British Policy and the Creation of Israel

Authors Avatar

Disclaimer:

While I have no control to the extent which you use this work, I ask you to RESPECT MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and NOT DIRECTLY COPY THIS ESSAY. Feel free to use aspects of it in your work or use it as a basis for any work you may need to do, but once again don’t plagiarize my work!

British Policy and the Creation of Israel

British policy in the Middle East and particularity, Palestine, has played a great role in aiding the creation of Israel. Not only did Britain open the door for possible Zionist aims to be recognized in Palestine, but the vast majority of the policies Britain established concerning Palestine would assist Zionist goals, directly or indirectly. Even when Britain wanted to hinder the creation of a Jewish state, their policies would work against them and ultimately, it would be because of these British decisions and actions that a Jewish state in the Middle East would eventually be created.

Britain’s first major policy towards the Middle East came in July/October, 1915, with the advent of World War I earlier in the previous year. Fearing the loss of Egypt and the vitally important Suez Canal to the Ottoman Empire, Sir Henry McMahon, on behalf of the British Empire, wrote several letters and came to an agreement with a highly influential Arab leader, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, promising Arab independence in exchange for their cooperation in staging an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers. However, this promise of Arab freedom was never truly intended to be a reality by the British who instead had their own plans for dividing the Middle East between themselves and their ally, France, with France controlling Syria and Lebanon and Britain laying claim to Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine. These plans were finalized in the secret, Sykes-Picot agreement of October 1916. With the Sykes-Picot agreement while Britain had erased any real hope for the creation of an independent Arab nation, they had opened up a new possibility, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and as the British cabinet had previously acknowledged and sympathized with Zionist aspirations for Palestine (in March, 1915) this possibility of a Jewish state was a very real one. These Zionist aspirations were again, officially, recognized in November, 1917, with the advent of the Balfour Declaration – “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

Join now!

With these three early policies, Britain had managed to lay the first stone in the creation of a Jewish national home, while at the same time, greatly betray all the Arabs of the Middle East, especially the Palestinians, who were expecting freedom and a nation of their own. These decisions would cause much tension and violence in Palestine for many years to come (violence in this region is still raging in the present day) and as historians, Ahrom Bregman and Jihan el-Tahri say in The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs “Palestine proved to be the British Empire’s greatest ...

This is a preview of the whole essay