CHAPTER FIVE
The White Paper of 1939, followed by the British attitude to a Jewish army during the early stages of the Second World War, led the Zionists to change their tactics. Instead of concentrating on the mandatory power, Britain, they focused on the United States. They threatened electoral punishment through the Zionist vote if the American administration failed to support a Jewish state. It was thought that the United States could force Britain to hand Palestine over to the Zionists. In the mandate itself the Zionists used new methods. A policy of attrition was waged against the administration. Violence and terrorism were aimed at wearing down British morale. Britain, rather than the Arabs, became the principal enemy. Palestine became an area of Anglo-American controversy at the time of the emergence of the Cold War. To Britain, it seemed that the United States was prepared to sacrifice British strategic interests, and indeed those of the West, on the altar of American domestic politics. There was thus a new factor in the equation of Great-Power interests and local squabbles over land. In the years leading to the creation of the state of Israel it was the most important.
Although informed of it at the time, it was not until 1922 that the United States officially endorsed the Balfour Declaration. And then Congress emphasized that nothing should be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine. By a separate Anglo-American convention of 1925 American consent was seen as necessary to modifications in the mandate affecting American interests.1 At the time of the Arab revolt in 1936 an official American party, including Senator Warren Austin, went to Palestine. Austin suggested that the arm of the mandatory should be strengthened: Britain had a difficult and delicate task.2 Until 1942 the United States considered the Middle East a British responsibility. In March 1943, however, a presidential committee under Senator Harry S. Truman reported that future American demand for oil was likely to be in excess of domestic production. Possibly, the United States was providing a disproportionate share of the Allies’ oil; Britain was achieving this to further its own imperial interests.3 James F. Byrnes warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt that public discussion of the economic rivalry between Britain and the United States in the Middle East could give rise to ‘strong and dangerous anti-British feeling’.4 Private American oil interests prevented any agreement between Britain and the United States.5
The Biltmore Hotel resolution
Roosevelt became involved in the Palestine issue in 1943. Concern over the security of the Middle East led the State Department to advise that the Arab world needed to be kept pacified. In May, Roosevelt promised Ibn Saud that ‘no decisions altering the basic situation of Palestine should be reached without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews’.6 By this time, however, Zionist tactics had changed. In May 1942 at the American Zionist Conference, which took place in the Biltmore Hotel in New York, Weizmann’s programme of demanding a ‘Jewish commonwealth’ in the whole of western Palestine was adopted. After the war millions of refugees would want to settle there. But Weizmann himself, with his ‘gradualist’ tactics, was effectively removed from the leadership shortly afterwards. David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Mapai Party in Palestine, replaced him. Ben-Gurion advocated an activist programme: the United States should be stimulated into supporting a revolutionary change of Palestine policy to which Britain would have to acquiesce.7 Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, was alarmed by the Zionist propaganda in the United States that followed this. Britain was asking, unsuccessfully, for common Anglo-American action to alleviate the distress of the persecuted in Europe. Eden wanted to ask Washington to damp down pro-Zionist utterances by public figures: the Arabs would not support an Allied victory if it meant Palestine being handed over to the Jews. Roosevelt was also aware of this, and an Anglo-American statement that the Palestine question should be shelved until the end of the war was drafted.8 The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, refused to agree that the 1939 White Paper was the firmly established policy of the British government.9 In any event the statement was not issued. It was leaked to the Zionists. They employed Ben-Gurion’s tactics and barraged officials, principally Henry J. Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, and Sumner Welles. This left the legacy in the State Department that the American Zionist pressure group could change policy agreed upon as being in the national interest. The British ambassador, Lord Halifax, thought it a sinister indication of the power of pressure groups.10
While Britain continued to develop ideas of partition in Palestine, Roosevelt considered trusteeship as a solution. This was prompted by the publication in the New York Times of an ‘extermination’ list of the 1,700,000 people who had died in Nazi concentration camps. Five hundred rabbis petitioned the President for the opening up of Palestine and the countries of the United Nations to Jews. Roosevelt spoke privately of admitting those Jews who could be absorbed into Palestine, and then surrounding the ‘Holy Land’ with a barbed-wire fence.11 The Zionists then shifted their attentions from the President to congressmen and other influential leaders. Their most influential organization was the American Palestine Committee formed in 1941, chaired by a Roman Catholic, Robert Wagner, and including in its membership two-thirds of the Senate, 200 members of the House of Representatives and the leaders of both major political parties and labour organizations. In co-operation with the American Zionist Emergency Council it supported the creation of a Jewish army, unrestricted immigration of Jews into Palestine, the revocation of the British White Paper of 1939 and the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth.12 Two rabbis, Stephen S. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver, were the co-chairmen of the Zionist Emergency Council. Wise, sympathetic to Britain, was a long-standing friend of Roosevelt and had actively supported his presidential campaigns. Silver, a Republican, was, according to Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, disliked by Roosevelt. Towards the end of 1943 the Zionist Emergency Council lobbied systematically in Washington and throughout the United States.13
Britain was worried. Eden urged Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, to warn the Zionists that their ‘strident and provocative’ attitude could damage the common war effort.14 But on 27 January 1944 resolutions were introduced into the House of Representatives, at the instigation of the American Palestine Committee, proposing that the United States secure free entry for the Jews into Palestine so that the country could ultimately be reconstituted as a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth. London refrained from commenting on a matter of legislation in the United States, but warned that the course envisaged included military obligations: British policy would be influenced by American willingness to control the ensuing situation.15 On 1 February two members of the American Palestine Committee, Wagner and Robert A. Taft, placed an identical resolution before the Senate. Hull was worried, and contacted the Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, about the congressional resolutions ‘advocating the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine’. The Arabs could ‘play hell’ with American oil interests. Marshall agreed: conflict in Palestine would tie up US forces intended for deployment against Germany and unrest in the Arab world could interfere with arrangements being made to procure oil for combat.16 As public hearings on the matter started, Senator Harry S. Truman recorded that ‘with Great Britain and Russia absolutely necessary to us in financing the war I don’t want to throw any bricks to upset the applecart, although when the right time comes I am willing to help make the fight for a Jewish homeland in Palestine’.17 Seven Arab states objected. Marshall appeared informally before members of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate on 23 February. The memorandum he used explained that the congressional resolutions envisaged a Jewish state as distinct from a homeland. That would increase tension in the Muslim world, throughout the entire Mediterranean area, the Near East, North Africa and further east. Troops would be tied down, and naval and military operations could be seriously affected by the interruption of oil supplies.18 The resolution was squashed.
