The report of a joint U.S.-British committee on the situation in Palestine and the fate of European Jewish refugees fails to offer solutions the British government will accept but does deliver vital data and insights on the situation between Arabs and Jews in the Land of Israel.
These Foreign Relations of the United States collections provide an ongoing, in-depth view at issues and conflict in the Middle East and the U.S.-Israel relationship from 1947 to 1978.
Fearing Communist penetration of the Eastern Mediterranean, Truman at the beginning of the Cold War defines the region as a sphere of US national interest.
Despite an officially anti-Zionist stance, the Soviet Union, hoping to adopt Israel as a Soviet proxy, takes a pragmatic stance and supports the U.N. partition plan of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states.
Published by the British Administration of Palestine, this summary emphasizes attempts at impartiality in governing the Mandate. It notes that in 1922, the Jewish community already possessed ‘national’ characteristics, while the Arab community’s composition was sociologically and economically divided and to a large degree impoverished by the war.
The Status-Quo Agreement is an understanding reached between David Ben-Gurion, then the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, and the religious parties in the period before Israel became a state.
The last of 23 volumes of Chaim Weizmann’s Letters summarized wonderfully by Aaron Klieman, recalls the Israeli first president’s views of those fateful years for Zionism and Israel from 1947-1952. Chaim Weizmann died at his home in Rehovot on 9 November 1952, shortly before his 78th birthday. All of the letters read together, provide ring side seat to Zionism as an idea to the reality of the Jewish state.
Earlier in 1947, Great Britain turned the future of the Palestine Mandate over to the newly established United Nations. Then in August 1947, the UN suggested that establishing an Arab and Jewish state with a federal union would be the best solution for the communal unrest there.
Loy Henderson, Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, U.S. State Department, to U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall
Writing two months before the U.S. voted at the United Nations in favor of Palestine’s partition into Arab and Jewish states, Henderson voices profound dislike for Zionism and a Jewish state. He advocates for cultivating positive relations with Muslim and Arab states. He is one of many at the State Department at the time who saw Zionism as contrary to American national interests.
No document better reveals the hostility which most Arab leaders and Arab states had in 1947 for Zionism and for a possible Jewish state. The Saudi King notes “that US support for Zionists in Palestine is an unfriendly act directed against the Arabs.” The King’s views were totally supported by US State Department officials including Loy Henderson and George Kennan who advocated strongly against Truman’s support of a Jewish state.
The UN recommended establishing Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, with an international regime for Jerusalem. Zionists were jubilant; Arab states and the Palestinians were indignant and rejected two state solution. No Arab state is established, Israel is in 1948
In March 1948, two months before Israel’s establishment, the US State Department sought to reverse the US vote in favor of partition for the creation of Arab and Jewish states in Palestine.
The Declaration recounts the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, the birth of Zionism and U.N. recognition of a Jewish state’s legitimacy. It also promises that the state will be a democracy for all its citizens.
This 10-page report, written by the British Colonial and Foreign Office, along with the 1937 Peel (Royal) Commission Report, is one of the two best summaries of the British presence in Palestine. Both are substantial in terms of content, detail and analyses; both were written from Britain’s perspective. Read these along with 1931 Census for Palestine to have a fuller grasp of the politics and the populations that shaped Britain’s Palestine’s administration from 1918-1948
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Subsequent to Israel’s territorial successes from May 1948 forward, U.N. mediator Bernadotte is assassinated after suggesting smaller borders for Israel. He does not mention Palestinian Arabs in his interim report.
The resolution states that refugees “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace (with Israel) should do so or compensation be paid.” Israel opposes the idea because it jeopardizes Israel as a majority-Jewish state.
One of four agreements Israel signed in 1949 with Arab neighbors, it does not end the state of war between Israel and Egypt. They do not sign a treaty until 1979.
Upon admission to the U.N., Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett said, “It was
the consummation of a people’s transition from political anonymity to clear identity, from inferiority to equal status, from mere passive protest to active responsibility, from exclusion to membership in the family of nations.”
Sharett gives an overview of Israeli foreign policy, key issues, and relationships with UN and Arab states.
Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and American Jewish Committee President Jacob Blaustein express a compromise in the American Jewish-Israel relationship: American Jews are excited and proud of Israel’s birth as a state but owe Israel no allegiance, and Israel does not speak for anyone but Israeli citizens.
This report submitted to the United Nations at the end of 1951 notes that “some one million Jews have become the victims of accelerated antiSemitism” since 1948 in the Muslim countries of the Arab League and North Africa, “communities which have existed for thousands of years.” The report analyzes the situation for Jews overall and explains restrictions and oppressive measures country by country.
In an impassioned Knesset speech, Menachem Begin staunchly opposes accepting $1.5 billion in German reparations for Jewish deaths during WWII. No price, he believes, can be put on the lives lost.
Further reinforcing the Truman Doctrine, the US President promises military or economic aid to any Middle Eastern country resisting Communist aggression.
Ten days before the start of the Six-Day War, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declares that Egypt, Syria and other Arab states intend to destroy Israel.
