CHAPTER FOUR
British paramountcy in the Middle East prevailed until the ‘beginning of the Second World War, and arguably lasted till its conclusion. The Russians had no real opportunity to penetrate the area. The French were preoccupied with problems in Syria and did not interfere with the British mandates. Some Americans were worried that Britain was securing control of too large a share of the world’s potential oil resources, and American commercial interests were established in Saudi Arabia, but at that time these did not seriously challenge British predominance. To some extent Britain controlled the area in the name of the League of Nations and had to make reports to the Mandates Commission. In effect, British paramountcy depended on a relationship between Briton and Arab, one that was perhaps based on illusion or legend, but which nevertheless secured British authority in the area for over two decades. Even before the enigmas surrounding Lawrence of Arabia made the public at large aware of the existence of the Arabs, an élite had acquired a fascination for the Middle East with the publication of works like A. W. Kinglake’s Eothen or Traces of Travel brought Home from the East, impressions of a tour undertaken in 1834, or Edward FitzGerald’s mistranslation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, illustrated in a mysterious oriental style by Willy Pogăany but reflecting more the influence of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession. The English were supposed to have a hunger for wide, empty and forbidden spaces. Arabia fulfilled that need, at least in the imagination. Richard Burton travelled to Mecca in disguise, and left an erotic literature for posterity. Charles Doughty dared to journey as a Christian. Even eccentric women ventured into the desert. Archaeologists and their excavations – be it Paul Emile Botta discovering Nineveh, the exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1854 of the reliefs at Nimrud brought back by Austen Henry Layard, or Major Henry Creswicke Rawlinson’s decipherment of the memorial to King Darius – excited an educated public.1 A few saw Petra and travelled down the Nile. For many public school products the Middle East remained an area in which they could apply Arnold’s principles of discipline and moral leadership.2 They were able to relate to the Arab leaders who had been chosen. They appreciated their courtesy. The Arab hierarchy responded in return: it sent its sons to Harrow and Sandhurst. A section of the British upper and upper-middle classes came to respect and admire the Arabs, and particularly the bedouin. The desert seemed clean. On the whole the British administrative structure established in the Middle East showed at least a façade of equality to the governed. There was a liberal tradition and even an idealism. The social snobberies so prevalent in the Indian subcontinent3 were largely absent, except in Egypt. Above all, British policy in the Middle East appeared to be flexible, and to respond to local needs.
Another section of the British Establishment, however, was subject to rather different influences. An education based on Old Testament Protestant Christianity, combined in some cases with a guilt over latent anti-Semitism, proved fertile ground for the Zionists. Britain was also the paramount power in Palestine. The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and his persecution of the Jews, forced new difficulties on the country committed to securing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Preoccupations in le Grand Liban, Syria and the Lebanon, meant that France was never able to present a serious challenge to British para-mountcy in the Middle East during the inter-war years. A constitution, drafted in Paris, was imposed on the Lebanon in 1926. It established the principle that seats in Parliament and the Cabinet should be divided between the Christians and the Muslims, effectively giving the Christians a working majority. The offices of President and Prime Minister were also allocated on religious grounds. In Syria, the revolt by the Druses in 1925 over local grievances, leading to an alliance with nationalists in Damascus, resulted in a constitution in 1930 establishing a parliamentary republic, with France retaining control over foreign affairs and security, but that was suspended from 1932 to 1937. Late in 1936, following a series of independent treaties in the British Middle East, France negotiated similar agreements with Syria and the Lebanon, but these were never ratified by the French government as the Popular Front fell. Fear of the coming war meant that France was concerned over the loyalty of its Arab population in North Africa: that could be inspired by other examples to revolt. The prospect of war also led to France’s agreeing to the incorporation of the ‘Syrian’ sanjak of Alexandretta into Turkey, a move resented by Syrian nationalists which left a bitter legacy. France sometimes attempted to impose its language and culture, something the Christians in the Lebanon continued to accept, but which was not liked by Arabic speakers. The administrative structure, however, was efficient, and Lebanese commerce flourished, even if the profits were often repatriated to the metropolitan state.4
The area of greatest British control was Transjordan, though there were only between six and eight Britons in the country. Colonel Henry Cox replaced H. St John Philby as British Resident in 1924, and remained there until 1939. A man of considerable administrative capacity, Cox presided at a time when Abdullah recognized Transjordan’s total dependence on Britain. Two Britons – Colonel F. G. Peake, who trained the villagers in self-defence, and General John Glubb, who was largely responsible for the bedouin, whom he saw as the corner-stone of the whole state – pacified Transjordan with the Arab Legion, protected it from the Wahhabi warriors and fashioned it into a unified state.5
In the Sudan British authority was also almost absolute. From 1899 that country had been governed as an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, though, with the establishment of the protectorate over Egypt, British control was extended. In 1924 extreme Egyptian nationalists, using the methods of Sinn Fein adopted in 1919, murdered Sir Lee Stack, the Governor-General of the Sudan and Commander-in-Chief (Sirdar) of the Egyptian army, in a street in Cairo. Britain forced the evacuation of the Egyptian army from the Sudan, and a new Sudan force under British control was established in 1925. In effect, the Sudan was governed by a devoted British Civil Service. Egypt tried to re-establish its former position through negotiation, but it was only with the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of 1936 that the Condominium Agreement of 1899 was reaffirmed, and even then Britain remained formally the predominant power, with Egypt having only a share in the higher administrative and judicial posts of the Sudan government.6
