The Question Of Palestine, 1914-1918; British-Jewish-Arab Relations

445 Pages·1973·12.789 MB·English

by  Isaiah Friedman

The Question of
Palestine, 1914-1918
British-Jewish-Arab Relations
Isaiah Friedman
Schocken Books . New York
Published in U.S.A. in 1973
by Schocken Books Inc.
zoo Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016
Copyright © 1973 by Isaiah Friedman
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 73-80310
Printed in Great Britain
To my father, Jonah Friedman,
who died somewhere in Soviet Russia
during the Second World War and
whose burial place is not known

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Palestine—a Strategie Bulwark of Egypt? i
2 The Samuel Proposal and British Policy in Turkey-in-Asia 8
3 The Zionists and die Assimilationists 25
4 The Jews and the War 38
5 Jewish Palestine—A Propaganda Card 48
6 The McMahonrHussein Correspondence and the
Question of Palestine 65
7 The Sykes-Picot Agreement, die Arab Question,
and Zionism 97
8 The Breakthrough 119
9 Achievements in Paris and Rome 144
10 British War Aims Reassessed 164
11 A Missed Opportunity 177
12 Sir Mark Sykes in the East 203
13 A Separate Peace with Turkey or an
Arah-Zionist-Armenian Entente? 211
14 The Conjoint Foreign Committee and die
Zionists 227
15 hi Search of a Formula 244
16 The Struggle for the Declaration 259
17 Motives and Effects 282
vii
VW CONTENTS
The Meaning of the Declaration 309
Notes 333
Bibliography 408
Index 427
Preface
This work developed from what originally was intended as an article to
supplement Mr Leonard Stein’s book The Balfour Declaration, published
by Vallentine & Mitchell in 1961. His is a monumental study, a model of
scholarship and objectivity, written in a superb style that could hardly be
bettered. It will certainly remain a classic in this particular freíd. Yet the
more I delved into the newly available records at the Public Record Office
in London, to which Mr Stein had no access, the more convinced I be­
came that there was room for a more ambitious undertaking.
Nor could I subscribe to the view, dominant among British historians,
dut the Balfour Declaration was the result of miscalculation, a product of
sentiment rather than of considered interests of state. The Foreign Office
files, the W ar Cabinet papers, and other previously untapped sources
gave me a coveted opportunity to find more satisfactory answers to here­
tofore unanswered questions, primarily on the motivations of British
policy towards the Zionist movement. These were manifold; the most
important was to_counter the possibility ofa T urco^German protectorate
of a Jewish Palestine emerging in tbe aftermath of the war. In igi7jyi
Allied victory_wa?.by no means certain, and it was generally believed that,
at best, the conflict would end in a negotiated peace. With the belligerents
proclaiming themselves strongly in favour of the principle of self-
determination, as opposed tc^ annexation, the nature ofJ ewish representa­
tions at the future Peace Conference (so it was reasoned) could have made
all the difference. This was the Zionists’ strength, of which they were not
fully aware.
Nor do the records confirm the assumption that, when the formula for
a declaration was considered at the Foreign Office, the key-words were
’asylum’ or ‘refuge’. In fact, all the evidence points the other way. In my
last chapter I have tried to show how the term Jewish National Home was
understood by contemporary public men and statesmen, and what were
the expectations of those who shaped the Declaration. I found that it was
also necessary to reassess the relations between the Zionists and the anti-
Zionists, as the issue could no longer be approached in entirely black-and-
white terms.
IX
X PBBFACB
Other matten also called for revision. The Sykes-Picot Agreement has
acquired a bad name, and been depicted as a ‘product of greed* and a
‘startling piece of double dealing’. This opinion is no longer tenable. The
official records show that the policy of the Asquith-Grey administration
was essentially non-annexationist in character, and it was not before die
revelation of Germany *s ambitions in the East that, during Lloyd George’s
premiership, dismemberment o f die Ottoman Empire came to be re­
garded as indispensable. It was not the Constantinople Agreement, as is
generally presumed, that was the progenitor of the Sykes-Picot Agree­
ment, but the negotiations with Sharif Hussein. It wasjn order to make
die Arab revolt against die Turks possible that an inter-Allied Agreement
was concluded in 1916. There was no material incompatibility between
that agreement and the pledges made to Hussein.
I was also privileged to be the first scholar to examine heretofore inr-
accessible documents relating to the intricate question of whether or not
Palestine was die ‘twice promised land*. This controversial issue bedevilled
Middle Eastern politics for over half a century, and it still has, as Professor
Arnold Toynbee pointed out (Comment, Journal of Contemporary History,
October 1970), a political bearing. I have no axe to grind, but I am con­
vinced, from my close reading of the available documentary evidence,
dut the hands of the British Government were clean. The understanding
with Sharif Hussein was not of a unilateral nature, and it was not the
British who remained in debt.
I intended to bring my story up to the eve of the Peace Conference in
Paris; to deal with the Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration, and with
