Acheson Prize 2nd Place - Trapped Empire: British Strategy at the End of the Palestine Mandate

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Aaron Schorr The Yale Review Of International Studies

Introduction

"Historians have traditionally attacked the British for either failing the Jews, failing the Arabs, or failing the Empire."1

British policy at the end of the Palestine mandate has been criticized by historians of every imaginable variety, testifying to the immense difficulty the British authorities in Palestine faced. Caught in a quagmire of their own partial design at a crucial moment for the Empire, British decision makers had to balance the dangers of Arab and Jewish insurgency, Soviet encroachment, American hegemony, and their own regional standing - all of which could not be satisfied simultaneously.

This essay will discuss British strategy in the final years of the Palestine mandate, focusing on (1) the evolution of partition as a solution to the territory's sectarian conflict, and (2) British responses to the changing international environment in which a solution was to be applied. Situated within a novel international order and strategic environment, British decision-making in this period was profoundly shaped by two factors: considerations of Britain's role and standing in the Middle East in the postwar world, and Britain's relationship with the two great powers of the nascent Cold War. Late British Palestine policy was therefore both consistent and strategy-driven, taking into account the acute financial and strategic limitations on the exercise of British power in the Middle East. Ultimately, however, Britain's abdication of responsibility in Palestine - resulting in the establishment of Israel - proved unforgivable to its Arab partners, and exposed its weakness at a critical moment. This was to have far-reaching implications for Britain's future in the Middle East, and for the strategic alignment of its former colonies and clients in the later stages of the Cold War.

I: British Strategy in Prewar Palestine

British rule in Palestine was shaped by considerations of international strategy from its earliest days. The defining document of the mandate's creation is the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government pledged its support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," undertaking to use its "best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.2 Historians have pointed out how this move to capture Zionist support in 1917 was part of a "broader strategy to win the First World War" by currying American support for Britain and undermining Jewish support for Germany. The framing of British rule in Palestine as an endeavor in nation-building was also in line with Wilsonian ideals of self-determination, the zeitgeist of the Entente Powers which rejected outright imperialism of the type that had defined the British Empire before the war.3 This pledge became a formal international legal agreement when it was incorporated into the text of the British mandate in Palestine at the San Remo Conference three years later.4

Support for the Zionist project was also in line with progressive theories of imperialism, popular among Labour Party leaders of the 1920s. Ramsay MacDonald, for example, saw Zionism as a civilizing force on the Arab population of Palestine, and supported it as a way to promote independent "constructive imperialism" within the Empire.5 This support, however, rapidly provoked animosity and resistance from the same Arab population. To some, including anti-imperialist historians, this was part of a deliberate plan to foster animosity between Jews and Arabs. Such a "divide-and-conquer" strategy, which had been employed in other British colonies, had the potential to perpetuate British mandatory rule.6

Britain was indeed unquestionably successful at stoking seemingly irreconcilable animosity between Jews and Arabs in Palestine between the wars. On the Jewish side, noncommittal immigration policy bolstered strife between mainstream Zionists who continued to work with the British and more radical Revisionists who believed more drastic measures were necessary.7 On the Arab side, British support for notable figures advocating the incorporation of Palestine into a greater Syrian state undermined the formation of a Palestinian nationalist movement.8 After large-scale Arab riots in 1929, the British were much more hesitant to support the Zionist cause, and thus refused to allow Jewish-financed mass immigration of German Jews to Palestine after the Nazis came to power.9 Even so, Arab resentment continued to grow, fueled by frustration that Palestine was not slated for increased sovereignty after similar developments in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Transjordan in the 1920s and 30s. The Zionists, too, interpreted these developments as an indication that they were next in line for independence after their neighbors, in line with the text of the mandate.10 British administrators thus set themselves up for failure all around when neither promise materialized.

An examination of British strategy during this period must note Palestine's outsized importance in the Empire. To quote Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore in 1937: "Palestine was unlike any other country with which the British empire had to deal… The task of the mandatory Power in Palestine was unique. The country was unique: the difficulties were unique."11 Appropriately, Palestine came to occupy an outsize presence in the British imperial consciousness. Of all British possessions, Palestine received the second-most attention from the British press and parliament in the 1930s and 40s, due to its religious value and to the impact of British policy in Jewish and Muslim circles in Britain, its Empire, and the United States.12 Palestine was also strategically important, since the Middle East became a vital source of oil for the British Empire over the course of the mandate.13

Important as the territory was, British policy in Palestine was constrained by influence from international institutions. The "unusually high levels of international scrutiny and lobbying" surrounding Palestine were a product of its religious significance and mandate status, which subjected British administration of the mandate to criticism from members of the League of Nations.14 Failures of administration that would have otherwise found a small local audience were amplified in Geneva and onwards in the world press, making such mistakes an international embarrassment for the Empire.15 The League's Mandates Commission also provided a platform from which to influence British rule. Though it was responsible for the administration of sixteen different mandates, Palestine alone was responsible for 43% of the more than 3,000 petitions addressed to the Commission.16

II: Towards British-Led Partition

"The obligations imposed upon His Majesty's Government by the terms of the Mandate were irreconcilable."17

Partition motivation

During the interwar period, the situation in Palestine progressively deteriorated, with major waves of violence erupting in 1929 and 1936-39, mirroring the mounting international challenges Britain faced. As a result, British strategists began to contemplate a radical idea: partitioning the territory. Numerous external factors catalyzed the formation of this idea: Zionist influence on British politics, experience with partition elsewhere in the Empire, British interests in the Middle East, and the increasingly difficult task of satisfying the dual requirement of the mandate - providing for a Jewish national home and respecting the rights of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants. The rise of fascism in Europe also played a role, motivating governments seeking either to aid Jewish refugees or to rid themselves of their Jewish populations to support Jewish emigration to Palestine against Arab wishes.18