The murder of Stack led to the fall of Zaghlul in Egypt. Allenby’s subsequent resolute action meant that he was replaced by Lord Lloyd, a Tory who insisted on maintaining key British officials. When Labour came to office in 1929 Sir Percy Lorraine took over, but he could not reach an agreement with Nahhas Pasha, the new head of the Wafd, which in any case was ousted from power by King Fuad in 1931. It was only really with Mussolini’s occupation of Abyssinia in 1935, and his expansionist policies in the Mediterranean, that Britain started to negotiate a new treaty to safeguard its position in Egypt. An uprising, similar to the riots of 1919, necessitated this new approach. With the growing menace in Europe, Britain could not afford to be preoccupied with quelling revolutions in areas of strategic significance. Sir Miles Lampson, who became the British ambassador in Cairo, was the principal architect of the consolidation of Britain’s position. Working with Nahhas Pasha, he tried to check the excesses of the young King Farouk. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, in effect, did not lessen Britain’s power or prestige in Egypt. Although British occupation formally came to an end, British troops remained in the country, though provision was made for their gradual withdrawal to the Suez Canal Zone and Sinai, and a limit of 10,000 land forces and 400 air personnel. In the event of war Britain had the right of reoccupation and the unrestricted use of Egyptian roads, ports and airports. It was in domestic affairs that Egyptians enjoyed some new freedoms. Lampson’s discreet policy at least allowed the Egyptians a feeling of independence, even though the reality was British paramountcy.7
In contrast to Egypt, Iraq formally achieved an independence with the signing of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty on 30 June 1930. The treaty, however, bound Iraq to have ‘full and frank consultations with Great Britain in all matters of foreign policy’. Iraq was not a homogeneous country: possibly Britain wanted to avoid any obligation to maintain the peace between the various feuding elements. Iraq had achieved a substantial degree of independence in 1925, but even then nationalist activities in the new parliament had endangered British policy. A principal British concern had been to secure the accession of Mosul to Iraq, and to prevent Turkey from occupying an area that could then leave the British Middle East with a northern frontier that could not be defended. Potential oil resources in Mosul were a factor, though not a dominant one. Washington, however, accused Britain of trying to assume control of the oil resources of Mesopotamia. This was resolved in 1929 with a private agreement between the British owners of the Turkish Petroleum Company, the French Compagnie des Pétroles, and two American companies, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum, to form the Iraq Petroleum Company. After major discoveries in 1927, with the opening of the pipeline from Kirkuk to the Mediterranean, Iraq became by the mid-1930s the second largest oil producer in the Middle East.8 On 21 November 1925 the Permanent Court of International Justice awarded Mosul to Iraq, and with it came Kurds, Turcomans and Assyrians, making one-quarter of the population of the new state non-Arab. The Arabs in Iraq were themselves divided: there was a Shiah majority, and a politically dominant Sunni minority. The bedouin also feuded among themselves. To secure Iraq’s admission to the League of Nations in 1932, Britain had to persuade some members of the League that Iraq was able to maintain its independence. Feisal died in 1933. His heir, Ghazi, encouraged factionalism, and in 1936 army officers seized power in the first of a series of military coups that dominated the life of the state. It was a group of officers known as ‘The Seven’ which secured power in 1938 for Nuri al-Said, Feisal’s former chief of staff. This pro-British civilian dominated Iraq for twenty years, and tried to secure British interests there. On Ghazi’s death in 1939 it was The Seven and Nuri al-Said who appointed the Regent of the Crown Prince Feisal. In return it was British support in 1937 that ensured that the question of navigation rights on the Shatt al-Arab River between Iraq and Iran went in Iraq’s favour. But Iraq was a fragmented country, and the nationalists resented Britain. Italy and Germany were both active in Baghdad and there was considerable Italian, German and Japanese commercial penetration. Nuri al-Said felt the German minister, Dr Grobba, did more than anyone else to damage the Anglo-Iraq relationship. As an independent country Iraq also became a refuge for disaffected elements from Syria and Palestine. The Mufti of Jerusalem arrived in Baghdad in October 1939.9
Iraq’s neighbour Iran (Persia) was important to Britain because of its oil production. Before the Second World War the Americans were Britain’s principal source of oil. In 1938 57 per cent of Britain’s oil came from there. But 22 per cent originated in the Middle East, and of that 18 per cent was supplied by Iran. Iran’s leader, Reza Shah, disliked foreigners. When the royalties from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company fell in 1932 with the world economic crisis, he unilaterally cancelled the concession. Britain took Reza Shah to the League of Nations in 1933, but in the end he emerged with a more advantageous agreement. In Kuwait, later Britain’s principal supplier of oil, there were disagreements between American and British companies between 1932 and 1933 over concession applications, but in the end the two companies applied jointly for a concession. In the Persian Gulf the British government was prepared to support the applications of the Iraq Petroleum Company for concessions: but this proved unnecessary and the rulers of the smaller sheikhdoms signed in 1938. In Saudi Arabia the Iraq Petroleum Company was unsuccessful: in 1933 Ibn Saud granted a concession to Standard Oil of California. In 1944 the Texas Oil Company, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum joined Standard Oil of California to form the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1944. Similarly, American concessionaries secured rights in Bahrain.10
