CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As 1945 began, three independent Arab States – Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq – wanted to know what Britain and the United States intended with regard to the Jewish future in Palestine. Churchill continued to seek a Zionist solution whereby the 517,000 Jews then in Palestine, just under a third of the Arab population, would have their own State in which they would not be at the mercy of a hostile Arab majority, but able to govern themselves, albeit in only about a third of the area they had hoped for.
In February, off the coast of Egypt, Churchill called on Roosevelt on board the American warship Quincy. Roosevelt was gravely ill; Churchill had already been shocked at his pallor at the Yalta Conference a week earlier, and felt that he did not have long to live. He had in fact only two months. Shortly before Churchill called on him on Quincy, Roosevelt had spent several hours with the Saudi monarch, Ibn Saud. It was Churchill who had urged Ibn Saud to meet Roosevelt, who, Churchill told the Saudi monarch ‘is also one of my most cherished friends.’1
The President’s meeting with Ibn Saud on 14 February was not encouraging for Churchill’s hopes of a future Jewish State in Palestine. According to the secret American account of the President’s meeting with Ibn Saud, a copy of which was sent to Churchill, Roosevelt began the discussion by asking the King for his advice regarding ‘Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe.’ The King replied, ‘The Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven.’ The Jews whose homes had been ‘completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them.’2
Colonel William A. Eddy, who had accompanied Ibn Saud by sea from Jeddah, noted that Ibn Saud had remarked about the Jewish survivors: ‘Give them and their descendants the choicest lands and homes of the Germans who had oppressed them.’3
Roosevelt replied that the Jews were ‘reluctant to go back to Germany,’ and that they nurtured a ‘sentimental’ desire to go to Palestine. Ibn Saud countered by telling Roosevelt: ‘Make the enemy and the oppressor pay; that is how we Arabs wage war. Amends should be made by the criminal, not by the innocent bystander. What injury have Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the “Christian” Germans who stole their homes and lives. Let the Germans pay.’
Arabs and Jews ‘could never cooperate’ Ibn Saud told Roosevelt, ‘neither in Palestine nor in any other country,’ and he warned of ‘the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs’ as a result of continued Jewish immigration and Jewish land purchase. The Arabs ‘would choose to die,’ the King told the President, ‘rather than yield their land to the Jews.’4 It was the Arab custom, Ibn Saud explained, ‘to distribute survivors and victims of battle among the victorious tribes in accordance with their numbers and their supplies of food and water. In the Allied camp there are fifty countries, among whom Palestine is small, land-poor, and has already been assigned more than its quota of European refugees.’5
Charles Bohlen, an American diplomat on board Quincy, wrote in his memoirs that Ibn Saud also told Roosevelt that in the past there had never been ‘any conflict between the two branches of the Semitic race in the Middle East.’ What had ‘changed the whole picture was the immigration from Eastern Europe of people who were technically and culturally on a higher level than the Arabs.’ As a result, the Arabs ‘had greater difficulty in surviving economically.’ The fact that these ‘energetic Europeans were Jewish’ was not the cause of the trouble, the King said, ‘it was their superior skills and culture.’6
The President then, according to the secret record, told the King he had heard from Churchill that the Jews might be settled in Libya, ‘which was far larger than Palestine and thinly populated.’ Ibn Saud rejected this at once, telling Roosevelt that ‘it would be unfair to the Muslims of North Africa.’ He went on to tell Roosevelt that ‘the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honour of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation the United States will support them.’
