* * *
A Bargain at Any Price
The Arabs and British both ignored the consequences of the rapid increase in the Palestinian Arab population, choosing instead to take issue with the purchases of land made by Jews for the purpose of settling new immigrants. Again the Arabs claimed that the Jews were buying the land of poor fellaheen for meager sums and dispossessing the Arab population.
More than 90 percent of the land Jews had purchased by 1936 had been bought from landowners, nearly 40 percent of whom lived in Egypt and Syria. Less than 8.7 percent of the Jews’ land was purchased from the fellaheen. In addition, of the 370,000 acres in Jewish hands, 87,500 acres were swampland and 125,000 acres were lands never before cultivated. Jews, who comprised 29 percent of the population, held only 5.5 percent of the land area west of the Jordan and only 11 percent of the area defined as “arable.”
The Jews were paying outrageous prices to wealthy Arab landowners for small tracts of arid land. The largest tracts were purchased from a handful of prominent families. The Arabs who became “dispossessed” were those who had willingly sold their land at exorbitant prices to Jewish buyers. The Arabs who were hurt by Jewish settlement were the relatively small propertied class who saw the high standard of living of Jewish workers and their communal lifestyle as a threat to their dominance over the poor fellaheen. Many historians believe that the intellectual class of Arabs feared and resented the superior education and standard of living of the Jews.
Despite the weakness of the Arab claims of dispossession, the British gave them the usual airing through an investigation. In 1931, the British conducted a survey of Arab “landlessness” and eventually offered new lands to any Arabs who had been “dispossessed.” British officials received approximately 3,200 applications, of which more than 2,600 were ruled invalid by the government’s legal adviser because they came from Arabs who were not landless. This left only about 600 landless Arabs, 100 of whom accepted the government land offer. The masses of dispossessed Arabs apparently did not exist or simply were not interested in reacquiring land.
The Arab Revolt
The offer of land failed to pacify the Arabs, and the surge in Jewish immigration in 1934 and 1935 served to intensify their anger. Recalling the British reaction to their pogroms in the 1920s, the Arabs felt confident that further violence would enable them to extract concessions to their demands.
* * *
Ask the Sphinx
The Arab Higher Committee replaced the Arab Executive Committee, which had disbanded in 1934 after the death of Mussa Kazim Pasha Hussaini. It became the dominant Arab political organization in Palestine.
* * *
The first outbreaks began in April 1936, with attacks on Jewish settlements led by a Syrian guerrilla, Fawzi el-Kaukji (who was a close friend of the Mufti). After a month of relatively unimpeded violence against the Jewish community, the Arab leaders formed the Arab Higher Committee and made the mufti its leader. The mufti quickly called for a general strike that he hoped would paralyze the country.
An “A-Peeling” Solution?
In May 1936, the British government appointed yet another commission to investigate the cause of the riots. By the time the commission, led by Lord Earl Peel, arrived in Palestine in November, 89 Jews had been killed and more than 300 wounded.
The Peel Commission investigation found that the Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. The commission’s report pointed out that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased…there was at the time at least of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.” Moreover, the commission found that the shortage of land was “due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.”
The commission was also of the opinion that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living, and ample employment opportunities.
Despite the positive economic impact of Jewish settlement in Palestine, the Arabs remained obdurately opposed to Jewish immigration and reacted violently. The commission acknowledged the validity of the Jewish complaints regarding the British Administration’s failure to curb Arab violence: “If one thing stands out clearly from the record of the Mandatory Administration, it is the leniency with which Arab political agitation, even when carried to the point of violence and murder, has been treated.”
Two States Within a State
The commission came to the conclusion that the mandate was unworkable because the aspirations of the Jews and Arabs were mutually contradictory. The commission proposed what seemed to be a logical solution, dividing Palestine into two separate states: one Jewish and one Arab.
Unfortunately, the Jewish and Arab populations were not neatly divided in separate regions of the country. Consequently, the Peel partition plan carved Palestine into a checkerboard of loosely connected areas. The Jewish state was to encompass a minuscule area of Palestine composed of eastern Galilee, the Jezreel Valley, and the coastal plain from Tel Aviv to Acre. Great Britain was to retain control over Jerusalem and the roads to the Red Sea, the Sea of Galilee, and the Mediterranean. The remainder of the country was to be included in the Arab state.
A majority of the Zionist Organization was willing to accept the Peel plan on the grounds that a small state was better than no state. This group felt that if the Jewish community were allowed to develop in its own state, coming generations would take care of the future.
Opposition and Outcries
A vocal Jewish minority, led by the Revisionists, vehemently objected to the partition plan. They would not accept the idea of giving up even part of what they considered to be their homeland to the Arabs. The religious party leaders rejected any plan that did not acknowledge the right of the Jews to settle anywhere in the Promised Land. Other Zionists believed the small area allotted for Jewish settlement was little more than a ghetto in which the British hoped to suffocate the Zionist movement.