Arab relations with die British and the Zionists in 1918, but this would
have made the book too long. For this omission I apologise; I hope to
treat the issue elsewhere. References to German-Zionist relations were also
reduced to an absolute minimum, since this is fully covered in my forth­
coming Germany and Zionism, 1897-1918. In writing, I took it for granted
that the reader was acquainted with Mr Stein’s book and therefore tried
to avoid unnecessary repetition.
In addition to the official records at the Public Record Office, I have
drawn extensively on the unpublished private papers of British officers,
as well as on Zionist archival material, as listed in the bibliography.
Acknowledgments
It is 'with pleasure that I thank many distinguished people and institutions
for their help.
I have benefited gready from many discussions, both oral and written,
with Mr Stein. Professor W . N. Medlicott, Professor Emeritus of Inter­
national History at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, and his successor Professor James Joli, gave me generously of
their time and knowledge in reading and criticising the first draft of my
work. For dûs, and for their interest and encouragement during and after
my post-graduate studies at the School, I am gready indebted.
I had also the immense advantage of gaining the goodwill of Professor
Sir Isaiah Berlin, O.M., President of Wolfson College, Oxford, whose
faith in my work helped me over many a bad patch. Had it not been for
his unflagging support, the book would never have been completed. I
had many useful and inspiring conversations with Dr Robert Weltsch,
Director of the Leo Baeck Institute, London; Professor Walter Laqueur,
Director of die Institute of Contemporary History; Dr S. Levenberg,
Representative of die Jewish Agency for Israel, and the late Samuel
Landman. I felt honoured when Professor Arnold Toynbee invited me to
join him in a discussion on die McMahon-Hussein Correspondence,
published in die Journal of Contemporary History.
I should like to acknowledge my debt to the staff of the Public Record
Office, the British Museum, London University Library and the library
of die London School of Economics, the Institute of Historical Research,
and the Wiener Library, for their invaluable and willing help.
I am very grateful to Lady Clayton and Mr S. W . Clayton for placing
at my disposal the papers of Sir Gilbert Clayton; to Mr Richard Hill,
formerly Lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies of Durham Uni­
versity, and to Mr I. J. C. Foster, Keeper of Oriental Books, for permitting
me to consult the Wingate Papers, and to Miss Elizabeth Monroe, Senior
Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, for allowing me to use die Sled-
mere Papers, die Yale Reports (in microfilm), the Allenby Papers and
Samuel Papen (xeroxed).
xi
XU ACKNOWLBDGMBNTS
I should also like to thank Mr Mark Bonham-Carter for his kind per­
mission to quote from the Asquith Papers at the Bodleian Library, MSS
Department, Oxford; Mrs Judith Gendel, for permitting me to dte from
a memorandum of her late father, Edwin S. Montagu; Professor A. J. P.
Taylor, Director of the Beaverbrook Library, for permission to quote
from Lloyd George’s letters; and the President of the Anglo-Jewish
Association for his kind consent to die use of the records of the Conjoint
Foreign Committee.
Transcripts and quotations of Crown Copyright material appear by
permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.
The late Lavy Bakstansky, formerly General Secretary of the Zionist
Federation of the United Kingdom, and I. J. Miller, currently its Executive
Secretary, gave me permission to use Zionist archival material without
restriction. Dr Michael Heymann, Director of the Central Zionist
Archives in Jerusalem, and Dr Alex Bein, his predecessor, accorded me a
similar privilege. I owe them a great debt for their courtesy and invaluable
help. Nor can I omit to mention the Trustees of die Weizmann Archives,
and its Director, Mr Julian Meitzer, who kindly allowed me to quote
from the Weizmann Papers. I should also like to thank Mr Yoram
Ephrati, the Curator of the Aaron Aaronsohn Archives, for permission to
quote from the Aaronsohn Diaries, when still unpublished. These have
recendy appeared in print in Hebrew.
I gratefully acknowledge the permission granted me by the following
copyright holders and publishers to quote from their books: The Rt Hon.
Julian Amery, M.P., from Leopold Amery: My Political Life; First
Beaverbrook Foundation and its Hon. Director, Professor A. J. P.
Taylor, from Lloyd George: The Truth about the Peace Treaties; Chatto 8c
Windus, from Charles K. Webster, The Art and Practice ofD iplomacy; The
Clarendon Press, from Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances; Curtis Brown,
from Viscount Samuel, Memoirs; Victor GoUancz, from Chaim Weiz­
mann, edited by Paul Goodman; A. P. Watt, from A. J. Balfour, Opinions
and Arguments.
Several persons have suffered from my attachment to this subject, but
none more than my wife and son, who showed sympathetic under­
standing during die long hours I remained locked in my study; my wife’s
contribution in encouragement and criticism was more iban can be
adequately acknowledged here.
It gives me great pleasure to thank die Hebrew University's Institute
of Contemporary Jewry and its Head, Professor Moshe Davis, for the
generous grant which enabled me to undertake the preliminary research
connected with this book. I am grateful to Dr Israel Kolath, and partial-