Britain and Israel: A chequered relationship
As a child, I had heard of the Balfour Declaration, a document precious to Jews, couched in the form of a letter from Arthur James Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a prominent member of the Jewish community, assuring him of the British intention to guarantee a National Home for the Jews in Palestine. The letter has been endowed with sacred status by the Zionist Movement, despite its ambiguity. The term ‘National Home’, for instance, was a new concept in international law, a much watered down version of the accepted notion of statehood. Nevertheless, in 1917 it was a step forward on the road to a Jewish state and as such, welcomed enthusiastically by Zionists while being excoriated by most Arabs in the region.
In 1917 the First World War was drawing to an end and the Ottoman Turks, having fought on the side of Germany, had, like their more powerful ally, been defeated. Their crumbling empire, encompassing a vast region which included Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Palestine, would shortly be dismembered by the victorious allies.
The ensuing years saw a flurry of Machiavellian maneuvering and intense diplomatic activity, in which the region was carved up into French and British spheres of interest. All of this collapsed, however, with the introduction of Mandates by the League of Nations. A Mandate, in political terms, was a territory to be administered by one of the victorious allies until the local population was deemed fit to take responsibility for self-rule. Britain was given the Mandate for Palestine, but in its Herculean attempt to design a brave new world, the concept of a Jewish Homeland disappeared from sight. Its spirit, however, lived on, to emerge when the Mandate came to an end, as the State of Israel.
The story of the British Mandate is one of bitter conflict between three interested parties – Britain, the Jews and the Arabs. The key question was, who should govern Palestine when the day would come for Britain to relinquish its mandate. There were several options to be considered. One was for the entire land to be governed by either Jews or Arabs. A second option would be to set up some form of bi-national state, and a third option, the one ultimately voted into existence by the United Nations in the teeth of Arab opposition and British obfuscation would be for the land to be partitioned into two territories, one to become a Jewish state, the other an Arab state.
But optimists who thought that they had arrived at a Solomonic solution to the problem and that healing and cooperation between the two warring parties could now begin, reckoned without taking into account the depth of blind unreason which existed on both sides of the divide.
For the Zionists, Israel was a dream come true, a Phoenix risen from the ashes of millions of Jews who had succumbed helplessly to murderous destruction. For the Palestinian Arabs, Israel was an alien entity, never to be incorporated in any size, shape or form into the Muslim world.
In the face of such intransigence, Britain was hamstrung. The military administration clung to the belief that law and order were to be maintained at all costs. But those costs proved to be too costly. In 1947 the Mandate expired and Britain withdrew, tail between its legs, having failed to control the violence which was engulfing both Jewish and Arab communities.
Despite having appealed to the United Nations to pick up the pieces, Britain then signaled its ambivalence towards that body by prevaricating at every step of the way until a vote in favor of Partition narrowly set the stamp on the state of Israel.
Then, as now, Britain was divided over the future of Israel. It would be all too easy to name leading figures in all three camps who fought for and against the Jewish state, any one of whom is either hero-worshipped or reviled. However, to do so would be to invite a clamor of ardent dispute and it is more constructive to identify the root causes of the turbulence unencumbered by reference to the dramatis personae who, like Ozymandias of Egypt, will one day lie buried in the sand, remembered, perhaps, only by poets and historians.
The conflict between Zionists and Palestinians as it has become today, has its origins in massive social trauma. It is the product of two world wars, the decline of empires and the rise of fascism and communism. Trauma breeds extremism which in turn promotes violence, the urge to retaliate against a perceived enemy by means of terror and warfare, and a polarized view of humanity (‘Us or Them’). Britain is not immune to such sentiments. Successive British governments have tried and failed to grapple with the problem. But there is a faint hope of change for the better in the pronouncements of the present government as it vigorously condemns both antisemitism and extremist Jewish violence against Palestinian communities in Israel. There is still a mountain to climb, but the base camp might have been reached.
