William Tyler
The British Mandate in Palestine
William Tyler | The British Mandate in Palestine | 07.01.24
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- So welcome, everyone. We’re talking today about the British mandate in Palestine. And this is a map which I think also Trudy has shown, and I thought I’d use the same map. It’s pretty straightforward what I want to say. This is a map at the start of the British mandate, early 1920s. The area which is shaded is the area of Transjordan. The area on the other side of the Dead Sea with a dark line represents Israel. Now, at the north is Lebanon. And the British gave some of what would’ve been Palestine/Israel to the French in Lebanon as a quid pro quo on the border. So we’ve got a very large Arabic country to the right, shaded, and to the left, we’ve got Palestine. Now, the important point to know politically about this, before anyone says, “Oh, yes, but it isn’t like that in 1935, 1948.” No, of course, it isn’t, it changes. But this is the beginning. In Iraq, sorry, in Transjordan as well as in Iraq, Britain had a mandate, and it placed on the throne of Iraq and on the throne of Transjordan one, or both, two sons of Hussein of Mecca. In Palestine, it had no Arab prince, why? Because the country is very divided between Jew and Arab. And the original plan of Britain and France was that there should be an international government in what we call Palestine at this stage.
But in the end, that did not, of course, happen, and the British mandate covered both Palestine and the area of Transjordan. And I know some people said last week, “No, no, you’re getting it all wrong. No, no, no, no. It is included in that British mandate.” So, as I tell the story, you just remember that at this stage, which you can see from the map, Gaza is entirely within Palestine, so is the West Bank entirely within Palestine. And if we remove the map, then I’ll begin to talk about the topic of, whoops. That’s lovely, I’ll just get my picture up because it would be, that’s it. That’s helpful to me. The story that I’m telling today of British Palestine, I’m only taking up as far as 1939, the outbreak of the Second World War. Why am I not going forward to the Second World War and immediately afterwards? Because I think those are quite distinct stories. And although you might be able to guess from the ending today, if you knew none of the history, what is likely to happen, I would prefer to keep it tight and stop in 1939. There’s enough to talk about, for goodness sake, between the early ‘20s and the late 1930s. I also need to say that, with contemporary history, there’s both a good point and a bad point as regards to the person talking, i.e., me.
The good point is that many of you know the story, and so I’m not having to teach grandmothers to suck eggs, as it were. You know the story. But secondly, knowing the story means that you’re much, in the right use of the word, critical. William, you didn’t say this happened in July of whatever year or an error of commission. William, you said July. I think you meant June. So there’s always a slight danger for the tutor with contemporary history. I regard it all as a plus. And I’m very grateful to those of you who contacted me privately via email to let me know how your families were involved in this period. That is to say, that the last email was someone who told me about their husband. Others have told me about their fathers or even grandfathers. So many of you know about the era of British Palestine between the First and the Second World Wars because you have inherited family memories. You may also have had family or friends which were instrumental in this story. So please share that if you wish in the half an hour or so we have after I’ve talked, or if you wish to contact me privately, simply send me an email, and I promise that I will answer that.
Now, I’m going to do this talk in, I suppose, four bits. The first bit is to finish off about Winston Churchill, Britain’s colonial secretary, who we talked about last time, setting up the Cairo Conference in March, 1921. I’m then going to look at the settlement in the Middle East as a whole, which repeats some things, gives more details on others, and comes to, I hope, a clear picture. I’ll then talk specifically about British Palestine. And as we end in 1938, '39, by the time British Palestine reaches those dates, there are clear indications of the troubles to come and of the seeming impossibility to resolve what we might describe as the Palestinian-Israeli question. Now, I hope in whatever I say, I don’t offend anybody. It’s not my intention to offend. But please remember that I’m not Israeli, I’m not Jewish, so it is possible that I may say something that you would’ve wanted an Israeli historian to say differently. Now, I’m going to begin, as I said, to complete Churchill’s story as the secretary of state for the colonies, which we looked at last week, and the date I’m starting with is the 17th of October, 1922. Churchill in hospital about to be operated on for appendicitis, which in those days was a far more serious condition and a far more serious operation than it is today.
As he lay in his hospital bed, the wartime Liberal-Conservative coalition finally fell apart. And on the 23rd of October, the Conservative, Bonar Law, took over as prime minister from Lloyd George, and an election was called for the 15th of November. Churchill immediately lost office because he was a Liberal and not a Conservative. When that Conservative government was formed on the 23rd of October, he is no longer secretary of state for the colonies. Churchill recovered from his operation and stood as a Liberal in the general election of that November, but he lost his seat in the Scottish city of Dundee. And as Martin Gilbert writes, any excuse to read Martin Gilbert, and I will. This is Martin Gilbert’s assessment of that situation. And he writes this, “Lloyd George’s former private secretary, a man called Geoffrey Shakespeare, recalled later in his life, 'Winston was down in the dumps. He could scarcely speak the whole evening. He thought his world had come to an end when he lost his seat in Dundee, at least his political world. I thought his career was over.’”
You can never, ever in Churchill’s life write him off, but they did. But that’s another story for another day. I just want to emphasise that Churchill’s involvement with the Middle East is now ended because his office as colonial secretary, which had involved him, amongst other things, with looking at the Middle East, is over. So the story I told last week of the Cairo Conference and Churchill leading it, in which I also quoted a number of people who thought even if historians today regard Churchill’s intervention as not helpful, his contemporaries, many of them, regarded it as extremely, extremely helpful. And you remember that I had said that the British were trying to be even-handed between Arab and Jew. But as I say that, and you all know that there were pro-Arab British, particularly in the Foreign Office in Britain, as well as pro-Jewish British, particularly in Parliament, members of Parliament. But there was a commitment by every government in the interwar years, and that means coalition governments, Conservative governments, and Labour governments in Britain, that they would hold by the commitment made in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 that they would create a Jewish homeland.