Considerations of partition were also marked by growing American influence on British policy in the Middle East, which accelerated during the Second World War. Britain sought American support for the administration and defense of the Middle East, leaving it open to influence through American electoral politics on top of its own domestic considerations. This was successfully leveraged by Zionists to elicit commitments of support from Churchill during the war, for example.19 This dynamic would only become more difficult for Britain after the war, when American leaders recognized the potential of a "willing Zionist client" to act as a more effective agent of American priorities in the Middle East than a "reluctant Britain."20 Finally, changes in British Palestine policy were motivated by a shift in Soviet attitudes towards Zionism during the war. Soviet authorities had repeatedly denounced Zionism as "an instrument of imperialism in the struggle against the movements of national liberation" and "a glaring example of the deception practiced on the working-classes of an oppressed nation by the combined efforts of Entente imperialism and the bourgeoisie."21 Prioritizing the war effort against Germany above all else, however, the Soviets came to view friendly contact with the Yishuv as beneficial. Such contact could be used to muster support among American Jews for opening a second front against Germany, and then to preserve Soviet influence in the postwar Middle East.22 By the end of World War II, then, Britain faced a deteriorating situation in Palestine and an international environment increasingly amenable to the idea of partition.

Despite these push and pull factors, British planners viewed partition as an option to be avoided if possible. Partition along religious lines had been attempted in Bengal (1905-11) and Ireland (1920), at great cost and with mixed results. Not only was a partition plan thus likely to be costly and bloody, but the prevailing British belief was that it was prohibited by the text of the mandate.23 As the idea gradually spread, however, planners defined a number of strategic priorities that a partition plan would have to satisfy. Penny Sinanoglou writes:

"From their inception, plans of territorial separation were designed to ensure the maintenance of British access to material resources, carve out some sort of space for Britain's Zionist allies, placate regional Arab states, and solidify Britain's position as a protector of the holy sites of three of the world's major religions."24

The impact of partition on British-Arab relations was of particular concern. During the war, inchoate Arab nationalism and encroaching Soviet influence made Britain shift its Middle East policy from country-specific to regional.25 This required a Palestine policy that was more conciliatory towards Arab interests, but efforts to maintain good relations with the Arabs were frustrated by their unwillingness to cooperate with alleged supporters of Zionism. The British thus tried repeatedly to establish Arab political institutions equivalent to the Jewish Agency, but the Arab population refused to cooperate at every turn, up until the end of the mandate.26

The Evolution of Partition Plans

Partition was first formally proposed by the Peel Report of 1937, commissioned in response to the ongoing Great Arab Revolt. In hindsight, British authorities identified this as the moment in which it became clear that "the obligations imposed upon His Majesty's Government by the terms of the Mandate were irreconcilable," and that "it was impossible both to concede the Arab claim to self-government and to secure the establishment of the Jewish national home."27 The Peel plan called for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with a British exclave stretching from Jerusalem to Jaffa, thereby retaining control of key strategic points. In advocating for the "difficult and drastic operation of partition," the report rejected the idea of cantonization, which was competing for influence within the British government at the time.28 While the Peel recommendations never became official policy, their influence was in the longer term: the partition lines became the core idea for resolving the "Palestine question" through the eventual UN partition plan and beyond to the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.29

The publication of the Peel Report renewed the Arab revolt, frightening the British authorities. With the prospect of war with Germany and Italy looming, British authorities particularly feared any Arab opposition that threatened their control of the Middle East.30 Intending to walk back the partition recommendation, the British appointed the Woodhead Commission in 1938 to conduct a "technical study" of the Peel plan.31 The members of the commission were under strict instructions to prioritize British strategic interests in their report - limiting its military and financial burden, and retaining control of holy sites, key border zones, and natural resources. The three plans the commission produced were thus distilled products of British strategy, envisioning an Arab state and a much smaller Jewish state, along with British enclaves in Jerusalem, Nazareth, and potentially the Negev. Thus, even as the Woodhead Commission declared that "the problem cannot be solved by an exchange of land and population", the British failed to propose a better alternative.32

As Arab violence persisted and the situation in Europe deteriorated, the British government published a white paper in May 1939 which explicitly announced that "it is not part of [British] policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State," calling for the establishment of an "independent Palestine State" within a decade in which "Arabs and Jews share authority in government."33 Even this document, however, demarcated geographic zones in which different land transfer rules applied, thereby maintaining a commitment to a territorial solution - albeit of a different kind. On the verge of a world war and embroiled in a three-year-long Arab revolt, the White Paper was a product of British pragmatism and commitment to shelving the Palestine question. Within months of its publication, Britain was at war with Germany, and Palestine found itself out of the limelight for once. With the Arabs largely satisfied and the Jews largely preoccupied with events in Europe, the White Paper was a successful temporary fix.

The 1939 restrictions on Jewish immigration, the core provision of the White Paper, were set to expire in May 1944, requiring British attention during the war. In August 1943, Churchill appointed a Cabinet committee to propose long-term plans for Palestine, all of which ended up being partition plans of one kind or another. Even the report's dissenting opinion agreed that partition represented "the best and possibly the only final solution of the Palestine problem."34 The committee advocated for a return to a "natural" political order, reversing the "arbitrary dismemberment of the Levant" in the 1910s by incorporating much of Palestine into a Levantine Arab state.35 The plan's nod to a pan-Arab political consciousness was an attempt to placate Arab partners crucial to Britain's warfighting efforts, who had explicitly been promised independence in 1939 and now had to contend with partition once again. The plan won over Churchill, and the rest of the Cabinet followed suit in October 1944.36

British planners later determined that the key suggestion of the Cabinet report - Levantine unification - was impossible. This, along with the assassination of the British minister of state Lord Moyne by Lehi operatives in November, halted all partition planning. For a brief moment, it seemed that partition would be taken off the table for good, as British opinion on Zionism soured, the new Arab League began to exert influence, and even Zionist leaders shifted their lobbying efforts towards federation.37 Experience with enclaves in Danzig in the interwar period also made British planners more reluctant to implement them in Palestine, which ruled out most conceivable partition plans.38

As a result, the next plan under consideration by British authorities - the Hall-Harris plan of September 1945 - called for federation rather than partition. Sharing an author, the plan was similar to the Harris-Andrews plan of 1936 (which the Peel Report had effectively buried). In this plan, Britain would retain strategic control of Palestine, but limit its territorial control to Jerusalem. Britain would thus be responsible for foreign relations, defense, customs, and communications in the entire territory, while Jews and Arabs would administrate their respective cantons independently.39 The Hall-Harris plan was a pure reflection of Britain's interests at the end of the Second World War, and thus embodied continued hopes that a solution in Palestine could produce maximum benefits for a minimal cost. As this chapter has shown, this was simply the latest iteration of British attempts to produce a solution that would satisfy conflicting Zionist, Arab, and American interests, balanced according to Britain's own evolving strategic priorities. As we have seen, however, none of these plans could produce a broad enough coalition of interests to actually be implemented.

