Book Review
The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Reviewed by Cheryl Rubenberg, Former
associate professor of political science, Florida International
University, and editor of the Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict (3 volumes), 2010
Random House, 2010. 433 pages plus glossary, maps and index. $30.00, hardcover
Winter 2010, Volume XVII, Number 4
During World War I, then, Britain and her allies slew the Ottoman dragon in the Middle East. By their policies they sowed dragon’s teeth. Armed men rose up from the ground. They are rising still (p. 376).
In
his extraordinary book The Balfour Declaration, Jonathan Schneer
provides an in-depth look at the process by which the document that
birthed the State of Israel came about and situates it in the whole of
British Middle East policy during World War I. Thus he pays close
attention throughout to British relations with the Arabs, including the
circumstances and controversies surrounding the 1914-15 Hussein-McMahon
Correspondence, which included the Damascus Protocol and which the Arabs
were led to believe included Palestine; the course of the Arab Revolt;
the roles of Sharif (later King) Hussein of Mecca and his sons Feisal,
Abdullah and Ali; as well as the progress of T. E. Lawrence and his
Bedouin troops. The Arabs never knew about Britain’s conspiracy with
France or about the Balfour Declaration and remained loyal and committed
to Britain during rhe whole of the war.
At
the same time, Schneer closely analyses the relationship between
Britain and its wartime ally France, including the 1916 Sykes-Picot
agreement, which envisioned an international condominium administering
Palestine and the carving up of the remainder of the ruins of the
Ottoman Empire between France and Britain in classic imperialist style.
On the other hand, Britain secretly hoped to exclude France from the
Middle East altogether.
After the
Bolshevik revolution, Moscow pulled Russia out of the war and canceled
all its wartime treaties and commitments. Britain secretly negotiated
with Russia to keep it in the war by promising Moscow control of
Istanbul and the Dardanelles. London failed to apprise Paris of this
promise.
The Zionist movement in Britain
is covered in detail, and we learn that the great majority of British
Jews were “assimilationist” and therefore anti-Zionist. Led by Lucien
Wolf, who came to dominate the Conjoint Committee of the Anglo-Jewish
Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Wolf and his
colleagues (especially Claude Montefiore and Edwin Montagu) worked
tirelessly to influence British policy against establishing a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. Their position denied the existence of Jewish
nationality, and they sought assistance from Britain to ensure the
rights of Jews in whatever country they lived. They also wanted Britain
to pursue a separate peace with the Ottomans.
Chaim
Weizmann became Britain’s leading advocate of Zionism and played a
crucial role in bringing about the Balfour Declaration. Together with
Nahum Sokolow and Walter Rothschild, and to a lesser extent Harry
Sacher, these few men managed to gain support of a slight majorty of
British Jews as well as critical persons in the British government, for
example, Herbert Samuel, Arthur Balfour and later Sir Mark Sykes. Samuel
is an especially interesting character (among a plethora of fascinating
men). A wealthy assimilated Jew (part of what Schneer defines as the
“Cousinhood”), initially he had little interest in Zionism. After
meeting Weitzmann, his interest grew, and he facilitated contact between
Weitzmann and important British officials. He personally felt
constrained from public advocacy; he was both a Jew and a member of the
cabinet. After the war, he served for five years as Britian’s first High
Commissioner in Palestine.
Weizmann, more
than any other individual, orchestrated the wartime campaign for
British support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As such, the question
arises, where did he receive his influence and power? It came mainly
from Weizmann’s perfecting a process for fermenting acetone from grain
rather than wood (Schneer mentions this much on p. 155, but little
more), to be used in the manufacture of explosives. During World War I,
acetone was in short supply in Britain, and this new synthetic material
produced by Weizmann went a long way in helping the British win the war.
That the prestige he gained from this important discovery would surely
translate into political power seems relevant and significant. Schneer
does not make this connection.