Easy to say and easy to blame them for not doing it, but in the realities on the ground in Palestine, extremely difficult. Let’s then begin the story with the League of Nations, which began its work in January of 1920. And I suppose that you could say that its purpose was to turn the phrase used about the First World War, the phrase, the war to end all wars, to turn that phrase into a reality under a rules-based international order. Now, when we come towards the end of this series of talks, I shall have to talk about the United Nations. And many of you may feel as I do that the United Nations, based on an international order, is seriously in doubt, and not least because of the Israeli-Hamas situation. The international rules order is looking ragged at the edges, to say the least. But that is what the League of Nations in 1920 set out to do. Now, it’s, of course, responsible for far more than the Middle East, but the Middle East, that is to say, the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East, had created a problem for the League of Nations.
So the League gave approval, because it felt that there was nothing else to do, to France and Britain who had moved into the region following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the fall of Constantinople. The French and the British moving into the area provided government and security with the Ottomans gone in this particular part of the world. It’s rather like the Americans in Berlin and in West Germany, for those of you listening from the States. It was having to take over and impose some sort of order and progress. Order and security were the two words, and Britain and France did that. Then, the League of Nations went further, and it regularised this situation by the creation of mandates, a French mandate in the Middle East and a British mandate in the Middle East. And Gordon Kerr writes in this way. He writes this, “The reason given by the League of Nations was that the mandates were inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.”
Wow, in other words, they can’t be free in the way that Wilson had been arguing at Versailles, that people should be free to choose their form of government and people should be allowed to establish their own nations. The League of Nations said, “No, no, you can’t do that in the Middle East. These are like…” It’s deeply patronising. It is deeply the language of European imperialism. “They are peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” That’s a terrible phrase. “They were to be assisted by what the League described as advanced nations,” that is to say, France and Britain, “until such time as they were able to stand alone.” So this is like having a guide. So the French are going to guide their mandate and the British theirs until the peoples that they are governing are judged not by the peoples themselves but are judged by France and Britain, in effect, and the League of Nations, as now you’ve achieved this level of civilization. It’s deeply imperialistic.
Once you’ve reached that level, then you can be free. But Kerr adds, very significantly, “Of course, this implied that Britain and France were going to be readying these countries to govern themselves independently of outside forces. This was, of course, far from the reality, and France and Britain were merely being allowed to pursue their own imperial interests.” And the Arabs remember that and remember it today. Hence, as I said, I think last week, how Hamas and Hezbollah and others are accusing Israel of imperialism and colonialism. It’s merely an extension of this argument right back in the 1920s. But there was an expectation, shall we say, that these Middle East countries would be, at some point in the future, not in any way elaborated, would be independent of France and Britain. France had been involved in the area which the Ottomans called Greater Syria, that is to say, in broad terms, modern-day Syria and Lebanon, since the 1860s. They had been involved in education, in railway construction, and they gained by having enormous amount of trading access, lucrative trading access, in Syria, Greater Syria, based upon Damascus.
This was as the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th century was crumbling apart, and there was money to be made out of selling, well, constructing railways. The French didn’t do it, nor did the British, out of the kindness of their hearts. They did it for money and for political control over the Ottomans. Now, the French had an expectation in the late 19th, early 20th century that if they could grab Syria, remember, that is Syria plus Lebanon, they would simply add Palestine to it. But in the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain, because that was not a situation that Britain would ever accept, it said that Palestine should be governed by an international administration. Now, here we come right up to 2024. If I ever talk about the position of Israel, I’m always asked, “Well, what is the solution?” Well, the answer has to be, if I knew the solution, I certainly wouldn’t be spending my time lecturing to you. I would be covered in laurels for having sorted the problem. It isn’t, as you all know, easy.
But there have been, over the years, attempts to resolve the problem, to resolve the issue of Jewish Palestine, today’s Israel. Remember then, at this very early stage, at the end of the First World War, Britain had been committed through the Balfour Declaration of establishing a Jewish homeland. Secondly, Sykes-Picot had talked about a government for Palestine which would be international. In other words, Britain and France were kicking the potential problems between Arab and Jew and the establishment, from Britain’s point of view of a Jewish homeland, into the long grass. Once the League of Nations had been formed, they might have thought this is an issue that the League could resolve. But the League resolved it by saying to Britain and France, “You’re okay. Just carry on as you are. But these are children. Once you bring them to the point where they can be independent and rule themselves, jolly good.” But France and Britain had this other imperial interest in the area. They’re not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. But Britain, let me reemphasize, Britain is committed politically to a Jewish homeland. So, what did that mean? Well, it didn’t mean what we might think it meant.
So, in that way, the British had and were to let the Jewish community in Palestine, and other Jews who wished to emigrate to Palestine had let them down badly. On the other hand, the Arabs also felt let down by Britain, which we’ve discussed before. So both sides, if we put it like that, both Arab and Jew regarded Britain and, brackets, France, but Britain in this context, had regarded Britain as being two-faced. It might say one thing to an Arab delegation and a different thing to a Jewish delegation. You remember when I was talking about the Cairo Conference, and Churchill laid out an agenda in advance, but the issue of Palestine was an addendum. It was separated. Churchill had accepted that there had to be different solutions in Palestine, as, indeed, Sykes-Picot had said about an international order in Palestine. It wasn’t as simple as finding yet another of Hussein’s children and putting him on the throne of Palestine. That was never considered. It had to be argued through. It had to be a different solution. So one of the important things to note in the modern world of the 20th and 21st century is that Palestine, today Israel and Palestine, whatever words you wish to use. I don’t want to offend any of you.
