Uncovered: U.K. Intel Encouraged Arab Armies To Invade Israel In 1948

by David Sidman on September 15, 2014 in General

Haaretz reports: September 11, 1947. On the eve of the Arab League’s political committee meeting to decide on the Arab response to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) report [supporting the end of the British mandate and partitioning the land between Jews and Arabs], the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient published an article. “Bloc Oriental et extension de la Ligue” argued that, like the Greater Syria plan [that aimed to unite Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine], the Oriental Bloc – a French term for Britain’s planned regional defense pact – hung over the independence of Arab countries and the Arab League like the Sword of Damocles, and that its authors were one and the same: [Iraqi Prime Minister] Nuri al-Sa’id and [Jordanian] King Abdullah.

On September 20, the Lebanese newspaper Le Jour reported that after the Arab League meeting in Saoufar, Lebanon, Brig. Iltyd Clayton – whom it defined as “head of the British intelligence in the Middle East” – had left for Damascus. It quoted a Syrian newspaper speculating on whether his visit was connected to the Greater Syria scheme and the tense relations between the Syrian and Lebanese presidents (Shukri al-Quwatli and Bishara al-Khuri) and Jordan’s King Abdullah, or to events in Palestine.

On February 19, 1948, the Lebanese newspaper Le Soir published an article titled “Claytonmade.” Based on “Zionist sources,” it reported that Brig. Clayton – “architect” of the Greater Syria plan, the Oriental Bloc and the bilateral defense treaties with the Arab states – was now advocating a new scheme for the partition of Palestine. The plan proposed that : “Imperialist Lebanon will annex the Western Galilee up to Shavei Zion; Syria the northeastern part of the Galilee and part of its southern region; Egypt will have part of the cake; and Transjordan will swallow up the rest.”

In fact, these and other reports in the Lebanese press on the activities of British secret agents were part of a secret war being waged by French intelligence against the British.

Information conveyed by the French intelligence services to the Haganah [the prestate underground Jewish army] in the fall of 1947 indicated that Brig. Clayton and his assistants were involved in a new initiative to secure Britain’s strategic position in the Middle East, and linked Clayton to the escalating Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. The sources also referred to a new partition plan proposed by Clayton, which, contradicting that of the United Nations, aimed to split Palestine between the neighboring Arab states and limit the designated territory of the Jewish state to the coastal area between Atlit [just south of Haifa] and Tel Aviv.

The French tied this initiative to renewed British efforts to implement the 1946 Morrison-Grady Plan [aka the Cantonization Plan] and warned of the danger of an attack on the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] by irregular forces organized by the Arab League. They also warned that an invasion by the regular Arab armies to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state could not be ruled out.

Information passed on by the French, after the UN partition vote on November 29, 1947, was even more alarming. On January 13, 1948, Maurice Fischer – the SHAI [Haganah intelligence service] liaison officer to French intelligence – reported from Paris that, based on totally reliable information from French sources, Brig. Clayton had, on December 17, 1947, reached an understanding with Lebanese Prime Minister Riyad al-Sulh, according to which the British forces would evacuate northern Palestine and give free rein to the irregular forces of the Arab Liberation Army, headed by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, to attack Jewish settlements.

The next day, January 14, two French intelligence officers from Beirut arrived in Haifa and informed the French military attaché that the Syrian prime minister, Jamil Mardam Bey, was mobilizing an irregular force of 20,000 volunteers to invade Palestine, with tacit British agreement.

Previously, at the end of August 1947, Eliyahu Sasson – David Ben-Gurion’s chief Arabist adviser – had been called urgently to Paris. He remained until mid-September, sending information and instructions to warn Jordan’s King Abdullah and the Egyptian government that British agents were planning to provoke their countries into a war against the Jews in Palestine.

Reports in the Haganah archives from those months – where Clayton’s name figures frequently – tie the escalation in the Arab-Jewish conflict to Britain’s efforts to secure its strategic position in the Middle East. They, too, alluded to a new scheme, promoted by the British secret services in Cairo, to divide Palestine between the neighboring Arab states.

In the early months of 1948, information continued to reach SHAI on secret British attempts, orchestrated by Brig. Clayton’s “clique” in Cairo, to reconcile the Arab leaders and convince them to join forces to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

Interviewing Clayton

Ben-Gurion’s concern regarding the undercover activities of Brig. Clayton and Arabist “experts” in the Foreign Office and the Middle East intensified after August 1947. On November 11, 1947, he sent a British-Jewish former officer to interview Clayton, who was unaware that Ben-Gurion had drafted the questions. The urgency to uncover the British secret services’ intentions prompted Ben-Gurion to approve the “Acre operation,” in which the Haganah seized the files of the British Legation in Beirut, on December 25, 1947, as they were being transferred from Beirut to Haifa, en route to Britain.
David Ben-Gurion (Daniel Rosenblum/Starfoot)
On January 11, 1948, Sasson sent King Abdullah a letter warning him of a plot being hatched in London and Cairo – promoted by Clayton, Nuri al-Sa’id and officials in the Foreign Office and Colonial Office against the UN Partition Plan – that aimed to provoke Transjordan into a war against the Yishuv, contrary to Abdullah’s understanding with the Jewish Agency.

In February, Ben-Gurion’s chief intelligence officer, Reuven Zaslani (Shiloah), arrived in London to establish whether Britain’s failure to ratify its defense treaty with Iraq in January 1948 (the Portsmouth Treaty) had influenced its stand on Palestine, and if there was indeed a British plot to thwart the establishment of a Jewish state. He reported back that although the British cabinet did not intend to oppose partition, the “experts” – who argued that it could not be implemented – were working against it.

Zaslani counted the following against them: Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s adviser, Harold Bailey; Brig. Clayton; and Gerald de Gaury, a Foreign Office Arabist and liaison officer. Zaslani noted that these “experts,” who advocated a collective military agreement with the Arab countries, believed that a future Jewish state could not be relied upon. He added that they were reinforcing the Arab side without the cabinet’s agreement.
Syrian President Shukri Al-Kouatly with Saudi King Ibn Saud and Iraqi PM Al Said, at the pan-Arab meeting in 1946. (AFP)
Nevertheless, he assessed that they would not be able to influence the cabinet’s decision to end the mandate and withdraw British forces from Palestine, as it was supported by the two highest-ranking British officials – High Commissioner of Palestine Alan Cunningham and the commander of the British forces in Palestine, Gen. Gordon MacMillan.

A similar assessment was made by Ben-Gurion in a conversation with a French diplomat in early March. In a March 7 entry in his diary, Ben-Gurion notes, “Clayton went to Syria; the British want to make Syria their base after failing in Iraq and Egypt. The situation in the Arab world is difficult – riots in Iraq – and Britain is trying to concentrate Arab thought on Palestine.”

The above examples from the Arab press and French and Zionist sources raise intriguing questions. Was there indeed a connection between Britain’s efforts to conclude bilateral military treaties with Iraq, Egypt and other Arab states or form a collective regional defense organization, and the alleged attempts by its secret services in Cairo to provoke a Jewish-Arab war in Palestine? Why was Brig. Clayton associated with a secret scheme to split Palestine between its neighboring Arab states? Why was he implicated in provoking Arab attacks, initially on the Yishuv by irregular forces and, later, on the newly established Jewish state by the regular Arab armies?