Elsewhere in Arabia, Britain felt threatened by the Yemen, bordering on the Aden protectorate which had signed a forty-year peace and friendship treaty with London in 1934. Through the efforts of Harold Ingrams, an administrative structure was devised of an eastern and western division. This protected Aden colony, and its port which had become a bunkering station and a vital link in the structure of the British Empire. Throughout the region precise boundaries were not defined.11
With the exception of Saudi Arabia and the Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf were under direct or indirect British control. Britain was the paramount power in the Middle East. The Americans had educational and missionary interests, particularly in Egypt and the Lebanon, and private oil companies with considerable concessions, but these never effectively challenged British suzerainty. France might have wanted to do this, but was prevented by its preoccupations with le Grand Liban. On the whole Britain had good relations with the old Arab ruling élite it had largely chosen. At times British policy might have seemed paternalist, but it was flexible. Britain ensured comparative stability in the area for over two decades. At a time of nationalist stirrings in parts of the Empire, Britain needed to maintain at least a façade of imperial strength. With hindsight, it is possible to exaggerate the importance of commercial interests and particularly oil. During the inter-war years the Middle East was, perhaps, regarded more as of strategic importance as a link securing the communications of the British Empire. Among the new generation of Arabs emerging, a more resentful view of British paramountcy could be discerned. In 1935 Gamal Abdel Nasser took part in a high school demonstration demanding an end to British interference. Iraqi nationalists detested the Iraq Petroleum Company, and what seemed to them British tutelage. But the growing focus of resentment was British policy in Palestine. As the mandatory power Britain was seen as being responsible for Zionist immigration and Arab oppression. An emerging Arab nationalism found focus in resentment at what seemed a British imposition of an alien population. Hitler’s persecution of the Jews and the flood of refugees exacerbated the situation. More than ever the politics of the Middle East became determined by the interests of the Great Powers, rather than local considerations. Britain as the paramount power over Zionists and Arabs was the legatee.
There was comparative calm in Palestine after Churchill’s White Paper of 1922. Arab fears of a Zionist take-over lessened. Jewish immigration continued, but after reaching a peak of 34,386 in 1924, it dropped to 3,034 in 1927, and with the economic depression more Jews left than entered the country. Most Jews preferred to go to the United States. In 1921 it is estimated that 119,036 Jews entered the United States, whereas only 8,294 went to Palestine. In 1924 the Americans imposed a quota system for immigrants, and the number of Jews arriving fell to 10,292 in 1925. But in the last few years of the decade approximately three times as many Jews left for the United States as entered Palestine.12 Between 1919 and 1931 the Jewish population of Palestine grew from around 60,000 to 175,000, an increase from 8 to 17.7 per cent of the total population. To the Arabs, the Zionist problem often seemed a numbers game. Some Zionists regarded the Arab problem in the same way, but between 1923 and 1929 the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) concentrated on its own internal matters, and the Arabs adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the British administration – though concerned about Jewish labour’s opposition to the employment of Arab workers in Jewish-owned enterprises.13
The ‘Wailing Wall’ riots
Then on 28 September 1928, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the police removed by force a screen illegally placed near the ‘Wailing Wall’ to separate Jewish men and women at prayer. To the Jews the Western Wall, the lower courses of the outer wall of Herod’s temple, was a sacred sanctuary and a reminder of past glory. To the Arabs it was part of Haram al-Sherif, where Muhammad had tethered his horse after his journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, while he ascended to the seventh heaven. Jews throughout the world objected to the British action, taken after a complaint from the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem. The Mufti tried to establish Muslim rights and the Jews were deliberately antagonized by building works and noise. The Va’ad Leumi demanded that the administration expropriate the wall for the Jews. On 14 August 1929 6,000 Jews demonstrated in Tel Aviv, shouting ‘The Wall is ours.’ The next day 300 youths raised the Jewish flag at the wall, and sang the Jewish national anthem. On 16 August Muslims burnt pages of Jewish prayer books, and on the next day, the birthday of Muhammad, there was a minor brawl between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem in which a Jew died. On Friday 23 August riots broke out in Jerusalem, spreading to other parts of Palestine. British troops were called in, and the Haganah was deployed. In Hebron a community of non-Zionist Jews was wiped out; though a committee concluded their books had not been mutilated, in Jaffa the Jews attacked the Arabs and killed seven of their number. One hundred and thirteen Jews and 116 Arabs died in a week of violence. Complicity of the Mufti was never proved.14
The High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, urged a move in British policy away from Zionism. A commission of inquiry under Sir Walter Shaw examined the reasons for Arab unrest, and reported in March 1930 that Zionist demands on immigration had aroused Arab apprehension about Jewish political domination. Shaw thought the Zionist demands a breach of the principle, accepted by the Zionist Organization in 1922, that immigration should be regulated by the economic capacity of Palestine to absorb new arrivals.15 An Arab delegation, including the Mufti, went to London and saw the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and Lord Passfield, the Colonial Secretary. Its demands included the prohibition of land sales from Arabs to non-Arabs, a halt to Jewish immigration and national parliamentary government in terms of the League covenant. Britain sent Sir John Hope Simpson to Palestine to investigate the land question. He reported that the amount of cultivated land in Palestine was considerably less than the estimates of the Zionists and the Commissioner of Lands. This land was not even sufficient to provide the Arab population with a decent livelihood. Pending development, there was no more room for Jewish settlers. This report formed the basis of the 1930 Passfield White Paper,16 which intimated immigration restrictions.