After this the Zionist lobby, through the offices of Rosenman and David Niles, the adviser on minority rights and a fellow Zionist, tried to see Roosevelt. The Zionists were in a strong position domestically: 1944 was a presidential election year and the 1942 congressional elections had resulted in an almost equal split between the Republicans and the Democrats. Though the Jewish vote was not great, it was concentrated in three key states: New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. In 1941 the count of Jews in the United States was 4,641,184, and the figure in the 1948 census was 4,500,000. The Democrats were likely to respond to Zionist pressure; the Republicans, out of office, could freely support the Zionist cause. The Arabs were insignificant domestically. The 1940 census listed 107,420 Arabic-speaking American residents. In 1943 the Office of Strategic Services estimated the number at 104,000, mostly Christians from Syria and the Lebanon.19 On 9 March Roosevelt did see Wise and Silver and authorized a carefully worded statement which only mentioned a Jewish national home. The President, in his correspondence, showed that he was also concerned for the other persecuted peoples in Europe and Asia.20
Roosevelt and the ‘Jewish Commonwealth’
Foreign Office and State Department officials discussed Palestine in April. Britain felt it could control the situation provided the American Zionists could be kept quiet. Firm action had to be taken against Zionist terrorism in Palestine: seven British policemen had been murdered and there could be attempts to assassinate prominent British officials. The Americans, however, warned that, in an election year, there would be support for Jewish agitation.21 Zionist pressure started almost immediately. Some of it was based on the premise that the doors of Palestine were closed to the Jews, the children of Israel: this was ‘a greater crime against the Jews than any perpetrated by Hitler or his aides against them’.22 On 27 June the Republican Party adopted an electoral platform calling for the opening of Palestine to unrestricted immigration for the victims of Nazism, unrestricted Jewish land ownership and Palestine as a free and democratic commonwealth. Hull thought this provided for the creation of a Jewish state.23 There were fears that the Arabs, suspecting that Britain and the United States had sold out to the Zionists, were turning to Russia.24 Wise, Silver, Wagner and Rosenman petitioned the President, and in the end Roosevelt saw Wise, who drafted a statement that, strengthened, Roosevelt authorized Wagner to deliver to the convention of the Zionist Organization of America. In this letter of 15 October 1944 Roosevelt promised, if re-elected, to help bring about ‘the establishment of Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth’. Before that, Roosevelt had used the phrase ‘national home’.25
The Arabs, aggressively bitter, refused to receive William S. Culbertson and his special American economic mission to the Middle East. Culbertson, in a report of 15 November that helped to determine State Department policy, advised that the Palestine question would remain a serious menace to the peace and security of the Middle East: ‘Perhaps the price the United States pays for the privilege to hold its widely publicized views on the Jewish state is worth all it costs. The Mission wishes only to emphasize that the price is considerable and that apparently the American people do not realize how considerable it is.’26
British policy at this time was influenced by reports from Sir Kinahan Cornwallis in Iraq and Lord Killearn (formerly Sir Miles Lampson) in Egypt. In February 1944, Cornwallis warned that any ‘whittling down’ of the 1939 White Paper, and even more, the establishment of a Jewish state, would mean that Britain would lose its influence in the Middle East, and the maintenance of oil and other interests would be endangered. Killearn recommended force majeure to compel both sides to accept definite and unlimited British control of the area. Palestine should be retained as a vital link in Britain’s defence system.27 The Foreign Office argued that Britain should retain pre-eminence in the Middle East: if it embarked on partition on its own it would concede that position to the United States. There were worries that the United States intended to usurp Britain’s place, especially in Saudi Arabia. The Colonial Office offered modifications of the partition scheme. The report of the Palestine Committee, recommending partition, was regarded by the Foreign Office as unfair to the Arabs.28 Then, on 6 November 1944, Lord Moyne, the Minister Resident in the Middle East, was murdered in Cairo by the underground Zionist terrorist group, the Stern gang. Churchill told the House of Commons on 17 November that ‘if our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently in the past’. Plans for the future of Palestine could not be considered in such a climate.29
Moyne’s murder had no impact on Zionist strategy in the United States. Three days afterwards Wise asked the State Department about the introduction of the Palestine resolution in Congress.30 The State Department was worried that Roosevelt’s letter to Wagner could jeopardize American economic and strategic interests in Saudi Arabia. Russia was showing an interest in the Middle East, and hoped for a foothold on the shores of the Persian Gulf near the West’s strategic oilfields. Russia could take a sweeping pro-Arab position and the Arabs could turn to Moscow. Alternatively, Britain’s position with the Arabs could be strengthened at the expense of that of the United States.31 Wallace Murray warned that ‘ill-considered statements made in the United States for political purposes’ had indirectly contributed to the prevailing insecurity ‘by giving encouragement, albeit unwittingly, to the more extreme Zionist elements such as the assassins of Lord Moyne represent’. These elements, particularly the Irgun and the Stern gang, were in their training and methods ‘essentially totalitarian’, and would stop at nothing to overthrow the British administration.32 Roosevelt informed Wise and Wagner that, following the Moyne murder, a resurrection of the Palestine resolution would be inappropriate. But the Zionist lobby contrived to get it discussed in the Senate and House committees. Roosevelt, influenced by a petition from Cairo, warned Wagner on 3 December that there were 70 million Muslims waiting to cut the throats of the possible 1 million Jews who wanted to go to Palestine. Everyone knew what American hopes were: ‘if we talk about them too much we will hurt fulfilment’.33 The Zionist activists split and, after the Acting Secretary of State Edward Stettinius had appeared before it and warned about likely Arab reaction and that a resolution might affect the conference with Stalin and Churchill, the Senate committee decided to take no action. Wise became sole chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council.34
By the end of 1944 the Zionists were implementing new tactics. On the one hand there was the terrorism of the Irgun and the Stern gang. On the other, the United States became the focus of their political activities. The Zionist groups in the United States were small and divided, but they aroused a public agitation out of all proportion to their size. Using the publicity of the Holocaust, they aroused widespread sympathy. What they asked for was designed to appeal to Americans. In a country where anti-Semitism was widespread and took the insidious form of preventing Jews from living in certain residential areas, joining certain country clubs and societies, congressmen did not have to worry about urging the immigration of Jews to Palestine.35 It would mean fewer Jews entering the United States. American immigration laws which restricted the entry of Jewish refugees remained sacrosanct. Congressmen were not prepared to risk the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Roman Catholic backlash on that issue. More Jewish immigrants from Europe could be at the expense of Roman Catholics under the quota system. There was no question of American financial or military assistance for Britain to establish the Jewish state. Hardly any mention was made in the United States of the non-Jewish victims of Hitler.