There
was another actor vying for Palestine: the Committee of Union and
Progress of the Ottoman Turks. Britain had long sought to conclude a
separate peace with the Ottomans and was prepared to make important
concessions. During 1917 and 1918, secret meetings took place with
Ottoman representatives. Britain was prepared to permit a Turkish flag
to fly over Palestine as well as over Greater Syria and Mesopotamia,
though with Britain running the countries. Schneer writes:
To detach the Ottomans from the Central Powers would do more to win the war for Britain than anything connected to Arabs or Jews . . . . Eventually, through his emissaries, Lloyd George offered the Turks, among other inducements, that their flag continues to fly over Palestine if they would make a separate peace, even as other British officials were promising Zionists and Arabs that the Ottomans and their flag would be expelled from the Middle East altogether. In the end Enver Pasha [one of a triumvirate who ruled the Ottoman Empire 1913-18] spurned Lloyd George’s offer. Nevertheless, it seems right to suggest that Palestine was not thrice-promised. It was promised, or at any rate dangled as bait, four times: before the Zionists and the Arabs, before Picot by Sykes in the shape of an as-yet-unformed international consortium, and before the Turks, who would otherwise lose it as a result of war (p. 368).
We shall
return to the evolution of the Balfour Declaration, but so overwhelming
is the sense after reading this book of British duplicity, deceit,
double-dealing, obfuscation, ambiguity and back-stabbing in its
relations with all the parties involved that one feels it necessary to
highlight it. One example will suffice:
They [Weizmann and colleagues] did not realize that a year previously [1916] Sykes and Picot had agreed precisely to international control of Palestine as a whole, the so-called Brown Area except for the British corridor running east-west and the northern slice that would go to France. Herbret Samuel, who had been a member of the cabinet when the Sykes-Picot Agreement was made, knew of this plan but was bound by cabinet oath not to speak of it. The meeting on February 7 [1917], then, was based upon at least three layers of deceit. In the first layer Sykes was attempting to undermine an agreement with France that he (and Herbert Samuel) knew the British government had already accepted, that he himself had helped to negotiate, and that bore his name. In the second layer, Sykes and Samuel both were keeping the Sykes-Picot and Tripartite Agreements secret from everyone else at the meeting. From his French contacts James de Rothschild had gained some inkling of them. Twice he asked Sykes to confirm that Britain had made no promise of Palestinian territory to France. The first time Sykes replied that “no pledges had been given to the French concerning Palestine,” an outright lie . . . The second time he referred the question to Samuel: “Mr Samuel replied that he could not reveal what had been done by the cabinet” (p. 198).
Britain herself wanted
Palestine. London believed that, by controlling Palestine, it could
better secure the Suez Canal and maintain the puppet monarchy it had
installed in Cairo.
The British
government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, but until
six months before that date and even up to the very day of its
announcement, its existence was uncertain. Until the very end, Lucien
Wolf and his followers remained staunchly anti-Zionist and pressed the
Foreign Office hard. Their position continued to be emancipation and
assimilation for Jews everywhere as well as opposition to the proposal
“to give to the Jews of Palestine privileges not shared by the rest of
the population of that country” (p. 306). The debate between the two
British Jewish communities continued in The Jewish Chronicle, The Times and a variety of other forums. The publication of Zionism and the Jewish Future
by Harry Sacher in late 1916 contributed mightedly to shifting the
position of some assimilationists, but it was a bitter struggle. A vote
taken in the Conjoint Committee in the fall of 1917 gave the Zionists 56
mandates to 51 for the assimilationists, signaling the end of the
latter’s influence.
Potential problems
came from another source. T.E. Lawrence and his Bedouin fighters
encountered numerous unexpected and disabling factors as they planned to
take Damascus. While the Zionists in London moved during the spring and
summer of 1917 to assert control over British Jewry and to influence
the Foreign Office, the Arabs pushed north from Wejh to Aqaba, intending
to move on to Syria and claim their homeland. Schneer asks: “Had they
reached Damascus before November 2, 1917, it is an interesting point
whether the British would have felt confident enough about the future of
that territory to release the Balfour Declaration” (p. 325). Near the
end of October, Gaza fell, but not until November 30 were the Arabs able
to penetrate Syria — three weeks too late for Arab interests to
prevail. Of course, they knew nothing of the Balfour Declaration.
