Over four decades, Winston Churchill’s views on Zionism and Jews varied greatly. Without knowing his long held personal beliefs or the policies he adopted while the Jewish state developed, and only reading this speech, one would not know that he was a political opportunist and certainly not a “Gentile Zionist.”
Jewish Agency head David Ben-Gurion emphasizes that a Jewish state will be a place for all, including Arabs, and calls for Jews to be better educated about the elements of a state.
A key figure in the Jewish Agency’s political department, Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) argues for a Jewish commonwealth/state in Palestine. Pragmatically he realizes Arabs in Palestine oppose the Jewish presence, yet he rejects a potential binational Arab-Jewish state.
This analysis was undertaken and written at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem by Jewish observers of the Arab riots and rebellion that took place between April 1936 and early 1939.
Before ending his term in 1944 as Palestine’s High Commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael suggested the partition of Palestine, “Jews and Arabs alike would enjoy the possession of their own respective territories, the former protected by international guarantees for their security, and the latter relieved from fear of further encroachments.”
Steady disintegration of Palestinian Arab society from 1945-1949 is detailed by five Arab and non-Arab historians citing local social cleavages, economic impoverishment, fear, indebtedness, and political dysfunction.
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.
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.
The head of Arab League says Palestine may be lost in a confrontation with the Zionists, but emphatically states that war is the Arab’s only option.
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
Irrefutable evidence shows Palestinian Arab collaboration with Zionists during the British Mandate greatly assisted Jewish state building. Cohen further asserts a general absence among Palestinians of a sense of national feeling, with loyalties instead tied to families, villages and other localities. Quite certainly without Palestinian Arab collaboration, Zionists would not have succeeded in building a nucleus for the Jewish state. Arabic newspapers in Palestine and British scrutiny show the constancy of the Arab population’s engagement with the Zionists, and this included Arabs resident inside Palestine.
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.
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.
With crisp analysis, Haganah Commander Yigal Allon, later a Prime Minister of Israel attributes Israel’s successes to multiple factors including the absence of a centralized Arab command, limited Arab military training, underestimating the potential fighting capabilities of local Arabs, and Israel’s success in integrating its citizens into the war effort.