But we say Israel/Palestine, then what we’re doing is saying, well, that is a problem that has emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire on the simple ground that carving up the Middle East into countries, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, was not easy to apply to Palestine. It’s left on the edge. Now, it’s also true in terms of Lebanon, why? Well, in Palestine, we have a clear division between Arab and Jew. Moreover, we have both claiming Jerusalem, and that’s a further problem. In Lebanon, we had a largely Christian community of Maronite Christians plus Druze. And Druze is a sect of Islam not approved of by either Sunni or Shia. And the Lebanese managed to persuade the French to alter the borders when they created Lebanon in 1920 when it broke away from Syria. And the French had a mandate over both, but they had split them in 1920. In Lebanon, the answer was that they created a country which had so many ethnicities and religions opposed to each other, and although as long as the French were there, they supported the Christians, the Maronite Christians.
When the French withdrew, then we had subsequently, I mean, the horrors of Lebanon. And whether Lebanon should ever have been separated from Greater Syria, of which it had always been a part, is very questionable, and that mirrors the Palestine-Israel situation of two peoples, Arab and Jew in this case. And so this is not, now I know, and people said to me last week, “Yes, but you’re ignoring the fact that there are Kurds and there’s Shias and there are Sunnis in the other country.” Yes, but that is of a different scale than the ethnic differences and religious differences in Lebanon and Palestine. And Lebanon and Palestine have arguably been the most fought over areas, well, since the end of the First World War right up until today. I can’t see, and if you push me about Lebanon, Lebanon should be part of Syria. But nobody’s going to give Lebanon to Syria from the West. Syria, for goodness sake. Who would give anybody to Syria? But the trouble is, how do you make Lebanon work as a country? And frankly, we haven’t got an answer.
Israel, Palestine, and I don’t need to spell all that out, is quite a different situation, except it is divided ethnically and religiously. At the end of the First World War, about 90% of the population of Palestine was non-Jewish, largely Arab Muslim. But Britain, let me repeat, was committed to a Jewish homeland, promulgated in the Balfour Declaration, underwritten by Churchill at the Cairo Conference, and it remained central to Britain’s Middle Eastern policy throughout the 1920s and ‘30s of the British mandate. Last week, we noted that Churchill, Samuel, and Gertrude Bell were some of the British who saw/hoped for, saw or hoped for a solution in Palestine that it would allow the Jewish population to grow, that is to say, immigration, would allow the population to grow and to make a real Jewish homeland based upon Churchill’s correct assumption that the Jews would make this difficult land flow with milk and honey, but, at the same time, to keep the Arabs in check in a multiethnic society.
So the mandate had changed the view from Sykes-Picot, it needs international governance in Palestine, to a position where Britain was given a mandate to hand over Palestine. But who do you hand over to? The British still optimistically thought they could have both Jewish immigration, and they could create a Palestinian state of Jew and Arab together, living equitably and peacefully together. Now, it’s important that we remember that they, at the time, I’m talking about the British now, the British at the time did not have the benefit of hindsight which we have over this period. They were attempting to do their best. And the British always, I’ve said this before, I think, the British were always looking for some middle way, some compromise way. And on a piece of paper, it sounds perfectly feasible. Let’s have one set in which Jew and Arab can live together. The question of how you set that up we’ll come to later because the British had some ideas about how you created it.
We look back on that and say, “But that was impossible.” So then, let’s look at the mandate in a little more detail. At the conference at Versailles in Paris, the British prime minister Lloyd George really didn’t get on with the American president Woodrow Wilson, who had brought the idea of the League of Nations, this international rules-based body, to the conference. And I’m using here David Fromkin’s book. And he says, he writes this, “David Lloyd George saw the negotiations as a bargaining rather than a judicial process. He was proud of what he’d been able to accomplish in the Middle East settlement. He had made material gains for Britain. The prime minister told a friend, 'Well, Wilson has gone back home with a bundle of assignats.’” Assignats is a French word, and it refers to paper currency issued at the time of the French Revolution, which was worthless, useless currency. So Lloyd George says, “I’ve sent Wilson home with worthless promises, worthless.” “‘Instead,’ he said, ‘I have returned with a pocket full of sovereigns in the shape of German colonies, Mesopotamia,’” that is to say, Iraq, “‘et cetera.’” “In all,” says Fromkin, “the prime minister had succeeded in adding nearly a million square miles to the British Empire.”
Most people think the height of the British Empire was the 19th century. No, it was not. The height of the British Empire was following the First World War. A million square miles of territory, German, and in this case, also Ottoman, were added to the British Empire. And so Lloyd George was viewing the Middle East, that is to say, in his case, Iraq and Jordan and Palestine, as imperial possessions. The niceties of having a mandate, I think, meant very little to Lloyd George. But Lloyd George had a venom. Remember, Lloyd George was pro-Jewish. He was pro-Zionist. And he said this of the pledges made to the Arabs, “The Allies redeemed the promises made in the declarations,” that is, the wartime declarations, “in full.” The Arabs, of course, denied that. Said they did not make them in full. There was not one Arab state but a myriad of states, if you like. They were given rulers on the British part who were not native to the countries they were assigned to, Jordan and Iraq. And moreover, they weren’t given Palestine. And he said that “they were ungrateful. The Palestinian Arabs fought for Turkish rule,” he said specifically of Palestine.
“The Palestinian Arabs fought for Turkish rule,” and he complained that they really had been rather, rather remiss in not accepting how brilliant Britain was. A very imperial view out of Lloyd George and the British superiority nose in the air, we know best. And why are you grumbling, you Arabs? You got a great deal out of the conferences at the end of the First World War. It did not resonate with the Arabs themselves. And in addition, Britain is still to deliver for the Jews a Jewish homeland. And the League of Nations simply hid behind the mandate system. Oh, Britain and France are doing it. It’s at a once removed from the League of Nations and not our fault, Gov. It’s the French. It’s the British that have made the mistakes. I’m changing to a book I haven’t used, but one that somebody said a week or so back, “Why haven’t we used this book?” Well, I’m using it now. This is James Barr’s book, “A Line in the Sand.” All the books are on my blog. And James Barr wrote this, “Under mandates granted by the League of Nations, Britain took control of Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq.