The Foreign Office feared that a Jewish state in Palestine could end British predominance in the Middle East. The charges of inhumanity against the British policy on Jewish immigration seemed unfounded and hypocritical. They seemed a way of easing American consciences over the refusal to admit significant numbers of Jewish refugees to the United States, and a means of diverting the problem to an area over which the United States had no responsibility. Support for Zionism also conflicted with the spirit of the Atlantic Charter. In August 1942 Churchill pointed out to Roosevelt that its application to Asia and Africa could lead to claims by the Arab majority that they could expel the Jews from Palestine, and forbid further Jewish immigration.36
Roosevelt and Ibn Saud
Early in 1945 Washington had to balance Zionist pressure and the claims of Ibn Saud. Bearing this in mind, James M. Landis, the American Director of Economic Operations in the Middle East, warned that the objective of a Jewish state had to be abandoned. Culbertson suggested trusteeship as a solution: Palestine, a land sacred to the three great monotheistic religions, should not be dominated by one. Local autonomy could be a solution.37 The State Department envisaged British trusteeship for Palestine, the Zionists the Lowdermilk scheme to use the waters of the Jordan River for irrigation and hydroelectric power.38 The Zionist Emergency Council urged on Roosevelt a Jewish commonwealth in ‘an undiminished and undivided Palestine’.39 On 14 February, on the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt, Ibn Saud told Roosevelt that the Arabs would rather die than yield their land to Jews.40 Although his wife, Eleanor, remained a convinced Zionist and was prepared to risk a fight with the Arabs, Roosevelt was impressed. There were 15 to 20 million Arabs in and around Palestine and, in the long run, he thought these numbers would win.41 The Democratic member for Brooklyn, Emmanuel Celler, upbraided Roosevelt for broken promises. On 18 March he warned that over 1 million Jews lived in Brooklyn: without their support New York City and state would have been lost to Roosevelt in the election. Indeed the nation might have been lost because the Jews held the balance in many metropolitan areas.42 Ibn Saud was disturbed by this agitation. He wrote to Roosevelt on 23 March about Zionist preparations ‘to create a form of Nazi-Fascism’ in the midst of Arab countries loyal to the Allied cause. To bring Jewish immigrants into land ‘already occupied and do away with the original inhabitants’ was ‘an act unparalleled in human history’. On 5 April 1945 Roosevelt assured Ibn Saud that he would make no move against the Arabs.43 Roosevelt died on 12 April.
On 2 April 1945 the research and analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services warned of the potential danger of Russia. It was in the American interest that the British, French and Dutch colonial empires be maintained: ‘We have at present no interest in weakening or liquidating these empires or in championing schemes of international trusteeship which may provoke unrest and result in colonial disintegration, and may at the same time alienate from us the Empire states whose help we need to balance the Soviet power.’ On 19 May Joseph Grew argued that the result of the war would be merely to transfer the ‘totalitarian dictatorship and power from Germany and Japan to Soviet Russia which will constitute in future as grave a danger to us as did the Axis’. American policy towards Russia should stiffen.44 But Harry S. Truman became President, and after an initial stiffening, he followed the Roosevelt line of accommodation towards the Russians in the face of dire warnings from Churchill and Eden.45
British assessment of American opinion
Before Truman assumed office there had been tentative British hints that American help might be needed in Palestine. Early in April Sir Edward Grigg, Moyne’s successor, condemned partition as a solution: it could endanger Britain’s whole position in the Middle East. Instead he envisaged a bi-racial self-governing state. Western sympathy for Jewish suffering, ‘combined with anti-Semitism in disguise’, had led to an unrealistic conception of what Britain could do. American support was needed to guide Zionism away from militarism back to its original peaceful aims.46 On 10 April Eden advised the War Cabinet that Palestine policy had to be considered in relation to that of the whole of the Middle East where Britain had vital interests. British pre-eminence in the area was being challenged by the United States and Russia, both anxious to profit from British mistakes. An attempt to create a Jewish state in Palestine with unrestricted immigration would outrage the Arabs and imperil British interests. The Foreign Secretary could not recommend the partition scheme of the Palestine Committee. He warned of the danger of American irresponsibility, and the need to temper it with a direct interest in Palestine.47 The Cabinet did not discuss the issue: it was preoccupied with the conclusion of the war. In considering alternative policies the Foreign Office concentrated on the United States, as discussion had suggested that British policy in Palestine might have to be decided in relation to opinion in that country. Michael Wright had sent an evaluation of this from the British embassy in Washington which Eden had endorsed. Wright pointed out that because there were 2,500,000 Jews in New York City, and most of the rest in towns of New England, Pennsylvania and Illinois, great areas of the United States had no immediate interest in Jewish questions. But in these few areas the Jewish vote was extremely important. The concentration of Jews in certain areas did lead to considerable anti-Jewish feeling. In the eastern United States Jews were barred from many universities and clubs. The lease of a house or apartment frequently contained a clause that subletting to Jews was forbidden. The public was not deeply moved over Palestine, but it was a source of trouble because politicians, with their eyes on the Jewish vote, could agitate about it at no cost to themselves.
