Dr Simon Smelt
This is the fourth in a four part series ‘Challenging the dominant narrative of a contested land’.
Colonial intrigues around the formation of the Jewish state eclipse any spy story.
From the 1920s, King Abdullah of TransJordan advocated a Greater Syrian state to include Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine under his rule. Britain took this up in the 1940s, secretly advocating the creation of such a state (including Palestine) under its stewardship. The intent was to secure Britain’s status in the region in return for putting a halt to Jewish ambition in Palestine. France and the United States opposed such British hegemony.[1] In 1946, the Arab League was formed under Egyptian control, aiming to free “the Arab nation” from colonial control.[2] Its Arab High Committee also wanted to fold Palestine into a Greater Syria (minus British influence or TransJordanian rule.)
In the 1947 UN vote on a Jewish state, Britain abstained – fearing the state would be anti-British and pro-communist – whilst Russia and its allies voted for the new state. After the resolution was passed, Britain did the bare minimum to maintain law and order there. They abandoned Palestine in May 1948 amidst widespread skirmishing, without any handover or ceremony whatsoever – unlike its other colonial departures. Much of government had already ceased to function, e.g. international air and postal services. These were only re-established some weeks after independence through (Russian controlled) Czechoslovakia, who also supplied arms to Israel. The British Foreign Office sought to stop British citizens joining Jewish forces, but allowed them to join TransJordan’s Arab Legion.[3] The British government put diplomatic pressure on Poland, the source of a large number of the Jewish refugees, to clamp down on Jewish emigration.[4] In Operation Embarrass, Britain even blew up empty ships in Italian ports that were preparing to take Jewish refugees to Palestine, by having operatives attach limpet mines to their hulls.[5] Britain used Cyprus to intern Jews trying to reach the Land and only released the last 25,000 prisoners after Israeli independence.
Official papers show that, in the face of US support for a Jewish state, British policy by 1947 was to accept a ‘small’ Israeli state. This aimed to maximise the position of former colonies TransJordan and Egypt, notably by retaining a land corridor between the two through the Negev.[6] However, an influential Arabist group in Britain sought further to maximise British interests by encouraging neighbouring Arab leaders directly to attack Israel.[7] Continuing an earlier tussle with France, they hoped to pull Syria and Lebanon into the British orbit and away from their former French colonial masters.[8] Thus Britain had two different Middle Eastern policies, of varying degrees of hostility to Israel. Meantime, French agents monitored the British Arabists’ efforts and reported them to the Zionist leader, Ben Gurion to stoke distrust.[9] At the same time, French agents worked with al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who had sided with Hitler in WW2, to undermine both British colonial interests and the Jewish state.[10]
With so much double dealing, both Arabs and Jews felt betrayed by the colonial powers in the 1948-49 war. Britain tried to monitor the movement of Israeli forces in the Negev. However, when the Israelis shot down five British Spitfires, the British had neither the will nor the forces available to respond. Britain resolutely opposed any permanent peace agreement between Arab states and Israel in order to maintain Arab solidarity against Israel.[11] In this, at least, they were successful.
Britain retained her hostility to Israel into the 1950s. Extraordinarily, a 1955 plan envisaged an RAF attack on Israeli airfields combined with a land attack by Arab armies.[12] The intent was to force a rump Israel back into the British Empire and gain favour in the Arab world. However, when the Egyptian leader Nasser nationalised the Anglo-French owned Suez Canal in 1956, Britain promptly changed sides. In the last gasp of empire, Britain and France drew Israel into their aborted attack on Egypt in the Suez crisis.
One result of forming a Jewish state was the persecution and expulsion of many Jews from Arab countries. In 1947, the Egyptian delegate to the UN declared “the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Moslem countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state.”[13] About 850,000 Jews fled Arab countries, some 500,000 to Israel. Today, among Israel’s Jewish population, the largest group (c45%) is of Middle Eastern origin.[14] They would not be welcome in the Arab countries from which their families fled. The Jewish population in Arab countries is now less than 1% of its 1948 level.[15] By contrast, the Arab population of Israel has increased at least twelvefold. For every 100 Jews in Arab countries in 1948 there is now one Jew. For every 100 Arabs in Israel in 1948 there are now 1,000. A ratio of one to one thousand makes clear where any genocide lies.
Israel is both ancient and recent among the nations. Amidst all the twists and turns, Israel has prospered in the Land. To summarize, our survey of the Land since the 1st century AD has shown:
- Jews have been continuously present in the Land, clinging on through numerous conquerors, oppressions, betrayals, expulsions, massacres and depressions. This old Yeshuv (settlement) was reinforced by a stream of immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland – a difficult and dangerous journey for much of the period.
- From the fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century, the Land is consistently reported as largely empty, desolate and depopulated. At the time of Jesus, the population of Palestine is estimated at some 2 million, but then fell sharply due to the Jewish revolts of the first and second centuries.[16] Recovering to around the two million level under Byzantine rule, it fell to 150,000 to 250,000 from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries, rising to some 700,000 by WW1. It reached the first century figure of two million by the late 1940s – the rapid growth being primarily due to immigration. It is currently some fifteen million (Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.)[17]
- A snapshot from the late seventeenth century shows Jews to be a substantial part of the local population, notably in Gaza, and engaged in both farming and commerce.
