The idea of a state for the Jewish people
had begun to gain traction by the end of the
First World War. This was formalized by the
1917 Balfour Declaration from the British
government, which proclaimed the intention
of the “establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people”. I’m
your host David and today we will be talking
about the creation of the State of Israel.
This is...The Cold War.
Although the British troops occupied Palestine
in 1918 following the campaign against the
Ottomans, the League of Nations made this
annexation legitimate in 1922 by granting
the mandate over the Palestine to Britain.
The mandate included provisions calling for
the establishment of a Jewish homeland, facilitating
Jewish immigration and encouraging Jewish
settlement on the land. Of course, as you
might already know, the Arab population of
Palestine was opposed to the increase in Jewish
immigration and settlement. This became the
source of a great deal of conflict and confrontation
prior to the outbreak of the Second World
War, which the British were unable to stop.
Over a quarter of a million Jews arrived in
Palestine between 1929 and 1938, and despite
the efforts of the British to prevent this
immigration, the Jewish Agency as well as
other Jewish organizations continued to help
smuggle Jews into Palestine. In the Palestinian
mandate, armed Jewish organizations were fighting
against both Arab groups and the British administration.
Their goal was to ensure continued Jewish
immigration and ultimately, independence.
If you are wondering why immigration was considered
so vital to the Jewish community, you just
need to recall that the persecution of Jews
across much of Europe was widespread in the
pre-war years, with many nations unwilling
to accept Jewish refugees.
The idea of a partition in Palestine was first
presented by the British Peel Commission,
in 1937, after it became clear that there
was little chance of achieving order in Palestine.
The Peel Commission proposed the creation
of two seperate states, one Arab and one Jewish,
with population transfers happening to adjust
ethnic divides. The Jewish community was in
favour of this proposal, seeing it as a first
step in the creation of a Jewish homeland
but the Arab community opposed it as they
did not want to lose the land.
The other prominent proposal made by the British
Government in the pre-Second World War era
was the White Paper, published in 1939. It
called for the establishment of a Jewish national
home inside of an independent Palestine within
the next 10 years. It also put a limit on
Jewish immigration to a maximum of seventy-five
thousand people over five years and finally,
it placed restrictions on the Jewish population
from buying more in Palestine.
While the more moderate groups in the Arab
community were willing to accept this proposal,
under pressure from the conservative and nationalist
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini,
it was eventually rejected. The Zionist groups
in the Jewish community were also against
the White paper as it did not promise an independent
state for the Jews and also imposed restrictions
to immigration. The rejection led to further
animosity between the Jewish community in
Palestine and the British administration.
British opposition to Jewish migration to
Palestine, still in line with the White Paper,
continued in 1945, after the end of the War.
US President Truman asked Great Britain to
admit one hundred thousand survivors of the
Holocaust which was subsequently rejected.
The presence of a very strong US Jewish political
lobby, as well as favourable (some would very
much say guilty) public opinion towards the
Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust
caused the US to put a great deal of pressure
on Britain to change their stance. Britain,
financially dependant on the United States
for the rebuilding of their country, was in
a very difficult position.
1946 saw the the British yield somewhat with
the creation of the Anglo-American Committee,
focused on the issues of immigration of European
Jews to Palestine but also pointedly ignored
the issue of creating an independent Jewish
state. The plan was to deal with the pressing
humanitarian issue and to leave the statehood
issue alone so as to avoid conflict with the
Arab communities, both in Palestine as well
in the region overall. By April of 1946, the
Committee had reached the unanimous decision
for the immediate admission of one hundred
thousand Jewish refugees from Europe in Palestine
and well as to remove the White Paper restrictions
on the purchase of land by Jews.
So how well was this received by both sides?
If you guessed “Not Well” you would be
correct! The Arabs were not happy with the
influx of more Jewish refugees who would continue
to take land and resources. There were even
calls in the Arab World for Jihad and for
the Jews to be “removed”, which in this
case translated to mean “annihilated”.
The Jewish community on the other hand, didn’t
like the proposal as it ignored the call for
a Jewish state to be created. There were claims
that it was an attempt to quote-unquote “clip
the wings of political zionism by treating
the whole matter as a Jewish refugee problem.”.
So yeah, the Commission's proposal was rejected
by both sides.
While all this was going on, there were armed
Jewish underground organizations such as the
Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang who were waging
a guerrilla war against the British administration
in Palestine. This guerilla war was only intensifying
the longer a settlement failed to be achieved.
The British responded, with the not-so-subtle
Operation Agatha; the arrest of approximately
two thousand seven hundred Jewish activists.
This was done to disrupt Jewish paramilitary
operations by seizing weapons and removing
leadership. On the 21st of July 1946, the
British Military Headquarters, based in the
King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed by
Irgun, resulting in 91 deaths. In response
to THIS, over one hundred twenty thousand
Jews were summoned and interrogated by the
Police. This was almost one out of every five
Jews in Palestine.
The heavy-handed response of the British and
their inability to find a compromise, as well
as the escalating violence did not play well
in the United States. The Americans put pressure
on Britain and effectively forced them to
refer the matter to the United Nations.
