By Dr Peter Shambrook
This talk was given at the recent conference: Britain and Palestine – past history and future role organised by Sarum Concern for Israel/Palestine Salisbury Saturday 13 February 2016
Two preliminary thoughts, to share with you, concerning the British narrative, and secondly, the power of words.
Although the focus of this talk is the competing Zionist and Palestinian narratives, I am deeply aware that the British narrative is just as partial and self-serving as any other nationalist narrative, shot through as it is with illusions of British even-handedness, of introducing democracy, of holding the ring in a disinterested fashion. In fact, there is a strong argument that British policies between 1917 and 1948 sowed the seeds of the ‘100 year war for Palestine’, which continues to rage today.
Secondly, Words have power. We all have our stories – as individuals, as groups, or as nations. As a powerless individual, my choice of words may be insignificant. However, Power (with a capital ‘P’) uses words. Their words have power: retaliation, peace process, terrorist attack, security wall. Such words, if we are not careful, shape our understanding of reality – they influence public opinion, create mindsets, and ultimately influence national policy. Words are used – to convince, to confuse, and to conceal reality. For all of my lifetime, the dominant narrative in the West concerning the ‘100 year war for Palestine’ is a classic demonstration of the truism: History is the propaganda of the victors, or to misquote George Orwell: He who controls the present, controls the narrative of the past.
Zionist historiography concerning the 19th and 20th century describes a profoundly moral, heroic, and ultimately successful endeavour to re-create a nation – a non-colonial, nationalist story, underpinned by centuries of European Christian persecution, culminating in the Holocaust. Palestinian historiography dealing with the same period describes a nationalist, profoundly anti-colonial struggle to escape the British and then Zionist Iron Cage – their, so far, unsuccessful struggle to create a nation state. Both narratives endeavour to occupy the moral high ground, as do all protagonists. An even-handed history of Israel and Palestine must obviously evaluate both narratives, but not accept either of them unreservedly, if only because each largely contradict, rather than complement, each other. In other words, where does historical truth reside – and with whom?
The Great War literally devastated Palestine and the Palestinians. Palestine, as you know, is a relatively small place. North to South is approximately 260 miles (Salisbury to York). The West Bank, North to South (80-90 miles) – approximately here to Oxford.
The Palestinian landscape was deeply scarred. Roughly one third was urban, one third still densely cultivated, and a third a mixture of desert, small natural reservoirs and what had been forests before being erased by the Turkish war machine.
By 1918, there remained some 800,000 inhabitants – classified by British officials as 650,000 Muslims, 80,000 Christians and 60,000 Jews (including indigenous Jews and the Zionist pioneers). There were ninety-five primary schools, and three secondary schools, in Acre, Nablus and Jerusalem. No universities.
In the traditional, pre-1882 Zionist narrative, Palestine was an empty homeland waiting to be redeemed by the exiled – and long-persecuted – Jews. Zionism saw itself as a national movement which brought modernisation and progress to a primitive Palestine. It ‘made the desert bloom’, rebuilt the Land’s ruined cities, and introduced modern agriculture and industry to the benefit of Arabs and Jews alike. The resistance to Zionism resulted from a combination of Islamic fanaticism and (during the Mandate period), pro-Arab British colonialism, along with local traditions of political violence. That’s one perspective.
In contrast, the traditional Palestinian narrative stresses that Palestine became part of the Arab Muslim World in the 7th Century, a 1000 years before the Mayflower landed its freedom-seeking colonists on the shores of North America, and some 400 years before Salisbury and the rest of this island became a Norman colony in 1066. At the end of the 19th Century, 95% of the population of Palestine was Arab and 99% of its land was Arab owned. It points to 1897, when a European political movement, resolved to work toward the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian Arab soil. The Palestinian Arabs saw themselves – and to a certain extent still do – as the victims of both duplicitous British imperialism and aggressive, foreign-financed Zionist colonisation. That’s part of the Palestinian story.