Halifax emphasized the prominence of Jews in the White House and the administration, as well as the extent to which the Jewish vote in New York could be decisive in election years. There was, the ambassador pointed out, an unwritten bond between the Zionists and those disinterested in Palestine: ‘the average citizen does not want them [the Jewish refugees] in the United States and solves his conscience by advocating their admission to Palestine’. On this issue, the Zionists could carry with them both liberal humanitarians and many anti-Semites. He concluded: ‘For the Americans to be able thus to criticize and influence without responsibility is the most favourable and agreeable situation for them, and, I must suppose, the exact converse for us.’ Halifax proposed that the United States be invited to share Britain’s responsibilities for the mandate of Palestine.48 Churchill liked Halifax’s suggestion. He recorded: ‘I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now.’ The United States could be invited to take over the mandate. The Foreign Office disagreed. The chiefs of staff were emphatic: Palestine was ‘the bottleneck’ of all land communications between Africa and Asia; a main centre of air routes between Britain and the eastern part of the Empire; it also included one of the key oil terminals. If Britain handed the mandate to the United States it would lose its predominant position in the Middle East with incalculable psychological effects on world opinion.49 Churchill and Attlee went to meet the new President at Potsdam without any British solution to offer.
In 1944 Truman had told the Senate that his sympathy was with the Jewish people.50 On 18 April Stettinius warned the new President of the danger of Zionist pressure: the Palestine issue should be handled with a view to American ‘long-range interests’. The next day Wise saw Truman, and a statement was issued that the President was carrying out Roosevelt’s policies for Palestine. Truman assured Cairo and Amman that no decision should be taken over Palestine without full consultation of both Arabs and Jews.51 The Zionists, by organizing mass rallies, tried unsuccessfully to secure representation at the conference at San Francisco. The American Palestine Committee organized a petition from Congress. The Acting Secretary of State, Grew, pointed out to them that the proposed resolution referred only to the Nazi persecution of ‘certain persons in Europe’. Grew advised Truman that this resolution for ‘the creation of an independent Jewish State’ could only inflame the Arabs at a most unfortunate time. Truman received a moderated petition signed by 54 Senators and 250 Representatives just before he left for Potsdam.52
The American administration also had details of Haganah’s plans. Any solution condemning Jews to a permanent minority status in Palestine would be countered by military activity, resistance from the civilian population, including a general strike and the proclamation of death sentences against any Jews collaborating with the British administration. In the sections of Palestine it held, Haganah would establish a Jewish government. The Yishuv was ‘a bridgehead in the conquest of the empty sixty percent of Palestinian land, where homes can be made for millions of distressed Jews in Europe’. Haganah would carry on illegal immigration, even if this led to clashes with Britain or any outside authority. If Britain attempted to stop or drastically curtail immigration, the Irgun and the Stern gang would submit themselves to Haganah to form a united opposition. The Haganah leaders said they realized that the terrorists could be valuable political allies. Irgun membership was estimated by Haganah at 2,000, and that of the Stern gang, 200. It was widely believed that the Irgun received money, weapons and technical assistance from the Polish army forces in Palestine. Irgun’s leader was Menachem Begin, a Polish soldier who came to Palestine in 1943 through Russia. It was also thought that the Stern gang was receiving aid from the French in the Levant.53 Over the following three years Haganah implemented this policy. On 14 May 1945 the Irgun and the Stern gang reached an agreement to co-operate ‘on the scale of war activities’. The two organizations, on 23 July, damaged railway communications by blowing up a bridge near Yavneh. After the British government’s announcement in September 1945 that it would continue the policies outlined in the 1939 White Paper, the Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern gang agreed on armed co-operation and, in effect, formed an alliance. American intelligence also had reports that militancy within the Zionist movement was growing, both in the United States and abroad.54
At Potsdam Truman sent a minute to Churchill on 24 July: he referred to the passionate protests in the United States over the drastic restrictions imposed on Jewish immigration and hoped that Britain would find it possible to lift these. In the Foreign Office Harold Beeley minuted: ‘The Zionists have been deplorably successful in selling the idea that even after the Allied victory immigration to Palestine represents for many Jews “their only hope of survival”.’55 Churchill did not reply: on 26 July he was defeated in the British general election. Labour was voted in. Clement Attlee became Prime Minister.
