Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  Speaking for the Opposition, Oliver Stanley, Creech Jones’s predecessor in the wartime coalition government, described the “complete and irrevocable change in the whole situation in Palestine” since February. In his view the only solution had long been partition. Because the Labour government had consistently rejected this option, the only alternative now was evacuation. “I do not believe,” the former colonial secretary declared, “that this country can continue to carry alone a burden in blood, in treasure, in work and labour in Palestine, on anything like the same lines as for the last 20 years.”57

  But it was the denunciation of the government’s policy by its own members that cut deepest. Labour’s Harold Lever spoke scathingly of “two years of planless, gutless and witless behaviour which has not only cost us treasure in terms of money but uncountable treasure in manpower and loss of life, all in order to prove that we are master of a situation of which we obviously are not master, and all for some obscure reason made plain not to our troops, not to the people of Palestine, and certainly not to us.” Britain, he fulminated, had lost all moral or legal grounds for governing Palestine. Decrying the altruism supposedly guiding government policy, he derided British rule as “this military dictatorship in Palestine, this police State, this State of the flogging block and the gallows” and accused the colonial secretary of having drenched “his hands with more purposelessly shed blood than any other Minister of the Crown in this generation.” The Mancunian MP concluded by stating unequivocally, “We must go, and the sooner we go the better it will be for the people of Palestine and the people of this country.” His fellow backbencher Michael Foot agreed that Britain had morally isolated itself in the world because of its present policy in Palestine, urging the government “to make an act of policy for the first time in two years” by proclaiming its intention to surrender the mandate and leave Palestine no matter what the UN might decide in September.58

  The strong reaction to the hangings from both the public and Parliament had convinced officials in the Colonial and Foreign Offices that the pressure on the government to end Britain’s involvement in Palestine regardless of the UN’s decision had become difficult, if not impossible, to resist. The Colonial Office was eager to extricate itself from its responsibilities in Palestine before conditions became worse. Its officials were convinced that even if the situation in Palestine were suddenly stabilized, the government would not be able to overcome opposition at home for Britain to remain there.59

  The Foreign Office concurred, fretting endlessly over the harm that Palestine was having on Anglo-Arab relations. Michael Wright, an undersecretary, summed up the Foreign Office position in a paper that extolled the salutary effect that withdrawal from Palestine would have on Muslim attitudes toward Britain. By washing its hands of the mandate, Britain could avoid the prospect of further alienating the Arabs should the UN attempt to impose a solution that involved any measure of Jewish autonomy, as was now thought likely. Although Britain clearly had strategic interests in Palestine, Wright argued, “the political advantages of withdrawal outweigh the strategic advantages” of continued access to the port at Haifa and the oil refinery, pipeline terminus, and storage facilities there. “The Mandate,” he concluded, “has proved unworkable. It has caused antagonism towards H.M.G. on the part of the Arab states, the Jews, and in America. British withdrawal from Palestine would remove this particular cause for antagonism.”60

  Opinion was also crystallizing within the cabinet that the government had no alternative but to announce its intention to withdraw from Palestine. “I am quite sure that the time has almost come when we must bring our troops out of Palestine altogether,” Dalton told Attlee on August 11. “The present state of affairs is not only costly to us in man-power and money but is, as you and I agree, of no real value from the strategic point of view—you cannot in any case have a secure base on top of a wasps’ nest—and it is exposing our young men, for no good purpose, to most abominable experiences, and is breeding anti-Semites at a most shocking speed.”61

  A few days later Creech Jones duly advised the British delegation attending the September meeting of the UN General Assembly, “Account should be taken of the strong feeling now apparent in the country and the House of Commons in favour of British withdrawal from Palestine.”62

  As the British government was pushed inexorably toward a final decision on Palestine that summer, an imbroglio of epic proportions was unfolding on the Mediterranean Sea. On July 11—the same day that the Irgun had kidnapped the two sergeants—the Exodus 1947, a Haganah ship illegally transporting more than forty-five hundred Jewish Holocaust survivors, had set sail from Sète, France, for Palestine. It was being tracked by Royal Navy ships and a special team of MI6 operatives aboard a civilian yacht. Trained in sabotage, they planned to plant a limpet mine on the Exodus’s hull with a three- to four-day time delay in hopes of disabling it. The Foreign Office, however, intervened and thwarted the intelligence service’s operation, aptly code-named Embarrass. As the vessel neared Palestine on July 18, heavily armed British sailors boarded it. A desperate struggle ensued as the crew and the refugees attempted to prevent the boarding party from gaining access to the ship’s wheelhouse. One crew member and two passengers were killed and many others injured—along with several sailors. With the Exodus now under British control, it was escorted to Haifa, where Sixth Airborne Division troops were waiting on the dock to facilitate the transfer of its passengers and crew to three other vessels that would return them to France. Judge Sandström, the UNSCOP chairman, and the Yugoslav delegate, Vladimir Simic, were on hand to observe the heartrending spectacle of the refugees’ forced re-embarkation.63