Turning specifically to the historiography of the Mandate period, I want to briefly examine 5 episodes of this complicated story with you: Firstly, the Balfour Declaration of 1917; secondly, the clashes of 1929; thirdly, the causes of the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939; fourthly, the UN Partition Resolution of November 1947; and finally (5) the events of 1948…and share with you a few elements from each side’s perspective. I’ll focus mostly on the Balfour Declaration, and the 1948 War.
The Balfour Declaration. For Jews generally and for the State of Israel, it’s the foundational charter – a morally sound, if unexpected, gift of potential salvation, for a persecuted, scattered nation-in-exile, from a civilised Great Power; for the Palestinians, it was a bill of sale, an immoral and racist Great Power subterfuge which led directly to the loss of their country to Jewish intruders.
Although the Declaration is crucial and absolutely central in the Zionist narrative, pro-Zionist historians are, on the whole, very circumspect about it: take, for example, the significant eighteen months of intense negotiations that led up to the Declaration. The late Sir Martin Gilbert was perhaps the most eminent, and certainly the most prolific of Zionist historians. In his 700 page tome: Israel. A History, the negotiations merit a single sentence, namely: ‘It took more than a year of continuous negotiations between the Zionists and the British government before the Balfour Declaration was ready to be issued’. No mention whatsoever of the influence of 19th and early 20th Century Christian-Zionism in Britain, of Chaim Weizmann’s role, of dissention within the Cabinet, or of the deep divisions within the British Jewish community on the issue.
In the following paragraph, Gilbert continues ‘[the Declaration]…was to form the basis, once the First World War was over, of an upsurge in Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the ‘close settlement of Jews on the land. It contained the emphatic assurance that ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object. . .’ The second half of the Declaration is not described, even indirectly, or mentioned in any of the following 650 pages. One can only speculate why the second part of the Declaration was dealt with – or more accurately, not dealt with – in this major, standard history of Israel by Zionism’s leading historian.
In contrast, pro-Palestinian writers do analyse in detail the origins, the wording, and the consequences of the Declaration, which became a central point of reference for Arab intellectuals, indeed the whole Arab world, after World War I – and up to the present day. For example, Edward Said, in The Question of Palestine (1979) dwells at great length on the unspoken assumptions behind the Declaration. For him, it’s a prime example of the moral epistemology of imperialism. The Declaration, he writes, was made:
‘(a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in the territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group, so that this foreign group might, quite literally, make this territory a national home for the Jewish people’.
In Britain itself, opinions about the Declaration remained sharply divided long after the end of the Palestine Mandate – and remain divided to this day. Richard Crossman, in A Nation Reborn (1960) argued passionately that Balfour, Lloyd George and Milner all felt under an obligation during that period, and after World War I, to do something for oppressed world Jewry. Strategic calculations, he believed, were at most secondary factors. Arnold Toynbee, on the other hand, believed that Balfour and his colleagues fully understood the consequences for the Arabs of fostering the equivalent of a white settler community, but they went ahead all the same for the sake of sustaining British influence in the eastern Mediterranean.
More recently, Professor Avi Shlaim wrote that the Balfour Declaration was ‘not just crooked – it was a contradiction in terms…[moreover], the national home it promised to the Jews was never clearly defined and there was no precedent for it in international law’.
The most recent book on the Declaration, Jonathan Schneer’s The Balfour Declaration (2010) is eloquently written and covers all the usual angles, except he neglects the significant Christian Zionist factor. The discussion about the Declaration continues.
My second topic: the Clashes of 1929: what led to them, and how have they been portrayed? By 1929, the Jewish leadership in Palestine had won concessions in major industries, such as phosphates and electricity. Jewish Education, health and legal systems became semi-independent. The Jewish Agency had its own bank [the Anglo-Palestine Bank (founded 1903)] and the Jewish National Fund, which undergirded the Zionist project – buying plots of land – throughout the Mandate period.
These rapid developments within the Jewish community was conveyed by the press and recognised by the more educated and politicised Palestinians. However, Palestinian notables, their hands effectively tied by the British, were unable to provide adequate political or economic leadership for the society as a whole. How were the Palestinian leadership’s hands tied? Well, the British refused to sponsor democratic elections. Had we done so during the 1920s, as we did in Egypt and Iraq, the Arab-Palestinian character of the land would never have been in doubt.
