British Foreign Policy Failures in the Palestine Mandate

        The Jews had continued to believe throughout their persecution in history that Jerusalem would be their homeland. The Zionist movement was not a new one but an ancient movement where the ideas had remained the same throughout centuries. Theodor Herzl, considered as the founder of modern Zionism, laid down the claim for a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Palestinian area is regarded by Jews as their homeland due to religious significance and the traditional and cultural connections thus attached to the land. Herzl in his book Der Judenstaat writes that “we shall not revert to a lower stage; we shall rise to a higher one. We shall not dwell in mud huts; we shall build new, more beautiful and more modern houses, and possess them in safety. We shall not lose our acquired possessions; we shall realize them. We shall surrender our well-earned rights for better ones. We shall relinquish none of our cherished customs; we shall find them again.” Here Herzl highlights the passion which the Jews felt at the time in late 19th and early 20th century towards the creation of a separate Jewish homeland which would rid the Jews of their endless persecution from all the nations of the world. The Arabs however, saw the situation differently. After 1917, the Balfour Declaration drew a severe response of anger and hatred by the Arabs who felt the land their own due to the status quo as well as their own religious roots in the region. 

        The Great Britain paid little heed to the conflict among the Arabs and Jews as they were more focused towards their own benefit and advantages in the region which they could squeeze out of Palestine. The role of Britain in Palestine can be considered to be significant after the Hussein-McMahon correspondence starting in 1915 till 1916. The British High Commissioner in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon negotiated the support of Sharif Hussein, the Amir of Mecca and thus the highest authority in Islam, in return for future Arab independence. The excerpts from the correspondence accepting the Arab demands with minor changes say that “Great Britain is prepared to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs in all regions within the limits demanded by the Sharif of Mecca” and this reflected the acceptance of Arab terms in return for their support in WWI. The real reason as Kristen Schulze evaluates is that as Ottoman Empire entered WWI on German side, the Suez Canal was open to their aggression and thus would cripple the trade routes as well as strategic military supply route for Great Britain. Therefore, to develop more friendly terms with the local Arabs would ensure the security of the Canal and thus Great Britain would retain its advantageous routes to South East Asia for trades and supplies. However, whilst this was done, later the same year on 16th May, 1916, the British and the French government signed a secret agreement by the name Sykes-Picot Agreement. (See map in Appendix) According to the agreement, France and Britain would divide the anticipated Arab territories after the fall of Ottoman Empire. The map shows zones of direct and indirect control by the two powers but the key element to note is that Jerusalem and surrounding area in international zone. This is contradictory of what was proposed to the Arabs in the guarantees of Arab land freedom whereas Jerusalem was not being given. The purpose behind this agreement was again out of self-interest. Such a division prevented the Russian influence from spreading into the European parts which would then shift power in Russia’s hands. Therefore, France and Britain saw it best to divide up the land into their own zones so that unwanted influences could be eradicated and prevented. This was followed in the following year with the growing interest shown by the British government in Zionist movements. The sympathy and interest felt by Great Britain for the Zionists was shown by the Balfour Declaration on 2nd November, 1917. The Declaration read that "[British] Government view[s] with favor 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, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The purpose of this negotiation was out of self-interest of Britain itself and not out of the apparent sympathy shown publically. The declaration was put together with the efforts of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and the Zionist key player Chaim Weizmann where the latter was involved in synthesizing of acetone, imported from Germany, and essential for making explosives potentially for British war-efforts. Thus appeasing Weizmann and through him the Zionist movement, Great Britain hoped to aid their own purposes in war and gain the Jewish support for their armies as well. Just these years from 1915 to 1917 set up the stage for a major Arab-Jew conflict as now the Promised Land was not promised to one but two completely different and opposing groups whose rivalry dated back centuries. In the eyes of the Arabs, the Jews were barring their rightful claim to the Holy Land and to the Jews the Arabs were posing a barrier in the creation of their homeland. Thus the British self-centered foreign policies aimed at exploiting the strategic geographical importance of Palestine resulted in the emergence of the friction between Zionists and the Arabs.