Like Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who blamed Britain for conspiring to evict France from the Levant, Ben-Gurion accused it of trying to sabotage the establishment of a Jewish state and secretly provoking an armed invasion by Arab states. Syrian and British documents uncovered in French archives confirm de Gaulle’s accusations and reinforce Ben-Gurion’s charges. These documents and French intelligence reports reveal that the British-Arabist secret agents, who engineered France’s eviction from the Levant in 1945, took similar steps to prevent the formation of a Jewish state in 1947-48.

The Missing Dimension

The question of Britain’s role in the war between Israel and the Arab states in 1948 is one of the most studied issues in the historiography of the War of Independence.

And yet, despite the considerable efforts of historians, they found no evidence of Ben-Gurion’s allegations that Britain had instigated the Arab leaders to invade Israel a day after its establishment.

In fact, confirmation of Ben-Gurion’s allegations can be found in French archives, especially in the files of French intelligence, whose officers closely followed the activities of the British secret services in the Middle East in the 1940s.

A major hurdle when studying the 1948 war is the lack of access to Arab archives. The Syrian documents, obtained by French intelligence – which contain uncensored private correspondence and secret agreements between the Arab leaders, as well as diplomatic exchanges – give scholars a closer look at the Arab stand toward a Jewish state in Palestine without having to rely solely on Israeli and Western archives, Arab rulers’ inflammatory public rhetoric and memoirs, or newspaper articles.

The Syrian documents reveal that the Arab leaders’ attitudes toward the Zionists’ aspirations derived not only from their hostility toward a Jewish state, but were far more complex. This emphasizes the need for scholars to study the Arab-Zionist conflict in the context of Anglo-Arab and inter-Arab rivalries, rather than merely Anglo-Jewish or Arab-Jewish relations.

The thousands of Syrian and other Arab documents found in the French archives, together with British intelligence reports obtained by French intelligence, confirm that the role of the British secret services in the Middle East during and after World War II comprises the “missing dimension” in the historiography of the region in the 1940s.

Two conclusions can be drawn from research into these documents, which are relevant to the role of British intelligence in the war in Palestine.

The first is that, in the 1940s, Britain conducted a two-track policy in the Middle East: one, a well-documented, official policy defined by Whitehall under both the Conservative and Labour parties; the second was informal and secretive, which can be termed “regional,” implemented by “agents in the field,” which left few traces in British archives.

It was perpetrated by a small, influential group of Arabist secret agents who manipulated the cabinet in London and implemented their own policies, which deviated from the official position. These agents enjoyed a unique status as intermediaries between Whitehall and local Arab leaders. Either intentionally, or because of deep-seated personal beliefs, they provided biased assessments.

They did not merely gather and interpret information and recommend policy, but controlled the flow of information and implemented their own policies while keeping the London decision makers in the dark. They joined forces with Arab rulers, whom they portrayed as voicing the Arab view, in order to mislead their government. Their tactics, which were backed by senior military officers in Cairo, gathered momentum under the post-WWII Labour government and during the crisis in Palestine in 1947-48.

The second conclusion is that the British secret agents succeeded in implementing their policies due largely to their use of indirect control over local “agents of influence.” They employed undercover political operations, clandestine diplomacy and covert propaganda to manipulate Arab leaders and public opinion – methods widely used in the Middle East during World War II.

The Syrian and British documents provide a unique insight into the modus operandi of the British secret services in co-opting prominent Arab leaders, and helping them to positions of power in return for their collaboration. President Quwatli and Prime Minister Mardam Bey in Syria; President Khuri and Prime Minister Sulh in Lebanon; Arab League Secretary-General Abd al-Rahman al-Azzam – these are prime examples, but there were many others.

This is not to say, however, that the British intelligence officers entirely controlled those leaders. Relations were complex and entailed various means of coercion.

Apart from political and financial bribery – and, when necessary, pressure and extortion – an effective tactic was to convince them that collaborating with Britain was in their own and their country’s interests. But such maneuvers, as was the case with President Quwatli, did not always succeed. After World War II, as Britain’s prestige waned and its military and economic standing diminished, undercover political operations were stepped up, becoming an essential tool for the Arabist secret agents to safeguard their country’s strategic and economic interests in the Middle East.

The Secret British Scheme

On May 28, 1947, Najib al-Armanazi, the Syrian ambassador to London, informed his foreign minister of an incident involving Brig. Clayton – a confrontation between the Foreign Office and the secret services, who had “categorically refused to remove him from Egypt.” Armanazi noted that “support for Clayton surpasses the imagination,” adding that he had been given “carte blanche to direct the vast program he aims to complete,” which consisted of advancing the Greater Syria plan and securing British control over Libya.

The same day, Mardam Bey instructed Armanazi to alert officials in Britain’s Foreign Office that the Syrian government would forcibly oppose any intervention by King Abdullah in Syrian affairs. He had previously notified Armanazi that British agents were inciting the Druze and Bedouin tribes against the Syrian government.

In early June, Mardam Bey wrote directly to Bevin, complaining of the intrigues of British officers in the Arab Legion against Syria, adding, “What makes the situation even more delicate is that the plot organized against Syria is welcomed by all the British officials in the Near East.” He warned that if Syria had no other way to safeguard its independence, it would seek foreign assistance, including from the Soviet Union.

Reports on increasing subversion by British agents in Syria came during the Syrian parliamentary elections, and the escalating tension along the border between Syria and Jordan in the summer of 1947. An Arab intelligence report reveals that British secret agents were also provoking members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria to act against its republican regime. It also reveals that British agents in Egypt were collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood there, against the growing communist propaganda.

The deterioration in Syro-Jordanian relations coincided with the Anglo-Iraqi negotiations on a new military agreement to replace the 1930 treaty and as relations between the Iraqi government and King Abdullah were improving. These were the initial steps of the scheme devised by the British secret services in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad, implemented between July 1947 and May 1948.

In the summer of 1947, British policy in the Middle East reached an impasse. Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi – backed by King Faruq – insisted that Britain undertake to evacuate its forces before the Egyptian government would agree to proceed with negotiations on an Anglo-Egyptian treaty and the future of Sudan. In July, the Egyptian government went further when it brought its case before the United Nations.

British policy in Palestine reached a deadlock as well. After the failure of negotiations with Arab and Zionist representatives in London in early 1947, the British cabinet had declared its intention to return the mandate over Palestine to the United Nations. Britain was losing ground in the propaganda war, especially in the United States, as the Zionists successfully portrayed the conflict in Palestine not as Arab-Jewish, but an Anglo-Jewish one between a Zionist liberation movement and a colonial power. Also, its harsh measures against the illegal immigration of Holocaust survivors from the European refugee camps to Palestine drew international criticism, which culminated with the Exodus ship affair in July 1947.

Continued reports of Zionist attacks on British soldiers stirred up intense public resentment and hardened the resolve of the cabinet to evacuate Palestine. As the U.K.’s economic crisis deepened, Prime Minister Clement Attlee was compelled to cut the costs of retaining large armed forces overseas to defend an empire that Britain was no longer capable of sustaining, either militarily or economically. In early 1947, the cabinet dramatically announced Britain’s intention to withdraw unilaterally from India.

Arab rulers closely followed the dramatic events unfolding in London, indicating that Britain’s imperial order in the Middle East was beginning to crumble. They saw Britain failing to suppress the Zionist insurgency, gradually losing its grip over the Middle East and being relegated to an inferior position vis-à-vis the United States. President Harry Truman’s March 1947 declaration that the United States would defend Turkey and Greece against the Soviet Union reinforced these beliefs.