III: The Cold Reality of the Cold War

"Abdication in Palestine would be regarded in the Middle East as symptomatic of our abdication as a Great Power."40

Britain emerged from World War II with four million troops under its flag, commanding the world's second-largest navy, and ruling over a loyal Empire-Commonwealth spanning the globe.41 Beneath this façade of strength, however, Britain was in dire financial straits -the Lend-Lease program had terminated in August 1945, and the mammoth $3.75 billion American loan that followed was only expected to keep it afloat for two years.42 In the postwar world, Britain was unmistakably a second-rate power inferior to the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which were showing keen interest in the Middle East and Palestine. Facing these new regional competitors, all Britain had to show for a quarter-century of mandatory rule was spiraling violence, a series of failed solutions, and rapidly-deteriorating security.

Despite its massive financial challenges, Britain still conceived of itself as a victorious great power, requiring expensive military commitments around the world. According to British historian David Reynolds, "national retreat from global status after military victory was entirely counter-intuitive for both British bureaucrats and politicians."43 British strategy in the years immediately following the war was thus based on a delicate balancing act between domestic reconstruction and the preservation of British status and independence vis-à-vis both great powers, and the main tool in service of the latter end was the Empire. Even as decolonization took off in the British and other empires, the Communist threat kept Britain from completely retreating from its former colonies as it attempted to continue to exert influence in the newly-formed Commonwealth.44

British foreign policy in the early Cold War was defined by Churchill's idea of the "Three Circles", with Britain at the nexus of the United States, Europe, and the Empire-Commonwealth.45 Up in arms about the Communist threat and heavily reliant on American financial, material, and military support during the war, Britain was naturally drawn to its ally across the Atlantic over its former ally across the Continent.46 By 1947, then, the contours of a bipolar world order had been drawn. The United States would assume responsibility for the defense of Western Europe against the Soviet threat, with Britain and France both relegated to supporting roles.47 British leaders thus understood that American support was essential to the success of their foreign policy, but sought to retain the Empire-Commonwealth as a British sphere of influence.

The Importance of Palestine

In the Middle East, where Soviet influence was less of an immediate threat than in Europe, Britain was more reluctant to defer to the Americans. In November 1945, the State Department declared that the United States had "no intention" of becoming a "mere passive spectator" in the region, but the British were jealous of their regional hegemony.48 Some, like the commander of the Transjordanian Legion John Glubb, even believed that Britain was entitled to a "Monroe Doctrine in the Arab countries."49 These lofty ambitions were checked by Britain's financial state, however, which had drastically reduced its ability to deploy force in the region. To maintain regional primacy without damaging the valuable Anglo-American relationship, Britain therefore needed to maintain good relations with Arab populations - and this required distance from the Zionists.50 At the same time, Britain's weakened state also meant that it could not afford to be perceived as weak in Palestine. As Harold Beeley, future secretary of the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine explained in July 1945:

"Abdication in Palestine would be regarded in the Middle East as symptomatic of our abdication as a Great Power, and might set in motion a process which would result in the crumbling away of our influence throughout this region."51

The situation in Palestine was not only a test of British power in the Middle East, but also a constraint on it. Palestine was considered one of three major overseas burdens on the British treasury, which had reached a critical state by the end of 1946.52 In numbers, British military expenditures in Palestine from the end of World War II to the end of the mandate topped £100 million, representing approximately 0.3% of GDP over the same period.53 Though the British military was responsible for the administration and security of one quarter of the world's population, the violence and unrest in Palestine had reached such proportions that by the end of 1946, one out of ten British troops was stationed in the territory, whose population numbered fewer than two million.54 In the final years of the mandate, these troops were mainly tasked with fighting Jewish insurgent groups - the IZL and Lehi, and briefly the Haganah, the armed wing of the Jewish Agency.55 Statements of British leaders from this period leave no doubt as to the magnitude of the frustration they were experiencing. In July 1945, Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley admitted:

"The Palestine Mandate […] has proved a continual drain on resources of material and manpower. I realise, however, that the effects both upon our strategic position in the Middle East might be serious, but these matters are more for the Foreign Office and the Chiefs of Staff."56

The same month, Churchill in his final weeks as Prime Minister remarked in exasperation: "I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now."57 In spite of this frustration, Palestine in the 1940s remained a rare bastion of British imperial power in the Middle East, and the prospect of retreat raised serious alarm in certain official circles. By early 1947, the British economy was reeling from war debts, lost export markets, and a harsh winter, but the Cabinet was unwilling to give up on Palestine - one of only two Middle Eastern territories still under direct British rule.58 At the center of the eastern Mediterranean, Palestine had unique importance to British imperial interests, providing control of strategic land and sea routes and access to vast oil resources beyond.59

The weakening of British control in the region only increased this strategic importance. In September 1945, Egypt demanded to revise the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, and Britain promised to do so on the basis of full equality. The unrest in Palestine directly undermined Britain's bargaining position, as it had forced a diversion of nearly all the combat troops stationed in Egypt to Palestine. The Foreign Office found this situation concerning as well, and noted that the formation of a Jewish state on the lines of communication between Egypt and Arab states to the east would be a disaster for British interests.60