Roosevelt assured Ibn Saud that ‘he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people,’ nor would his government change in its policy in Palestine ‘without full and prior consultation with both Jews and Arabs.’ Roosevelt suggested that the King support an Arab mission to Britain and the United States to press the argument against Zionist aspirations, because, said the President, ‘many people in America and England are misinformed.’ The King replied that such a mission might be useful, but ‘more important to him was what the President had just told him concerning his own policy toward the Arab people.’7
After the meeting with Ibn Saud, Roosevelt told his senior advisers that Arabs and Jews were on a ‘collision course’ toward war in Palestine, and that on his return to Washington he planned to meet with congressional leaders to seek ‘some new policy that would head it off.’8 On 5 April, only a week before his death, Roosevelt wrote to Ibn Saud from Washington, reaffirming his promise made on board Quincy that he would ‘take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive Branch of this Government, which might prove hostile to the Arab people.’9
This commitment was at complete variance with what Churchill believed to be Roosevelt’s – and his own – support for a Jewish State in Palestine. In describing his meeting with Ibn Saud, Roosevelt told Congress how his change of mind had come to pass: ‘On the problem of Arabia,’ he said, ‘I learned more about that whole problem – the Moslem problem, the Jewish problem – by talking with Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in the exchange of two or three dozen letters.’10 On hearing this, one of Roosevelt’s senior aides remarked sarcastically, ‘The only thing he learned was what everyone already knew, that the Arabs didn’t want any more Jews in Palestine.’11
Churchill understood the meaning of Roosevelt’s unexpected commitment to the Arab point of view with regard to Palestine – whether based on whim or oil. Roosevelt had no sense or sensitivity, as Churchill did, for the idealism and enterprise of Zionism, something Churchill had seen first hand fourteen years earlier. Churchill recognised Ibn Saud’s inflexibility with regard to the Jews, but he was committed to trying to persuade the King to adopt a positive position towards a future Jewish State in Palestine, quite apart from the possibility of an additional Jewish presence in Libya.
Leaving Quincy, Churchill was driven to Cairo, from where, on 17 February, he travelled through the desert to the Hotel du Lac on Lake Fayyum, where Ibn Saud was staying. One of those British officials present at Fayyum, Laurence Grafftey Smith, the newly appointed Minister to Saudi Arabia, who was on his way to Riyadh. He later recalled that Churchill had told him before the meeting with Ibn Saud, ‘that in deference to the view of Eden and the Foreign Office, he was not going to mention Palestine to the King.’12 The oil-rich kingdom was not to be pushed into the arms of the United States. Grafftey Smith later reflected with pride that he had succeeded in persuading Churchill not to mention Palestine.13
Grafftey Smith was wrong. During Churchill’s conversation with Ibn Saud, as Churchill himself reported to the War Cabinet two days later, he had raised the Palestine issue without prevarication. As the War Cabinet noted, Churchill ‘had pleaded the case of the Jews with His Majesty but without, he thought, making a great deal of impression, Ibn Saud quoting the Koran on the other side, but he had not failed to impress upon the King the importance which we attached to this question.’14
The official account of what Churchill and Ibn Saud discussed was to remain secret until 2006, when I requested access to it while writing this book. It shows that at the start of the discussion, Ibn Saud explained to Churchill that ‘his position was very difficult. The Jews in Palestine were continuously increasing in number; they were even forming a sort of Government of their own, with a Prime Minister, a Foreign Minister and a Minister of Defence. They also had formed a military force of 30,000 men with modern arms and equipment. They had thus become a great danger to the Arabs.’ If it was ‘only a question of Jews and Arabs,’ the King explained, ‘the Arabs would fight the Jews, and, even if they were not victorious, they would not mind because they would go to Paradise.’ He had continually advised moderation to the Arabs with regard to Palestine, ‘but he feared that a clash might come and then he would be in a great difficulty.’ He did not wish to get involved in such a conflict, which would also bring Saudi Arabia into conflict with Britain.
Churchill sought to assure Ibn Saud that Britain would not allow the Jews to attack the Arabs with armed forces. ‘We had control of the seas and could easily deprive them of supplies. At the same time the Jews must have a place to live in – that is to say, in Palestine. He had never been in favour of Palestine being a National Home, but of a National Home in Palestine.’ Churchill pointed out that the work done by the Jews in cultivating desert areas in Palestine ‘was advantageous to the Arabs, whose population and welfare were increased thereby.’ He hoped that he might count on the King’s assistance to promote ‘a definite and lasting settlement’ between the Jews and the Arabs.