The opponents of the Peel Plan were quick to point out that Great Britain had already partitioned historical Palestine once when it severed the 90,000 square kilometers of Transjordan from the rest of the country. Now, out of the remaining 26,700 square kilometers of Palestine, the Jewish community was to be allowed to settle on only 5,000 square kilometers.
The Arabs were just as unhappy with the idea of a second partition. Arab nationalists maintained that the Arabs were not being granted independence under the Peel Plan because 300,000 Arabs were to be living in the Jewish state and therefore under “Jewish domination.”
Furthermore, the Arabs objected to the existence of any Jewish state in “their” land and maintained that even the small area allocated for the Jewish state exceeded the size of the “National Home” envisioned in the Balfour Declaration. This view was refuted by the commission, which found that “the field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan.”
Given the opposition of a large segment of the organization and the reservations of the majority, the Twentieth Zionist Congress, which met in Zurich in August 1937, decided not to accept the Peel Plan, but voted to enter negotiations to clarify the British government’s proposal to found a Jewish state in Palestine. The Zionist leaders were quick to jump at the possibility of establishing a state after being mentioned for the first time in the Peel Plan. The Arabs, meanwhile, rejected the proposal unequivocally.
* * *
Ask the Sphinx
In addition to inciting violence against Jews in Palestine, the mufti curried favor with Hitler in the hope of winning the Führer’s support for the Arab cause. Hitler did nothing to aid the Arabs directly, but ironically, he might have had the biggest impact of anyone on the eventual establishment of Israel�
�by his genocidal policies.
* * *
Brits Lose Their Patience
The apparent concessions to the Zionists implicit in the Peel Commission’s report fueled the Arabs’ antagonism toward the Jews in Palestine. The mufti subsequently incited further rioting.
Eventually, the British lost patience with the inflammatory rhetoric and violent orchestrations of the Arab Higher Committee and declared the organization illegal. The leaders of the committee either fled or were arrested. The British tried to arrest the mufti, but he escaped to Germany, where he became an active supporter of the Nazis. The lack of Arab leadership slowed the Arab revolt but did not end it.
Wingate’s Warriors
In 1936, a British captain named Charles Orde Wingate was transferred to Palestine to serve as an intelligence officer. Wingate learned Hebrew and was a vociferous supporter of the Zionist cause. To counter the attacks by Arab bands, he organized and trained members of the Haganah for “Special Night Squads.” Their tactics were based on the strategic principles of surprise, mobility, and night attacks, and they served effectively both as defensive and offensive units, successfully preempting and resisting Arab attacks.
Wingate became a hero in the Jewish community, which called him ha-yedid, “the friend.” His pro-Zionist sympathies did not win him any friends in the mandatory government, however, and in 1939 the British transferred Wingate, going so far as to stamp his passport with the restriction that he not be allowed to reenter the country. Though he never returned, his legacy was the cadre of men he trained who later became key figures in the Israel Defense Forces.
* * *
Mysteries of the Desert
After his expulsion from Palestine, Wingate returned briefly to Great Britain but was soon back on active duty. In 1941, he led the force in Ethiopia against the Italians and played an important role in liberating the country. He then worked in Burma, organizing and training a special jungle unit that operated behind Japanese lines. In 1944, Wingate was killed in an airplane crash in Burma and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Today a number of institutions in Israel are named after him.
* * *
Jews Turn to Terror
The Haganah acted according to the Jewish principle of havlaga, or “self-defense.” However, the organization’s ineffectiveness during the 1929 riots stimulated discontent among its more militant members. Some extremists rejected the notion of havlaga and advocated offensive action. They formed a new organization that accepted the Revisionists’ assertion that the only way the Jewish people could gain their independence would be to fight for it. This organization became known as the Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL or Etzel), the “National Military Organization.” By comparison, the Haganah was composed of approximately 17,000 men and 4,000 women in 1937, whereas the Irgun membership was only about 1,800.
Rather than calm Arab passions, the Peel Commission’s partition recommendation further inflamed them. Subsequently, the Arabs launched a new, more violent series of riots against the British and attacks on Jewish settlements. The Jewish defenders were initially subdued, but their tactics changed in 1937. In September the Irgun retaliated for the murder of 3 Jews by launching an attack that left 13 Arabs dead. On November 14, the Irgun began a series of assaults against hostile Arab neighborhoods; it killed 10 Arabs and wounded many more. The attacks outraged the Jewish Agency, which accused the Irgun of undermining its efforts to obtain a political settlement. The outcry induced the Irgun to return to the principle of havlaga, but this was only a temporary move.