In mid-summer 1917, the Zionists wrote a paragraph that they wanted the Foreign Office to adopt and announce as policy:
(1) His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people. (2) His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavors to secure the achievement of this objective and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organization (p. 335).
It is of note here
that the first sentence implies an unbroken link between Jews and
Palestine despite a nearly 2,000-year separation, while the second
sentence posits the Zionist Organization as the official representative
of all Jewish interests. Needless to say, the British did not accept this formulation.
Indeed,
both the Foreign Office and the War Cabinet were split and undecided
about how to proceed. Weizmann then mobilized American support,
including American Zionists and non-Zionists and President Woodrow
Wilson (who was influenced by Louis Brandeis and other prominent
Zionists) and who had just brought the United States into the war on the
side of Britain and France. Wilson sent a strong letter of support. As a
result, Weizmann had access to virtually every cabinent official, and
the Declaration was shortly released. But British deceit and double
dealing continued.
This is such an
outstanding book that one is reluctant to point out errors and
omissions, but it seems dishonest not to do so. The author mentions that
there were “Shiite Muslims” and “Sunni-Shiite conflict” in Palestine
(p. 9). However, historically or contemporaneously there were never any
Shia in Palestine. When writing about conflict in the country (p. 9), it
would have been relevant and accurate to mention the inter-hamula (clan)
strife. He writes, “There were as well Druze and other Christians . .
.” (p. 5). Druze are not Christians; they are a schismatic religion said
to have begun as an offshoot of Islam but unique in its incorporation
of Gnosticism, neoplatonism and other philosophies, similar to other
followers of Ismaili Shia Islam. Further, in Jerusalem Schneer writes,
“[with] Mecca-bound Muslim pilgrims, . . .residents did brisk business
selling supplies, services, and trinkets typically of olive wood and
mother-of-pearl” (p. 7). This is probably a true statement, but Schneer
fails to mention that in all likelihood, the majority would have prayed
at al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam after Mecca and
Medina. The whole first chapter (pp. 3-31) has a condescending, almost
derogatory tone in its analysis of the social and economic life of
Palestinians before the British arrived.
With
regard to the Jewish holy cities in Palestine, Schneer writes: “Earlier
in the nineteenth century it had been mainly elderly Jews who
immigrated to Palestine. . . . They were seeking . . . to end their
lives in the holy land. These pathetic figures could be seen, ill-clad
and malnourished, begging for alms in the streeets of Jerusalem, Hebron,
Tiberias and Safed” (p. 10). This hardly gives the holy cities their
due as centers of spiritual learning. Safed came to be regarded as a
holy city after an influx of Jews from Spain following their expulsion
in 1492, and became known as a center of kabbalistic scholarship, a
mystical/spiritual branch of Judaism. Tiberias was significant in Jewish
history as the place where the Jerusalem Talmud was composed and as the
home of the Masoretes (mostly Karaite scribes and scholars), but its
status as a holy city is due to the influx of rabbis who established the
city as a center for Jewish learning in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
Mr. Schneer repeatedly calls
Weitzmann a “folks-mensch” (Yiddish for “man of the people”), but he was
not one. Indeed, his elegant lifestyle and cultivated manners were a
handicap to him in a movement increasingly dominated by the working
class.
A topic that Schneer completely
overlooks but that most definitely played a role in the realization of
the Balfour Declaration is Christian Zionism. This is a literal belief
in the biblical prophecy that the Jews must return to their ancestral
home in order for the Second Coming of Christ to occur. Christian
Zionism was born in Britain and has been widely influential there.
British leaders such as Lord Balfour, Herbert Samuel, Lloyd George and
others (including much earlier Lord Shaftesbury) mingled British
imperialism with their belief in the need to restore the Jews to their
home.
One final criticism, which can be
relegated to the category “that is not what the book is about”: The
author repeatedly (some 15 times) mentions together the Armenians and
the British. Yet he never tells us who the Armenians are, why Britain is
concerned about them, what it has promised to do for them, the genocide
and so on — all of which could have been done in one paragraph and
relieved a sense of void.Despite these errors and omissions The Balfour Declaration is a
masterful work of research and analysis. I highly recommend it to
everyone interested in British policy in World War I and the origins of
the Balfour Declaration.
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