Confronted with the specter of evacuating its strategically vital bases in Egypt, the British military immediately turned to Palestine as the closest and most viable alternative. In its view, Palestine was the only place "between Malta and Aden" that could accommodate the Middle East Reserve and British air bases, critical to power projection in the region.61 To this end, the Chiefs of Staff warned Attlee against the grave strategic implications of any solution which would forfeit the right to station British troops in Palestine. Lord Tedder, chief of the Air Staff, went even further and insisted that even a solution which addressed British interests in Palestine would be unacceptable if it alienated the Arabs.62 For the British military, the Middle East was an area of "prime importance to the British Empire", and surrendering the mandate would result in the loss of Britain's "predominant position" in the region, causing "incalculable" damage to its reputation.63 With all avenues of action challenging or blocked entirely, it becomes apparent why Palestine has come to be regarded as "perhaps the most intractable problem facing the British government" in the early postwar years.64

External Pressure Points

For all this talk of strategic importance, by 1947 there was no denying that British control of Palestine was weakening with every passing day. To quote the commander of British forces in Palestine in 1946: "The Palestine government is completely in control of those areas which are primarily Arab, [and] the [Jewish] Agency in areas where the Jews predominate."65 A major factor in this deterioration of sovereignty was illegal immigration, which was the source of 70,000 of the 120,000 Jews who arrived in the territory between the end of World War II and the end of the mandate. Illegal immigration particularly scared the British because it was the main source of recruitment for Jewish underground organizations. The arrival of every immigrant ship therefore raised the probability of the worst possible outcome for the British - having to fight both Jews and Arabs - and their interception became the paramount task of British forces in Palestine and the Mediterranean.66

This was hardly a task for the British military alone, however, as the immigration was largely originating from territories under US and Soviet occupation in central and eastern Europe. Under instructions from Soviet authorities eager to disrupt British rule in the Middle East, the Polish and Rumanian puppet governments permitted Jews to emigrate to Palestine, a fact of which British authorities were aware as early as January 1945. The British managed to leverage negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference in summer 1946 to slow emigration from the Soviet Union and the countries under its influence, but the Americans proved more difficult.67 Much of the financial and material support for illegal immigration and underground resistance in Palestine originated in the US, but American authorities maintained that they could do nothing to stop it.68

Facing issues like illegal immigration, any British course of action was likely to provoke violence from Jews, Arabs, or both - in addition to international condemnation from the United States if it was anti-Zionist. Britain thus found itself in a nearly impossible position in which inaction meant the loss of control in a strategically important territory, but any action would anger one of its two principal partners in the early Cold War - the United States and the Arab nations. The situation was made worse by divided opinions on the Palestine question within the British government itself. The Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office were more concerned with Soviet expansion into the Middle East and beyond into Africa and southern Europe, and generally maintained pro-Arab attitudes. Several Cabinet members, in contrast, were more concerned by American reactions, and were therefore inclined towards pro-Zionist policies.69

British leaders had deemed that American cooperation on the Palestine issue was necessary for the preservation of the mandate as early as 1945, further complicating this debate.70 American interests in Palestine went beyond support for Zionism - the US viewed Palestine as a weak underbelly for British policy in the Middle East, recognizing that support for pro-Zionist policies would make it difficult for the British to ensure their position of primacy in the Arab world. Indeed, as time went on, Britain found it increasingly difficult to apply a coherent policy to the entire region, since Palestine required an entirely different form of treatment from the rest of the region.71 The United States thus found itself in the opportune position in which its support for Zionism won it support from Jewish interests, but also had the indirect effect of increasing American influence in the Arab world at British expense.

Understanding this dynamic, British leaders sought to engage the Americans in producing a solution for Palestine and kill two birds with one stone. American involvement would not only make them assume some of the responsibility for the events in Palestine, but also hinder Soviet encroachment into the region.72 Britain was desperate to achieve the first goal, and used mutual concerns about Soviet expansionism to form the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AAC) in January 1946. With split attitudes on partition, the committee recommended placing Palestine under UN trusteeship, which would allow the British to retain control of the territory and provide an opportunity to rewrite the seemingly impossible terms of the mandate. The British Cabinet took up the AAC's recommendations, and in July produced a joint Anglo-American agreement on Palestine policy, which became known as the Morrison-Grady plan.73

This plan recommended splitting Palestine into three provinces - Jewish, Arab, and British, removing restrictions on Jewish purchases of Arab land, and immediately issuing 100,000 Jewish immigration certificates, which was a personal priority of President Truman.74 The plan was categorically rejected by the Arabs, and the US eventually removed its support after a few months.75 Initially considered a major British success, the AAC was ultimately a failure. The committee failed to secure American support for continued British rule in Palestine, buy Britain more time to stem the tide of its waning influence in the region, or move the United States towards support for the principles of the 1939 White Paper which had previously preserved the peace in Palestine. This failure meant that Britain remained without a workable plan and with few options to resolve the situation on its own.

At this juncture, the position of the Palestine question in the Anglo-American relationship in the late 1940s should be clarified. Britain was frustrated at what it perceived to be American hypocrisy in advocating for the mass resettlement of Jewish refugees in Palestine while refusing to allow them to immigrate to the United States. In 1945, the British ambassador to the United States Lord Halifax went so far as to write about Jewish immigrants: "The average citizen does not want them in the United States, and salves his conscience by advocating their admission into Palestine."76 At this point, however, Britain was seriously dependent on American financial and strategic support in Europe. With their hands thus tied, British leaders had to acquiesce to American priorities - themselves a reflection of U.S. electoral politics - at the expense of their own strategic interests. Truman personally played a central role in this dynamic, successfully pushing the British to shift towards a more Zionist-friendly line without assuming responsibility for the repercussions - whether in the expenditure of blood and treasure in Palestine, or by allowing Jewish immigration to the United States.77