In May of 1947, the United Nations formed
a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP),
tasked with preparing recommendations for
the future of Palestine including how it should
be governed as well as how to handle the Jewish
population in the Mandate. The Committee was
composed of the so-called neutral states of
Australia, Netherlands, Iran, Sweden, India,
Peru, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Uruguay,
and Yugoslavia. As you can probably guess,
not all of these countries were really and
truly neutral.
While the Jewish Agency cooperated with the
committee, the Arab leadership in Palestine
boycotted any participation, claiming that
the committee was “pro-zionist”.
The Committee representatives, in the course
of their considerations, carried out field
trips to meet with Jewish representatives
in Palestine as well as with Arab leadership
both inside Palestine as well as in other
countries in the region. They also spent time
monitoring the attempts of Jewish people attempting
to illegally immigrate into Palestine as well
as meeting with Jewish refugees who were still
in various holding camps across Europe.
The Committee, as I’m sure you could expect,
was heavily lobbied by representatives from
all sides; Jewish, Arab, and even the British.
Jewish groups wanted a partition of Palestine
into separate Jewish and Arab states. The
Arabs lobbied against this outcome, warning
that a divided Palestine could lead to catastrophe
in the region. The British, on the other hand
lobbied in favour of Partition as the only
feasible option.
On September 3, 1947, the United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine published its report.
It proposed the establishment of two separate
nations, one Arab and one Jewish, but that
would retain an economic union. Jerusalem
would be governed by the international community.
The proposal was sent to the United Nations
General Assembly to be voted on. Notably,
both the United States and the Soviet Union
were in favour of the proposal for partition.
How did the newly emerged Superpowers view
this proposal and how did they react to it?
Pro-Zionist movements in the United States
had launched an intense lobbying campaign
to secure public support for the plan and
to encourage the US government to apply pressure
on other countries to also back the proposal.
President Truman, not personally happy with
the lobbying taking place, still put his support
behind the plan, mostly as a result of electoral
considerations with a Presidential Election
approaching. A formal endorsement was given
on October 11, 1947 and was followed by a
statement, signed by 26 of the US Senators
who wielded influence on foreign aid bills,
calling on other states to support the plan.
Nobody should be surprised that the United
States, who was so busy financing the reconstruction
of a war-torn world, was using its financial
muscle to get countries to do what it wanted.
It is reported that at least France, Haiti,
the Philippines and Liberia voted in favour
of the UN partition plan based on financial
pressure from the US.
Ok, so now we know why and how the Americans
were in favour of the Partition of Palestine.
So why were the Soviets?
While official Soviet ideology was critical
of Zionism, describing it as bourgeois nationalism,
Stalin, forever the calculating pragmatist,
chose not to see this matter through the lens
of ideology but rather as someone looking
for the best geopolitical outcome for his
country! The Soviet leadership saw the Arab
countries as being pro-British and hoped that
the creation of a Jewish state in the region
would disrupt British dominance. Stalin also
hoped that the future Jewish state would be
Socialist in nature and align itself with
the Soviet Union.
With this in mind, Moscow pushed its socialist
allies to support the partition plan in the
UN General Assembly. As the plan required
a two-thirds majority vote to succeed, the
support of the Moscow-led socialist countries
was crucial. Andrei Gromyko, now the Soviet
Ambassador to the UN made an impassioned speech
before the vote was held, calling for an independent
Jewish state. He called back to the immense
suffering that the Jewish people had endured
through the Holocaust in order to justify
Soviet support.
As a side note, Soviet support for the Jewish
state continued, even after the declaration
of independence of Israel, and many of the
weapons used by the Israelis in the First
Arab-Israeli War originated from the Skoda
factories in Czechoslovakia, sold to the Jewish
state under Soviet auspices. We are going
to cover more about this conflict in upcoming
episodes so make sure to check it out!
So this all looks pretty favourable for the
Jewish community in Palestine. But how did
the Arabs feel about all this? This was, after
all, their land. As I’m sure you already
know, or at least can guess, they were diametrically
opposed. Arab leaders applied pressure of
their own in the international community to
vote against the plan. The Iraqi Prime Minister
warned, using very harsh words, that recognition
of the plan would lead to a revolt by the
Arabs of not only Palestine but in other nations
as well, and would create a great danger to
the Jewish communities across the entire region.
The head of the Egyptian delegation in the
General Assembly echoed these warnings, warning
of inevitable bloodshed and danger to a million
Jews living in the Arab countries. In our
next episode, we will talk more about the
Arab countries in this period.
The vote on the partition plan was held in
United Nations General Assembly on the 27th
of November, 1947. Thirty-three countries,
including the United States and the Soviet
Union voted in favour while only 13, almost
all Muslim-majority countries, voted against
the plan. The plan for the partition of Palestine
into a Jewish state and an Arab state was
passed through the United Nations.
This marked the first major test of the UN
of an extremely complicated matter, which
was never going to have an easy solution that
could bring satisfaction to all sides. The
success of the proposed plan was dependent
on the support of both the Soviet Union and
the United States, even if this support was
the result of very different reasons. It is
one of the early examples of the two Superpowers
using the UN as a place to flex their international
muscle over other countries instead of letting
it be an impartial judge of international
conflicts.
So this is the background on how the State
of Israel was to be formed but certainly not
at all where the story ends. We here at the
Cold War will discuss what happens next in
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