Some Zionist writers even claim that Britain’s policies during this period were pro-Arab. In my view, that’s an unsustainable argument. Some five years ago, the late Sir Martin Gilbert’s gave a lecture (about British policy in Palestine) to a distinguished Jewish audience (no doubt exclusively Jewish) at Ben Gurion university – and for one unguarded moment, he ‘lapsed into balance’: ‘The centrepiece of British Mandatory policy was the withholding of the creation of representative institutions for as long as there was, in Palestine, an Arab majority’. This, the most eminent Zionist historian of his generation, quite remarkably confirming one of the foundation stones of the Palestinian narrative.
Regarding the clashes, the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, points to ‘the unprovoked and unprecedented political demonstration held at the Wailing Wall adjacent to the Muslim Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). The demonstrators were militant right-wing secular members of the Zionist Revisionist Party…evidence of Zionist designs on the mosques of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa inside the Sanctuary, which gave rise to violent clashes in which 133 Jews were killed and 339 injured. In March 1930, the report of a British commission of enquiry attributed the 1929 clashes to the fact that the Palestinians, quote, ‘have come to see in Jewish immigration not only a menace to their livelihood but a possible overlord of the future’.
In the Zionist narrative, Gilbert describes the 1929 events: ‘Throughout the first six months of 1929, Jewish prayers at the Wailing Wall had continued to be a focus of Arab protest. On June 11, the High Commissioner wrote to the Mufti defending the right of the Jews ‘to conduct their worship’ as in the past. But growing tension between the two communities led, on August 23, to an attack by large crowds of Arabs on individual, unarmed Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to the subsequent British commission of inquiry, ‘large sections of these crowds were bent on mischief, if not on murder’. End of quote. Another pro-Zionist writer, Paul Johnson, covers the whole of 1929 with two sentences, namely: ‘There was another Arab pogrom in 1929, in which over 150 Jews were killed’. The British response, as before, was to tighten immigration.’ End of quote.
My third topic: the causes of the 1936 Revolt. Pro-Palestinian writers highlight:
Firstly, the retraction of the 1930 White Paper, which would have limited Jewish immigration, convinced the Palestinians that there could be no legal redress of their grievances. Secondly, the rapidly escalating rate of immigration (30,000 in ’33; 42,000 in ’34; 61,000 in ’35). Thirdly, the death in action against the British in November 1935 of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, with his comrades. Al-Qassam had taken up arms against British soldiers and Jewish settlers in 1933. And finally, in December 1935, the successful blocking by pro-Zionist MPs of a proposal in the British Parliament to establish a more democratic Local Legislative Council in Palestine, confirmed again to the Palestinians that they had absolutely no legal redress whatever. Non-Zionist writers argue that when all ‘legal’ avenues for peaceful change are blocked, in this case, after fifteen years of fruitless talks with the authorities, what option is left to an unarmed and yet politically aware, indigenous population, whose country is being swamped by foreigners?
Gilbert, on the other hand, describes in vivid, emotive detail the increasingly desperate plight of the Jews in Europe; that in May 1935, quote: ‘the Arab leaders’ met in Jerusalem and demanded an immediate end to all Jewish immigration, a ban on any further Jewish land purchase and an Arab majority government’. End of quote. No mention of an Arab Revolt or Rebellion, just Arab attacks on Jewish farms, houses and shops. There’s a very clever, subtle juxtaposition, from one sentence to the next, in Gilbert’s writing of the unbearable suffering of Jews in Europe, followed by the implicitly, quite ‘irrational’ and totally unexplained Arab opposition to Jews arriving in Palestine.
My fourth topic: the November 1947 UN Partition Plan. From the Zionist perspective, the Palestinian rejection of the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947 was regarded as an act of terrorism – more significant than previous acts of terror, and genocidal besides, since it intended to destroy the Jewish community in Palestine altogether.
From the Palestinian Perspective: the Resolution was basically a re-packaged 1937 Peel Plan, Zionist in inspiration, in principle, and in substance. Proposed officially at the UN as a ‘compromise’ solution, the Palestinians asked, what possessions in Palestine were the Zionists conceding? How much of that 6.7% of the land of Palestine owned by the Jewish community were the Zionists prepared to concede? For the Palestinians, what unfolded in front of their eyes was not a compromise, but a power game, a process of deception and blackmail. Power, not justice prevailed.