France took control of Lebanon and Syria. Both powers were supposed to steer these embryonic countries to rapid independence, but they immediately began to drag their feet. The Arabs reacted angrily as the freedom they had been promised continually receded before them like a mirage. The British and the French blamed one another’s policies for the opposition they each began to face. Each refused to help the other address violent Arab opposition because they knew that they would only make themselves more unpopular by doing so. For almost two years in the 1920s, the British ignored frequent French requests to stop the rebels who were fighting their forces inside Syria from using neighbouring British-controlled Transjordan as a base. The French, in turn, shrugged when the British asked them to clamp down on the Arabs who were taking sanctuary in Syria and Lebanon during the insurgency in Palestine in the second half of the 1930s.
Both France and Britain resorted to violent tactics to crush protests that only enraged Arabs further.” This is a disaster from the very beginning in the 1920s. They had not expected, Lloyd George, they had not expected the Arabs to be, in Lloyd George’s word, ungrateful. But they didn’t want French or British imperialism as they saw it, and in fairness, as the French and British largely saw it. They had to bring law and order. The more law and order they try to enforce, the more deaths there are and the more violent the opposition to the mandates. James Barr goes on to say this, “What makes this venomous rivalry between Britain and France so important is that it fueled today’s Arab-Israeli conflict.” Let me read that sentence again. “What makes this venomous rivalry between Britain and France so important is that it fueled today’s Arab-Israeli conflict. Britain’s use of a Zionist to thwart French ambitions in the Middle East led to a dramatic escalation in tensions between Arabs and Jews. But it was the French who played a vital part in the creation of the State of Israel by helping Jews organise large-scale immigration and devastating terrorism that finally engulfed the bankrupt British mandate in 1948.”
If you were doing this as a university postgraduate course, maybe the question you should ask, was the very nature of the settlement in the Middle East and the creation of the mandate system bound to fail? Was the British-French rivalry in the Middle East bound to fail? Were the promises that were made during the war by the British to Hussein and then broken, was this that led to the chaos in the Middle East? If one could wind time back, and we wound the clock back to the end of the Ottoman Empire, you might say, “Surely, they could’ve found a better solution in the Middle East.” But remember what I said earlier. They only had the facts as they were before them and not the benefit of the hindsight that we have. Of course, we would do differently. Of course, if I was asked to go back in time to advise the League of Nations, I would say stop. Think about this. But it’s too late, and we are where we are. But what is of interest, I think, to the present situation, as always, is to know some of the history, because that enlightens us at least to the why people think as they do, but, more hopefully, to see if there is a solution.
Well, the only solutions we’ve talked of so far are Sykes-Picot, to have an international governance of Palestine ditched because of the mandate system of the League of Nations, and Britain is given sole charge in Palestine. Well, you may feel that’s good, but it wasn’t good for Palestine. I’m carting lots of papers away because I changed the order in which I was going to say things. And I started, I got carried away talking about Lebanon, which was important, but I put it in in a different place. Don’t worry, I shall still get to the end, hopefully. After the Ottoman defeat in 1918, the British administered what was then called Transjordan. We’ll come to all the later stuff a later date. At the British withdrawal from Transjordan in 1919, Faisal, one of Hussein’s sons, who had been put on the throne of French Syria, claimed Transjordan and, therefore, would rule over both Syria and Transjordan. That does not equate with what Britain wants to get out of the area. The French in the end got, the French didn’t take kindly to Britain dumping kings on them, and they didn’t like king. These are the republican French.
And Faisal became too big for his boots in Syria, and the French, by force, defeated Faisal and threw him out. But the British stepped in. Oh, never trust the British. “Oh,” they said to Faisal, “oh, we’ve got a spare throne.” And I always sort of say jokingly, it’s like two British civil servants. “I say, old boy, where do we put Faisal? Have we got a spare throne anywhere in the cupboard?” “Well, well, William, what a good idea. We do a spare throne as it happens. We’ve got a spare throne in Iraq, so we’ll put Faisal.” They said, “Would you like to be king of Iraq rather than Syria?” Bluntly, Faisal didn’t mind where he was king of as long as he was king. So he goes off to Iraq and is under a British mandate. Meanwhile, Abdullah, his brother, entered Amman, Transjordan’s capital, days before the Cairo Conference of Churchill in March of ‘21. At that conference itself, it was agreed that Britain would administer Transjordan with Abdullah as king. Britain maintaining that Transjordan fell within the British mandate for Palestine. This is me trying to just bring the story together.
So stop, clear your minds, and just listen for a couple of minutes. And there we have it. France is in Syria, which it split into Syria and Lebanon with no Arab king. That’s the French mandate. Britain is in Iraq and in Transjordan with Faisal and Abdullah, two brothers, both sons of Hussein of Mecca. Britain is in Palestine with a problem. To create a British homeland, or, sorry, to create a Jewish homeland in British Palestine, whilst at the same time keeping the Arabs in check or ensuring, you can take two views, or ensuring that the Arabs had their fair share of Palestine. In that way, you can say Iraq and Transjordan and Syria and Lebanon were easy situations. We all know that they became uneasy situations. We’ll park that on one side and let us turn to the British mandate in Palestine.
Let me just recap using Gordon Kerr of what he says in terms of the British mandate in Palestine, “Britain had to be cognizant of the fact that Syria was France’s preserve. There were those who believed that Palestine should be included in French interests in the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement stipulated, however, that Palestine was to be governed by an international administration. Nothing was said about the Jews, of whom there was still a small community in Palestine. Napoleon, when he’d invaded Palestine from Egypt in 1799, had proclaimed a manifesto in which he offered the Jews of the world, quote, 'the patrimony of Israel.’” In other words, historic Israel’s borders. “While many 19th-century British Protestants believed that the restoration of the Jews to Palestine would represent the fulfilment of the biblical scripture.”