Britain’s plan for a regional security pact was perceived as being less likely; Turkish and Arab leaders were less inclined to be part of it. But President Quwatli believed that Britain would not give up the Middle East without a struggle, while King Faruq told Mardam Bey, “Great Britain played us all and exploited us in its own interest, and won on all fronts simultaneously.” The French intelligence service estimated that Britain was far from losing its grip over the Middle East and “still had many cards to play.”
A report filed by a French intelligence officer regarding his conversation with Eliyahu Sasson, who was responsible for contacts with the French. (Meir Zamir)
In the summer of 1947, a shift took place in the British Arabists’ stand – especially those in the secret services – toward the Labour cabinet’s Middle East policy.

Unable to influence Prime Minister Attlee, who was resolved to withdraw a substantial part of the British forces from the region, they “hijacked” Britain’s Middle East policy, taking matters into their own hands. They were determined to act against what they perceived as a policy that was endangering their country’s vital strategic interests in the face of the Soviet thrust into the region.

From June 1947 until May 1948, Britain thus conducted two contradictory policies in the Middle East – one official, carried out by the cabinet and foreign secretary; the other, unauthorized and secretive, devised by Arabist secret agents in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad. Brig. Clayton played a key role in coordinating and implementing this covert policy.

This brief analysis examines only whether the Arabist secret agents intentionally instigated Arab armed attacks against the Jewish community in Palestine, and later against the State of Israel, without their cabinet’s knowledge or sanction. It does not address the inter-Arab balance of power, which was closely tied to the war in Palestine; the military and diplomatic counterstrategy adopted by Ben-Gurion and his close advisers after learning of the secret British scheme; nor the French or Soviet counteraction in undermining British designs in the Middle East.
Arab League Secretary General Abd al-Rahman al-Azzam with Lebanese President El Khoury. Arab leaders found themselves trapped between fears of embarking on a war – and public pressure. (AFP)
On September 23, 1947, shortly after the Arab League meeting in Saoufar, the French attaché in Baghdad reported a secret British scheme to instigate an Arab-Jewish war in Palestine, in order to facilitate the implementation of the Greater Syria plan. The report, reproduced in part here, disclosed that the Iraqi prime minister’s militant stand in Saoufar had been coordinated with British agents and “marked a turning point in Britain’s Middle East policy”:

“It seems, in effect, that the British government, urged on by the young elements in the Foreign Office and the Intelligence Service, has decided, after months of hesitation, to undertake a large-scale maneuver that will enable it to consolidate, at little cost, its present wavering position in this part of the world. The British believe that the UN will no doubt ratify the UNSCOP decisions. Disturbances will thus begin in Palestine. The English will benefit from the situation to build new positions as advantageous as those they have lost in Egypt. According to information from an English source, the British plan will be as follows:

“England will give up its mandate over Palestine as soon as possible and return it to the UN, which will oversee, if necessary, an international force to reestablish order in this country. A retreat from Palestine of most of the British troops can already be envisaged. In the event of open conflict between Jews and Arabs, the English, under the pretext of not wanting to be attacked from both sides in these hostilities, where it maintains an officially neutral position, will retreat to Transjordan, from where one or two British divisions will be able to immediately intervene if necessary. British agents will now push the Arab countries to intervene to help their brethren in Palestine if they are attacked by the Jews.”

The report indicated that Britain would abstain from voting on the final UNSCOP report, “leaving the Americans and their satellites the responsibility of creating a Jewish state.” It provided details of a scheme aimed at provoking Syria into a war in Palestine, in order to open the way for King Abdullah’s Arab Legion and the Iraqi army to advance on Damascus under the pretext of defending Syria against a Zionist attack. “Once there, the King of Transjordan will receive overwhelming support and attempt to reestablish peace in Palestine while incorporating the Arab part of this country into the new Greater Syria that will be united with Iraq.”

But contrary to the French attaché’s account, the cabinet in London neither knew of nor approved the scheme of their secret agents to instigate an Arab armed invasion of a Jewish state. Prime Minister Attlee, who decided on withdrawal from Palestine despite the objections of his chiefs of staff, would not have taken on the moral responsibility for a plot that could have annihilated the Jews in Palestine only three years after the Holocaust. Moreover, such an act could have jeopardized Britain’s international standing and its relations with the United States.

Foreign Secretary Bevin, who still believed in the strategic importance of the Middle East, was caught between his prime minister, the chiefs of staff and the secret services. But it was unlikely that he would have acted against his prime minister’s decision.

The record of his tense relations with his secret services in the Middle East – revealed in the Syrian documents – reinforces the assumption that he too was misled, a victim of his inability to control them. He was led to believe that the hostilities between the Arabs and Jews in Palestine resembled the religious and intercommunal strife in India between Muslims and Hindus following Britain’s decision to withdraw. As in India, the violence and loss of life would eventually force the two sides to reach the compromise that Britain had failed to convince them to make. Britain could thus not be held responsible for a partition it had not believed in, and might be called upon to implement a more acceptable solution.

All-out Arab-Jewish war

While many British politicians and officials shared this belief, neither Bevin nor other cabinet ministers were aware that their secret services in Cairo and Arabist diplomats in London and the Middle East, supported by the senior military authorities, were determined, contrary to cabinet decisions, to hold on to the Middle East – even if it led to an all-out Arab-Jewish war.

While the attaché’s report from Baghdad focuses on a secret scheme by British agents to provoke an Arab-Jewish war to further Greater Syria and its union with Iraq, other French reports disclose that its immediate goal was to safeguard Britain’s strategic position in the Middle East.

Another goal was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state or an Arab-Palestinian state based on the UN partition. There were also emergency safety measures – both military and diplomatic – to prevent the Jewish state from expanding its territory if the Arab armies were defeated. In this event, British forces stationed in Transjordan and Egypt would intervene, while British diplomats in the UN Security Council would act to impose a cease-fire.

French intelligence sources present the scheme as an attempt by Britain to shuffle its cards in the Middle East and inflame Arab hostility toward a Jewish state in order to secure its dominance in the region. Whether the Arabs won or were defeated, its instigators assumed that Britain would be in a better position than it had been in the summer of 1947. Indeed, the attaché’s report concluded: “The British position, which for some time has appeared precarious, will thus find itself again dominant, all the more so as Egypt’s termination of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty will enable the British forces to maintain their position on the Suez Canal.”

During deliberations in London and Cairo in 1947 on a defense strategy in the Middle East, it was decided that Britain would seek bilateral military treaties with each Arab state – rather than a collective agreement brokered through the Arab League – to replace existing treaties. It was assumed that Britain would be in a better position to initially conclude bilateral treaties with friendly Hashemite Iraq and Transjordan, and later with other Arab governments, especially Syria. A treaty with Egypt remained a high priority for the British High Command. The Foreign Office expected that after failing at the UN that July, Egypt would be more amenable to renewing negotiations, thus ensuring Britain’s military use of its territory and solving the Sudan question.

But King Faruq and his prime minister, as well as Syria’s President Quwatli, were reluctant to conclude treaties with Britain, a declining colonial power. They faced an upsurge of nationalist passion among the younger generation, who were demonstrating in the streets for independence and social and economic reforms, and refused to be drawn into a war between the Western powers and the Soviet Union.

As the communist threat became less convincing, British agents believed that they had to come up with more effective leverage to persuade the Arab governments and public that their countries needed Britain’s assistance.