Despite these disagreements, British and American leaders could unite behind a shared suspicion of the Soviet Union, which stood to benefit from the weakening of Britain's grip on the Middle East. One major tool at the Soviets' disposal for sustaining the unrest in Palestine was enabling Jewish emigration at a time when the British were seriously concerned with curbing it. In 1944-45, the Soviets allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to return to Poland and Romania, whence they had fled earlier in the war. In the throes of anti-Semitism, neither was an attractive destination for Jews, and Stalin anticipated that many of them would attempt to continue onwards to Palestine.78 Stalin thus hoped to accomplish two strategic purposes. First, any Jewish migration to Palestine was likely to generate pressure on Britain to allow it, since the Americans were particularly sensitive to this issue. Second, this migration had the potential to favorably influence the course of a future Jewish state, since many Polish Jews had leftist sympathies.79 This episode was a major anomaly in Soviet policy regarding displaced groups during and after the war. Despite official denial of any mass emigration taking place, the departure of so many Jews from Soviet territory could have only taken place following an explicit directive from Moscow.80

Motivated by different concerns, the United States also used Jewish displaced persons (DPs) in Europe as a lever of pressure on Britain. Despite incessant American pressure, the British refused to budge from the tight quotas of the 1939 White Paper. After the war, the United States occupied significant parts of Germany and Austria, and encouraged Jewish DPs there to move toward Mediterranean ports where they could continue to Palestine with the support of Zionist organizations. These seized the opportunity to help DPs from other occupation zones move to the American zones, where they could be transported to a port for emigration. For the Zionists, this was a win-win situation, since those that could not be transported would constitute a financial burden on the Americans, incentivizing them to up the pressure on Britain to allow more immigration. Motivated by memories of the Great Arab Revolt, the British held fast to their quotas, significantly exacerbating the Jewish DP problem in Europe. Jews had made up no more than 1% of the 10.5 million DPs in Europe immediately after the war, but by 1947 they represented 20%.81

IV: A Strategic Retreat?

By 1947, then, the British government was facing significant pressure from the Americans, the Soviets, the Arab countries, Zionist organization, and its own generals to produce a workable solution for Palestine, but none appeared. The territory remained a powder keg, and any major policy shift was likely to provoke tremendous upheaval. British officials were particularly frustrated by Jewish illegal immigration and by the obstinance of Arab leaders. The latter factor was exacerbated by the sense of Muslim betrayal following Britain's near-expulsion from Egypt in 1946 and catastrophic partition of India the following year.82

In late 1946, President Truman unilaterally declared his support for partition, and the British conducted a series of unsuccessful negotiations with Zionist leaders. Reaching new levels of frustration, British leaders began to consider letting the newly-formed United Nations solve the Palestine question in their stead.83 Turning to the UN would draw the Soviets into the mix and likely strip Britain of its strategic assets in Palestine and was therefore seen as a last resort short of unilateral withdrawal, but Britain was running out of time. The deteriorating situation raised the probability that the Soviets would refer it to the Security Council themselves, which was likely to undermine British interests even further.84 With the British government unable to advocate for partition because of Arab sentiment, under American pressure to pursue policies friendly to the Zionists, and split along ideological lines, the appeal of a UN-sponsored partition spread rapidly, even among those who were previously strongly opposed to any form of partition.85

After numerous failures to reach a compromise within the British government, Foreign Secretary Bevin gave a speech to the House of Commons in February 1947 stating that "the only course now open to us is to submit the problem to the judgement of the United Nations."86 The speech captures the sense of paralyzed frustration gripping British authorities at the time:

"If the conflict has to be resolved by an arbitrary decision, that is not a decision to which His Majesty's Government are empowered, as Mandatory, to take. His Majesty's Government have of themselves no power under the terms of the mandate, to award the country either to the Arabs or to the Jews, or even to partition between them."87

Following Bevin's speech, the British Cabinet decided to refer the issue to the United Nations, after a last-ditch negotiation effort at the London Conference for Palestine.88 The decision to surrender responsibility in Palestine was thus a deliberate strategy choice, and not merely a cost-cutting measure as some have suggested. Several weeks later, the British representative to the UN requested a special session of the General Assembly to discuss the issue. The session convened in April 1947 and formed the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to produce a workable plan.89 The choice of a non-binding body was not accidental. Convening a special UNGA session was seen as the best option, since the Security Council was seen as too prone to Soviet influence and issued binding decisions.90

UNSCOP's starting point for examining the Palestine question was five volumes of British documents and data and officials' private analysis of past partition plans, which gave it a very British view of things. As an international body, however, it had much less of an interest in protecting British interests than all previous British plans, and therefore cut Britain out of the plan entirely. The UNSCOP plan was therefore essentially the first plan to not call for some form of British presence or control over strategic resources. Instead, the UN considered the Jewish state "the force to implement the partition plan," and rejected the unification of the Arab state with Transjordan, which was a central British priority.91

By this point, British public opinion on Palestine had reached an all-time low, significantly undermining British leaders' ability to advocate for their strategic interests. As the UNSCOP report was being written, Britain plunged into another balance-of-payments crisis, and the Jewish underground organization IZL kidnapped, murdered, and booby-trapped the bodies of two British soldiers. Days later, British forces turned the immigrant ship Exodus away from Haifa towards Marseilles, from where it would be turned back to Germany, producing a publicity nightmare for the British government. It was at this moment that the two UNSCOP plans were published, both agreeing on the immediate termination of the mandate, granting of independence, and preservation of economic unity, but diverging on the appropriate political solution. Seven members called for a transitional period of British rule under UN trusteeship before partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, while three supported the establishment of a federative state, and one abstained.92

Critical to the success of the partition plan was Soviet diplomatic support, which was a truly seismic shift in Soviet policy. Following decades of open hostility towards the Zionist project, this support formed part of Soviet grand strategy in the early Cold War, and has been widely analyzed in the academic literature. Particularly informative for understanding this strategy is the Declaration of the Founding of the Cominform, published by the Communist parties of the Soviet Union and its satellite states on November 10, 1947. Seeing light only 19 days before the UN vote on the Palestine partition plan, this document provides a snapshot of Soviet grand-strategic thinking at the precise moment in which the partition debate entered a critical phase. The declaration divides the world into "two diametrically opposed political lines":

"On one side, the USSR and the other democratic countries directed at undermining imperialism and consolidating democracy, and on the other side, the policy of the United States and Britain directed at strengthening imperialism and stifling democracy. […] The anti-imperialist democratic camp should close its ranks, draw up an agreed program of actions and work out its own tactics against the main forces of the imperialist camp, against American imperialism and its British and French allies."93

The rhetoric of this document leaves no room for doubt as to the fixation of the Soviet Union on undermining British and American influence in the late 1940s. This worldview was entirely black and white, good and evil, and explains both the convergence of British and American geostrategic interests and the dramatic pendulum swings in Soviet policy towards the Zionist project in this period.