British Zionists, of which we’ve talked. Of course, we know no international administration of Palestine was ever established, and instead, the League of Nations passed the buck to the British and the British mandate over Palestine. The British, taking control, set to work in Palestine by establishing a civil administration in place of the military British administration, which had been in charge since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And they immediately initiated reforms in education, health, and infrastructure projects. But the major issue the British faced was that of Jewish immigration in the face of Arab opposition. Remember that the non-Jewish population of Palestine at this point was 90%, but Britain had promised to create for the European Jews who had suffered under pogroms in Eastern Europe a homeland for Jews.
Abraham Salvatore writes this, “Jewish immigration and land purchase encouraged by the Balfour Declaration and fleeing persecution in Europe, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased during the 1920s. The Jewish National Fund also facilitated the purchase of land, often leading to Arab tenant farmers being displaced. The Arab majority, alarmed by increasing Jewish immigration and land purchases, felt marginalised by the British. This sentiment was exacerbated by the continuation of the Balfour policy despite Arab opposition.” Well, that states what I’ve been trying to say, maybe less clearly than that. That expresses it very clearly what the problems are that are facing Britain. This is not an easy situation. If I’d been around in the 1920s and had been offered a job in Palestine, I think I’d have turned it down because it seemed even then an intractable problem. And trouble began. We’ve already noted that in both French and British territories, there was opposition to French and British mandate.
The Palestinian Arabs rioted in Jerusalem in March of 1920 in a event that is now described as the Bloody Passover. Five Palestinian Jews and four Palestinian Arabs were killed. That’s the very beginning. That is the very first beginning of the troubles of the 20th and 21st centuries between Jew and Arab. In April of 1920, six Palestinian Jews were killed in political violence in Jerusalem. The Jewish self-defense organisation, the Haganah, was established by Jabotinsky on the 15th of June, 1920. Some 47 Palestinian Jews and 48 Palestinian Arabs were killed in November, 1921. Well, between May and November, 1921, actually, in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and other cities in Palestine. So Britain is dealing with inter-Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine as early as 1920, 1921. Jewish immigration continued. Between 1922 and 1926, there were approximately 75,000 European Jews came into Palestine, which led to further clashes between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and other cities in 1929, resulting in something like 250 individual deaths. So there are huge problems, massive problems.
As a result of this escalating violence throughout the 1920s, Britain established, oh, if in doubt, set up a commission of inquiry, and Britain did that at the end of 1929. At the start of a new decade, in April, 1931. Now, you’ll have to forgive me, my pronunciation, Tehomi, Avraham Tehomi, T-E-H-O-M-I. You’re bound to tell me how to pronounce it properly. Established the military organisation Irgun, which is really important later when we come to the postwar situation with Jew versus the British mandate. So Haganah and Irgun have both been established by the early 1930s to protect the Jewish immigration and continuing immigration into Palestine. In 1935, 60,000 Jews arrived in Palestine in one year. The Arabs responded by demanding Britain halt all Jewish immigration. Britain ignored the demand. Further rioting occurred in which over 500 people were killed. Matters were deteriorating fast in the 1930s. Now, remember, in this context, Britain isn’t the power that it had been at the height of empire, not in terms of land, but power in, shall we say, 1870. Britain is poverty-stricken. Britain is riddled with strikes in the 1930s.
Britain is a busted flush, but it’s got the League of Nations mandate, and it has responsibilities, but it could not control the Arab backlash to Jewish immigration. And between 1936 and 1939 and the outbreak of war, we have what is known as the Great Arab Revolt. And Salvatore writes in this way of the Great Arab Revolt. He writes, “Beginning in 1936, a series of strikes and protests erupted, eventually transforming into a full-scale revolt against British rule and Jewish immigration. The revolt saw the formation of Arab rebel groups adopting guerrilla warfare tactics against British forces and Jewish settlements. The British were initially caught off guard but finally responded with a combination of military force and political manoeuvres. They brought in significant troop reinforcements, imposed martial law, and initiated punitive measures against Arab communities.” The political measure was to appoint yet another commission, this time led by Conservative politician Lord Peel, and he was appointed in October of 1936. The outcome of the Peel Commission, as it became known, is fascinating because that’s the first time that people had seriously talked about a two-state solution.
In other words, a Jewish state and an Arab state. Prior to this, there’d been an international government and then followed by a one nation, but where Jew and Arab would live peaceably side by side, hopefully, thought the British. But now, Lord Peel said, “Forget all of that. We can’t do this. We need a two-nation solution, an Arab Palestine and a Jewish Palestine.” Just before war started, and the Arabs finished their revolt against British rule in September, 1939, but before we get to that, Britain is still trying during the course of 1939 to find a way through. And Britain published a white paper in May, 1939, just before the outbreak of war in September. The white paper provided for a Palestinian state within 10 years. It limited Jewish migration to 75,000 for five years. It introduced land reform, so it restricted Jews buying up Arab land. This independent Palestine, to be created within 10 years, was to be governed jointly by Jew and Arab in proportion to their populations. Britain, therefore, would end its mandate, if you like, wash its hands of the whole problem.
So this was a rejection of the Peel Commission’s two-nation solution, and so also was it a rejection of the Balfour Declaration of a Jewish homeland. Britain is back to saying there will be one Palestinian state, which will be governed by Jew and Arab according to a proportional vote. With hindsight, that was about the worst solution you could ever have come up with, but that was what was being proposed. I’m having, yeah, I think, I’m going to go on. If I go over by a couple of minutes, I’m happy to do that. I’ve managed to put my book somewhere. Here it is. It’s James Barr that I’m going to use. So whoever it was who said, “You didn’t use James Barr,” I hope you’re pleased that I am now going to. And this is what James Barr wrote, “The political problem had been created by the Balfour Declaration, and in trying to fix it, the Peel Commission had only made matters worse. As long as Peel’s proposal for partition was on the table, even moderate Arabs refused to negotiate with the British.”
