[(Continued from p.6)]
who take refuge in the "Autonomy." In addition, political concessions under pressure and violence will turn Israel into a perpetual hostage to similar tactics.The rehabilitation of Israel's power to deter is much more important than the progress toward "peace." If there is any chance at all for peace it is contingent, first and foremost, on the return of Israel's deterrence capability.
Here is a book on Mandatory Palestine that does not include the Mandate for Palestine. The central thesis of Israeli journalist Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete is that the British "kept their promise to the Zionists. They opened the country to mass Jewish immigration. Contrary to the widely held belief of Britain's pro-Arabism, British actions considerably favored the Zionist enterprise." No one can begin to weigh this claim, however, unless he knows exactly what the "promises to the Zionists" were--in other words, unless the commitments by Great Britain to the League of Nations, in order to receive the Mandate for Palestine, are clearly laid out. Surely a page or two of the book's 600 pages might have been devoted to reproducing both the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate.
The Preamble to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1922) states that "Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the (Balfour) declaration originally made on Nov. 2, 1917 by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine" (deliberately omitted were the phrases "political" and "national" rights). Segev concedes that everyone, including the British, understood that sooner or later this meant a Jewish State. Furthermore, the Mandatory Authority was to "encourage immigration" (by Jews) and "close Jewish settlement on the land including state and waste land." (Article VI of the Mandate). These clauses have to be kept steadily in mind as one considers the evidence, even as presented by Segev, as to whether British officials did or did not encourage the Zionist enterprise, whether their official policies, and the administration of those policies, represented a fulfillment of the solemn commitments Great Britain had made--or something else.
Failure to include the Mandate's provisions is the first, but not the last, of the many bizarre aspects of this book. Major historical events--such as the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan out of the entirety of Eastern Palestine, originally expected to form part of the Palestine Mandate, and the White Paper of 1939, severely limiting Jewish immigration to Palestineare sometimes relegated to a footnote or half a sentence.
On the other hand, there is a lot of historically irrelevant or insignificant material of the human-interest variety; this ranges from the car worries of Raymond Cafferata, the police superintendent in Hebron during the 1929 massacre of its Jewish population, to the epistolary passion between Sir Evelyn Barker, British military commander in Palestine from 1946 to 1948, and his Arab lover, Katy Antonius. There are also the recurring intertwined tales of two men--the Arab Khalil al-Sakakani, and the Jew Alter Levine--whose diaries and letters Segev apparently found fascinating and to which he devotes considerable space. Segev enjoys painting the British social scene (cream teas, thes dansants, and suchlike, being unfamiliar to him, are objects of his longing).
Segev should have resisted the temptation to use his treasure-troves of diaries and letters in a book which is supposed to be about matters quintessentially political, diplomatic, and military. He devotes more pages to the agonies and ecstasies of Mr. Al-Sakakani than to the entire period 1945-1948 of the Mandate; he gives an equally preposterous amount of attention to the amorous intrigue of General Barker with Antonius. One longs for a sober and unsentimental historian, one truly at home among the diplomatic demarches, with a grasp of who made the decisions then (the British did, in London and Jerusalem), and why.
Segev's central thesis is that the British "kept their promise to the Zionists."
The first great betrayal by the British of their
responsibilities under the Mandate for Palestine was
the last-minute amendment they wrote into the
Mandate's final draft, which tore out all of Eastern
Palestine--that is, Palestine east of the Jordan (the historic definition
of Palestine always included both "Western" and
"Eastern" Palestine on either side of the Jordan), amounting
to three-fourths of the territory originally contemplated
for the mandatory territory, and one-half of historic
Palestine. This was done to provide, by way of
consolation prize, some territory where Abdullah, the
Hashemite younger brother of Faisal, to whom the British had
given Mesopotamia (Iraq) could be given a throne of his
own (sons of the Sherif of Mecca, both Abdullah and
Feisal had been driven out of Arabia by Ibn Saud and
the Wahhabis). This rates one misleading footnote in Segev,
[(Continued on p.8)]
May 2001 - 7 - Outpost