The ‘Black Letter’
Zionist influence on British policy had lessened during the 1920s. It now reasserted itself. Lewis Namier, effectively an employee of the Zionist executive, on the evening of 17 October took the White Paper to Weizmann. The following day Baffy Dugdale, Balfour’s niece, contacted the Conservative politician, Leo Amery. Namier used the Prime Minister’s son, Malcolm MacDonald, to get through to 10 Downing Street. On 6 November Ramsay MacDonald proposed a meeting between the Zionists and a Cabinet subcommittee, chaired by Arthur Henderson, assisted, at Weizmann’s request, by Malcolm MacDonald. The Zionists mounted an orchestrated campaign, and there were anti-British demonstrations throughout the Jewish world. The national consensus on Palestine was shaken in the House of Commons and Anglo-American relations appeared strained. The government felt threatened. The Anglo-Zionist conference finished its work in January 1931. Using as a basis a memorandum provided by Leonard Stein, it drafted the letter MacDonald officially sent to Weizmann on 13 February 1931.17 In what the Arabs dubbed the ‘Black Letter’, MacDonald reaffirmed Britain’s intention to stand by the mandate, viewed as an obligation to world Jewry, to uphold the policy of the Jewish national home by further land settlement and immigration, and to condone the Zionist insistence on Jewish labour for work on Jewish enterprises.18
In Palestine the Arab executive announced that it was looking to the Arab and Muslim worlds for help as it no longer had confidence in Britain. On 18 September 1931 a conference of Arab activists resolved to concentrate on ‘independence within Arab unity’. In December the Mufti inaugurated the General Islamic Congress in Jerusalem: it announced the central importance of Palestine to the Muslim world and denounced Zionism and British policies. An Arab Independence Party was established in 1932. The increase in Jewish immigration led to Arab riots in September and October 1933, largely directed against the mandatory power. Zionist purchases meant an increase in landless Arabs. In 1935 Sir Arthur Wauchope, the High Commissioner, reported that one-fifth of Arab villagers had no land, and Arab unemployment was growing in the towns. Later he advised that the 60,000 Jewish immigrants who had entered Palestine were beyond the absorptive capacity of the country. Many leading Arab families, some of whom lived outside Palestine, sold their land to Jews. Revelations about this led to divisions between the Mufti and other Palestinian factions, particularly those led by the al-Nashshashibis and Musa Kasim al-Husseini, who, until his death in 1934, was head of the Arab Executive. Followers of the Mufti criticized the Arab Executive for doing little about the land sales to Jews. Most of the Palestinian Arabs lived on the land. An increase in imports in the 1930s, particularly of wheat, helped to undermine the basis of the Arab economy and many peasants left to work in cities or for Jewish farmers. It also meant that many small landholders sold out to Jews. It was these peasants who fomented the Arab rebellion. They were supported by an increasingly disillusioned Arab youth. The growth of various parties reflected the Arab plight. One advocated pan-Arab unity as a solution. But these parties disagreed over tactics: those led by Hussein al-Khalidi, elected mayor of Jerusalem in 1934, and Raghib al-Nashshashibi favoured political action rather than the militant stand taken by the Mufti, but they divided among themselves. The secret societies formed included a group one of whose leaders was Qassam. Inspired by the duty of jihad (holy war), Izz al-Din al-Qassam advocated a strict adherence to Islam, and against the background of the seizure of an arms shipment in Jaffa which the Arabs claimed the Jews were stockpiling for use against them, in November 1935 Qassam led a band of twenty-five men in an unsuccessful revolt against Britain and Zionism. Killed by police on 20 November in a cave near the village of Ya’bad, west of Jenin, Qassam became a martyr and Arab hostility increased.19
On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Persecution of Jews increased. In August the Zionist Congress in Prague demanded that the Jewish national home be built up as speedily and on as large a scale as possible. On 15 September 1935 the Nuremberg laws effectively barred Jews from German society.20 Increasingly, Palestine seemed a haven. The number of Jewish immigrants from Germany rose from 353 in 1932 to 5,392 in 1933. Jewish immigration overall rose dramatically from 9,553 in 1932 to 30,327 the following year, 42,359 in 1934 and reached a peak of 61,844 in 1935. The Colonial Secretary, Sir Philip Cunliffe Lister, warned the Cabinet on 28 March 1934 that Arabs and Jews were diametrically opposed on the subject of immigration, and criticized the Jewish Agency policy of employing only Jewish labour. The Zionists, however, in their publicity linked the need for Jewish immigration into Palestine with the Nazi persecution.21
The Arab rebellion
Britain offered representative government to Palestine. In December 1935 the Arabs would have fourteen seats and the Jews eight on a legislative council. Both parties rejected the idea, and in any case the Zionist lobby achieved its defeat in Parliament in March 1936. In April the various Arab groups in Palestine formed the Arab Higher Committee under the Mufti. Alarmed by information that the Zionists were smuggling in arms, and disturbed by the increasing Jewish immigration, they ordered a general strike. This followed disturbances in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Weizmann antagonized the Arabs with a speech in Tel Aviv on 23 April by calling the Arab–Zionist struggle one between the forces of the desert and destruction on the one side, and the forces of civilization and building on the other. There were 600 arrests, non-payment of taxes was advocated by the Arabs, and when the government on 18 May announced a schedule of 4,500 Jewish immigrants for the next six months, defiance grew. That same day a royal commission was announced to investigate the reasons for unrest, but it would not leave for Palestine until order had been restored. Military reinforcements arrived from Egypt and Malta and disorders increased. The Colonial Office, under Ormsby-Gore, discussed cantonization as a solution. Britain tried to use Abdullah of Transjordan and Nuri al-Said, Foreign Minister of Iraq, as intermediaries. On 19 June, in the House of Commons, speakers emphasized the strategic value of Palestine; some equated British interests with the success of Zionism. Clement Attlee wanted a special session of Parliament. Then the Cabinet, on 2 September, decided to crush Arab resistance, and an announcement was made that an additional division of troops was being sent to Palestine. By 22 September British troops in Palestine numbered 20,000. After visitations from a delegation of the Arab Higher Committee, Ibn Saud, Abdullah and King Ghazi of Iraq appealed for the strike to be called off. That marked the end of the rebellion which killed 38 Britons, 80 Jews and 145 Arabs. British refusal to stop immigration left the Arabs with the impression that Britain was committed to a pro-Zionist policy.
