1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (7 page)

But World War II was a crucible from which both the Jewish and Arab national movements would emerge strengthened and largely triumphant. The war's vast weakening of British (and French) power and the concomitant rise in national consciousness and ideologies in the third world resulted almost immediately in the liberation from imperial rule of vast domains, stretching from Indonesia through India to the Arab Middle East. At war's end, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, and Lebanon became independent, and other Arab territories-including Egypt and Iraq-enjoyed a loosening of the imperial grip.

For the Jews, the world war meant, above all, the Holocaust. But while destroying Zionism's main potential pool of manpower, Eastern European Jewry, the Holocaust also reenergized the movement as a powerful vehicle of the victimized and stateless, who now enjoyed the international community's sympathy. In a larger sense, history was repeating itself, to the benefit of Zionism. As the pogroms in Russia in the i88os had launched modern Zionism, so the largest pogrom of them all propelled the movement, almost instantly, into statehood. And much as World War I had issued in the first important statement of support for a Jewish "national home," the Balfour Declaration, so the aftermath of World War II resulted in that decisive international warrant, the United Nations Partition Resolution of a9 November 1947, which would underpin the emergence of the State of Israel.

In effect, the white paper policy remained in force through the war, even though Churchill-a pro-Zionist-had taken over the premiership in London in May 1940. In October 1941 he had written: "If Britain and the United States emerge victorious from the war, the creation of a great Jewish state in Palestine inhabitated [sic] by millions of Jews will be one of the leading features of the Peace Conference discussions."35 But during the war, there was, in fact, little Churchill could do, apart from winning the war quickly enough to save at least some of Europe's Jews. A secret cabinet committee he had set up in 1943 had recommended, as he had sought, a switch in British policy in favor of partition, but it was never acted upon. And although Churchill was continuously peeved by the Arabs' pro-Axis behavior, he knew full well that Britain needed a quiescent Middle East in the rear of its fighting formations and could not afford to rile them over Palestine. As Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald put it, "If there was trouble in Palestine ... there would be repercussions in Transjordania, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and even echoes of that trouble in India."36 But Churchill did authorize the establish ment of both the Palmah, a guerrilla strike force of Haganah members to be used if the Germans conquered Palestine, and the Jewish Brigade, a large formation composed mainly of volunteers from the Yishuv that fought with the British army in Italy. The veterans of both were to stand the Yishuv in good stead in the 1948 War.

In the first months of World War II, Zionist organizations stepped up efforts to save European Jews from the impending massacre-and to strengthen the Yishuv by bringing them to Palestine-through an illegal immigration operation run mainly by the newly created Institute for Illegal Immigration (hamossad le`aliya bilti ligalit), a secret arm of the Haganah. The British countered with a Royal Navy cordon that intercepted the rickety steamers, and many were stopped and their passengers reshipped to detention camps in Mauritius and, later, Cyprus. But by mid-1941 both Zionist and British efforts had become largely irrelevant: the Germans had overrun Europe and closed its ports while changing their policy toward the Jews from one of encouraging emigration to initiating mass murder. Few Jews reached Palestine from Europe during 1941-1945.

Nonetheless, the war significantly speeded up the march toward Jewish statehood. In January 1942, Chaim Weizmann, in an article in Foreign Af= fairs, explicitly demanded the establishment of a Jewish "state" in all of Palestine.37 And in May, an Extraordinary Zionist Conference, attended by most leaders of American Zionism, a number of exiled European Zionist leaders, and three members, including Ben-Gurion, of the JAE from Jerusalem, formalized this demand by voting to support what became known as the Biltmore Program (drafted by Meyer Weisgal, a Weizmann aide). Meeting at the Biltmore Hotel, New York, the delegates called for "the Land of Israel to be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new [postwar] democratic world."38 By "commonwealth" they meant state. This was to remain Zionist policy down to the end of 1947.