In December 1944 the Labour Party had adopted a resolution, framed by Hugh Dalton, endorsing a transfer of population in Palestine in favour of the Jews. During the election campaign Dalton had also made virtually the only statement on Palestine.56 Some thought that Dalton would be Attlee’s choice as Foreign Secretary. But the Palestine issue was not a factor in Attlee’s choice of ministers. Ernest Bevin was picked as Foreign Secretary, unexpectedly, for reasons of personality conflicts.57 Attlee regarded Russia as a power with imperialist ambitions ‘whether ideological or territorial whether derived from Lenin or Peter the Great’.58 He reassured Churchill that he believed in continuity in foreign policy, on ‘the main lines which we have discussed together so often’.59 Bevin, with his working-class background, temper and blunt turn of phrase, soon ‘became more devoted than any of his predecessors for a generation to the Career Diplomat and all the Old Boys in the F.O., so that “now all the old nags are going back to the stables”’.60
In Palestine Labour’s victory raised Zionist expectations. The American Palestine Committee took immediate appropriate action. On 16 August Truman told a press conference of his Potsdam message to Churchill, but added the caveat that the matter would have to be worked out diplomatically between Britain and the Arabs: he did not want to send 500,000 American soldiers to Palestine.61 In the State Department William Yale pointed out that among the 1,250,000 Jewish refugees in Europe there were many who would prefer to emigrate to the United States. He warned that the Arabs would consider mass Jewish immigration into Palestine an attempt to turn that country into a Zionist state. There would be disorder and troops would be needed. Yale advised that the United States should refrain from supporting a policy of large-scale immigration into Palestine during the interim period. Washington should not make any public statements on immigration before discussions with Britain.62
The officer administering the government of Palestine, J. V. W. Shaw, reported an explosive situation in the mandate. His analysis of the new Zionism confirmed that offered by Grigg in April. Shaw warned that the pressure of Zionism had been the main contributory factor to a sense of Arab nationalism. Jewish publicity and terrorism were persuading the Arabs that they would have to maintain their present position by force.63 Against this background the Colonial Office developed a scheme drawn up by Sir Douglas G. Harris, the former treasurer in Palestine, of local autonomy for separate Arab and Jewish provinces.64 On 30 August Bevin proposed a conference of British representatives in the Middle East to discuss general policy in the area. It decided that Britain should broaden the base of its influence in the Middle East, and develop an economic and social policy that would make for the prosperity and contentment of the area as a whole. But the Middle East was to remain largely a British sphere of influence: Britain ‘should not make any concession that would assist American commercial penetration into a region which for generations has been an established British market’.65 The Palestine Committee concentrated on Britain’s strategic position. The attitude of the Arabs was of the first importance as the Middle East was a region of ‘vital consequence’ for Britain and the Empire. It formed the nodal point in the Empire communication system and was also the Empire’s main reserve of oil. It also contained the Suez Canal and the principal naval bases in the eastern Mediterranean and at Alexandria. Britain was likely to have to depend on co-operation from independent Middle Eastern states. A policy unfavourable to the Arabs in Palestine could lead to widespread disturbances in Arab countries and endanger Britain’s imperial interests.66 On 4 October Bevin outlined a policy to the Cabinet based on these recommendations. Particular attention was paid to Britain’s strategic position. It was reported that the chiefs of staff were considering the feasibility of basing forces needed for the protection of the Middle East on British territory rather than in Egypt. The Cabinet endorsed the new policy.67
Truman and the Earl G. Harrison report
The Palestine issue, however, was complicated by pressure from the United States. In June 1945 Truman had sent Earl G. Harrison, the American representative on the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, to investigate the condition of displaced persons in Europe. He recommended that the United States should, under existing immigration laws, allow reasonable numbers of Jewish refugees into the United States. Truman, realizing that Congress would not relax the immigration quotas, chose instead to assign the responsibility to Britain. The President overrode his State Department. There was an election in New York, and the Jewish vote seemed crucial. Truman wrote to Attlee on 31 August suggesting that the main solution lay in the quick evacuation of Jews to Palestine. Harrison had recommended that 100,000 be admitted.68 Attlee was alarmed. He reminded Truman that Britain had to consider the Arabs as well. The Palestine problem also had to be considered in relation to India with its 90 million Muslims.69 The State Department agreed: on 26 September it recommended that the United States publicly accept a British decision that it would be impossible to allow any large number of refugees into Palestine. Instead they should be settled in other countries, including the United States. Furthermore, if Roosevelt’s promise to Ibn Saud were not kept there would be a serious threat to vital American interests in the Middle East. The War Department estimated that if Palestine were opened to Jewish immigration 400,000 men would be needed to maintain order, of which the United States would perhaps have to contribute over 300,000.70 But Zionist agitation led by Rosenman, Silver, Wagner and Bernard Baruch mounted. In Congress Taft tried to link Britain’s Palestine policy to the Anglo-American financial negotiations. Both Republicans and Democrats censured Britain for restricting immigration to Palestine. The New York election was only a few weeks away.71
The Anglo-American commission
In Cabinet Bevin mooted the idea of an Anglo-American commission to investigate the refugee problem. He explained on 11 October that agitation in the United States on the immigration issue was poisoning relations with the country. The Foreign Secretary could not accept that Jews could not live in Europe. The Cabinet agreed to Bevin’s proposal. The Foreign Secretary forwarded it to Halifax with the observation that the United States had been thoroughly dishonest: ‘to play on racial feeling for the purpose of winning an election is to make a farce of their insistence on free elections in other countries’.72