Without the knowledge of their cabinet, from June 1947 until May 1948 British secret agents conducted their own covert policy. While officially seeking to convince the Arab governments of the importance of concluding defense agreements with Britain to counter the escalating Soviet threat, they secretly instigated an Arab-Jewish confrontation in Palestine to advance Britain’s strategic ends. They sought to use a war in Palestine to deflect the Arab public’s attention from the controversial treaty negotiations; as an incentive for the Arab governments to conclude defense treaties with Britain; to demonstrate to the Arab rulers their countries’ need for military collaboration; to reinforce the Arab states’ military dependence on Britain, while preventing the establishment of a Jewish state or limiting its size.

A war in Palestine would pressure the United States to revise its position on partition. No longer would Zionist propaganda be able to portray the struggle against Britain as that of a national movement fighting to liberate itself from colonial rule. An Arab-Jewish conflict would also validate Britain’s long-held position regarding the solution to the Palestinian problem and demonstrate that, despite its good intentions, it was caught in the middle. Moreover, it would help Britain secure its strategic assets in Palestine: Haifa, with its port and refineries, and the Negev region in the south.

Brig. Clayton’s frequent visits to the Arab capitals in the last months of 1947, and his behind-the-scenes involvement in the Arab League’s meetings in Saoufar, Aley and Cairo, were part of the scheme hatched by the secret agents in Cairo, Baghdad and Amman. Nuri al-Sa’id, the Arab League’s Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh were used to implement it. King Abdullah was essential for its success, as he and his Arab Legion were to serve as a means to pressure Quwatli, Saudi King Ibn Sa’ud and Egypt’s Faruq, while forcing the Zionist leaders to acquiesce on Britain’s proposals.

Also part of the ploy were attempts by British agents in Transjordan to intimidate the Syrian president; the Iraqi government’s militant stand in Saoufar and Aley, and its insistence that the Arab League take action in Palestine; and Clayton’s proposal to split Palestine between the Arab states.

In mid-January 1948, the Arabists’ scheme seemed on the verge of success. With the Arab public’s attention turned to events in Palestine, Britain concluded a defense treaty with Iraq. A similar agreement with Transjordan was to be signed without any hindrance. After failing to persuade kings Ibn Sa’ud and Faruq to conclude an agreement with Syria against Abdullah, President Quwatli was more predisposed to give in to British pressure, particularly as British agents had undertaken to restrain the Jordanian monarch. He was also anxious to prevent them from jeopardizing his efforts to be elected president for a second term.

Prime Minister Sulh, who opposed a Jewish state on Lebanon’s border that might reinforce Maronite separatism, secretly collaborated with Clayton and publicly endorsed a treaty with Britain. But when Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador to Egypt, and Brig. Clayton proposed to Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi that Britain foil the establishment of a Jewish state or limit its territory in return for a treaty, Nuqrashi rejected any attempt to link the conflict in Palestine with Egypt’s demands for the evacuation of British forces and unity of the Nile Valley.

Alongside negotiations with the Arab governments on defense treaties, the British secret agents stepped up their efforts to fuel violent Arab-Jewish clashes, urging the Arab leaders to close ranks against the Zionist threat.

Between September and December 1947, Brig. Clayton and other secret agents tacitly collaborated with Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh to organize an irregular force – the Arab Liberation Army, under Qawuqji’s command – to be activated before Britain formally withdrew from Palestine. While Azzam regarded this force as a means for the Arab League to intervene in Palestine, Mardam and Sulh – and President Quwatli in particular – saw it more as a means to preempt an attempt by Abdullah’s Arab Legion to take over the northern part of Palestine than to help their Palestinian brethren against the Jews.

A British military mission under Col. Fox, an unofficial adviser to the Syrian High Command since 1946, tried to obtain arms and ammunition from British army stocks in Palestine to arm Arab volunteers in the Katana camp south of Damascus. French intelligence sources reported that British army and police deserters, disguised as Arabs, were to be seen in the streets of Damascus.

Scores of British employees of the Iraq Petroleum Company arrived in the city, leading to Syrian press speculation on why the Syrian capital had suddenly become an attraction for British “tourists.”

British agents also negotiated with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – initially indirectly through Sulh and later with his envoy, following his demand to command his own armed forces in Palestine. The Arab Liberation Army entered Palestine in the first half of January 1948; Qawuqji later wrote that the British army had hardly hindered the advance of his forces on northern Palestine.

The collapse of the Portsmouth Treaty marked the failure of the bilateral treaty approach. Although Bevin signed a new treaty in London with Jordanian Prime Minister Tawfiq Abd al-Huda, other Arab leaders, including Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh, openly opposed treaties with foreign powers. British military planners and Arabists in the Foreign Office and the Middle East now came up with a new strategy – a collective defense agreement with the Arab states through the Arab League.

In March 1948, Azzam and Mardam Bey began a campaign to revise the Arab League pact in order to consolidate ties between its member-states against the Zionist threat – an initiative tacitly coordinated with the British secret agents. After consulting with King Ibn Sa’ud, King Faruq declared that before any negotiations could take place on a collective defense agreement, Britain had to abrogate its existing bilateral treaties with the Arab states.

In their reports to London, the Arabists linked the collapse of the Portsmouth Treaty directly to events in Palestine. Their failure in Iraq increased the likelihood of war in Palestine, as British secret agents became even more determined to provoke an Arab-Jewish conflict. The defeat in April of the Arab Liberation Army irregular forces and of those commanded by Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini – the Mufti’s nephew – reinforced their conviction that only the regular Arab armies could prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

In this brief article, it is impossible to detail all the maneuvers and intrigues of the British Arabists in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad to instigate an Arab attack on the Jewish state. The British secret agents used almost all the “dirty tricks” in their arsenal – fear, jealousy, greed, false promises, misleading information and playing on inter-Arab rivalries – to provoke the Arab rulers into a war in Palestine. Nuri al-Sa’id (until the failure of the Portsmouth Treaty); King Abdullah (between June 1947 and May 1948); and Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh, and other co-opted “agents of influence” – all allowed the British secret services to operate behind-the-scenes to implement their schemes.

King Ibn Sa’ud aptly described the British agents as “master puppeteers.” The Arab leaders were trapped between their reluctance to go to war and pressure from their public that they themselves had incited with inflammatory rhetoric on destroying the Jewish state. Azzam admitted to a Jewish Agency representative that “we have no choice but to go to war, even if we will be defeated.”
King Abdullah the first. An emissary sent by Ben Gurion warned him, and the Egyptians, that British agents are pushing their nations to wage war on the Jews. (Getty Images)
Provoking Egypt to join the war in Palestine was central to the British secret strategy. French sources give details of the British agents’ tactics – teaming up with Azzam to press King Faruq to instruct his army to join the war, despite the opposition of his prime minister. They also included an undertaking to supply the Egyptian army with weapons and ammunition from British stocks in the Canal Zone, and a deliberate underrepresentation of the military strength of the Jewish forces.

Like other Arab rulers, King Faruq – under public pressure to take action – was vulnerable to British machinations. He could not remain on the sidelines while his rival, King Abdullah, was sending forces to Palestine.

The May 11 report from the French military attaché in Beirut, on the secret discussions of the Arab League’s political committee in Damascus, reveals that, apart from King Abdullah, the other Arab leaders were hesitant, seeking a way to delay an invasion of Palestine. It also exposes the British agents’ direct intervention in their decisions. At the last minute, King Faruq overruled his reluctant prime minister and commanded his army to go to war.