Palestine remained under British control, and the 1939 white paper continued to guide Whitehall's policies. But during the two and a half years between the end of World War II and the start of the first Arab-Israeli war, developments on the ground-in Washington, Palestine, and Europe-were to prove more important than the character and mindset of Whitehall's mandarins or their calculations and declarations. In the United States, the Jews decisively won the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people and its leaders, due to the impact of the Holocaust and effective Zionist propaganda. The existence of the five-million-strong Jewish community proved extremely important. The Jews, themselves energized and united by the Holocaust, were well organized and wealthy and were traditionally big donors to political campaigns. They also tended to vote in high numbers, were concentrated in such key electoral states as New York and California, and were, by tradition, Democrats. It was Zionism's luck that Democrats controlled the White House and Congress during the war and postwar years.

Perhaps the surprising thing is that, despite Jewish clout, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had managed during the 193os and the first years of the war to desist from anything but insignificant expressions of sympathy for Zionism. Roosevelt avoided a forthright commitment to Jewish statehood. The plight of European Jewry may have weighed heavily on the side of Zionism; but American global interests, as they emerged in the war against Germany, Italy, and Japan and as perceived by most senior officials in the relevant departments (State, Defense), militated in the other direction. The officials worried about the continued supply of oil, American bases, and open lines of communication as well as, from the war's end, countering Soviet influence and power. The continued goodwill or, at least, neutrality of the Arab world remained a major American interest. In May 1943 Roosevelt assured King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia that both Arabs and Jews would be heard before the powers decided on the contours of the postwar settlement in Palestine.

But the last months of the war saw a dramatic, gradual shift in American policy. In March 1944 the White House, under pressure from various departments, may have persuaded Congress to withdraw a joint resolution calling on Britain to rescind the white paper and supporting a Jewish state. But Roosevelt assured the Jews that "full justice will be done [after the war] to those who seek a Jewish national home, for which our Government and the American People have always had the deepest sympathy and today more than ever in view of the tragic plight of hundreds of thousands of homeless Jewish refugees."39 During the second half of 1944, both the Republicans and Democrats included in their election platforms pro-Zionist provisions, with the Republican presidential contender, Governor Thomas Dewey, declaring support for the establishment of a "Jewish ... commonwealth" in Palestine. At Yalta, in February 1945, Roosevelt, in conversation with Joseph Stalin, described himself as "a Zionist" (to which the Soviet dictator rejoined, "me too," but then added that Jews were "middlemen, profiteers, and parasites").'() Though the following month Roosevelt assured Ibn Saud that he would support "no action ... that would prove hostile to the Arab people,"41 the growingly Zionist orientation of American public opinion, fueled by the revelation of the full horror of the Holocaust, proved inexorable. Roosevelt's sudden death in April clinched the Zionist victory in Washington, with the more sympathetic vice president, Harry Truman, taking over the White House.

Truman was not the committed philo-Semite or Zionist Arab propagandists and Zionist politicians later made out. In i944, Truman had pointedly declined to support his party's pro-Zionist platform. And he reportedly told his cabinet in July 1946 that he had "no use for them [the Jews] and didn't care what happened to them."42 Without doubt, he was often annoyed and even angered by the perpetual Zionist importunings, blandishments, cajolery, and pressure to which he was subjected during 1945-1948. And once converted to supporting partition, he was pessimistic about the outcome: "I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath."43

But in August 1945, in Potsdam, Truman came out in principle in support of resettling the Holocaust survivors, the Jewish displaced persons (DPs), in Palestine (in response to which Arab League secretary-general Abd al-Rahman Azzam declared that this could touch off a new war between Christianity and Islam, as had the medieval Crusades.44 Azzam had long been tagged by the British as "intransigent." Back in 1939, he had told Weizmann that "there was nothing for it but a fight to the death against the Jews.")45 Truman pointedly asked the British prime minister to lift the restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine.46 Soon, this had crystallized into open support for the immediate resettlement in Palestine of "ioo,ooo" DPs.