The Peel Commission
The Zionists had not liked the idea of a commission. Weizmann thought that the Colonial Office under its secretary, J. H. Thomas, wanted to use the commission to reduce Jewish immigration. Thomas’s replacement, Ormsby-Gore, was considered weak, and unable to resist the supposed pro-Arab tendencies of the Foreign Office. But Labour leaders, including Attlee, advised the Zionists not to boycott the commission. Headed by Earl Peel, it left for Palestine on 5 November 1936. At the same time Ormsby-Gore announced there would be no suspension of immigration during the commission’s investigations. The Arabs initially refused to give evidence. When they did, they asserted that McMahon’s pledge to Hussein included Palestine, therefore the Balfour Declaration and the mandate were invalid. They demanded independence. The Zionists opposed this as it would mean a Palestinian state. The Foreign Office view was largely determined by the Arabist, George Rendel, who made private soundings in the Middle East early in 1937. Anthony Eden, preoccupied with Europe, accepted Rendel’s arguments. Rendel warned that Ibn Saud could turn to Italy, driven in despair by British policy in Palestine. The same might happen in Iraq, and Transjordan could follow. Lampson had warned Rendel that Egypt would do the same. But the Christians in the Lebanon welcomed Weizmann and the idea of a Jewish state.22
The Cabinet received the Peel Commission report in June 1937. It recommended that Palestine be divided into three parts: an Arab state; a Jewish state; and then certain areas of strategic or religious importance that would remain under a British mandate. As the Jewish state would include the best land, the report recommended that it should pay an annual subvention to the Arab state. Ormsby-Gore endorsed the report. The Foreign Office objected. Eden told the Cabinet it would mean a Jewish state with unviable frontiers, alongside an Arab state with no outlet to the sea. Abdullah, as head of the Arab state, could arouse Iraq and Ibn Saud. The Zionists were uncertain: initially, Ben-Gurion, a Yishuv leader, opposed the idea, but then changed his mind and submitted to Weizmann. The Prime Minister of Iraq called for the opposition of Palestinian Arabs; Britain was embarrassed by Iraq’s attitude in the League of Nations. British prestige in the Middle East seemed threatened. Reports from British representatives there warned of conflagration if partition were implemented. A battle developed between the Foreign and Colonial Offices.
In September 1937 a Pan-Arab congress in Syria claimed Palestine as part of the Arab homeland. Arabs everywhere were bound to defend Palestine. A Jewish state could be a foreign base against the Arab world. That same month Lieutenant-General Archibald Wavell was appointed General Officer Commanding Palestine. After the assassination of Yelland Andrews, the District Commissioner of Galilee, the Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal and the Mufti was deprived of his offices and escaped to the Lebanon. In October there were serious disturbances and the Iraq Petroleum Company’s pipeline was damaged.