Ibn Saud said that he ‘counted on British friendship with the Arabs and on British justice.’ In response, Churchill assured him ‘of our friendship with the Arabs and pointed out that we had done a lot for the Arabs since the last war in establishing Arab States in Iraq and Transjordan.’ But, as the account of the discussion noted, he felt ‘that he could not altogether satisfy’ Ibn Saud regarding Palestine.15
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The OSS wanted to know what Churchill had discussed in Cairo. In a top secret report on 21 February, its Middle East agency informed Washington that it had learned that at a series of meetings in Egypt between Churchill, Eden, King Farouk of Egypt, President Kuwatli of Syria, and Ibn Saud, ‘discussions centered on the question of the partitioning of Palestine to an independent coastal Jewish State and to an Arab State which would be “fused” with Greater Syria. It is reported that the plan, including the creation of Greater Syria, was accepted by all parties at the meetings, but that Churchill made it clear that the plan must have the approval of the British Parliament before it could be put into effect. Under this plan Lebanon is said to have been promised complete autonomy, but as part of Greater Syria.’16
Greater Syria was considered by Arab nationalists to include Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. It was not in fact to the British Parliament, as the OSS believed, but to a post-war Middle East peace conference that Churchill looked to secure an independent Jewish State in Palestine. Churchill was under no illusions as to the difficulties of his task. On 25 March he was shown a letter from Emir Abdullah of Transjordan warning him unequivocally: ‘The inhabitants of the Arab world are in a ferment over the future of Palestine.’ One reason, Abdullah explained, was that ‘The Arabs believe at present that the Jews want to have Palestine only as a means of their future domination of the whole Arab world economically as well as politically.’17 Six weeks later Churchill was shown an equally long and emphatic letter from Ibn Saud, insisting that the formation of a Jewish State in Palestine ‘will be a deadly blow to the Arabs and a constant threat to peace.’ The ‘ambitions of the Jews,’ the King insisted, ‘are not confined to Palestine alone. The preparations they have made show that they intend to take hostile action against neighbouring Arab countries.’ The Jews were preparing in Palestine ‘to create a form of Nazi-Fascism within sight of the democracies and in the midst of the Arab countries…’
Part of the King’s letter was an historical complaint. The Biblical Joshua had captured the land of the Canaanites – ‘an Arab tribe’ – ‘with great cruelty and barbarity.’ The Arabs had been in Palestine since 3,500 years before Christ. They had ruled it ‘alone or with the Turks’ for 1,300 years. The ‘disjointed rule of the Jews did not exceed 380 confused and sporadic years,’ ending in 332 BC. For 2,200 years ‘there have been few Jews there and they have had no influence … The Jews were merely aliens who had come to Palestine at intervals and had then been turned out over two thousand years ago.’18
Churchill knew these arguments well. He had first heard them, and variants of them, and had sought to rebut them, twenty-four years earlier in Jerusalem. He had heard Ibn Saud reiterate them at Fayyum. He was nevertheless convinced that the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine would be one of his main post-war tasks, and challenges, and that he had the historical justification as well as the determination and skill to bring that State into being. Churchill’s plans were never to be discussed, however, either in the British Parliament, as the OSS had imagined, or at a post-war peace conference on the Middle East that Churchill had envisaged, and where he hoped Ibn Saud could be persuaded to support a sovereign independent Jewish State as part of an Arab Federation of which Ibn Saud would be the head. ‘It is my earnest hope that our deliberations will produce a result that will be just to the rights and interests of all concerned,’ Churchill replied to Ibn Saud’s complaints.19
Within five months of the meetings on board Quincy and at Fayyum, the Conservative Party was defeated at the British General Election, and a new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, found himself in charge of Britain – and of Palestine. Churchill, who became Leader of the Opposition, could only watch in frustration, disbelief and anger as the final act of the Mandate drama unfolded.