In this new zero-sum world, Zionism came to be seen as "an issue of truly central importance" for Soviet authorities.94 To this end, the Soviets initially supported the establishment of a single, majority-Arab state in Palestine. Soviet sympathies naturally lay with the Arab population of Palestine, as the Jews were seen as colonizers "vigorously backed by British imperialism."95 As the violence in Palestine escalated, Stalin came to see a Jewish state in Palestine as a potential "source of trouble" for Britain.96 In the Soviet worldview, the Yishuv was at that moment playing a progressive and anti-imperialist role in undermining British rule, even as the Zionist movement itself was regarded as subversive and bourgeois. The Soviets' desire to supplant British hegemony in the Middle East with their own influence was paramount, even at the cost of losing standing in the Arab world.97 To that end, on October 13, 1947, the Soviet delegation announced its intention to support the UNSCOP majority plan, citing Britain's failures in Palestine, Western failures to protect Jews during the Holocaust, and rising Jewish-Arab tensions. This essentially guaranteed the plan's passage in the UNGA.98

Indeed, Palestine's disruptive nature was a blessing to Soviet designs on the Middle East. As British policy in Palestine and other arenas came to rely more heavily on American support, the Attlee government came under increased criticism from the left wing of Attlee's own Labour Party to reduce this dependence.99 Sustaining chaos in Palestine therefore not only directly undermined British power there, but also fueled Anglo-American discord, from which the Communist bloc stood to gain. The Soviets therefore did not only support the partition plan, but also enabled permitted the export of arms and aircraft from Czechoslovakia to Israel during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War. These shipments had a major impact on the success of Israeli forces in the war.100

During this entire period, however, the Soviets were careful to not explicitly endorse Zionism as an ideology. "Zionism" was never brought up in a favorable context in Soviet media or speeches at the UN; only "Jews" and "the Jewish people".101 This had the effect of separating Zionism as a global movement and ideology from the de facto existence of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. One was considered highly subversive to the Soviet regime; the other a useful tool to weaken the British grip on the Middle East. Indeed, once the British had left Palestine and the existence of the State of Israel was a fait accompli, the Soviets again shifted their focus towards the suppression of domestic Zionism, and Soviet support in arms and immigration ended by 1949.102

Following the publication of the UNSCOP plans, the British anticipated that the majority partition plan would spark an Arab revolt, and the minority federation plan a Jewish revolt. In response, the Cabinet determined that it was not willing to commit the military resources that restoring order in either scenario would require. This was not only a financial decision - both plans ran a significant risk of alienating Arab public opinion at a moment when British strategy required it desperately.103 By the end of 1947, then, Britain had no realistic options short of withdrawal, since no solutions other than the UNSCOP plans were in sight. This was both a validation of British concerns in referring the issue to the United Nations in the first place, and a resounding signal of the decline in British imperial power.

Without a viable course of action, Britain chose to abstain in the vote on the partition plan in November 1947, and subsequently announced that it would surrender the mandate the following May. Even as the situation rapidly devolved into open warfare, Britain refused to cooperate with UN authorities. British authorities thus hindered the arrival of the partition implementation committee in Palestine and refused to establish UN trusteeship. The Arab response to this decision is contested by historians. In one view, the decision to withdraw rather than implement partition was well received, thereby accomplishing Britain's chief strategic aim.104 In another, the haste of the British departure was viewed in the Arab world as abetting the Zionist cause.105

V: Aftermath and Conclusion

Amid the chaos that gripped Palestine after the partition vote and despite the decision to withdraw, British decision makers refused to write Palestine off. With Palestinian Arab institutions still largely absent, Britain successfully negotiated an agreement between Transjordanian and Jewish Agency officials allowing the former to administer the territory of the hypothetical Arab state, a British goal which had been explicitly rejected by UNSCOP.106 This was part of a broader British plan to use its Arab proxies to continue to exercise influence in the Middle East after partition. Central to this plan were the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, and Iraq, all of which were commanded by British officers and controlled by governments with some degree of British influence. After the British withdrew their forces from Palestine in May 1948, they urged these governments to invade the infant Israel in the hope of defeating it militarily to preserve their influence in the territory.107 These plans were largely unsuccessful, however, as Israel prevailed in the war and conquered much of the territory designated for the Arab state.108

Within Palestine, the British withdrawal was a tactical success and a strategic failure. In the immediate view, British forces emerged "relatively unscathed" once the decision to surrender the mandate had been made - thereby avoiding a large and costly military engagement.109 In a broader view, British weakness had been exposed for all to see, and all it had to show for 30 years of control was "the dismal wreck of Arab Palestine," to quote a senior official in the Foreign Office's Eastern Department.110 Indeed, Britain's "infamous scuttle" from Palestine was to adversely affect its reputation both in the Arab world and in the United States, which was to emerge as the unmistakable hegemon during the Korean War only two years later.111 Internally, too, the trauma of Palestine in the last days of the mandate reached such an extent that it became a metaphor of administrative failure throughout the Empire. Thus in 1947, Lord Wavell, the penultimate Viceroy of India, warned King George that the situation in India could deteriorate into a "large-scale Palestine."112 When the British faced a Communist insurgency in Malaya the following year, they worried about it becoming "a second Palestine."113