The 1948 war swept away the anciens régimes and opened the road to power for a young generation of radical Arab-nationalist officers, determined to avenge their countries’ defeat and bring an end to Britain’s dominance in the region.

The old Arab rulers, victims of British machinations and their own ambitions, were to pay dearly. King Abdullah, Iraqi Prince-Regent Abd al-Ilah, Nuri al-Sa’id, Sulh and Nuqrashi all lost their lives. King Faruq and President Quwatli were more fortunate, losing only power.

The British secret agents, diplomats, military officers and civil servants returned home, leaving behind their legacy of a divided, violent Middle East, in which the states formed by two colonial powers in the aftermath of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement failed to withstand the test of time.

Meir Zamir teaches at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His book, “The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948,” is due to be published by Routledge this December.

British Efforts Against the Nascent Israeli State

In a British television interview on December 12, 1971, Mr. Richard Crossman, one of Britain's famous left-wing intellectuals, a member of the Labour government between 1964 and 1970 and subsequently editor of the prestigious Socialist weekly The New Statesman, bluntly accused the former Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who presided over the destinies of Britain after World War II, of having "tried to destroy the Jews of Palestine." Mr. Crossman recalled that he was intended by Mr. Bevin in 1945 to be one of the instruments of his policy. He thus discovered first hand what that policy was.

His accusation, with its implication of a violent British passion against the Jews of Mandated Palestine, must have startled many well-meaning people who innocently believed that the conflict over Palestine was a straightforward clash "between Jews and Arabs." If they knew of Britain’s role in the Mandate period it was as merely an honest broker caught in the middle. In fact, Mr. Crossman added authoritative support to those who have long known and insisted that Britain was an active participant in the dispute, and was indeed the prime driving force in the resistance to Jewish restoration in Palestine.

In the immediate context of this tells of the motives and the vital part of successive British governments and their agents in the creation and perpetuation of the conflict between Jews and Arabs.
 

Britain Refused to transfer any functions to Jewish authorities, even after terminating the Mandate.

The key to this question is reflected in the behaviour of the British in 1947. When, in that year, the Arabs rejected the partition of Palestine and refused to set up the projected Arab state, the British administration, then still governing Palestine under the Mandate, refused to carry out the recommendations of the United Nations to implement the partition plan. The British government made it plain that it would do all in its power to prevent the birth of the Jewish state. Britain announced that she would not -- and indeed, she did not -- carry out the orderly transfer of any functions to the Jewish authorities in the interim before the end of the Mandate on May 15, 1948. Everything was left in a state of disorder. This was Britain's first contribution to the burden of the nascent state.

When, immediately after the United Nations Assembly decision, the Palestinian Arabs launched their preliminary onslaught on the Jewish community, the British Army gave them considerable cover and aid. It obstructed Jewish defence on the ground; it blocked the movement of Jewish reinforcements and supplies to outlying settlements; it opened the land frontiers for the entry of Arab soldiers from the neighbouring Arab states; it. maintained a blockade in the Mediterranean and sealed the coast and ports through which alone the outnumbered Jews could expect reinforcements; it handed over arms dumps to the Arabs. When Jaffa was on the point of falling to a Jewish counterattack, it sent in forces from Malta to bomb and shell the Jewish force. Meanwhile, it continued to supply the Arab states preparing to invade across the borders with all the arms they asked for and made no secret of it.

The British government was privy to the Arab plans for invasion;¹ and on every diplomatic front, and especially in the United Nations and in the United States, it pursued a vigorous campaign of pressure and obstruction to hinder and prevent help to the embattled Zionists and to achieve the abandonment of the plan to set up a Jewish state. When the state was declared nevertheless, the British government exerted every effort to bring about its defeat by the invading Arab armies. It was not by chance that one of the last operations in the war between Israel and the Arab states in January 1949 was the shooting down on the Sinai front of five British RAF planes that had flown across the battlelines into Israeli-held territory. This was the culmination of a policy developed and pursued by the British throughout their administration of the Mandate -- surely not the least of the great betrayals of the weak by the strong in the twentieth century.

The policy of Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, who was severely criticised, was no more than the logical, if extreme, evolution of the policies of Anthony Eden, who inspired the creation of the Arab League in 1945; of Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary who presided over the declaration of death to Zionism in the White Paper of 1939, and of their predecessors who shaped the "Arab Revolt" of 1936, who made possible the "disturbances" of 1929, and who were responsible for the pogrom in Jerusalem in 1920.
 

Seeds of Arab hostility to Israel & British Policy

It is impossible and, indeed, pointless and misleading to explain, analyse, or trace the development of Arab hostility to Zionism and the origins of Arab claims in Palestine without examining the policy of the British rulers of the country between 1919 and 1948.

One of the great objects of British diplomacy as the conflict in Palestine deepened during the Mandate period was to create the image of Britain as an honest arbiter striving only for the best for all concerned and for justice. In fact, Britain was an active participant in the confrontation. She was indeed more than a party. The Arab "case" in Palestine was a British conception. It took shape and was given direction by the British Military administration after the First World War. The release in recent years of even a part of the confidential official documents of the time has strengthened the long-held suspicion that the Arab attack on Zionism would never have began had it not been for British inspiration, tutelage, and guidance.

In the end, it is true, British sympathy, assistance, and co-operation came to be auxiliary to Arab attitudes and actions. Those attitudes, however, had their beginnings and their original motive power as a function of British imperial ambitions and policy. The two intertwined progressively throughout thirty years, until their open co-operation after 1939. At the last, in 1947- 1949, they consummated an imperfectly concealed alliance for the forcible prevention of the establishment of the Jewish state.
 

The Sudden Appearance in 1919 of a militant Arab "movement."

That is the background of the sudden appearance in 1919 of a militant Arab "movement." In the circumstances of the time, the British military administration should have invited and ensured the co-operation of the local population, Moslem and Christian, in implementing London's policy. What was required was dissemination of clear and concise information on the vast areas of Arabia and Mesopotamia that had been liberated by the British and their Allies and were to become Arab or predominantly Arab states; on the contribution made by the Jews to the liberation of Palestine, their ancient and unrelinquished homeland; and on the undertaking made to them in the Balfour Declaration and the safeguards in that declaration for the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. It might have been made clear that the Sherif Hussein had called on the Moslems to welcome the Jews to Palestine; information should have been spread about the cordial meetings between Faisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the agreement they had signed; and last but not least, the determination of the British government to carry out its Zionist policy should have been confirmed. Such a declaration would without a doubt have created the right climate for launching that policy. "The military Administration ruled the country which waited on its very nod," wrote a contemporary observer. "It would consequently have required the maximum of moral courage, enmity or external support, deliberately to go in the teeth of the policy of the Administration -- above all in the Levant where the whole population is so singularly sensitive to every nuance of tyranny and of intrigue."² 
 

The Balfour Declaration in Palestine is to be treated "as extremely confidential and is on no account for any publication"

The popularisation of the Jewish National Home policy was, however, farthest from the minds of the military administration. For more than two years, it neither published nor allowed the publication of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. This act of omission was backed by a specific prohibition from headquarters in Cairo. The Declaration, wrote the Chief Political Officer to the Chief Administrator in Jerusalem. on October 9, 1919, "is to be treated as extremely confidential and is on no account for any publication."³

The group in power in Jerusalem made no secret of its hostility to Zionism. The whole of its administration, even down to its social occasions, was permeated with an anti-Jewish atmosphere that reminded some Jewish observers of the Tsarist regime in Russia. Indeed, Zeev Jabotinsky, then serving as a lieutenant in the Jewish Legion, which he had founded, and himself a native of Russia, wrote: "Not in Russia nor in Poland had had there been seen such an intense and widespread atmosphere of hatred as prevailed in the British Army in Palestine in 1919 and 1920."⁴
 

The measures to prevent Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened

In Palestine, the measures to confine and restrict Jewish reconstruction slowly tightened. The British government was not free to make drastic changes since Britain had no sovereignty in Palestine. She was there constitutionally to fulfil the Mandate and was answerable to the League of Nations for her actions. As long as the League had prestige in the world, it served as a restraining influence on the deepening tendency in London to turn the purpose of the Mandate from the "reconstitution of the Jewish National Home" to the creation of an Arab-dominated dependency of Great Britain. Informed public opinion could not be disregarded, nor that part of the British establishment that fought back, though ever less effectively, against the Arabist erosion of its obligation to the Jewish people.