In 1938, David Raziel, who had organized the November 14 attacks, became commander of the Irgun. In that year, three Jews were arrested by the British after an attempted attack against the Arabs. One of the attackers was judged mentally imbalanced and released. The second was convicted and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted because he was under 18. The third man, Shlomo Ben-Yosef, was sentenced to death and hanged on June 29, 1938. The British saw the punishment as an example for others. The Irgun considered Ben-Yosef’s death a challenge to be confronted, and the Arabs believed it to be an implicit endorsement of their rebellion.
* * *
Ask the Sphinx
The violence in Palestine in 1938 took a heavy toll: 486 Arab civilians killed and 636 wounded; 1,138 Arab rebels killed, 196 wounded; 292 Jews killed, 649 wounded; 12 others killed, 6 wounded; 69 British killed and 233 wounded. The British deployed more than 20,000 troops to quell the revolt.
* * *
After the hanging, the Irgun stepped up its activity, attacking Arab headquarters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on July 4 and killing five Arabs. On July 6, bombs placed in milk cans exploded in a Haifa market, killing 23 Arab shoppers and wounding 79. Another bombing, this time in Jerusalem on June 15, killed 10 and wounded 29. A little more than a week later, on July 25, an explosion in Haifa killed 39 and wounded 46 Arabs. During this same period, 44 Jews were killed by Arabs.
Britain Slams the Door
In another attempt to appease the Arabs, the British restricted Jewish immigration in March 1938 to 3,000 for the following 6-month period. Consequently, Jewish immigration fell from its record high of 66,000 in 1935 to a little more than 14,000 in 1938. The Arabs were not pacified by the concession and continued their attacks. By the end of the year, nearly 300 Jews had been killed and more than 600 wounded.
The Zionists persistently and naively clung to the belief that the Arabs would eventually accept their presence in Palestine, and would recognize the benefits that Jewish settlement was bringing to the country. In 1934, Ben-Gurion told Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami that the Zionists were bringing “a blessing to the Arabs of Palestine” and that they had no good reason to oppose Jewish settlement. Alami replied: “I would prefer that the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years, until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own.”
The violence in Palestine was finally put to rest in 1939 as a result of Great Britain’s latest white paper, in which the Balfour Declaration and subsequent pro-Zionist policies were effectively repudiated. The new British policy, articulated in the white paper, called for the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine within 10 years and the restriction of Jewish immigration to no more than 75,000 total over the following 5 years—and none thereafter without the consent of the Arab population.
Even though the Arabs had been granted a concession on Jewish immigration and been offered independence—which was the goal of Arab nationalists—they rejected the 1939 white paper. The Palestinian Arabs did not want an independent state; they wanted Palestine to be part of an independent Arab state of Syria. They also wanted to get the Jews out of their country.
* * *
Ask the Sphinx
After 3 years of violence, the toll on the Arabs was estimated to be roughly 5,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and 5,600 imprisoned. More than 400 Jews were killed during the revolt.
* * *
The Zionist leaders were shocked by this new white paper and categorically rejected it. They saw it as a complete capitulation to Arab demands, a surrender to extortion, and an abandonment of Great Britain’s obligations to the Jews. The timing of the English government’s policy shift could not have been worse: Hitler was occupying Czechoslovakia, and the mass persecution of the Jews by the Nazis was intensifying. The Jews’ escape route to their homeland was being closed, not by the Nazis, but by the British. It was this closing of the gates of Palestine, more than anything else, that stimulated the Jewish resistance movement and convinced the moderate Zionist leaders of the necessity of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
In 1939, the leaders of the Irgun were arrested (they were released in 1940), the Arab attacks subsided, and the world edged into war. The Jewish community saw the white paper as a surrender to Arab violence, and the more militant among them were determined to show the British that the “Jewish nuisance value was no less dangerous than the Arab variety.”
The Least Yo
u Need to Know
Jewish immigrants, particularly from Nazi Germany, flooded Palestine and provoked Arab anger. The British responded with new Jewish immigration restrictions.
Despite continuing claims of dispossession, the Arab standard of living increased as more Jews settled in Palestine.
The Arabs mounted a three-year revolt that took thousands of British, Jewish, and Arab lives, but that accomplished little.
The Peel Commission proposed dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. The Arabs rejected the idea, and the Jews began to see this as a victory.
The Haganah began to take a more active role in defending the Jews. Militant Jews believed, however, the only way to achieve independence was to fight for it.
In reaction to the Arab revolt, the British issued a white paper in 1939 that restricted immigration and repudiated the Balfour Declaration.
Chapter 8
Fighting Hitler and Great Britain
In This Chapter
The Jewish underground versus the British blockade
The violence escalates
The establishment turns on the Jewish extremists
Churchill’s defeat brings unexpected misery to the Jews
The Jewish community in Palestine, the Yishuv, not only survived the turbulence of the 1930s, but it also grew and flourished. Its population increased by 100,000 during the three years of the Arab revolt (1936–1939), demonstrating the unyielding determination of the Jews to settle in their homeland and their unwillingness to be deterred by Arab violence or British restrictions.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict Page 15