Rendel made Foreign Office policy. He considered the Middle East an organic whole: incidents in one area could affect the rest. Arab disunity, he warned, obscured a growing nationalism. The only way to square the British wartime pledge to the Arabs with the Balfour Declaration would be to assume a Jewish national home as a centre of Jewish civilization. The Jewish population of Palestine would have to be limited. It was decided that a new ‘technical’ commission would go to Palestine. Ormsby-Gore argued that Britain had already accepted partition. Rendel countered that this was overridden by the implications for Europe of a Middle East aligned with Britain’s enemies. The matter was settled on 8 December 1937. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, supported the Foreign Office. It was open to the ‘technical’ commission to represent that partition would be unworkable. The commission, under Sir John Woodhead, was seen by the Colonial Office as a Foreign Office creation. Ormsby-Gore resigned, disillusioned with both Jews and Arabs. Malcolm MacDonald became Colonial Secretary in May 1938. Despite his earlier sympathies with Zionism, a few weeks in office convinced him that the British interest lay elsewhere. Canvassed by Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, he also had to handle Zionist sympathizers in Parliament. An Arabic scholar with service in the Sudan, Harold MacMichael, replaced Wauchope as High Commissioner, and Lieutenant-General Robert Haining took over from Wavell. Palestine was in a state of rebellion. Captain Orde Wingate, a proponent of Zionism, led ‘special night squads’ of mixed British and Zionist units against the rebels and to protect the Iraq Petroleum Company’s pipeline. His methods were ruthless and to the Arabs this appeared as an alliance between Britain and the Zionists. At the time of the Munich crisis civil government had virtually collapsed in Palestine.23
The Mufti, though no longer physically present in Palestine, was regarded as the Arab leader. He was suspected of leanings towards Germany. Indeed Peel’s report had alarmed Berlin. A Jewish state could consolidate Jewish political influence. Germany moved towards supporting the Arab cause. The Arabs felt unable to compete with the Zionist lobbies in Western capitals. Nazi Germany with its attitude towards Jews was an obvious ally for securing Palestine as an Arab state. Driven out of Palestine, the Mufti remained in the Lebanon till shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War. Frightened about their own position in the Middle East, the French would not give in to British representations to expel him. Besides the Mufti and his entourage, there did not seem to be any representative Arab leaders. Malcolm MacDonald felt reluctant about inviting the Mufti to London. With the Munich crisis Britain wanted to restore friendly relations with the Arabs: Iraq with its oil and communications would be important in war, and Egypt could be an area of battle. In the event of war the friendship of the United States was vital: MacDonald was conscious of the power of the Zionist lobby there. Haining and MacMichael replied that only postponement of partition and the complete cessation of immigration would bring peace to Palestine.24 On 19 September Weizmann, Ben-Gurion and Baffy Dugdale learnt from MacDonald that Britain intended to abandon partition owing to fear of Germany, Italy and the Arabs. MacDonald told the Cabinet on 19 October that partition was not the right solution. On 9 November the Woodhead commissioners’ report was published. It ruled out partition as the two states envisaged would not be economically viable and would entail large-scale movements of population. Britain proposed a conference in London of Arab and Jewish leaders, together with representatives from the independent Arab states.
The Zionists were kept apprised of Cabinet opinion by Walter Elliot, the Minister of Health. The Jewish Agency resolved that if it could not buy land in Palestine, it would get it in other ways; if arms were forbidden the Haganah would be trained unofficially; if immigration were reduced illegal immigrants would have to be brought in. This was tantamount to a declaration of war on Britain.
The May 1939 White Paper on Palestine
The London Round Table Conference opened on 7 February 1939. The Arabs refused to speak to the Zionists. Chamberlain saw them both separately. In January 1939 the Cabinet had approved the policy outlined by MacDonald: Palestine would be neither a Jewish nor an Arab state. Self-governing institutions would be encouraged and the state moved towards independence with an Arab majority. At the end of 1938 the Jews made up 29 per cent of the population of Palestine. Jewish immigration was to be severely curtailed, and suspended after ten years, unless the Arabs of Palestine consented to it. But even that was not enough for the Foreign Office. Some officials were particularly influenced by the appearance of George Antonius’s The Arab Awakening, a scholarly presentation of the Palestinian Arabs’ case. Antonius pointed out that it was morally outrageous to make the Arabs in Palestine bear the burden of Hitler’s persecutions. The persecution of one people could not be justified to relieve that of another. MacDonald’s policy was what Britain had in mind in its talks with the Arabs and Jews. The Zionists were alarmed, and tried unsuccessfully to involve the United States. Arab opinion was elated by rumours of an agreement on the lines of the Anglo-Iraq treaty. The Zionists reacted with their new tactics: on 27 February thirty-eight Arabs died in a series of bomb explosions throughout Palestine. On 8 March Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, and MacDonald reported that the conference had achieved nothing. To win Arab friendship, Britain needed to decide the final number of Jewish immigrants. Chamberlain, conscious of American opinion, urged as large a figure as possible, close to 100,000. In consultation with the Arabs a figure of 75,000 was agreed over the next five years. Elliot leaked this to Baffy Dugdale and Weizmann, who again tried unsuccessfully for American intervention. On 13 May Weizmann accused MacDonald of betraying the Jews.25 The Colonial Secretary, however, favoured immediate publication of a White Paper outlining the new British policy. As he told the Cabinet committee on 20 April, this was necessary to secure the benevolent neutrality of the Arabs in the coming war. Chamberlain supported him: if Britain had to offend one side, it was preferable to offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.26
