in December 1947, said it would take whatever measures
were required to prevent implementation of the resolution.

 Despite the passage of the UN partition plan, the situation in
Palestine in early 1948 did not look auspicious for the Yishuv.
When the AHC rejected the plan immediately after its passage and
called for a general strike, violence between Arabs and Jews
mounted. Many Jewish centers, including Jerusalem, were besieged
by the Arabs. In January 1948, President Truman, warned by the
United States Department of State that a Jewish state was not
viable, reversed himself on the issue of Palestine, agreeing to
postpone partition and to transfer the Mandate to a trusteeship
council. Moreover, the British forces in Palestine sided with the
Arabs and attempted to thwart the Yishuv's attempts to arm
itself.

 In mid-March the Yishuv's military prospects changed
dramatically after receiving the first clandestine shipment of
heavy arms from Czechoslovakia. The Haganah went on the offensive
and, in a series of operations carried out from early April until


mid-May, successfully consolidated and created communications
links with those Jewish settlements designated by the UN to
become the Jewish state. In the meantime, Weizmann convinced
Truman to reverse himself and pledge his support for the proposed
Jewish state. In April 1948, the Palestinian Arab community
panicked after Begin's Irgun killed 250 Arab civilians at the
village of Dayr Yasin near Jerusalem. The news of Dayr Yasin
precipitated a flight of the Arab population from areas with
large Jewish populations.

 On May 14, 1948, Ben-Gurion and his associates proclaimed the
establishment of the State of Israel. On the following day
Britain relinquished the Mandate at 6:00 P.M. and the United
States announced de facto recognition of Israel. Soviet
recognition was accorded on May 18; by April 1949, fifty-three
nations, including Britain, had extended recognition. In May
1949, the UN General Assembly, on recommendation of the Security
Council, admitted Israel to the UN.

 Meanwhile, Arab military forces began their invasion of Israel
on May 15. Initially these forces consisted of approximately
8,000 to 10,000 Egyptians, 2,000 to 4,000 Iraqis, 4,000 to 5,000
Transjordanians, 3,000 to 4,000 Syrians, 1,000 to 2,000 Lebanese,
and smaller numbers of Saudi Arabian and Yemeni troops, about
25,000 in all. Israeli forces composed of the Haganah, such
irregular units as the Irgun and the Stern Gang, and women's
auxiliaries numbered 35,000 or more. By October 14, Arab forces
deployed in the war zones had increased to about 55,000,
including not more than 5,000 irregulars of Hajj Amin al
Husayni's Palestine Liberation Force. The Israeli military forces
had increased to approximately 100,000. Except for the
British-trained Arab Legion of Transjordan, Arab units were
largely ill-trained and inexperienced. Israeli forces, usually
operating with interior lines of communication, included an
estimated 20,000 to 25,000 European World War II veterans.

 By January 1949, Jewish forces held the area that was to define
Israel's territory until June 1967, an area that was
significantly larger than the area designated by the UN partition
plan. The part of Palestine remaining in Arab hands was limited
to that held by the Arab Legion of Transjordan and the Gaza area
held by Egypt at the cessation of hostilities. The area held by
the Arab Legion was subsequently annexed by Jordan and is
commonly referred to as the West Bank (see Glossary). Jerusalem
was divided. The Old City, the Western Wall and the site of
Solomon's Temple, upon which stands the Muslim mosque called the
Dome of the Rock, remained in Jordanian hands; the New City lay
on the Israeli side of the line. Although the West Bank remained
under Jordanian suzerainty until 1967, only two
countries--Britain and Pakistan--granted de jure recognition of
the annexation.

 Early in the conflict, on May 29, 1948, the UN Security Council
established the Truce Commission headed by a UN mediator, Swedish
diplomat Folke Bernadotte, who was assassinated in Jerusalem on
September 17, 1948. He was succeeded by Ralph Bunche, an
American, as acting mediator. The commission, which later evolved
into the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization-Palestine
(UNSTOP), attempted to devise new settlement plans and arranged
the truces of June 11-July 8 and July 19-October 14, 1948.


Armistice talks were initiated with Egypt in January 1949, and an
armistice agreement was concluded with Egypt on February 24, with
Lebanon on March 23, with Transjordan on April 3, and with Syria
on July 20. Iraq did not enter into an armistice agreement but
withdrew its forces after turning over its positions to
Transjordanian units.


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This file extracted from Dept. of Commerce, Economics & Statistic's Division's
Mar. 1994 NATIONAL TRADE DATA BANK (NDTB) CD-ROM, SuDoc C1.88:994/3/V.2
Processed 4/20/1994 by RCM (UM-St. Louis Libraries / / AAH60010