But while the Colonial Office and the administration in Palestine reduced the essentials of the Mandate, the League of Nations grew progressively less effective; its influence waned gradually in the 1920s, speedily after its show of impotence over the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931. In sum, Zionism was fought on every possible front: economically, in the social services, in the police and public service. The administration was so filled with officials hostile to the purpose of the Mandate that the exceptions became famous. The progress of Jewish restoration was retarded as much as possible.
 

The central and most effective, weapon in the British armoury was the control of immigration

The central and most effective, weapon in the British armoury was the control of immigration, and this was used with ever increasing severity. In justification, economics were invoked; a principle called "economic absorptive capacity" was the guiding criterion. With the help of "experts" who asserted that there simply was little or no cultivable land left for development, the government's control of Jewish immigration-administered by a system of quotas -- became ever more restrictive. (At that time, there were less than a million people in western Palestine; today there are four million, with still undefined possibilities of growth.) Through the country's back door, in quiet defiance of its Mandate, it also allowed an incessant inflow of Arabs. These came mainly from Syria and Transjordan, attracted by the progress and prosperity the Jews were bringing to Palestine. In a constant atmosphere of Jewish crisis and tragedy, in the twenty-six years of the Mandate period, the British allowed the entry of approximately 400,000 Jews into their national home and hounded and punished and, in the end, drove back or deported Jews who were trying to steal in. In that same period, crossing the Jordan with ease, probably 200,000 Arabs came in to swell the "existing non-Jewish population."⁵

Yet, though the effort was sustained for a whole generation, from the early 1920s to 1948, neither the British rulers nor Haj Amin el Husseini with the machine he had built for propaganda and indoctrination, ever succeeded in converting the Arab population of Palestine into a nationally conscious entity, moved and animated by a hunger for "liberation," proclaiming and asserting itself as a people with a positive aim. The fundamental reason is that it was -- and is still -- no such thing. A nation cannot be "created" in a generation or even in two, certainly not when essential ingredients are lacking. It was difficult to distinguish an Arab people altogether, not only in Palestine. A sense of fraternal solidarity did exist in the Arab family, in its economics, in its sense of honour. It existed in the clan that might grow out of the individual family. It might exist in the village. Beyond these loyalties, there was only a religious sense, a sense of community in Islam. Even that, with the considerable sectarian fragmentation, never proved itself in modem times as an effective force. There was little sense of belonging to "Arabdom." To the degree that such a feeling ultimately did take root, it was expressed by an affinity to the large Arab people as a whole. Such an affinity could at least refer back to the ancient glory of a vast Arab Empire. This very frame of reference emphasised the absence of a "Palestinian" consciousness -- which had in fact never existed and which could not be conjured up. Whenever, therefore, a reaction was to be provoked in the more militant, or more unruly, section of the Arab population, it was the vaguer generality of Islam or of pan-Arabism that was invoked.

Thus, the disturbances in 1929 were organised on a religious pretext-the alleged designs of the Zionists on the Moslem Holy Places and an Arab assertion of Moslem ownership of the Western Wall (of the Jewish Temple), which abuts the Temple Mount where the Moslems built their mosques. These disturbances, marked by the resolute permissiveness of the British authority, were characterised by outbursts of sheer slaughter. The massacre of the scholarly Jewish community of Hebron remained unreported elsewhere because of the defence provided by the newly effective Jewish Haganah organisation.

The "Arab Revolt" of 1936-1939, developed by British and Arab co-operation into an expression of pan-Arab policy, was far more ambitious. It was intended-and indeed came to be-the herald of Britain's final abrogation of her pact with the Jewish people. For between 1929 and 1936, a drastic and dire change had occurred in the world.
 

If the Jews could proclaim a state, the Arab population might well make peace with it, and the British presence would come to an end

The Nazis had come to power in Germany. The campaign of the German state against the Jewish people in Germany and throughout the world, the wave of anti-Semitism engulfing the Jews of Eastern Europe and poisoning the wells of the West, had created an unprecedented pressure on the gates of their national home. During the three years after 1933, when the official anti-Jewish terror in Germany began, some 150,000 Jews had entered Palestine by taking advantage of remaining loopholes in the immigration regulations. The plight of the Jews remaining in Germany and of the persecuted, increasingly desperate, five million Jews in Eastern Europe was arousing considerable international attention. Opening the gates of Palestine, though the obvious solution, would have meant the defeat of the Arabists' purpose. A few more years of large-scale Jewish immigration would have placed the Jews in a majority. If the Jews could proclaim a state, the Arab population -- for the most part probably prepared to resign itself to a Jewish regime if it did not interfere with its way of life -- might well make peace with it, and the British presence would come to an end. The pressure of Jewish need and world sympathy could be countered only by a more powerful, irresistible force which would prove that it was impossible to achieve the Mandates original purpose, that Arab resistance was too strong, too determined. The Arab "Revolt" was the result.

It was not a revolt at all but a campaign of violence directed against the Jews. Haj Amin's resources, after fifteen years of organisation, were adequate to give it a countrywide -- though still primitive and improvisational-character. In 1920, the pogroms had been inspired and connived at by the military administration in an effort to nip its home government's Zionist policy in the bud. In 1936, the Arab campaign of violence was a move calculated to further the British home government's intention of finally burying Zionism. The policy laid down in 1939 in the White Paper was the preordained purpose for which the 1936 outbreak was needed.

The permissive attitude of the Palestine government to the campaign of violence was evident from the outset. The outbreak was signalled months in advance. Inciting speeches by Arab political and religious notables and inflammatory articles in the Arab newspapers were the order of the day. It was common talk among both Jews and Arabs that the Arab villages (as in 1920) were "infested with agitators" who were inciting the population to violence against the Jews and that once again the people were being assured that a'dowlah ma’ana. This process was not disturbed by a single overt act, nor by any public statement, nor any warning of preventive or punitive action by the government.⁶

When, in the face of this astonishing forbearance, warnings were addressed to the High Commissioner and to the Colonial Office in London of the signs of the imminence of Arab violence, the reply was that the situation was under control. Similar reassuring statements were made after the first day's toll of seventeen Jews killed by Arab mobs in the public streets of Jaffa under the nose of the British authority (Katz, pp. 4-5).
 