For Palestine's Arabs, the war years passed without significant change. True, their financial assets grew substantially because of Allied spending and investment.47 But militarily and politically, things remained much the same. Few-perhaps five or six thousand-signed up with the Allied armed forces or otherwise gained military experience; there was no increment in local military force or organization. And the political (and military) leadership that had been shattered in 1938-1939 remained either in exile, neutered, or hors de combat. But by mid-1943, it had become increasingly clear to Palestinian and outside Arab leaders that the Allies would win and that, whatever their true feelings, the Arabs had better at least edge toward, if not jump outright onto, the bandwagon. To gain anything from the Allied victory in the postwar settlement, Palestine's Arabs would need to have a recognized leadership and an organization capable of managing the coming struggle and reaping its possible rewards. During 1943 the former heads of Palestine's Istiqlal Party- Awni Abd al-Hadi, Rashid Haj Ibrahim, and Ahmad Hilmi Pashalaunched an effort to reunite the Palestinian nationalist movement. In August, Ahmad Hilmi began to reorganize the Arab National Fund, designed to counter Jewish land purchasing, and in November, the fifteenth conference of the Palestinian Arab chambers of commerce met in Jerusalem and set in motion a process to elect new Palestinian national representation. The Istiqlalists' platform called for the rigid implementation of the provisions of the 1939 white paper.48

Because of Husseini opposition, matters hung fire. But not to be outdone, the Husseinis also began to reorganize. True, their main leaders were in exile-Haj Arnin in Berlin, serving the Nazis, and Jamal Husseini, interned in Southern Rhodesia. But the remaining local leadership, spearheaded by Emile Ghury, a Greek Orthodox journalist, in April 1944 formally relaunched the Palestine Arab Party, whose central demands were immediate Palestinian Arab independence, the cessation of Jewish immigration, and "the dissolution of the Jewish National Home." By September, the Husseinis were once again the most active and powerful political faction in Arab Palestine.49 Returning to the fray, the Palestinians, led by the Husseinis, on Balfour Declaration day, 2 November, launched nationwide protests.

The "repoliticization" of Palestine's Arabs at war's end coincided with the British-supported drive for pan-Arab unity, which had captivated the political imagination of the Middle East since before World War I. During 25 September-7 October 1944, delegates from seven Arab countries met in Alexandria and founded "a League ... of Independent Arab States," henceforward known as the Arab League. On 22 March 1945, these states formally signed a pact in Cairo. A secretariat was set up in the Egyptian capital, with the Egyptian 'Abd al-Rahman Azzam as secretary-general.50

The Palestinians had sent Musa al- A1ami to the gathering in Alexandria. He was designated first an "observer," then a "delegate," the Palestinian Arab community thus enjoying, at least theoretically, an equal footing with existing or emergent Arab states.

At the end of the conference, the delegates issued the Alexandria Protocol. A section was devoted to the issue of Palestine. The Arab states resolved that "Palestine constitutes an important part of the Arab world and that the rights of the [Palestine] Arabs cannot be touched without prejudice to peace and stability in the Arab world." The League endorsed the demand for a stoppage of Jewish immigration, the cessation of land sales, and "independence for Palestine." In light of the international circumstances-almost universal horror over the Holocaust and growing American pressure to resettle the remnants of European Jewry in Palestine-the Arab states declared that they were "second to none in regretting the woes which have been inflicted on the Jews of Europe by European dictatorial states. But the question of these Jews should not be confused with Zionism, for there can be no greater injustice and aggression than solving the problem of the Jews of Europe by another injustice, that is, by inflicting injustice on the Palestine Arabs. "51

To add cogency to their demands for a voice in the expected postwar settlement, four of the states-Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia-in early 1945 declared war on the Axis, thus assuring membership in the nascent United Nations Organization, the heir to the interwar League of Nations.

The establishment of the Arab League at once strengthened the Palestinian cause and weakened the voice of Palestinian nationalism. On one hand, the Arab states collectively weighed in behind Palestinian Arab demands. But at the same time, the pact gave the member states the right to select who would represent the Palestinian Arabs in their councils, so long as Palestine was not independent. Coupled with the continued factional deadlock within Arab Palestine, this assured, in the words of one historian, that "the initiative in Palestine Arab politics thus passed to the heads of the Arab states" and "major political decisions on the organization of Arab resistance to Zionism were thereafter taken not at Jerusalem but at Cairo."52