The White Paper was published in London on 17 May 1939. It was not British policy that Palestine should become a Jewish state. And London could not accept that the McMahon correspondence formed a just basis for the claim that Palestine should be converted into an Arab state. Britain wanted an independent Palestine with Arabs and Jews sharing authority in government in a way that secured their essential interests. This was to be established within ten years. It would have treaty relations with Britain to meet the commercial and strategic interests of both countries. Over the following five years, 75,000 Jewish immigrants would be allowed into Palestine and after that immigration would be subject to Arab consent. In some areas no transfer of Arab land would be permitted; in others it would be restricted. There was no Jewish veto over the establishment of an independent state in Palestine.27
As Europe moved towards war British paramountcy in the Middle East was challenged by events in the Palestine mandate. On 5 July 1937 the Committee of Imperial Defence resolved that in the event of war it was essential to keep control of Egypt and the Middle East.28 In February 1938, the Cabinet decided to establish a holding force to keep Egypt until battles in the Far East and Europe had been won. The Middle East Reserve Brigade moved to Palestine late in 1938 and stayed there until July 1939 when it was transferred to the Canal Zone.29 British policy in Palestine undermined good relations with the Arab states and British predominance in the Middle East. In January 1939 a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence pointed to the strong feeling of the Arab states over British policy in Palestine. It assumed that if war broke out measures would be taken ‘to bring about a complete appeasement of Arab opinion in Palestine and in neighbouring countries’.30 From Cairo, Lampson advised that unless Jewish immigration ceased Britain might have to fight the Arabs as well as the Germans and Italians. He went further: the Arabs regarded a Jewish state as an even greater danger.31 Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, warned that Muslim opinion in India was roused over what was happening to the Palestinian Arabs.32 With the coming war Britain also had to consider a difficult and seemingly illogical public opinion in the United States. Rather than producing an anti-German reaction, Hitler’s pogrom against the Jews after Munich led to a ‘strong anti-British atmosphere’ in the United States. Because of the immigration quotas the United States took few refugees. It expected Britain to do everything. Chamberlain, hoping for American co-operation in Europe and the Far East, had to do something. Britain took vast numbers of refugees, and to soften the impact of the 1939 White Paper in the United States it published simultaneously a programme to settle the refugees in British Guiana.33
In the early 1930s the Zionist lobby had secured a sympathetic British policy. International circumstances changed that. The Middle East was unlikely to be a secure base in time of rebellion. The British Empire contained many millions of Muslim subjects. They were concerned over Jewish immigration into Palestine, and opposed vehemently the creation of a Jewish state which they regarded as a base for foreign influence in the Arab world. Britain was still the paramount power. The local dispute in Palestine over numbers and land was subsumed by overall imperial interests. These dictated the conciliatory policy towards the Arabs reflected in the White Paper of 1939.
References
1See C. W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars. The Story of Archaeology (London 1952), pp. 207–317.
2John Bagot Glubb, Britain and the Arabs. A Study of Fifty Years 1908 to 1958 (London 1959), pp. 220–232.
3For an outstanding analysis of the British structure in India see Paul Scott, The Raj Quartet (London 1966–75), passim.
4Stephen Hemsley Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate (London 1958); A. L. Tibawi, A Modern History of Syria including Lebanon and Palestine (London 1969), pp. 338–364; Glubb, op. cit., pp. 103–119; Peter Mansfield, The Arabs (London 1978), pp. 237–240.
5Nasser H. Aruri, Jordan: A Study in Political Development (1921–1965) (The Hague 1972), pp. 15–32; P. J. Vatikiotis, Politics and the Military in Jordan. A Study of the Arab Legion 1927–1957 (London 1967), pp. 57–74; Philip P. Graves (Ed.), Memoirs of King Abdullah of Transjordan (London 1950), pp. 212–228; Glubb, op. cit., pp. 163–175; Trevor Royle, Glubb Pasha (London 1992), p. xii; H. St J. B. Philby, Arabian Jubilee (London 1952), p. 197; Elizabeth Monroe, Philby of Arabia (London 1973), p. 135.
6L. A. Fabunmi, The Sudan in Anglo-Egyptian Relations. A Case Study in Power Politics 1800–1956 (London 1960), pp. 41–114, 400.
7Laila Morsy, ‘British policy and the nationalist movement in Egypt 935–1939’ (Ph.D. Thesis: University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 1976); John Marlow, Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1800–1953 (London 1954), pp. 260–313; P. J. Vatakiotis, The Modern History of Egypt (London 1969), pp. 239–291. 1976
8George W. Stocking, Middle East Oil (London 1970), pp. 50–53; C. J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks and Arabs (London 1957), p. 398; William Stivers, Supremacy and Oil: Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918–1930 (Ithaca 1982), pp. 192–353
9Majid Khadduri, Independent Iraq 1932–1958, 2nd edn (London 1960), pp. 34–158; Elie Kedourie, ‘The kingdom of Iraq: a retrospect’, The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies (London 1970), pp. 236–285; Stephen Hemsley Longrigg, Iraq 1900 to 1950. A Political, Social and Economic History (London 1953), pp. 134–297; Lord Birdwood, Nuri Al-Said. A Study in Arab Leadership (London 1959), pp. 154–172; Abid A. Al-Marayati, A Diplomatic History of Modern Iraq (New York 1961), pp. 47–73; Harry C. Sinderson, Ten Thousand and One Nights. Memories of Iraq’s Sherifan Dynasty (London 1973), pp. 156–172; Philip Willard Ireland, Iraq. A Study in Political Development (New York 1970), pp. 406–453; Khadim Hashim Niama, ‘Anglo-Iraqi relations during the mandate’ (Ph.D. Thesis: University College of Wales, Aberystwyth 1974).
10Elizabeth Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East 1914–1971, 2nd edn (London 1981), pp. 95–115; Mansfield, op. cit., pp. 240–243; Glubb, op. cit., pp. 213–214; Rouhollah K. Ramazani, The Foreign Policy of Iran 1500–1941 (Charlottesville 1966), pp. 242–257; Donald Hawley, The Trucial States (London 1970), pp. 170–172; J. B. Kelly, Eastern Arabian Frontiers (London 1964), pp. 117–138; David Holden and Richard Johns, The House of Saud (London 1981), pp. 78–122; Stocking, op. cit., pp. 66–90; Geoffrey Jones, The State and the Emergence of the British Oil Industry (London 1981), pp. 141–252; Michael J. Hogan, Informal Entente. The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy 1918–1928 (Columbia 1977), pp. 159–226.
