The Palestinian general strike ended with the appointment of a Royal Committee of Inquiry, known as the Peel Commission. Several inquiries had been made by different British commissions since the establishment of British rule over Palestine, particularly after riots. Most found Jewish land purchases and immigration to be the major reason for Arab unrest.
TABLE 1
JEWISH POPULATION AND ESTIMATED LAND OWNERSHIP IN PALESTINE (1880-1947)
After each report was published, new regulations and laws were issued to restrict the purchase of land and to limit immigration to the “absorption capacity” of the country (usually quantified by the rate of unemployment).
This time, however, the Peel Commission went further, recommending partition of the territory between the Arabs and Jews and the establishment of a Jewish state, an Arab state (linked with Transjordan), and an international enclave—a corridor between Jaffa and Jerusalem that included Bethlehem. Both the Arabs and the Jews rejected the partition proposal. Since then the idea of partition as the basis of a solution to the Jewish-Palestinian conflict has often reappeared in one form or another. The most recent agreements to grant autonomy to the Palestinian people in (a still disputed) part of the country as an interim stage toward what will probably be a tiny state with limited sovereignty, supervised and controlled by the Israeli state, is yet another manifestation of the partition solution.
After the publication of the Peel Commission report, the Arab revolt was resumed by rebellious peasant groups (or “gangs,” as the British and Jews called them) with even more violence. It was a cruel war against all “foreigners”—Jews, British, and all those not perceived as in line with the rebels, including Arab collaborators or suspected collaborators with the British and the Zionists. For a while, the British authorities lost control over most of the country, and parts of it were declared “liberated” by Palestinian rebels. The Jews sank their resources into defending their settlements, neighborhoods, and the roads connecting them. For their part, the British flooded the country with troops drawn from all parts of the empire and turned the 1939 revolt into a bloodbath. Most of the Palestinian leaders fled (including Hajj Amin al-Husseini) or were exiled or jailed. Some of the upper and middle class fled to Beirut and Alexandria. Palestinian Arabs have marked this as a glorious point in their history, one of the biggest anti-colonial revolts of the time. The social outcome of the revolt was, however, disastrous for the Palestinians. The dismantlement of several generations of leadership and the dispersal of a large segment of the middle and educated classes are still felt today.
After the brutal suppression of the revolt, the British made diplomatic efforts to reach a Jewish-Arab agreement involving the other Arab states (e.g., the St. James Conference in February 1939). In fact, the British withdrew from the basic orientation outlined in the Balfour Declaration and issued a White Paper on May 17, 1939, in which they redefined the mandatory obligation to guarantee an independent Palestine, ruled by the Arab majority of its population. Severe restrictions were imposed on Jewish immigration and land purchases. The British knew, however, that the Jews would remain loyal to Britain in the coming conflict with Nazi Germany, and the White Paper was aimed at securing Arab support in the war effort.
PALESTINE AND WORLD WAR II
During World War II, the Jewish-Arab conflict reached an almost complete stalemate. During the first part of the war, the country was turned into a large military base for British and Allied troops, contributing to the economic rehabilitation of both communities after the catastrophic years of the Arab revolt. Each community knew that the war was an interim period before the decisive struggle over control of the land resumed. During the war, President Roosevelt promised self-determination for all people, and the Arabs and Jews each understood this promise in terms of their own claims and aspirations.
During the war, however, Jewish claims became much more vigorous as a result of the dreadful years of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis and their collaborators managed systematically to exterminate about six million European and North African Jews. In the postbellum years, the international community felt a strong obligation to compensate the Jewish people for the horrors of the Nazi genocide, and for the fact that the Allies had done little to avoid or reduce the extermination of the Jews. The Palestinians meanwhile resented having to pay for crimes committed by Europeans.
As a result of the war, both sides were forced to reconsider their basic positions. Feeling vulnerable, the Palestinian Arabs turned to the patronage of the Arab countries, which had just established the Arab League. For their part, the Zionists changed from a British to an American orientation. As early as May 1942, David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community of Palestine since 1933, convened a meeting of Zionists in the United States to urge that after the war “Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth [code for “state”] integrated in the structure of the new [postwar] democratic world.” This declaration, commonly known as the “Biltmore [Hotel] Declaration,” also called for the financial and political mobilization of American Jewry on behalf of the Zionist cause.
In the meantime anti-British Jewish resistance increased. Alongside the semi-official Jewish militia, the Haganah, two additional underground organizations had gradually developed. The National Military Organization (known by its Hebrew acronym EZEL, or “Irgun”), which was affiliated with the Zionist Revisionist party, was established in 1931. The “Israel Freedom Fighters” (the LEHI, or “Stern Gang”), which espoused a more radical orientation, split from EZEL in 1940. Between 1944 and 1947, these two radical organizations conducted a full-scale guerrilla war against British and Arab targets, including the use of terror tactics aimed at individuals. For a short period, they cooperated with the Haganah. For the most part, however, the Haganah actively operated against these two underground groups, perceiving the intra-Jewish fight as a prelude to the upcoming battle for political dominance in the soon to be established Jewish state.
When World War II ended, and the British colonial state in Palestine terminated its mandate, the question remained of who would rule Palestine—the Arab majority or the Jewish minority. A third option was partition. A fourth option, a binational state, was completely rejected by all parties.11
A JEWISH STATE IS DECLARED
On April 30, 1946, the report of an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was published. It called for immediate permission for the entry of 100,000 Jewish refugees and the suspension of the severe restrictions on buying land imposed by the 1939 White Paper. In long-range terms, the committee envisaged a binational state based on vague political mechanisms, presumed to ensure that neither the Jews nor the Arabs could dominate the other population. On the day the committee's conclusions were published, U.S. President Harry Truman declared his support for the issuing of 100,000 certificates of immigration to Jewish immigrants to Palestine and the lifting of land purchase restrictions, but without committing himself to the other parts of the recommendations. This was the first direct American involvement in the Palestinian conflict. The fact is that the Americans were concerned with the fate of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, but not to the point that they were willing to change American immigration laws and permit increased entrance to the United States.
A year later, the United Nations nominated another committee to investigate the Palestinian problem and offer recommendations to the General Assembly. The majority of the committee called for an end to the mandate and the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state (with Jerusalem as an international city). These recommendations served as the basis for the November 29, 1947, partition decision adopted by the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181). The Zionist Organization accepted the resolution, regarding it as the realization of the Zionist vision of the establishment of an independent Jewish state in part of “the Land of Israel.” The Palestinian Arabs rejected the resolution, considering it an unacceptable transfer of their lands to European immigrants and settlers. The entire Arab and Islamic world supported them. With the UN decision, the British prepared to leave the territory, in expectation of chaos.
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