My fifth and final topic: the white hot issue of the War of 1948. For the Palestinians – and, I would say, for many mainstream historians – there were two wars: a civil war began to erupt in November 1947, following the passage of the UN resolution i.e. six months before the end of the Mandate. During this period, the battle-hardened militias of the Yishuv, unhindered, and sometimes aided by the British, were deliberately unleashed by Ben Gurion on specifically targeted Palestinian villages, following a well-prepared military plan. Palestinian villagers – basically leaderless and defenceless, following the brutal suppression of their revolt – were routed, leading to the fall of several cities, scores of villages, and the expulsion or flight of at least 250,000 Palestinians i.e., the die was cast before the British actually left. When the Arab armies did invade, they were largely un-trained, badly equipped, with no unified battle plan.
The Zionist story is radically different. With the expiry of the Mandate in May 1948, and the proclamation of the state of Israel, seven Arab states sent their armies into Palestine with the firm intention of strangling the Jewish state at birth, and expelling all Jews from Palestine. The infant Jewish state, with less forces, and initially less armaments, fought a desperate, heroic battle for survival – and won. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled to neighbouring Arab states, mainly in response to orders from their leaders, and despite Jewish pleas to stay. A war of self-defence.
Until the late 1980s, this official, Zionist version of the events surrounding the birth of the state of Israel was certainly uncontested within Israel, and remained largely unchallenged outside the Arab world. However, in the late eighties, a number of books appeared by Israeli writers, prompted partly by the opening of some of the Israeli state archives, that took a much more critical view of Israel’s conduct in the years 1947-49 and place on her a larger share of the blame for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the continuing political impasse in the Middle East.
The initial book, by the journalist Simha Flapan, was entitled: The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (1987). As Flapan wrote, ‘these myths have been of paramount importance in shaping Israeli policy for more than three and a half decades…the myths…have hardened into [an] impenetrable and dangerous ideological shield’.
In brief, he and others who followed him, like Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and – for a time, Benny Morris, argued that – just to mention three points out of many:
Firstly, the Zionist narrative that Britain actively tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state was incorrect. Rather, Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and was quite ambivalent towards the creation of a Jewish state.
Secondly, the Military balance, in favour of the Arabs, according to the Zionist narrative, was incorrect. Rather, the reverse, at least after June 1948.
Thirdly, the Zionist narrative that the Palestinians fled, encouraged by their leaders, despite the efforts of the Jewish leadership to persuade them to stay was also incorrect, argue these historians – labelled as ‘new’ historians.
The appearance of the new books, particularly on the 1948 war, excited a great deal of interest and controversy in Israeli academic and political circles. Perhaps the most vehement critics of the new historians was Shabtai Teveth, Ben Gurion’s biographer, who described the new history as a ‘farrago of distortions, omissions, tendentious readings and outright falsifications’, politically motivated, pro-Palestinian, and aimed at delegitimising Zionism and the State of Israel.
In 1997, there was a further counterblast by the British/Israeli historian, Efraim Karsh (Fabricating Israeli History), who rebutted the new historians’ claims.
Avi Shlaim’s The Iron Wall (2000) followed by Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) re-energised the debate. Pappe in particular has caused a heated controversy, with his argument that a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population – and that the opportunity came in 1948 for Ben Gurion and his advisors to put their military plan for ‘population transfer’ into action.
To conclude: The debate between the Palestinian and Israeli narratives, and between the old and the new (Israeli) historiography is much, much more than merely academic. It is intensely political, in particular as it questions the very essence of Israel’s moral and political image of herself.
This extremely uneven Palestinian – Israeli propaganda war, and the 100 year war for Palestine (stones against drones), with all its suffering, continue today with a vengeance. The Crusades lasted nearly 200 years. I hope the current conflicts, in Palestine, and around Palestine, do not last as long.
Peter A Shambrook
p.a.a.shambrook@durham.ac.uk