Truman, however, remained obsessed with the New York election of 6 November. Rosenman tried to persuade Truman not to give in to State Department pressure to publish Roosevelt’s assurances to Ibn Saud in the letter of 5 April 1945. The new Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes, admitted to Halifax on 22 October that the Jews in the United States were not interested in the plight of the Jews in Europe. American Jews believed that they ought to have ‘a country to call their own’ and that was their main preoccupation. The New York election was the paramount consideration.73 Bevin wanted to announce the Anglo-American commission in the House, and to point to its terms of reference that Palestine was not the only country for refugees. But Byrnes ‘in shamefaced embarrassment’ had to ask Bevin to postpone the statement till after polling day. The Secretary of State explained that the negative American attitude was a result of ‘intense and growing agitation about the Palestine problem in the New York election campaign’. 74 Even after a Democrat was elected in New York with a resounding majority, the Zionists succeeded in delaying matters. London, worried about repercussions in India over the pilgrimage to Mecca, was disturbed. Halifax told Byrnes that American domestic difficulties were hardly comparable to the ‘possibilities of outbreaks and dead bodies in Palestine’.75 In Palestine Haganah was implementing its plan, and Bevin was increasingly upset by the murder of British Tommies with whom he felt a class affinity. He told Weizmann on 2 November that the Jewish Agency could no longer be regarded as an innocent party in relation to terrorist outrages.76
But Truman was threatened by another congressional resolution on Palestine organized by the American Palestine Committee. Wagner and Taft, aghast at the enormity of the Jewish tragedy (5,700,000 had died at the hands of the Nazis), argued that Palestine was the only safe refuge for the remainder. They did not regard the United States as a suitable haven. Truman drafted a letter he did not send: ‘I don’t think that you or any of the other Senators, would be inclined to send a half dozen Divisions to Palestine to maintain a Jewish state.’77 Despite Truman’s request for delay, in the middle of December the Senate and the House of Representatives endorsed a resolution mentioning Truman’s request for the immediate entry of 100,000 refugees, and referring to a ‘democratic commonwealth’ in Palestine.78
On 9 November Bevin announced the appointment of an Anglo-American commission of inquiry to the House of Commons. He suggested that the commission should prepare a trusteeship agreement for Palestine, as well as a permanent solution for submission to the United Nations.79
By the end of 1945 the Arab–Zionist controversy had a new centre of focus. It had become subsumed into a conflict between British strategic interests in the whole of the Middle East and American domestic politics. Britain, after the end of the Second World War, wished to remain the paramount power in the Middle East. That area was vital for the Empire’s strategic security and communications. At a time of the emergence of the Cold War Britain was increasingly worried about possible Russian advances into the area, and saw the Middle East as being essential to Western security. But to maintain this, Britain had to negotiate treaties with the new Arab states. This would hardly be possible if Britain were seen as the sponsor of a Zionist state in Palestine, to be achieved through Jewish immigration. In the United States, the State Department and the military appreciated Britain’s predicament and advised Truman accordingly. But the new President, having reiterated Roosevelt’s assurances to the Arabs, succumbed to Zionist pressure and threats of electoral punishment. To the British it seemed that winning the election in New York was more important to the President than dead bodies in Palestine. The American position appeared hypocritical: immigration quotas meant that the United States took hardly any Jewish refugees. Instead an alliance of Zionists, anti-Semites and Roman Catholics in the United States wanted Britain to be responsible for the refugees in Palestine. In Truman the Zionists found a President sensitive to his electoral position. American domestic politics became a principal component in the events leading to the outbreak of the Arab–Israeli Wars.
References
1ESCO Foundation, Palestine. A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, Vol. I (New Haven 1947), pp. 252–253.
2Warren R. Austin Papers (University of Vermont Library, Burlington), Box 23, Palestine Notebook 1936, ff. 47–56.
3Llewelyn Woodward, British Foreign Policy in the Second World War, Vol. IV (London 1975), pp. 388–402.
4James F. Byrnes Papers (Clemson University Library, North Carolina), Folder 95(1), Byrnes to Roosevelt, 17 Feb. 1944.
5Woodward, op. cit., pp. 388–402.
6Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter cited as, FRUS), 1943 (4), pp. 786–787, Hull to Kirk, 26 May 1943.
7Joseph B. Schechtmann, The United States and the Jewish State Movement (New York 1966), pp. 61–69; Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Bloomington, Ind. 1991), pp. 95–6.
8Woodward, op. cit., pp. 351–357.
9Michael Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate. The Making of British Policy, 1936–45 (London 1978), pp. 162–163.
10RG 59 (National Archives, Washington), Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6751, Alling to Dunn, 6 May 1945.
11FRUS 1943 (4), pp. 816–821, Memorandum by Merriam, 15 Oct. 1943; William D. Hasset, Off the Record with F.D.R. (New Brunswick, New Jersey 1958), p. 209, Diary, 6 Oct. 1943.
12Robert F. Wagner Papers (Georgetown University Library, Washington), Palestine Files, Box 2, File 28, Wagner to Ben Hecht and Will Rogers Jr, 28 May 1944; Blank Invitation Form, 20 June 1944; see also Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (Detroit 1961), pp. 179, 182–185, 275–281, 320, 374–375; Hertzel Fishman, American Protestantism and a Jewish State (Detroit 1975), pp. 71–73, 80–82; Esther Yolles Feldblum, The American Catholic Press and the Jewish State 1917–1959 (New York 1977), pp. 58–59.
13Doreen Bierbrier, ‘The American Zionist Emergency Council: an analysis of a pressure group’, American Jewish Historical Quarterly, LX (1970), pp. 82–105; Stephen Wise, Challenging Years (New York 1949), pp. 216–232, 297–308; Schechtmann, op. cit., p. 69.
14FRUS 1944 (4), pp. 828–829, Halifax to Hull, 23 Dec. 1944.
15Ibid., 1944 (5), p. 562, Memorandum by Berle, 31 Jan. 1944.
16Marshall Library (Lexington, Virginia), with WDCSA, McCarthy to Marshall, 5 Feb. 1944; George C. Marshall Papers (Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia), Box 78, File 15, Marshall to Hull, 7 Feb. 1944 (not sent); Memorandum for Record by F. McCarthy, 7 Feb. 1944.
17Truman Papers (Truman Library, Independence, Missouri), General File Jews, Truman to Dubinsky, 8 Feb. 1944.
18FRUS 1944 (5), pp. 574–577, Enclosure, McCloy to Marshall, 22 Feb. 1944; Marshall Library, WDCSA 381, Marshall to McCloy, 23 Feb. 1944.
19Samuel I. Rosenman Papers (F. D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York), Box 13, Rosenman to Wise, 3 Feb. 1944; Rosenman to Wise, 5 Feb. 1944; F. D. Roosevelt Papers (F. D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York), McCormack to Roosevelt, 8 Feb. 1944; Enclosing Memorandum on the Jewish National Home; Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1944–45 (Washington 1945), p. 32; United States Office of Strategic Services, Foreign Nationality Groups in the United States: A Handbook (Washington 1943), p. 6.
