Prelude to Israel AN ANALYSIS OF ZIONIST DIPLOMACY 1897-1947 PDF
Preview Prelude to Israel AN ANALYSIS OF ZIONIST DIPLOMACY 1897-1947
Alan R. Taylor PRELUDE TO ISRAEL AN ANALYSIS OF ZIONIST DIPLOMACY 1897-1947 THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES Prelude to Israel AN ANALYSIS OF ZIONIST DIPLOMACY 1897-1947 ALAN R. TAYLOR —TBBLnWAfcy WmWAm tTNIVERSn Y OF PETROf .BUM afcM&JERAU fiUAHRAN, 3J26S, SAUDI ARABIA, THE LiBBi TY UNIVERSITY C? * Wf** PHAHBAN - SAUDI ARABIA. THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES The Institute for Palestine Studies is an independent non-profit Arab research organization not affiliated to any government, political party, or group, devoted to a better understanding of the Palestine problem. B00&J in the Institute series are published in the interest of public information. They represent the free expression of their authors and do not necessarily indicate the judgement or opinions of the Institute. Copyright © 1959 by Philosophical Library Inc., New York This edition first published 1961 by Barton, Longman and Todd, Ltd., London New impression with a revised Introduction and Epilogue, February 1970 Copyright © 1970 by the Institute for Palestine Studies REPRINT SERIES N° 5 THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES Ashqar Building, Clemenceau St., P.O. Box 7164 Beirut, Lebanon NOTE TO SECOND IMPRESSION At the request of the Institute for Palestine Studies the author has kindly given his permission for Prelude to Israel to be reprinted. Dedicated to all who have brought the light of scholarship to the problem of Palestine CONTENTS Preface xi i. The Creation of Zionist Aims and Policy 1 i. The Balfour Declaration 10 hi. The Mandate 26 iv. The Growth of Political Zionism 40 v. Zionist Strategy in the 1930s 49 vi. The Reorientation of Political Zionism 56 vn. Wartime Zionist Diplomacy in Britain and Palestine 66 vm. The Zionist Search for American Support 78 ix. The Making of Modern Israel 89 Epilogue 108 Bibliography 116 Index 120 PREFACE For over twenty years the State of Israel has been a fact of life in the Middle East, an unsettling reality which has occupied the anxious concern of the world and perplexed both the knowledgeable and the uninformed. The contestants in the Arab-Israeli conflict remain mutually hostile and have become increasingly embittered, with the result that there remains as much today as two decades ago a Palestine “prob¬ lem.” But since the June War of 1967, the imperatives of a settlement have become more apparent. The escalating charac¬ ter of the conflict, the instability of territorial status, and the involvement of the great powers have raised serious threats to international peace. This has led to increased concern and new efforts to achieve a solution. Of primary importance in the peace-making task is know¬ ledge and understanding, a mature perspective which can show the way to possible avenues of approach rather than to illusory panaceas. The starting point of necessity is history. Perhaps the major cause of current confusion as to the real issues is ignorance of the problem’s historical roots. The actual dimen¬ sions of the crisis cannot be grasped in terms of the more recent developments alone, for these reflect only claims and counter-claims, assaults and retaliations, without reference to the origins of conflict and the deeper sources of causality. Reduced to fundamentals, the Palestine problem is a struggle between the Arab and Zionist movements for control of the southwestern sector of the Fertile Crescent. The function of this book is to trace the history of Zionist endeavours to establish a Jewish state in Palestine from the founding of the Zionist movement in 1897 to the creation of Israel, with special emphasis on the diplomatic methodology involved. It deals xi Xll PRELUDE TO ISRAEL specifically with the origins of Zionism as a political movement, the formulation of particular goals, and the implementation of policies designed to achieve these goals. The purpose of such an account is to clarify the nature and direction of Zionism in its formative phase, which still remains relatively obscure. A further aim is to dispel certain misconceptions. One of these is the notion that Zionism is essentially a religious movement with religious goals. This is not true. Zionism is actually a secular and political movement. What it seeks is the reconstitution of Jewish identity in the context of modern political nationalism. Though religious Jews have adhered to Zionism, their interests have been accommo¬ dated to the secular orientation of the leadership and the non¬ religious majority. By employing the slogan of “return,” political Zionism has gained the support of religious Jews for modernist programmes of “normalization” and “negation of the Diaspora.” This is why Zionism has been confused as a facet of Judaism, whereas it is actually more concerned with essentially populist problems of integration, group affilia¬ tion, and cultural assertiveness. A second misconception which this volume seeks to clarify concerns the manner in which Israel came to be. It is commonly thought that the establishment of the state was a natural and spontaneous event inspired by the traditional longing of the Jews to reconstitute their national life in Palestine and precipitated by recurrent episodes of anti-Semitism cli¬ maxed in Hitler’s programmatic genocide. This also is a dis¬ torted picture of what actually happened. The founding of the state was neither religious nor spon¬ taneous, but the result of careful planning and organized activity on behalf of a secular national ideal. Long before anti-Semitism had reached the proportions it assumed in Nazi Germany, the Jewish national idea was formulated by Zionist ideologists as the only effective programme for the regeneration of the Jews as a modern people. Though many Jewish thinkers and communities rejected this premise and even regarded it as contrary to Judaism, the apologists and poli¬ tical leaders of Zionism embarked on an intensive programme to proselytize the Jewish world and found a Jewish state in PREFACE Xlll Palestine. Their efforts over half a century, which arc summa¬ rized in this book, were ultimately successful, but created the problem of Palestine for the Middle East and raised profound religious and ethical questions for the Jews. A final misconception which needs to be clarified is the belief that Zionism is a completely democratic movement, stemming from the Jewish masses and sustained by broad popular support. It would be more accurate to describe the Zionist phenomenon as directive populism. Its founder, Theo¬ dor Herzl, regarded himself as the self-appointed director of a latent popular movement, and the leadership patterns which he founded became indigenous to Zionism. Within the context of this directive system, the many factions within the movement developed a party organization which achieved political ex¬ pression through the Zionist Congress. Thus, organized Zionism combined elitist and democratic institutions, permitting the assertion of factional positions but retaining a leadership principle which provided unity of direction and purpose for an otherwise diverse movement. One further elaboration concerning the nature of Zionism should be made to avoid confusion. The basic components of the movement have been political, cultural, and religious Zionism. The political Zionists stressed the importance of statehood and Normalization,55 not even insisting on Palestine as the site of the new Jewish nation. Their concern was the development of a statist programme as a means to collective integration in a nationalist-oriented world. By contrast, cul¬ tural Zionism was preoccupied with the reassertion of Jewish identity in a modern form. It looked to a cultural centre in Palestine as a regenerating influence, though its founder — Achad Ha‘am — was not religious in basic outlook. Religious Zionism, which has existed in an unorganized form within a traditionalist framework for centuries, revered the Holy Land as a place of sanctification. Though many Orthodox Jews regarded modern political Zionism as a profane movement, some joined it on the premise that the messianic age could come about by human agency. This raised the problem of realizing a spiritual ideal through a secular programme, which Orthodox adherents of Zionism have yet to solve.
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