British Troops prevented from controlling Arab violence

Had the campaign been in fact a spontaneous Arab outbreak, and had the government been determined to maintain law and order, the outbreak would have lasted no more than a few days and would have made little impact. A completely typical illustration of the administration's solution to the problem of pretending to be putting down the "rebellion" is provided by the description by a British soldier on the spot, given in the London journal New Statesman and Nation, September 20, 193 6:

At night, when we are guarding the line against the Arabs who come to blow it up, we often see them at work but are forbidden to fire at them. We may only fire into the air, and they, upon hearing the report, make their escape. But do you think we can give chase? Why, we must go on our hands and knees and find every spent cartridge-case which must be handed in or woe betide us.

In a similar spirit, the general strike proclaimed by the Arab Higher Committee (the self-appointed leadership of the Arab community, headed by Haj Amin el Husseini) and imposed on the Arab masses as the central weapon and symbol of the campaign was not resisted by the administration. It refused to declare the strike illegal, in flagrant contrast to its swift crushing of an earlier strike in non-violent protest-by the Jews against Jabotinsky's arrest after the pogrom of 1920.

When, subsequently, the "rebels," mistaking British permissiveness for Arab strength, went beyond attacks on Jewish villages and on Jewish life and property and attacked British personnel, effective measures were and the "rebels" were firmly suppressed.

The revolt, widely publicised, served its purpose. British government proclaimed in its famous White Paper of 1939 its abandonment of the Zionist policy. After the introduction of 75,000 more Jews into Palestine during the ensuing five years, the gates would be closed. The way would thus be open for that ultimate semi-dependent Arab state that would complete the British pan-Arab dream in the Middle East.
 

The British White Paper was was rejected as inconsistent with the Mandate by the League of Nations, but the League of Nations was dying

This document was rejected as inconsistent with the Mandate by the supervising body of the League of Nations, the Permanent Mandates Commission. But the League of Nations was dying, and Britain treated it with appropriate contempt. Four months later, the Second World War broke out; and the British government executed the White Paper policy as if Palestine had been a British possession and the White Paper an act of Parliament. Unnumbered Jews thus were trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe when, but for the rigid and unrelenting application of the provisions of the White Paper, they could have escaped to Palestine even during the war.

It may be that this grim consequence of British policy is the reason why the British government later wilfully destroyed so 'many of the documents that could have provided direct evidence of the Palestine government's behaviour. After thirty years, the British state archives were, in accordance with custom, opened to the research of writers and historians. The entire correspondence between the Palestine administration and its chiefs at the Colonial Office in London relating to the records of the meetings of the Executive Council (in effect the Cabinet) of the Palestine government had been "destroyed under statute." Another obviously important file so destroyed was that relating to the Haganah organisation, which, if it had not been hamstrung by the government, was itself capable of putting a swift end to the Arab attacks. Yet another file destroyed was on "Propaganda Among the Arabs" -- the incitement against the Jews-which the Palestine government had often been charged with inspiring, sponsoring, or at least facilitating.⁷
 

The British Government later destroyed records of it's Palestine Government 

The sanctity of the minutes of the British Cabinet in London has, however, saved one item of direct documentary evidence on the British government's relationship to the "revolt" and to the "rebels." The disturbances were not even mentioned when the Cabinet met soon after they broke out. Nor was the outbreak discussed at the next meeting or the one after that. Indeed, five meetings went by before the Cabinet discussed any aspect of the situation in Palestine. At the meeting of May 11, 1936-three weeks and a day after the Outbreak -- the Secretary of State for the Colonies presented the Cabinet with a memorandum, not indeed proposing or even announcing measures for putting an end to the violence, but reporting that

the High Commissioner recommended that the most helpful means now open to His Majesty's Government of preventing the present disorders from spreading and increasing in violence would be for an immediate announcement of a Royal Commission with wide terms of reference, with power to make recommendations for lessening animosities and for establishing a feeling of lasting security in Palestine. [Cab. 23/84]

The Secretary of State "did not," the minutes continue, "ask for a decision on the Terms of Reference to, or composition of the proposed Royal Commission which would require careful consideration, but merely for permission to tell the High Commissioner that His Majesty's Government was favourable to the proposal so that he could sound the Arabs and report further" (italics added).

Nevertheless, in spite of this collusion, the development of the "revolt" was made possible and given shape and thrust only by the introduction of help by Arabs from outside Palestine. One of the outstanding features of the "revolt" was the failure of the Arabs of Palestine themselves to act appropriately.
 

British Collusion and the Arab apathy to the Mufti's Incitement

The Palestinian Arabs were comfortably aware of the existence around them, in addition to their original homeland in Arabia, of six more Arabic-speaking countries, five of them predominantly Moslem, all part of the same sprawling territory which many centuries ago had been won and lost by the invaders from Arabia. Those Arabs who had dealings with the Jews got on well with them, and even if they did not like the idea of Jews, rather than Turks or British, ruling the country, they could not conjure up enough hostility to fight them. In 1929, the Mufti had incited them by distributing postcards which showed the El Aksa Mosque flying the Zionist the flag -- an effective essay in photomontage. In 1936, the bulk of Palestinian Arabs still remained cold to the urgings of Haj Amin. A minority carried out the street knifings, the sniping at Jewish transport, the throwing of bombs in cinemas and marketplaces. The general strike was maintained only by the constant threat of force by the Mufti's organisation; and the threat was made more persuasive by the refusal of the administration to declare the strike illegal.

The effort of the Palestine Arabs was not enough to impress the world. After the first phase of sniping, of attacks by street mobs, of individual bomb throwing, of shooting at transport on the main roads, there came a relaxation even of this effort. "Rebels" were consequently imported. A Syrian, Fawzi Kaukji, led a mixed band of Syrian and Iraqi mercenaries in the extended campaign directed mainly against the Jewish villages.⁸ The Palestine Arab population on the whole refused to co-operate with these liberators, often even denying them shelter. The outcome was a campaign of murder against the Palestinian Arabs. When Arab villages appealed to the British administration for arms to defend themselves against Kaukji's invading bands, they were refused. In the end, more Arabs than Jews were killed by the rebels.⁹

The intervention by Arabs from the neighbouring countries was a reflection of the Cairo school's dream. To its members, Palestine was only part of the larger scheme; it was needed only to complete the homogeneity of a large Arab "world" under British tutelage. That dream was not abandoned. Indeed, the British government worked energetically to create a form of unity, or at least a framework of co-operation, among the Arab states. In an Arab world riven with disagreements and jealousies, the Palestine issue was the ideal instrument to bring about such co-operation. To appear, without much effort, as the champions of their brothers in Palestine and at the same time to nourish the hope that the Fertile Crescent might become homogeneously Arab -- this was a prospect that appealed to the Arab states.

As early as 1936, the real or nominal heads of the Arab states or states in embryo were called in by the administration and generously agreed to "secure" from the Mufti and his Arab Higher Committee a temporary cessation of the revolt so as to enable an investigation of grievances. When the Mufti in turn graciously consented, the government permitted the main body of Fawzi Kaukji's terrorists to go back across the Jordan, where they could rest and reorganise. Thereafter, it became a self-understood facet of British policy that the Arab states had acquired a right to intervene in the affairs of Palestine. As though they were parties to the "dispute," with a claim and interests in the country-and in flagrant flaunting of the origin, the concept, the letter and the spirit of Britain's own defined Mandate -- the Arab rulers were invited in 1939 to a so-called Round Table Conference. The predetermined failure of this conference (where the Arab representatives refused to meet the Jews face to face) was enshrined in the White Paper that followed immediately.
 