20New York Times, 10 March 1944; F. D. Roosevelt Papers, OF 700, Roosevelt to J. Melville Broughton, 17 March 1944.
21FRUS 1944 (5), pp. 600–603, Memorandum by Kohler, 11 April 1944; pp. 603–605, Memorandum by Kohler, 19 April 1944.
22F. D. Roosevelt Papers, OF 700, Nathan Hilfer to Senator Theodore Francis Green, 7 April 1944.
23FRUS 1944 (5), p. 605, n. 99; p. 606, Hull to Roosevelt, 26 July 1944
24Ibid., pp. 614–615, Memorandum by Murray, 30 Sept. 1944.
25F. D. Roosevelt Papers, OF 700, Wise to Roosevelt, 16 Sept. 1944; Silver to Roosevelt, 26 Sept. 1944; Roosevelt to Wise, 9 Oct. 1944; Wagner to Roosevelt, 29 Sept. 1944; Memorandum for Watson, 13 Oct. 1944; FRUS 1944 (5), pp. 615–16, Roosevelt to Wagner, 15 Oct. 1944.
26W. S. Culbertson Papers (Library of Congress, Washington), Box 99, Ventures in Time and Space, Ch. 27, f. 24; RG59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6750, Extract from Report of Culbertson Mission, 15 Nov. 1944; FRUS 1944 (5), p. 39, n. 6.
27Woodward, op. cit., pp. 368–369; Cohen, Palestine, pp. 173–174; Trefor E. Evans (Ed.), The Killearn Diaries 1934–46 (London 1972), p. 281, 21 Feb. 1944.
28Woodward, op. cit., pp. 369–372; Cohen, Palestine, pp. 175–179.
29United Kingdom Parliamentary Debates House of Commons, 404, col. 2242, 17 Nov. 1944; Cab 66, 65, ff. 272–3, WP (45) 306, Memorandum by Stanley, 16 May 1945.
30Stettinius Papers (University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville), Box 229, Palestine Resolution.
31Ibid., Box 372, NEA Weekly Political Review, 15 Nov. 1944; FRUS 1944 (5), pp. 624–626, Murray to Stettinius, 27 Oct. 1944; Annex, Memorandum by Murray, 25 Oct. 1944.
32FRUS 1944 (5), pp. 634–635, Murray to Stettinius, 8 Nov. 1944.
33Ibid., p. 637, Stettinius to Roosevelt, 15 Nov. 1944; p. 640, Memorandum by Stettinius, 23 Nov. 1944; p. 641, Murray to Stettinius, 24 Nov. 1944; p. 638, Tuck to Hull, 21 Nov. 1944; pp. 638–9, Tuck to Hull, 21 Nov. 1944; F. D. Roosevelt Papers, OF 700, Stettinius to Roosevelt, 17 Nov. 1944; Wise to Stettinius, 16 Nov. 1944; Roosevelt to Stettinius, 20 Nov. 1944; Stettinius Papers, Box 229, Palestine Resolution; Elliott Roosevelt (Ed.), FDR: His Personal Letters 1928–1945, Vol. II (New York 1950), pp. 1559–1560, Roosevelt to Wagner, 3 Dec. 1944.
34Stettinius Papers, Box 245, Record, Section 1 ff. 17–20; Record, Section 2, f. 1; Box 229, Palestine Resolution.
35Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (New York 1975), pp. 58–59; Philip J. Barum, The Department of State in the Middle East 1919–1945 (Philadelphia 1978), p. 294.
36Francis L. Loewenheim et al. (Eds), Roosevelt and Churchill. Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York 1975), p. 234, No. 128, Churchill to Roosevelt, 9 Aug. 1942; FRUS 1942 (4), pp. 538–540, Murray to Hull, 2 July 1942 and Enclosures.
37Elliott Roosevelt, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 1564–1565, Roosevelt to Landis, 11 Jan. 1945; FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 680–682, Landis to Roosevelt, 17 Jan. 1945; W. S. Culbertson Papers, Box 99, Ventures in Time and Space, Ch. 27, f. 49, Comments on the Arab-Jewish Question in Palestine, 22 Jan. 1945.
38FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 683–687, Memorandum prepared in the Department of State, 30 Jan. 1945; Walter Clay Lowdermilk, Palestine Land of Promise (New York 1944), esp. pp. 9–10, 80, 168–179.
39F. D. Roosevelt Papers, OF 700, Memorandum of the American Zionist Emergency Council, 19 Jan. 1945.
40FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 2–3, Memorandum of Conversation between Ibn Saud and Roosevelt, 14 Feb. 1945; William A. Eddy, FDR meets Ibn Saud (New York 1954).
41RG 59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6750, Hoskins to Alling, 5 March 1945.
42Schechtmann, op. cit., pp. 114–115.
43RG 59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6750, Ibn Saud to Roosevelt, undated; Roosevelt to Ibn Saud, 5 April 1945.
44Joint Chiefs of Staff Leahy Records (National Archives, Washington), Folder 88, Research and Analysis Branch of OSS: Problems and Objectives of United States Policy, 2 April 1945; RG 59, Records of Charles E. Bohlen 1942–52, Box 1, Memorandum by Grew, 7 April 1947; Private Memorandum by Grew, 19 May 1945.
45Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Britain, the U.S.A. and the European Cold War 1945–1948’, History, 67 (1982), pp. 219–229.
46Cab 66, 64, ff. 58–68, WP (45) 214, note by Grigg, 4 April 1945.
47Ibid., ff. 120–2, WP (45) 229, Memorandum by Eden on Palestine, 10 April 1945.
48FO 954, 19A, ff. 76–78, Michael Wright to G. E. Millard, 17 March 1945; Minute by Eden, 26 March 1945; FO 371, 45378, E 4849/15/31G, Halifax to Eden, 1 July 1945.