Unfortunately for Britain, the partition of Palestine was to be only the first in a series of critical blows to its standing in the Middle East which it tried so hard to preserve. In the 1950s, British influence was to become a target of Nasserism and pan-Arabism, leading to the 1956 Suez crisis and the eventual alignment of much of the Arab world with the Soviet Union. While the Middle East would occupy a central role in world politics over the subsequent decades, Britain would largely play a minor role in these events. Although the partition of Palestine was not the cause of this broader decline, it exposed Britain as flippant, self-interested, and weak to Arab leaders, who found comfort in the anti-colonial rhetoric of the Soviet Union and its allies.114

While Britain persistently tried to tie its policy in Palestine to its broader evolving strategic goals, then, it was ultimately unsuccessful. British policymakers were initially correct that support for Zionism would help them win the mandate for Palestine, but this rapidly provoked resistance from the local population. The Pandora's box of Jewish immigration could conceivably have been closed once more in the early years of the mandate, but the rise of fascism in Europe made the mandate an easy target for international pressure on Britain. With rising sectarian tensions, British strategists began to contemplate the partition of Palestine, but no consensus could be reached. When war broke out in Europe, Britain got a brief reprieve in Palestine, with the Arabs placated by stricter policies and the Jews preoccupied with the ongoing Holocaust.

The Second World War demoted Britain's standing on the world stage, and left it financially and militarily weak. The emerging Cold War made competition for global influence a zero- sum game between the United States and the Soviet Union, both of which showed interest in exerting influence in Palestine and the region. Britain threw in its lot behind the United States for the defense of Europe, which exposed it to the exercise of American leverage on issues like Palestine policy. Anxious to preserve its regional hegemony necessary for its global standing, British leaders attempted to have the United States assume some of the responsibility for administering Palestine. When this failed, they felt they had no choice but to turn the problem to the United Nations, or risk alienating their Arab partners.

When UNSCOP recommended partition as a solution for Palestine, both great powers saw it as advancing their own interests, producing a rare moment of Soviet-American consensus in the late 1940s. Britain still saw its future as a bridge between the Arab world and the United States, and distanced itself from the decision as much as it could. Even unilateral withdrawal and non-cooperation with the partition implementation mechanisms were not enough to salvage Britain's reputation, however. British plans to regain indirect control of Palestine were foiled first by Israel's successes on the battlefield, and later by the broader split between Britain and its Arab partners. By the middle of the 20th century, then, Britain had very little to show for its 30 years in Palestine. Both Arabs and Zionists had pinned their hopes on British control of the Middle East, but constant course changes in an effort to maximize evolving strategic goals left both feeling betrayed.

References

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Jewish Brigade of the British Eighth Army, taken 1939-1945, Photo by Imperial War Museum | Image sourced from Picryl | CC License, no changes made