The British Creation of the Arab League to serve as the mouthpiece of a British sponsored Pan-Arab dream

Looking ahead, through the storms of the war that followed to the final consummation of the White Paper, the British government took active steps to create A formal instrument of pan-Arabism. Thus, the Arab League was born. After Anthony Eden first mentioned It publicly in 1941, the then British Foreign Secretary presided over the necessary diplomatic exchanges and negotiations that brought about the formal establishment of the League in 1945. The pan-Arab dream had meanwhile also assumed that large economic importance which had been part of its inspiration. The oil-fields of Iraq proved to be but a small portion of a vast potential in Iraq itself and, even more, in Saudi Arabia and the British dependent sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf. British commercial interests played a large part in their exploitation.

Thus, after thirty years, an Arab entity consisting of seven countries -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan -- formally independent, semi-dependent, or on the way to formal independence and providing substantial dividends to an impoverished British economy, promised to realise the dream, conceived in 1915, of an Arab confederation that would "look to Britain as its patron and protector." Western Palestine was still lacking to complete the picture, but its inclusion seemed imminent. It remained only to give the finishing stroke to Zionism. That should not be difficult after the battering the Jewish people had suffered from the Nazis.
 

A Jewish Homeland with a Jewish Majority was an obstacle

From the very outset of the new Pan-Arab-British imperial phase, however that prospect was scarred by one intrusion: Zionism striving for the Jewish restoration of Palestine. The member states of the Arab League, which was formed in 1945 to supply the beginnings of co-ordinated modern Arabic power, were led by the British to be believe that the Prospect of a Jewish state in Palestine had been finally erased by the White Paper of 1939. Accordingly, they announced their acceptance of the White Paper-which also recognised the rights of the Jews to minority existence. They were accorded an immediate earnest of British loyalty to the compact: That same year the British, efficiently and unceremoniously, finally forced the French out of Syria. The Arabs looked forward to the equally effective end to snuffing out of the Jewish restoration in Palestine.

The refusal of the Jews to submit to the British dictate, their underground struggle which, to the Arabs' surprise and dismay, resulted in the relinquishment of British Power in Palestine, consequently ruled out the transfer of sovereignty (which the British did not legally possess) to the Arabs. Encouraged, and armed, by the British, the Arabs rejected even the partition compromise of 1947, rejecting Zionist pleas for co-operation. If they were to eliminate the Zionists and to prevent the rebirth of the Jewish state they had now themselves to go to war, under strikingly' favourable circumstances.

Then, precisely at the beginning of the new and so promisingly brilliant era in Arab nationalism, at the very rebirth of the empire, the Arab states suffered one of the greatest shocks, in all Arab history.

In May 1948, they launched the war against the embryonic Jewish state with considerable reason for confidence. The total Jewish population numbered no more than 650,000. Israel's armed force had for the most part had no more than partisan training. She had no air force at all.¹⁰ She had just passed through years of strain and tension and a bitter struggle with the British. When the invasion by the Arab states opened, she had been under guerrilla attack for six months by Palestinian Arabs and by advance units from the armies of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan, aided in a hundred ways by the still ubiquitous British. (The British civilian administration evacuated by May 14, 1948. The British Army began to organise its evacuation well after that date, completing the process on August 1.) While the British had opened the land frontiers so that men and arms could pour in from the neighbouring Arab countries,¹¹ they had refused to open a port for the Jews as recommended by the United Nations; and they maintained their blockade in the Mediterranean to prevent any reinforcements from reaching Israel. The United States bad announced an embargo and enforced it strictly, so that the Jews were deprived of that source as well.

In addition to these advantages, the Arabs were given massive material support by the British government, which openly provided arms and ammunition for the war (and turned aside criticism at the United Nations that Britain was aiding aggressive invasion by the claim that the State of Israel did not legally exist and could not therefore be invaded). The Arabs further enjoyed expert British leadership; the Transjordanian Arab Legion was officered by British soldiers.
 

British co-operated in planning at least some phases of the war against the Jewish State

Unknown to the world at the time, the British co-operated in planning at least some phases of the war. On January 15, 1948-the day a new treaty with Iraq was signed at Portsmouth-the British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, reached an agreement with the Iraqi leaders, Prime Minister Saleh Jabr, Foreign Minister Fadil el Jamali, and the elder statesman, then President of the Senate, Nuri el Said. By this agreement, the British undertook to speed up the supply of weapons and ammunition ordered from the British government and to supply automatic weapons sufficient for "50,000 policemen." The purpose was to arm the Palestinian Arab fighters to enable them to participate in the liberation of Palestine.¹² A third point in the agreement was that Iraqi forces would enter every area evacuated by British troops in the whole of Palestine, so that a Jewish state would not be formed.¹³ So much for Iraq. Six weeks later Bevin, at an interview with the Prime Minister of Transjordan attended by General Glubb (the Commander of the Arab Legion), approved the plan of Transjordan to do her share in frustrating the partition plan by invading and occupying the area allotted in the United Nations resolution to the establishment of an Arab state-¹⁴ Superiority in numbers, overwhelming superiority in arms and ammunition, the eager and substantial help of a major world power, a strategy based on a converging movement on three fronts against a Jewish force largely untrained, poorly armed and defending a small but densely populated coastal strip-these were surely enough to assure victory and even the slaughter that Arab leaders openly promised.

1. See Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies (London, 1970), pp. 231-233.

2. Horace B. Samuel, Unholy Memories of the Holy Land (London, 1930), p. 51.

3. Pal. Govt. File Pol/2108, in Israel State Archives. Quoted in Kedourie, Chatham House Version, p. 57.

4. The Story of the Jewish Legion (New York, 1945), p. 171. Jabotinsky's book contains (pp. 168-77) a description of the policy and motives of the military administration in 1919 and 1920. More detail still is in Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary 1917-1956 (London, 1959); Horace B. Samuel, Unholy Memories of the Holy Land. See also Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949).

5. See the report of the Royal Commission on Palestine (HM. Stationery Office, 1937). Also Y. Shimoni, Arviyei Eretz Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1947); the UNRWA Review, inf. Paper No. 6 (September, 1952) on Megal Arab immigration during the Second World War.

6. A description of the developing situation three months before the outbreak began is contained in Samuel Katz, Days of Fire (London, 1968), pp. 3-4.

7. Files CO 793/27/75269; CO 793/27/75402; and CO 793/27/75528/25.

8. Colonial Office files of correspondence on the "Participation an Arabs" in the Disturbances (CO 793/27/75528/48), and "Activities of Fawzi Kauldi" (CO 793/27/75528/82) have been "Destroyed Under Statute."

9. A critical detailed analysis, legal and administrative, of the British measures during the first phase of the 1936 revolt is given in Horace B. Samuel, Revolt by Leave (London, 1937). For a comprehensive picture and summing up, see Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (London, 1949), and Katz, Days of Fire (London, 1968).

10. Four fighter Planes were later scraped together and they brought about a turning point in the war by halting the Egyptian advance at Ashdod.

11. The British themselves announced (in the House of Commons) at the end of February that 5,000 Arabs from the neighbouring countries had entered Palestine in the preceding three months.

12. This was a wildly optimistic estimate. The Iraqis later discovered that the total number of Palestinian Arabs taking part in the fighting was 4,000.

13. See Kedouri, The Chatham House Version, pp. 212-233, quoting Iraqi historian Abd-al-Razzaq al Hosani. The scheme, according to Jamali, was dropped when the Portsmouth Treaty was revoked.

14. J. B. Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London, 1957), pp. 63-66.