- Increasing numbers of visitors and diplomats from the mid-nineteenth century found the land mostly empty and the Jews harshly oppressed.
- From the 1860s, Ottoman land and other reforms saw substantial concentration of land ownership into the hands of an effendi class, who lived off the rents rather than investing.
- From the 1880s, oppression and pogroms in East Europe drove significant Jewish immigration and began the new Yeshuv in the Land.
- Land was purchased for Jewish immigrants at some risk through the ramshackle Ottoman legal system. Funds came from charitable collections throughout the Jewish diaspora and from wealthy families.
- The effect of Jewish immigration, land purchase and associated investment was dynamic on the Palestine economy, so that its growth rates greatly exceeded surrounding countries. This led to extensive Arab migration into Palestine from its neighbours.[18] Much of the new Arab settlement clustered around Jewish settlements and towns.
- Displacement of Arab communities by Jewish ones was more than counterbalanced by opportunities from increased economic activity and modernisation. However, the rising proportion of Jews in the Land led to increased tensions and violence. This was exploited by some of the same effendi families who had sold land to the Jews.
- British policy under the Palestine Mandate wavered but increasingly was driven by concerns to placate Arab leaders and safeguard wider British imperial interests. Britain took increasingly harsh measures to inhibit Jewish immigration.
- Jewish presence in Palestine does not fit the colonialist paradigm: the new Yeshuv represented no colonial power; they did not expropriate land from locals;[19] they worked the land themselves and reinvested any surplus; they sought to express their own culture in the land of its birth; they fought the British colonial power as they had the Romans.
- Arab resistance to the Jews was in terms of developing a strong Arab nation. Palestinian Arabs were seen as part of the wider Arab Muslim ummah (community). The idea of a distinct Palestinian nation and culture is a recent concoction, only gaining wide usage post 1967.
- Jewish flight to the new state of Israel was from both European and Arab countries.
- Arabs continue to prosper within Israel. For every 100 Jews in Arab countries in 1948 there is now one Jew. For every 100 Arabs in Israel in 1948 there are now 1,000.
Much of the current narrative concerning Israel and the Palestinians is the reverse of the truth. Jews are the Land’s earliest known inhabitants and Jewish archaeological ruins lie underneath ancient Arab settlements. They have retained their attachment to the Land through two millennia of foreign rule to this day. To present the Palestinian cause, history must be denied; thus Hamas claims that only Muslims are indigenous to the land that is now Israel, so Jews can never belong there.[20]
A false story has been promulgated which denies the history of the Jewish people, their claims to the Land, and the Lord’s promises to them, whilst upholding a distorted history of a concocted people group – the Palestinians – to justify violence and anti-semitism to Western audiences. All except the puppet masters suffer as a result.
[1} https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1947v05/d504 King Abdullah of TransJordan had long sought a Greater Syria embracing Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.
[2} Hourani, Albert (1991) A History of the Arab Peoples, MJF, NY. The Arab League supported the Greater Syria plan; their problem was who was to lead the new Arab entity. Cf: https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/greater-syria-plan
[3] https://world.edu/wp-content/files/2012/02/Arielli-war-web.pdf
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory_Palestine citing Marrus, Michael Robert; Aristide R. Zolberg (2002) The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War. Temple University Press.
[5] op.cit citing Jeffery, Keith (2010) The Secret History of MI6.
[6] Shlaim, Avi (1987) “Britain and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948,” J Palestine Studies, 16, 4, Summer. Available at: https://balfourproject.org/bp/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Britain-Arab-Israeli-War-1948-JPS-1987.pdf
[7] Zamir, Mair (2014) The secret Anglo-French war in the Middle East: Intelligence and decolonization, 1940-1948, Taylor and Francis. Summary available at: https://archive.ph/rnNiE#selection-1969.1-1969.213
[8] Competing French and British colonial interests post-war led to the ‘Levant Crisis’ and a direct military confrontation between them in Damascus in 1945. The French backed down.
[9] Zamir, op.cit.
[10] Pryce-Jones, David (2005) “Jews, Arabs, and French Diplomacy: A Special Report,” Commentary, 119, 5, May. Available at: http://www.benadorassociates.com/pf.php?id=15043 He quotes a French diplomat on al-Husseini: “He has above all betrayed Britain … He is persuaded that he can launch a durable Franco-Arab cooperation.”
[11] Shlaim, Avi, op.cit.
[12] Cohen, S. A. (1988). “A Still Stranger Aspect of Suez: British Operational Plans to Attack Israel, 1955–1956,” International History Review, 10 (2), 261–281. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.1988.9640477
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt
[14] Lewin-Epstein, Noah & Yinon Cohen (2018): “Ethnic origin and identity in the Jewish population of Israel,” J Ethnic and Migration Studies. Available at: https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/noah/files/2018/07/Ethnic-origin-and-identity-in-Israel-JEMS-2018.pdf
[15] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries
[16] Agriculture in the Hula Valley collapsed in the 2ndC, only being resuscitated by Jews in the 20thC.
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_demographics_of_Palestine_(region)
[18] As the British governor of Sinai put it: “it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” Royal Commission Report (1937) Palestine, HMSO, London (The Peel Report.)
[19] After the 1948-49 war, abandoned property was expropriated by the state.
[20] Kirsch, Adam (2024) On Settler Colonialism, Norton