  Bevin’s decision to deport the refugees to France rather than intern them on Cyprus, where previous ships carrying illegal immigrants had been diverted, quickly proved to be a colossal public relations blunder. When the three ships transporting the Exodus passengers arrived in Port-de-Bouc on July 29, they simply refused to disembark. The French declined to intervene and a three-week standoff followed. Then, on August 22, the British government announced that if the refugees did not voluntarily leave the ships, they would be taken to the British occupation zone in Germany and interned there. Only thirty-one of the Exodus’s original passengers accepted the offer to remain in France, and the three ships set sail that evening for Hamburg. They arrived on September 8, and after fierce resistance from some and resigned cooperation from others the refugees were disembarked and transported by rail to the former Nazi detention camps at Poppendorf and Am Stau.64

  The image of Jewish concentration camp survivors struggling to reach Palestine, only to be dragged back and imprisoned in the country responsible for their torment and travail in the first place, caused irreparable damage to Britain’s moral standing and credibility. The outcome of Bevin’s petulant response was the extensive press coverage focused on the prolonged plight of the Exodus refugees. This in turn completely vitiated his intention “to teach the Jews a lesson” and marshal international support to help end the illegal immigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine. Instead, it generated immense sympathy for the Zionist cause and, with respect to UNSCOP, solidified the prevailing sentiment in favor of partition.65

  On September 1 the 117-page UNSCOP report was released. The committee unanimously concluded that the British mandate should be terminated and Palestine should be granted its independence as soon as was practicable. A majority of the committee’s members recommended that Palestine be partitioned into separate Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem set aside as an international enclave under UN auspices. A two-year transitional period was proposed during which Palestine would be governed by Britain but overseen by the UN. Independence would be granted at the end of that period provided that the constitutions adopted by the proposed Arab and Jewish states satisfied the UN and a treaty of economic union between the two states was concluded.66

  A minority report submitted by the Indian, Iranian, and Yugoslavian delegates instead recommen
ded the establishment of an independent, binational, federal state. Little attention, however, was paid to its proposals.67

  The Labour government was not pleased. If, as appeared likely, the General Assembly approved partition, Britain would be saddled with the responsibility of enforcing that solution during the two-year transitional period. This was unacceptable, as editorials in The Times and The Economist similarly concluded. “Whatever solution was propounded for the problem,” Creech Jones later reflected, “it called for the use of force which the British Government did not have and a use which the British public felt to be intolerable.”68

  The military’s position on the UNSCOP recommendations was contained in an assessment prepared by the Chiefs of Staff that Albert Victor Alexander, the minister of defense, transmitted in his memorandum to the cabinet on September 18. The chiefs warned that adoption of the majority recommendations would trigger an Arab uprising in Palestine abetted by “irregulars and volunteers” from surrounding states that would lead to anti-British disorders across the Middle East. This would inevitably entail the deployment of British military reinforcements to the region and therefore require “a drastic revision” of Britain’s defense policy. Even if the UN accepted the minority report, it was unlikely to receive the approval of both communities in Palestine—which was a prerequisite of the plan’s implementation. Although the current strength of the Palestine garrison was sufficient to handle any Jewish unrest, it would be unable to cope simultaneously with Arab violence. But the targeted reduction in overseas personnel would render this existent capability evanescent. The cardinal principle of British policy, the assessment concluded, must in any event remain the “retention of Arab goodwill.”69

  In a memorandum submitted to the cabinet that same day, Bevin bluntly described the majority proposal as “so manifestly unjust to the Arabs that it is difficult to see how … we could reconcile it with our conscience.” The foreign secretary also spoke of the likelihood of Arab disturbances in Palestine that would be vigorously supported by its neighbors and therefore necessitate the deployment of at least one additional army division to the Middle East. “The present situation in Palestine,” he therefore believed, “is intolerable and cannot be allowed to continue. His Majesty’s Government have themselves failed to devise any settlement which would enable them to transfer their authority to a Government representing the inhabitants of the country. If the [UN General] Assembly should fail, or if it were to propose a settlement for which His Majesty’s Government could not accept responsibility, the only remaining course would be to withdraw from Palestine, in the last resort, unconditionally.”70

  Although Bevin conceded that by withdrawing unilaterally from Palestine, Britain might be criticized by both Jews and Arabs for failing to fulfill its obligations under the mandate, the foreign secretary argued, “We cannot permit ourselves to be kept in Palestine indefinitely by fear of this accusation.” In any case, the advantages of withdrawal—primarily the preservation of good relations with the Muslim world and in turn the maintenance of British strategic interests in the Middle East along with an end to the bloodshed and hardship endured by British forces in Palestine—obviated the disadvantages of remaining there. “British lives,” he explained, “would not be lost, nor British forces expended, in suppressing one Palestinian community to the advantage of the other, and we should not be pursuing a policy destructive of our own interests in the Middle East.” Bevin hoped that such a decision might also have a positive effect on Palestine’s Arab and Jewish populations and thus “induce a sense of realism and offer a prospect of a settlement. With this end in view,” the foreign secretary concluded, “it should be made clear at an early stage in the Assembly that our minds are made up.”71