Because they wanted the whole of Palestine. The British are moving, jurtling from one, from one unacceptable solution to another unacceptable pollution. Britain then set up, just before the war’s end, a further commission under Sir John Woodhead to extricate themselves from the Peel Commission’s two-nation approach, which it so engendered. One story that James Barr tells sort of illustrates the problem, “Lord Woodhead gave an Arab boy a piece of chocolate when he visited a school in Beersheba. The child threw it on the ground, saying he would ‘never take anything from a man who had come to divide Palestine and give its best land to the Jews.’” The fact that the British would prevent a Jewish immigration or limit it to 15,000 per annum for five years with a six-month moratorium and restrict the Jews’ ability to buy land was described by the colonial secretary in Britain at the time, “This was necessary to placate the Arabs.”
The British are not placating Jews. The Jews are nice people. The Jews are like us. The Arabs are nasty, dirty, all the adjectives that were implied. And so we’ve got to placate the Arabs because they’re killing people. The prime minister, Chamberlain, said this, and this is quite extraordinary, I think, “If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs,” why? Because the Jews are basically nice. They won’t be nasty to us because we’ve offended them. But we daren’t offend the Arabs because they’ll be really nasty to us and have been in the Great Arab Revolt of ‘36 to '39. There was no answer to any of this. In May, 1939, the British arrested David Raziel, the commander of Irgun, the first time we take an action against a Jew. But remember, this is in the light of the prime minister saying we can offend the Jews because they won’t care, but we must placate the Arabs, to quote the colonial secretary.
As war came, the Arabs ceased their fight against Britain. So war comes with nothing having been settled, no way through found for two decades. An international commission, blown out of the water. An international government, blown out of the water. A one Palestine shared by Jew and Arab, blown out of the water. A divided Palestine into two states, thrown out of the water. Where did the British turn? But that, ladies and gentlemen, is a story for another time. I guess I’ve got lots of questions. Yes, I have. Thank you very much for listening, for those of you who move on now to other things. So those who have stayed with me…
Q&A and Comments
Q: “Please, can we have the presentation in a larger screen?” A: No, you can look at it, Louis. It was sent out to you with the joining instructions for today, and so you can do what you like to the, and you can also pinch it out. No, we can’t do it on a bigger screen than we’ve got, but you can get hold of it by going back to the joining instructions for today. You can also, of course, look on, sorry, on the internet and have your own map.
Sandy, “Some of us don’t know the story.” Oh, “Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canucks.” I didn’t know that. Isn’t that dreadful? I didn’t know that. So happy Canada Day to all the Canadians. “William, I tried to find your email but was unable to.” It’s given out by Lockdown, and it’s simply williamtyleruk, one word, williamtyleruk@yahoo.co.uk, williamtyleruk@yahoo.co.uk. “As an American, I always have,” who said this? Sorry, Shelly, “As an American, I always have to remind myself that under the British system, somebody like Churchill can be a cabinet member and sit in Parliament at the same time.” Well, not only can, has to. You cannot be a minister in Britain without being in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. In practise, it means that all senior posts are now in the House of Commons, except in the last dying days of the Conservative government, we’ve had a member of the House of Lords as foreign secretary, Lord Cameron. And, of course, if a government wanted someone who isn’t a member of Parliament to be a cabinet minister, they can pop him in the House of Lords. But normally today, they’d ask somebody with a big majority to resign, give him a period, put him in the House of Lords or her in the House of Lords, and let the man or woman they want in the cabinet to fight a by-election and win and take a seat.
Carol, “The Jewish Agency was a government in waiting. When Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel, we had an immediate government that stepped into government.” Absolutely, Carol, you’re getting ahead of where I am, but you’re absolutely right. “Sorry,” says Lana, “not a question.” Oh, well, that’s good. “My parents,” sorry, I’m not going to be able to pronounce this properly. People can see the question. “My parents went on,” is it hakhshara, “in September, 1939. As war was breaking out, they went to Binyamina with their kibbutz group but left before the group arrived at Kfar Blum. My sister was born in Haifa in '43 whilst they were both working as local residents for the Royal Navy. She has a British passport stating that she’s a Palestinian, which is how Jews were described who were born in the mandate.” Yeah, because there was no Israel. They were Jewish Palestinians and Arab Palestinians, absolutely right.
“They returned to England at the end of the war, and I was born in London in 1946. However, their friend, Teddy Kollek, was working for the Jewish Agency and persuaded them to return in '47. As a result, we were in Palestine as Israel was declared a state, and my father went into the new army since the Arabs attacked our new country. He was involved in an attempt to take Latrun, a hill outside Jerusalem covered with corn fields, where they were fighting uphill against the crack Jordanian troops who had been trained by the British Army.” Indeed, had been trained by Glubb Pasha, whom we mentioned last time or the time before. Nayla says, “You mentioned that after the first war, 90% were Arab.” I didn’t say that. I said 90% were non-Jewish, and there were Christians as well. That is a figure that normally historians use. I certainly wasn’t exaggerating. That is the figure that’s a common figure that’s used.
Q: “According to Mark Twain, there were not many Arabs in Israel or Palestine when he visited the area. Afterwards, the Turks moved many Arabs and Circassians,” I’m not sure, “to the area. Also, as soon as the Jews started arriving in numbers, many Arabs came from all over because of what?” A: What is absolutely true is that the area was not highly populated under the Ottoman Empire, absolutely true.
Q: “Will, at the time of Sykes-Picot, was there any precedent was used to model in it?” No, “To model an international governance over Palestine, or was this all just a figment of imagination?” A: I think you could actually, Ralph, say that. I think probably it was like putting a plaster over the situation because they didn’t know an answer and they were anxious. The British were anxious that France shouldn’t add it to Syria. The French would’ve been quite happy to add Palestine, so God knows what would’ve happened then. But I think you’re right. There was no, there was no real precedent for international control. Am I right in saying that? Someone will always find, think about it somehow, and tell me that there was a precedent. I don’t think there was a precedent.
