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Israel
Index
Figure 3. Palestine during the Mandate and Two of the Partition
Proposals
By 1936 the increase in Jewish immigration and land
acquisition, the growing power of Hajj Amin al Husayni, and general
Arab frustration at the continuation of European rule, radicalized
increasing numbers of Palestinian Arabs. Thus, in April 1936 an
Arab attack on a Jewish bus led to a series of incidents that
escalated into a major Palestinian rebellion. An Arab Higher
Committee (AHC), a loose coalition of recently formed Arab
political parties, was created. It declared a national strike in
support of three basic demands: cessation of Jewish immigration, an
end to all further land sales to the Jews, and the establishment of
an Arab national government.
The intensity of the Palestinian Revolt, at a time when Britain
was preparing for the possibility of another world war, led the
British to reorient their policy in Palestine. As war with Germany
became imminent, Britain's dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and
therefore the need for Arab goodwill, loomed increasingly large in
its strategic thinking. Jewish leverage in the Foreign Office, on
the other hand, had waned; the pro-Zionists, Balfour and Samuels,
had left the Foreign Office and the new administration was not
inclined toward the Zionist position. Furthermore, the Jews had
little choice but to support Britain against Nazi Germany. Thus,
Britain's commitment to a Jewish homeland in Palestine dissipated,
and the Mandate authorities pursued a policy of appeasement with
respect to the Arabs.
Britain's policy change in Palestine was not, however, easily
implemented. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration, successive British
governments had supported (or at least not rejected) a Jewish
national home in Palestine. The Mandate itself was premised on that
pledge. By the mid-1930s, the Yishuv had grown to about 400,000,
and the Jewish economic and political structures in Palestine were
well ensconced. The extent of the Jewish presence and the rapidly
deteriorating fate of European Jewry meant that the British would
have an extremely difficult time extricating themselves from the
Balfour Declaration. Furthermore, the existing Palestinian
leadership, dominated by Hajj Amin al Husayni, was unwilling to
grant members of the Jewish community citizenship or to guarantee
their safety if a new Arab entity were to emerge. Thus, for the
British the real options were to impose partition, to pull out and
leave the Jews and Arabs to fight it out, or to stay and improvise.
In 1937 the British, working with their regional Arab allies,
Amir Abdullah of Transjordan, King Ghazi of Iraq, and King Abdul
Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, mediated an end to the revolt with
the AHC. A Royal Commission on Palestine (known as the Peel
Commission) was immediately dispatched to Palestine. Its report,
issued in July 1937, described the Arab and Zionist positions and
the British obligation to each as irreconcilable and the existing
Mandate as unworkable. It recommended partition of Palestine into
Jewish and Arab states, with a retained British Mandate over
Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem and a corridor from Jerusalem to
the coast
(see
fig. 3).
In 1937 the Twentieth Zionist Congress rejected the proposed
boundaries but agreed in principle to partition. Palestinian Arab
nationalists rejected any kind of partition. The British government
approved the idea of partition and sent a technical team to make a
detailed plan. This group, the Woodhead Commission, reversed the
Peel Commission's findings and reported in November 1937 that
partition was impracticable; this view in its turn was accepted.
The Palestinian Revolt broke out again in the autumn of 1937. The
British put down the revolt using harsh measures, shutting down the
AHC and deporting many Palestinian Arab leaders.
With their leadership residing outside Palestine, the Arabs
were unable to match the Zionists' highly sophisticated
organization. Another outcome of the Palestinian Revolt was the
involvement of the Arab states as advocates of the Palestinian
Arabs. Whereas Britain had previously tended to deal with its
commitments in Palestine as separate from its commitments elsewhere
in the Middle East, by 1939 pan-Arab pressure carried increasing
weight in London.
In the Yishuv, the Palestinian Revolt reinforced the already
firm belief in the need for a strong Jewish defense network.
Finally, the Arab agricultural boycott that began in 1936 forced
the Jewish economy into even greater self-sufficiency.
Data as of December 1988
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