  The cabinet met on September 20 to discuss the government’s options in view of the UNSCOP report and the forthcoming General Assembly session. Bevin reiterated his view that Britain should decline “to enforce a settlement which was unacceptable” to either the Arabs or the Jews. To his mind, “the right course was for His Majesty’s Government to announce their intention to surrender the Mandate and … plan for an early withdrawal of the British forces and British administration from Palestine.” Creech Jones spoke next and stated his agreement with Bevin’s assessment, as did the rest of the cabinet. Emanuel Shinwell, the minister of fuel and power, stressed the importance of an orderly withdrawal so that Britain’s relinquishment of its responsibilities in Palestine would not be seen as a sign of weakness. Dalton strongly opposed the deployment of any more service personnel and said “that a date for the withdrawal of the British administration and British forces should be announced as soon as possible.”72

  The prime minister concurred. The time had come, he said, for Britain to disencumber itself of the responsibility for Palestine. Attlee drew attention to the “close parallel between the position in Palestine and the recent situation in India,” where independence had been proclaimed on August 15, as an example of how Britain had stated its intention to withdraw, fixed a definite time limit for the cessation of British rule, and had then left the two rival communities there to resolve their differences on their own.

  The cabinet, accordingly, agreed to inform the UN that Britain “would not be able to give effect to any scheme unacceptable to both the Arabs and the Jews and that in any other event, the United Nations Organisation would have to find another implementing authority. The prime responsibility for the implementation would in any event be transferred to the United Nations Organisation.”73

  Creech Jones communicated the government’s decision to the UN on September 26. “In order that there may be no misunderstanding of the attitude and policy of Britain,” he stated, “I have been instructed by His Majesty’s Government to announce with all solemnity that they have consequently decided that in the absence of a settlement they must plan for an early withdrawal of British forces and of the British administration from Palestine.”74

  Indeed, less than eight weeks after the cabinet had decided to surrender the mandate, it approved the evacuation timetable proposed by the Chiefs of Staff. “In order to dispel any remaining uncertainty of Britain’s intention to withdraw,” the British delegation at the UN was instructed to inform the General Assembly that all British forces and administrative services would be withdrawn from Palestine by August 1, 1948. This date was subsequently moved forward to May 15. And on that day British rule in Palestine ceased.75

  EPILOGUE

  Only Thus

  Nearly a decade and a half after the events that brought Britain to its knees in Palestine, Creech Jones described the thinking behind the Labour government’s fateful decision to surrender the mandate in two revealing letters written within five weeks of each other to Elizabeth Monroe and the Labour MP and future prime minister James Callaghan.

  The first letter, dated October 23, 1961, and addressed to Monroe, identified four pivotal concerns that had driven the cabinet in September 1947 to conclude that the mandate was no longer tenable. First were the political differences separating Palestine’s Arab and Jewish communities that the government had despaired of resolving. “Jews and Arabs had rejected every possible solution,” the former colonial secretary lamented, “and each was so inflexible in their views as to make them irreconcilable.” Second was the unrelenting pressure on Britain’s already depleted economy imposed by the large garrison maintained in Palestine because of ongoing Jewish terrorism and the threats of more widespread Zionist resistance as well as renewed Arab violence. Third was the mounting criticism over the Labour government’s inability to replace the 1939 white paper with a new policy acceptable to both Arabs and Jews. Lastly, he called attention to the “deadly blow against British patience and pride” that the hanging of the two sergeants had caused. Hence, with “accelerating speed,” Creech Jones concluded his account of these seminal developments, “the Cabinet was pushed to the conclusion that they could [no] longer support the Mandate.”1

  In the second letter, sen
t to Callaghan on November 30, 1961, Creech Jones began by recounting his advocacy for partition from the time he became colonial secretary in October 1946. “It was too late and an impracticable policy at that stage in every respect,” he explained. Bevin, moreover, had already “influenced the Cabinet along his line of policy and in the broad it was the inevitable one. Things were in crisis and steadily mounting to a climax” throughout the summer of 1947. The Labour government was under immense pressure from Parliament, from America, and from the British people to end its paralytic reign over Palestine and reach a decision about the mandate’s political future that had eluded every other premiership for the past decade. “Meanwhile outrages were common in Palestine,” he recalled.

  Terrorism was at its worst and the British public seemed unable to stand much more of it. For my part, I could only work within the confines of the Labour Government’s Middle East policy and try to get order into Palestine and any acceptable interpretation of the Mandate … this was an impossibility and I knew it. Bevin was thoroughly co-operative but the situation was hopeless and intolerable. The Cabinet determined that the Mandate could not be worked and felt the only possible alternative was to leave it to the responsible International Authority in the world … and ask them to find a solution. That we did.2