Naomi, hello, Naomi. “William, one of the major problems between the peoples remains today. Young Jews and young Arabs never interact, but each section grew up afraid of the other.” Exactly the same situation near me as in Northern Ireland between Catholic and Protestant during the so-called Troubles, and that is a really important point that you make. “Not long ago, my daughter and son-in-law bought a flat in a new, as yet unfinished building, where the head of plumbing, wiring, tiling, et cetera, were all Arab. I gather they were brilliant workers, middle class in every way, and insisted on stating they saw themselves as the luckiest Arabs in the world. Israeli citizenship was very precious to each of them.” Absolutely, I’ve heard that sort of story before. Thank you for giving that, Naomi. And you are right. Education, of course, I’m going to say that as an educator, but education is important. Margaret, “There are young Jews and young Arabs in the Barenboim orchestra, can’t remember the name. I’m sure they interact.” You can find examples, but I guess that Naomi’s point is a more general one and stands.
Q: Shelly, “How did the British guard their roles or possession of mandates as compared to how they’ve guarded their role of possession in India?” A: Very, very interesting question, Shelly. But basically, by the 1930s, Britain realised it had to get out of India. What Britain was doing in those interwar years was giving more and more of the governance of India, not least in the Indian Army, to an infrastructure in this imperial, in the Indian Civil Service, which had been entirely white. They were giving jobs to Indians in preparation for what they regarded as the inevitable question of Indian independence, much opposed by Churchill. But Gandhi had visited England. It was inevitable. And most people in positions of power, I think, by the time of the war realised that after the war, they couldn’t hold India. The mandate was more difficult. Now, Britain did, of course, make a complete hash of withdrawing from India because it was done in such a rush due to that idiot Mountbatten that the division between India and East and West Pakistan, which were also, of course, divided into East Pakistan, West Pakistan, but as one country, which is absolutely important to remember when dealing with Palestine. In terms of an Arab Palestine, you cannot possibly, in my view, have Gaza and the West Bank forming a country called Palestine. It won’t work. It did not work with East and West Pakistan. We now have Pakistan and Bangladesh. The British withdrawal caused millions of deaths, and it was not good, but at least they were preparing India for independence. What they couldn’t cope with was the divide between Hindu and Muslim and the terrible numbers of deaths. Really, Shelly, that’s a really good question. We could spend hours discussing similarities and differences. But in both cases, in terms of Palestine and India, you have to say Britain failed.
“You referred to British and French policy post-World War I as a disaster. Do you think if they had kept their promise to the Arabs, a disaster one way or another, would that have a risk?” If they had washed their hands of the Ottoman Middle East and given Hussein an Arab kingdom, it probably would have worked. It might have worked. It may have worked. The Arabs might not have been happy about Hussein of Mecca taking control, but it might’ve worked. But that would have meant there would’ve been no Jewish homeland. So I don’t know. In all of these things, when people ask me these questions, I’m often to say, I really don’t know.
Q: Tim, “It seems that the Brits and the French have an unusual relationship. Sometimes, there is enmity, and sometimes, they were allies. Do you know the reason for this?” A: Yes, because we both hate each other, but sometimes we put on a good face politically. This isn’t to do with individual French and English. Politically, there’s always a big divide, and sometimes, we have a common enemy, Germany in 1914, Germany in 1939. Do you remember that in 1940, Churchill promised France a unity with Britain as a united country for the duration of the war, and the French totally rejected it? Not surprisingly, perhaps.
Q: “Why do some of the new countries get ruling families, the other get different a kind of government?” A: Britain and France. France is republican, doesn’t want kings, got rid of Faisal. Britain think kings are jolly good things, and anyhow, we’d made some promises to Hussein that we couldn’t really dodge. No, it wasn’t based on Ottoman rule.
Q: “Why would the Arab community wish for Ottoman rule? The area of the mandate was a neglected backwater.” A: Yes, yeah, but the Ottomans were Muslim, were Muslim, even if they weren’t Arab. I haven’t got that. Sorry, I haven’t got the breakdown of figures in front of me for the population stat. Sorry, I just haven’t got it at hand.
“The weird solution of appointing kings from other countries who rule over areas that need a king was done in many places in Europe.” That’s true, Norwegian kings were raging Danish. The Greek kings were from Schleswig-Holstein. Carol of Romania was from Russia. Yeah, there was a very odd view about monarchies at the end of the 19th century, which you’re right, continued in the Middle East in terms of British view into the 20th century. Marion, “Without partnership and cooperation, you can’t achieve success, and I think that is why they failed when they carved up the Middle East.” Yes, yeah, you’re absolutely right. They never bothered to discuss it with them. Largely, it’s this awful League of Nations thinks about these childish people who couldn’t really govern themselves, so why talk to children? The grown-ups will sort out what’s going to happen to you. “I had that same question.” No, same answer. “Who was the land bought from?” And somebody said, “From absentee Arab landlords who did not care about their tenants.” That’s absolutely right. Mengoh, absolutely spot on. That would’ve been my answer.
“For your information, here’s the '22 census. Total population, 757 of whom 590, 78% were Muslims, 11% Jews, 9% Christians, and nearly 10,000 others.” Hang on, I’ve lost the questions now. Thank you for looking that up. The wonders of the internet are, and I now, thanks to my 12-year-old grandson, got chat, and I’ve got a ChatGPT or whatever it’s called, which is the AI thing that gives you instant answers. Oh, here we are. Sorry, Sandy, amazing, “If we have to offend a group, we must offend Jews because they’re a nice people and the Arabs kill. Wow, I hadn’t heard this.” Well, I have no time for Neville Chamberlain, but that’s what he said. That’s not me. That’s what Chamberlain said. In reply to Naomi, “There are a great many groups among Israelis, Arabs, and Christians, Bedouin and Druze who are working together. Look up Hand in Hand schools, et cetera.” Well, yes, that I’m not getting involved in. All those who live in Israel will know all those details, and you just have to hope that more and more collaboration takes place as a model, but that’s not going to work with Hamas, Hezbollah, and others.