        The end of WWI saw Britain with the Mandate of Palestine along with others. When the British troops entered Palestine in 1918, the first action take was to set up a provisional military government in Jerusalem. This was in direct violation of Britain’s agreements and declarations made with the Arabs, Jews, and the French where in the first two groups’ case the area was promised to them and to France; it was told that Jerusalem would remain an international monitored zone. The impact of all these policies implemented was that Britain was assured access to the Suez Canal and the East, she could prevent French ambitions in Lebanon and Syria from drifting South, and she also created a bridge for herself from the Mediterranean Sea to the oil fields of Iraq. Whilst Britain’s own agendas and goals were accomplished according to their wishes, the important task of ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ and ensuring ‘that nothing [will] be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ was also her responsibility. However, the preliminary policies from the duration of WWI had already started the friction between the Arabs and the Jews. The Interwar period between WWI and WWII was tense in sense that the British troops spent much time dealing with the Arab-Jewish riots resulting from the friction between he two groups against being treated unjustly.  These prominently were the Arab mob attack on Jaffa in 1921 and in the holy city of Jerusalem in 1929. Furthermore, the Arab Rebellion in 1936 sparked an especially harsh response from the British forces.  With the situation deteriorating for Britain not only in Palestine but other colonies as well including India and South Africa, Britain sought to resolve the matter and the result was the Peel commission in 1937 which suggested the partition of Palestine. However, once again, attempts to implement it further enraged the Arabs and the Jews and Britain was         forced to abandon the idea and continue to rule.  Following the commission and the end of the Arab Rebellion in 1939, Great Britain in its efforts to appease the Arabs due to imminent         danger of approaching WWII, issued the White Paper in 1939 which limited Jewish immigration to 15000 annually and also resolved to renew the immigration flow only if the Arabs gave their consent.  This heightened the tension even more as the Jews felt betrayed now that the Anti-Semitism had been apparent in Germany and the need for a Jewish homeland seemed greater than ever.  However, WWII only worsened the division as the Arabs saw the Germans as         means of liberating Palestine from both the British and the Jews whereas the Jews fought on Allied side while breaking the White Paper’s indictment repetitively.  Britain also had to deal with Jewish Terrorism in the latter part of the 1940s as well with the prolific example being the bombing of King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22nd July, 1946 .With the war over, the international pressures after the Holocaust and previous failures to resolve the problem, Britain, in hopes of an honorable way of retreating in 1947, gave the mandate of Palestine over to the United Nations Association to resolve. The resolution passed by the UN in 1947 was however, in favor of partition while in the voting process Britain voted against it.

E        Conclusion

        Having investigated, analyzed, and evaluated the role Great Britain played in her mandate of Palestine, the failures of British foreign policies become apparent as discussed above. The self-driven policies of Britain which were meant for personal strategic gains stimulated the tensions betweens the Arabs and the Jews as contradictory policies of the Great Britain left both groups frustrated; the example of the provisional government in Jerusalem being the prime case where Britain broke her word with the Arabs and the Jews as well as the French. The result of this was the outbreak of violence and foundations of the current Arab-Jew conflict being laid. All further attempts by Britain to regulate and control the situation resulted in serious escalation of the tensions until she gave up and sought diplomatically honorable ways out of the situation thus marking her failure to deal with the problem of Palestine and leading to the partition due to her inability to incorporate policies which should have yielded better results.

F        List of sources

• Baumann, Michael Scott, Conflict in the Middle East: Israel and the Arabs, 2nd Edition (London: Hodder Murray, 2007)
• Bender, David L and Leone, Bruno Israel: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1989)
• Bickerton, Ian J. and Klausner, Carla L. A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 5th Edition (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2007)
• Cleveland, William L A History of the Modern Middle East (3rd Edition) (Colorado: Westview Press, 2004)
• Frank, Mitch Understanding the Holy Land (USA: Viking, 2005)
• Laqueur, Walter The Israel-Arab Reader, (3rd Ed.) (Bantam Books, 1976)
• Sachar, Howard M. A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to our Time, 3rd Edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
• Schulze, Kirsten E. The Arab-Israeli Conflict , 2ND edition (Great Britain: Pearson Education, 2008)

Yale Law School, The Avalon Project: Balfour Declaration 1917

G        Appendix

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