49FO 371, 45378, E 4939/15/31G, Churchill to Stanley and Chiefs to Staff Committee, 6 July 1945; E 5141/15/31G, COS (45) 175th Meeting, 12 July; JP (45) 167 (Final), 10 July 1945.
50Reuben Fink, America and Palestine (New York 1945), p. 153.
51FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 704–705, Stettinius to Truman, 8 April 1945; pp. 706–707, Grew to Truman, 15 May 1945; p. 707, Truman to Abdullah, 17 May 1945; p. 708, Grew to Truman, 2 June 1945; pp. 708–709, Truman to Nokrashy, 4 June 1945; RG 59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6751, Memorandum for Truman by Grew, 1 May 1945; Note to Grew, 2 May 1945; Grew to Stettinius, 4 June 1945.
52Robert F. Wagner Papers, Palestine Files, Box 2, File 31, Wagner and Taft to Senators, 18 May 1945; Green to Wagner, 23 May 1945; Grew to Green, undated; Senators and Representatives to Truman, 2 July 1945; RG 59, Decimal Series 1945–49, Box 6750, Grew to Truman, 26 May 1945.
53G-7333 (National Archives, Suitland), Palestine – Jewish terrorist gangs, 22 March 1945; G-7090, Polish support of Irgun activities, 13 Feb. 1945; G-6716, 12 Dec. 1944; RG 84 (National Archives, Suitland), Entry 56A336, Box 254, 800 Palestine, State Department to London Embassy, 17 July 1945; Enclosing OSS Field Memorandum 253 (FR-446), 8 June 1945.
54RG 84, Entry 59A543 part 5, Box 1057, 800 Palestine, State Department to London Embassy, No. 5686, Enclosing OSS Report No. B-378, 14 June 1945; Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 (London 1995), pp. 144–145, 152–156.
55FO 371, 45378, E5474/15/31C, Truman to Churchill, 24 July 1945; Minute by Beeley, 27 July 1945.
56RG 59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6751, Hare to Byrnes, 1 Aug. 1945.
57Attlee Papers (Bodleian, Oxford), 2, Plans for New Government 1945; List A; Next Draft; Attlee Papers (Churchill College, Cambridge), 1/17, Labour in Power; Dalton Diaries (British Library of Political and Economic Science, London), 33, ff. 4–4v, 27–28 July 1945; Oliver Harvey Diaries (British Library, London), 8, 28 July 1945.
58Attlee Papers (Churchill College, Cambridge), 1/17, Labour in Power.
59Ibid., 1/24, Notes on Post-War Problems.
60Dalton Diaries, 34, 25 Feb. 1946.
61FRUS 1945 (8), p. 722, Byrnes to Pinkerton, 18 Aug. 1945.
62RG 59, Decimal Series 1945–49, Box 6751, Henderson to Byrnes, 30 Aug. 1945.
63Cab 129, 2, ff. 47–9, CP (45) 165, Shaw to Hall, 24 Aug. 1945 (extracts).
64FO 371, 45379, E656/15/31G, Memorandum on Future Policy for Palestine, Aug.–Sept. 1945.
65Cab 129, 2, f. 91, CP (45) 174, Memorandum by Bevin on Middle East Policy, 17 Sept. 1945.
66Ibid., f. 20, CP (45) 156, Great Britain’s Position in the Middle East, 8 Sept. 1945.
67Cab 128, 1, f. 81, Cab 28 (45) 6, 4 Oct. 1945.
68FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 738–739, Truman to Attlee, 31 Aug. 1945; ‘Report of Earl G. Harrison’, Department of State Bulletin, 30 Sept. 1945, p. 456.
69FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 740–741, Attlee to Truman, 16 Sept. 1945.
70Ibid., pp. 745–748, Merriam to Henderson, 26 Sept. 1945; pp. 751–753, Henderson to Acheson, 1 Oct. 1945; pp. 753–755, Acheson to Truman, 2 Oct. 1945; p. 762, Henderson to Byrnes, 9 Oct. 1945.
71Rosenman Files (F. D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park), Rosenman to Truman, 1 Sept. 1945; Robert F. Wagner Papers, Palestine Files, Box 2, File 31, Silver to Wagner, 27 Aug. 1945; 6 Sept. 1945; Baruch Papers (Princeton University Library), Vol. LXII, Silver to Baruch, 21 Sept. 1945; FO 371, 45400, E7449/265/31, Halifax to Bevin, 4 Oct. 1945.
72FO 371, 45381, E7757/15/31G, Bevin to Halifax, 12 Oct. 1945.
73Rosenman Files, Memorandum by Rosenman, 18 Oct. 1945; RG 59, Office of Near Eastern Affairs, Box 2, Minutes of Conversation between Byrnes and Halifax, 22 Oct. 1945.
74FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 794–795, British Embassy to Department of State, 26 Oct. 1945; pp. 795–799, Halifax to Byrnes and Enclosure, 26 Oct. 1945; FO 371, 45382, E8160/15/31G, Balfour to Bevin, 27 Oct. 1945.
75FO 371, 45383, E8539/15/G, Halifax to Bevin, 7 Nov. 1945.
76FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 812–813, British Embassy to Department of State, 6 Nov. 1945; FO 371, 45383, E8437/15/31a, Minute by Bevin, 2 Nov. 1945.
77Robert F. Wagner Papers, Palestine Files, Box 2, File 32, Wagner and Taft to various Senators, 16 Nov. 1945; Truman Papers, Box 184, PSF, Truman to Joseph H. Bull, 24 Nov. 1945; Minute by Truman, undated.
78Robert F. Wagner Papers, Truman to Wagner, 10 Nov. 1945; FRUS 1945 (8), pp. 841–842, State Department Memorandum, 17 Dec. 1945.
79United Kingdom Parliamentary Debates House of Commons, 415, cols 1930–2, 13 Nov. 1945.