  1. Ravndal, "Exit Britain." 416. ??
  2. "Text of the Balfour Declaration." ??
  3. Hollis, "Palestine and the Palestinians in British Political Elite Discourse." 7-8. ??
  4. Brenner, Zionism: A Brief History. 140-41. ??
  5. Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism. 15-16. This represented a wider embrace of Labor Zionism among European social democrats, who saw it as a force for positive change in the colonized world. See Kelemen, 25. ??
  6. Lumer, Zionism; Its Role in World Politics. 13; Nosenko, "The Palestinian Struggle in the 1920s- 1930s." 43. ??
  7. Penkower, Palestine in Turmoil. 86-89. ??
  8. Sinanoglou, Partitioning Palestine. 40-41. ??
  9. See Penkower, chapters 1-4. ??
  10. Brenner, Zionism: A Brief History. 145-46. ??
  11. League of Nations, "Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission." 55. One unique aspect was that Palestine was initially inhabited by a native Arab population and settled by nationalist Jews who were neither native nor British. The Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) was therefore neither part of the imperial community nor entirely outside it. See Sinanoglou, 19. ??
  12. Kelemen, 5. ??
  13. Nachmani, Great Power Discord in Palestine. 30. ??
  14. Sinanoglou, 18, 34. ??
  15. Sinanoglou, 34-35. ??
  16. Pedersen, The Guardians. 87. ??
  17. Colonial Office, 6. ??
  18. Sinanoglou, 18, 35. This final category included Nazi Germany itself, which encouraged Jewish emigration to Palestine in the early 1930s and signed an agreement regulating it with the Jewish Agency in 1933, inter alia. See Black, Edwin. The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine. Cambridge, MA: Brookline Books, 1999. ??
  19. Kelemen, 22-23; Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948. 11. ??
  20. Nachmani, 273. ??
  21. Frankel, The Soviet Regime and Anti-Zionism. 2-6; Resolution of the Second Congress of the Comintern, 1920. In: Degras, The Communist International, 1919-1943. I, 144. ??
  22. Frankel, 10-11. ??
  23. Louis, "The Dissolution of the British Empire." Partition in Bengal was reversed after six years following opposition, but was far more successful in Ireland. For an elaboration on the history of these partitions, see Sinanoglou, 23-32. ??
  24. Sinanoglou, 172. ??
  25. Nachmani 28-29. ??
  26. Colonial Office, 5-6. ??
  27. Colonial Office, 6. ??
  28. Ovendale, Britain, the United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942-1948. 5; El-Eini, Mandated Landscape. 316-19. Partition caused deep disagreements within the British government. See JTA, "Britain Seen Firm on Partition." ??
  29. Brenner, 149. ??
  30. Kelemen, 34-35. ??
  31. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. 49. ??
  32. El-Eini, 332-40; Morris, 49. "Palestine Partition (Woodhead) Commission Report." §178. In fact, the report itself rejected all three of the plans that it put forward. ??
  33. Secretary of State for the Colonies, "Palestine Statement of Policy." ??
  34. War Cabinet, Committee on Palestine, Report of the Committee, December 20, 1943. In: Sinanoglou, 160. ??
  35. Ibid.; El-Eini, 346. A Levantine state appealed to a Britain made hegemonic in the Middle East by the surrender of France and the German defeat in North Africa. ??
  36. Sinanoglou, 162. ??
  37. Sinanoglou, 163. British attitudes towards Zionism were complex, especially among soldiers in Palestine. Jews were simultaneously seen as both sympathetic victims of Nazi aggression and murderous terrorists. See Kadish, 10-11. ??
  38. El-Eini, 355. Jewish settlement patterns made it incredibly difficult to partition Palestine into two contiguous territories without major transfers. ??
  39. Sinanoglou, 165; El-Eini, 356. ??
  40. Beeley minute, July 10, 1945. In: Cohen, 16. ??
  41. Deighton, "Britain and the Cold War." 112. ??
  42. Sinanoglou, 164; Cohen, 1. ??
  43. Reynolds, "Great Britain." 78-79. ??
  44. Deighton, 114-17; Ravndal, 419. ??
  45. Davis, "WSC's 'Three Majestic Circles.'" ??
  46. See a JIC report from September 1946: "Communism is the most important external political menace confronting the British Commonwealth and Western democracies and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future." In: Deighton, 120. ??
  47. Deighton, 121. ??
  48. Nachmani, 28, 38. ??
  49. Nachmani, 32. ??
  50. Ravndal, 430. ??
  51. Beeley minute, July 10, 1945. In: Cohen, 16. ??
  52. Cohen. 30-31. ??
  53. Colonial Office, 10; Chantrill, "Gross Domestic Product for United Kingdom 1946-1960." ??
  54. Nachmani, 19; United Nations Conciliation Committee for Palestine (UNCCP), "Palestine Population Estimates for 1946." ??
  55. Kadish, The British Army in Palestine and the 1948 War. 1. ??
  56. Cohen, 15-16. ??
  57. Cohen, 15. Of course, Churchill was well aware of the strategic benefits of British rule in Palestine, as we shall now see. ??
  58. Ravndal, 418-20. ??
  59. Deighton, 120. ??
  60. Cohen, 34; Ovendale, 178-83. ??
  61. Cohen. 34-37. ??
  62. Ovendale, 185. ??
  63. Cohen, 16. ??
  64. Ravndal, 418. ??
  65. In: Nachmani, 19. ??
  66. Nachmani, 16. Many of the illegal immigrants were imprisoned in Palestine and Cyprus, but some were sent back to Europe. Intercepting migrant ships and imprisoning their passengers, most of whom were Holocaust survivors, generated extreme international and domestic pressure on the British government. ??
  67. Kochavi, 168, 210, 228; Nachmani, 78. See more on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union below. ??
  68. Ovendale, 202-03. ??
  69. Ravndal, 420, 423. ??
  70. Nachmani, 270. ??
  71. Nachmani, 31, 40. ??
  72. Grigoryev and Fedchenko, "Palestinian Problem in the United Nations (1945-1947)." 63-64. ??
  73. Sinanoglou, 165-66. ??
  74. Colonial Office, 8-9. ??
  75. Sinanoglou, 168. ??
  76. Cohen, 15. ??
  77. Ovendale, 178-79. ??
  78. Khanin, Bogdim Ba-Moledet. 39-41. ??
  79. Kaganovitch, 76-79. More than others, Polish Jews who survived the war in the USSR felt indebted to the Soviets when they learned that by escaping, they had evaded near-certain death at the hands of the Nazis in their home country. ??
  80. Kaganovitch, 59. Kochavi, 167, 227. ??
  81. Nachmani, 9, 14-16. ??
  82. Ovendale, 187-89. ??
  83. Ovendale, 167. ??
  84. Ravndal, 421. ??
  85. Ovendale, 168-70, 193-96. ??
  86. Sinanoglou, 168. ??
  87. Colonial Office, 9. ??
  88. Ravndal, 417. ??
  89. Ovendale, 199-201. ??
  90. Grigoryev and Fedchenko, 65-66; Ravndal, 421. ??
  91. Ovendale, 168-71, 174. ??
  92. UN Special Committee on Palestine, "Report to the General Assembly." ??
  93. Organ of the Cominform, "Declaration of the Founding of the Cominform." 122-24. ??
  94. Frankel, 9-10. ??
  95. Grigoryev and Fedchenko, 71; Nosenko, 40. ??
  96. Kaganovitch, "Stalin's Great Power Politics, the Return of Jewish Refugees to Poland, and Continued Migration to Palestine, 1944-1946." 76. ??
  97. Frankel, 14; Hersh, 20; Ovendale, 186. ??
  98. n.a., "Text of the Russian Statement on Palestine." Hamilton, "Russia Endorses Palestine Division; U.N. Approval Seen." In an anecdote that captures the spirit of the moment, the article about Russian support appeared on the front page of the New York Times, to the right of an article describing how the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem was the third diplomatic mission in three weeks to be attacked by Arab militants for supporting partition. ??
  99. Ovendale, 176. ??
  100. See Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947-53. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1974. Chapters 3-4. ??
  101. Even these indirect allusions to Jewish nationalism were dangerous to intra-Soviet stability, which was predicated on the replacement of nationalism with centralized socialism. ??
  102. Frankel, 12-15. See also Khanin, 197-98. ??
  103. Ravndal, 425; Hollis, 12. ??
  104. Ravndal, 426-29. ??
  105. Hollis, 12. ??
  106. Ravndal, 428-29. ??
  107. Lumer, 13; Grigoryev and Fedchenko, 76. ??
  108. Israel's battlefield success was in small part due to Soviet support, such that it had the intended effect - weakening British power in the Middle East. ??
  109. Louis, 336. This naturally draws a parallel to India, where the British withdrawal had similar reverberations. ??
  110. Sir Michael Wright, 30 March 1949. In: Louis, 336. ??
  111. Deighton, 127-29. ??
  112. Wavell to King George VI, 24 Feb. 1947, In: Louis, 332. ??
  113. Louis, 337. ??
  114. See Behbehani, The Soviet Union and Arab Nationalism, 1917-1966. ??

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