“I feel that the British Foreign Office have never recovered from this mess. What is your opinion about the Foreign Office attitude today towards Israel, which is definitely anti? They don’t even encourage the royal family to make official visits.” I’m not sure. I’m not sure how much it’s civil servants in the Foreign Office and how much it’s politician dragging their feet. The royal family, unless that it’s a private holiday, and even then, they would have to inform the government, if they make an official visit, it is decided by the government and has to be in British interest. That’s why Charles was sent to Germany because of the obvious German links, and that was meant to help us forge new post-Brexit relationships.
Q: “No mention of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s?” A: Absolutely, no, because I can only concentrate on one thing in an hour. We will come to the Second World War and the impact of Nazism in the Middle East, Leona, next time. Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m being a bit blunt this evening, and I don’t mean to be. It is a perfectly rational question. But, you see, when you prepare a talk, I have to prepare it logically to carry you all along so that I have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If I go off at tangents, and I try to avoid that, then it confuses people, and the storyline is lost. I’m a great believer that history is his story, the story, and if you’ve got the thread of the story clear, then, as with Lockdown, other people are going to talk about issues of this period, and not just me, and they will go into further detail than I did. But if you’ve got a general oversight, then it enables you to place additional information within it. I am keeping Nazism until I talk about the war, which, I think, which is next week. That’s what I’ve been attempting to do. Yes, Lana, the truth is the British is responsible for problems in Pakistan, in India, Cyprus, et cetera. Yes, the end of the British Empire, like the end of all European empires, has not been a successful story, by and large. But India remains the greatest democracy, the largest democracy, in the world, and that has to be a positive.
Q: Yes, Erica asked a question about, “Why couldn’t the Palestinians become part of Transjordan?” A: Because they were living in Palestine, and they wanted that land as their land, and I will come back to that as I go through. You’re absolutely right. Yeah, people are adding in other information.
Jonathan, however, says, “You didn’t mention the dynamic created by the expelling of Jews from the surrounding Arab lands and then coming to Israel.” No, I didn’t, and that’s a sin of omission. But I didn’t say that, and I accept the fact that you might’ve liked me to say it. “During COVID,” says Monty, “I visited Israel for my grandson’s bar mitzvah. The young Arab lady who came to take blood from me for obligatory tests was very efficient and a delight to be treated by. And I had to collect a script for one of my family. The pharmacist was an Arab, another pleasant person to deal with, and he told me he would love to move to Canada, but his wife would not leave Israel.” Oh, well, Stuart, you asked about the actual lines in Transjordan as regards to Judea and Israel and saying that Jordan is now Palestine. That is where the discussion gets extremely difficult, and I’ve avoided that so far because I think it’s easier to talk about once I get into the post-1948 situation and the wars between Israel and its neighbours. And I think it will become clearer then than if I tried to do it at this point. But you may be right. I don’t claim any virtue in doing what I did. I did it as I see it. Yes, “Abdullah had originally wanted to include Jews in Palestine under his domain.” Well, he wanted to include Palestine and that would’ve brought the Jews.
Q: “Was he leaning towards an independent Jewish state when he was assassinated?” A: Yes, the story changes when you look at the other countries in the Middle East. I have no idea what percentage of pre-mandate Palestine land was privately owned. That, gosh, that, Kelvin, is a question, believe it or not, I have never ever been asked, and I have no idea what the answer is. Therefore, I think you’re awarded tonight’s gold star for asking a question that I’ve never been asked. There are lots of questions I don’t know the answers to. But I don’t know the answer to that, but that has never, ever been raised, and I don’t know what. I’ve never read anything about that.
Naomi, “In '29, the mandate tried to set up two agencies, a Jewish agencies and an Arab agency, which the Arab powers that be refused to do,” absolutely right. Myra, Myra says, “My.” Hi, Myra, “My Holocaust survivor parents emigrated to Israel from Czechoslovakia.” Oh, Sheila says, “Not a sin of omission to not talk tonight about Jews expelled from North Africa and Middle Eastern countries tonight. Not in the time period you explored.” Yeah, that’s one of the problems, that sometimes, it feels, if you split it up chronologically, you’re missing part of the story. That, yes, I understand that. Had I been talking about immigration in Palestine and Israel as a one-off talk, it would’ve been different. I’m trying to do it chronologically because by doing it chronologically, I think, personally, it enables us to see more clearly why we are where we are. We are where we are because of this long trail of history behind us, and if we understand the background to the present, it might give us insight into how we can move forward.
Q: “What about Saudi Arabia in this work?” A: Not in this story, I’m pleased to say, in my point of view, Cynthia. Hussein was given the Hejaz, and then his son, Ali, ruled it. But the story of Saudi Arabia is the rise and rise and rise of the House of Saud since the 18th century, and that is a very different story. Maybe one day, Lockdown might ask me to talk about the history of Saudi Arabia. It is a very distinct story from the story of the Middle East, although, of-
[Host] And but we have to stop it there 'cause-
Oh, no.
[Host] I didn’t want to stop you, but there’s more questions that keep coming in, and it’s just about to be 25 past, so we do have to cut it.
Right, okay. Okay, don’t worry, thanks, everyone. Thank you for joining in, those who have with questions and comments. I’m sorry if some of my answers were less than satisfactory, but you can just pat yourselves on the back. At least you asked questions I couldn’t answer, which is always a plus, for those listening. Thank you very much. Next week, we’re in World War II, and next week sees Britain with a potentially new government. So we’ll see you all next week, same time, same place, and same boring old lecturer, see you then.