11Mansfield, op. cit., p. 243; Manfred W. Wenner, Modern Yemen 1918–1966 (Baltimore 1967), pp. 141–171.
12Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine. The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917–1929, 2nd edn (Oxford 1991), p. 161; Michael Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge 1997), p. 56.
13Neil Caplan, Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question 1917–1925 (London 1978), pp. 194–203; A. W. Kayyali, Palestine. A Modern History (London 1978), pp. 130–137.
14British Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 3530, Report of the Committee on the Palestine Disturbance of August 1929, 1930; Wasserstein, op. cit., pp. 215–235; Kayyali, op. cit., pp. 138–151; Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement (London 1993), pp. 16–17.
15Cmd. 3530.
16Cmd. 3686, Palestine. Report on Immigration. Land Settlement and Development by Sir John Hope Simpson, 1930; Cmd. 3692, Palestine Statement of Policy by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom 1930.
17Norman Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism (Oxford 1980), pp. 47–53; N. A. Rose, The Gentle Zionists. A Study in Anglo-Zionist Diplomacy, 1929–1939 (London 1973), pp. 49–50; Alan R. Taylor, Prelude to Israel. An Analysis of Zionist Diplomacy 1897–1947 (London 1961), p. 51; Martin Kolinsky, Law, Order and Riots in Mandatory Palestine, 1928–35 (London 1993), pp. 141–158.
18MacDonald to Weizmann, 13 Feb. 1931, in Walter Laqueur (Ed.), The Israel-Arab Reader, 3rd edn (New York 1976), pp. 50–56.
19Kayyali, op. cit., pp. 162–183; Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 3rd edn (New York 1996), pp. 94–101; Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement 1929–1939 (London 1977), pp. 63–79; Kenneth Stein, The Land Question in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Chapel Hill 1984), pp. 131–144; Shai Lachman, ‘Arab rebellion and terrorism in Palestine 1929–1939; the case of Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam and his movement’, in Elie Kedourie and Sylvia G. Haim, (Eds), Zionism and Arabism in Palestine and Israel (London 1982), pp. 52–99; Joseph Nevo, ‘Palestinian-Arab violent activity during the 1930s’, in Martin Kolinsky (Ed.), Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s: Security Problems, 1935–39 (London 1992), pp. 169–189 at p. 173.
20The predicament of the Jew in German society at this time was captured by Christopher Isherwood in Goodbye to Berlin (London 1939); Mr. Norris Changes Trains (London 1935); and Christopher and his Kind 1929–1939 (London 1977). Even Evelyn Waugh treated it in passing in Brideshead Revisited (London 1945). Isherwood’s and Waugh’s works later appeared as stage plays, widely acclaimed films – Cabaret, United States 1972, directed by Bob Fosse – and television blockbusters.
21Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return. The Emergence of Jewish Statehood (London 1978), pp. 157–164; Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle. The Struggle between the British, the Jews and the Arabs 1935–48 (London 1979), p. 25.
22Kayyali, op. cit., pp. 187–207; Michael J. Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate. The Making of British Policy, 1936–45 (London 1978), pp. 10–65; Bethell, op. cit., pp. 25–30; Jon Kimche, The Second Arab Awakening (London 1970), pp. 160–161.
23Cmd. 5479, Palestine Royal Commission Report, 1937; Cohen, op. cit., pp. 28–41; Kayyali, op. cit., pp. 207–214.
24CO 733, 367, MacDonald to MacMichael, 24 Sept. 1938; MacMichael to MacDonald, 25 Sept. 1938. See Francis R. Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (London 1985) for an account of the common interest the Nazis and the Zionists had in facilitating the emigration of German Jews to Palestine.
25Cmd. 5634, Policy in Palestine, 1938; Cmd. 5854, Palestine Partition Commission Report, 1938; Kayyali, op. cit., pp. 215–221; Bethell, op. cit., pp. 39–75; Cohen, op. cit., pp. 41–49, 66–87.
26FO 371, 23234, Minutes of Meeting of Cabinet Committee on Palestine, 20 April 1939.
27Cmd. 5957, Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916, 1939; Cmd. 5964, Statements Made on Behalf of His Majesty’s Government during the Year 1918 in Regard to the Future Status of Certain Parts of the Ottoman Empire, 1939; Cmd. 5974, Report of a Committee Set Up to Consider Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif of Mecca in 1915 and 1916, 1939; Cmd. 6019, Palestine Statement of Policy, 1939.
28Cab 24, 270, CP 185, Minutes of Meeting of Committee of Imperial Defence, 5 July 1937.
29Cab 23, 92, 23 Feb. 1939; 99, 24 May 1939.
30Cab 51, 11, ME(O)292, 24 Jan. 1939.
31Prem 1, Lampson to MacDonald, 2 Sept. 1938.
32Cab 23, 96, 2 Nov. 1939.
33Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Appeasement’ and the English Speaking World. Britain, the United States, the Dominions and the Policy of ‘Appeasement’ 1937–1939 (Cardiff 1975), pp. 194–196, 251–252.