The Balfour Declaration was a document of the British government, approved by the League of Nations, which allowed London to gain a foothold in Palestine for a long time, skillfully maneuvering between Jewish and Arab claims to create their own state.
The text of the Declaration was constructed in such a way that it contained two mutually exclusive parts:
The first part endorsed "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" and committed Great Britain to "use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object". This formulation gave London the opportunity to reject Arab claims by referring to its obligations to the Jewish people and the international community.
The second part included a clause that effectively nullified the promises of the first part. The clause stated: "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
In fact, the British ruling class played a double game: on the one hand, it fueled anti-Jewish sentiments among the Arabs, and on the other, it referred to these sentiments as an objective obstacle to fulfilling its obligations.
As a result, in May 1939, three months before the outbreak of World War II, Great Britain officially renounced its commitment to "establishing in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people", and in 1944 it closed Palestine to Jews. [1]
Content
Why didn't Britain claim Palestine as a colony?
The Importance of Palestine to Britain
Britain was initially opposed to the creation of a Jewish state
Divide and Rule - British Policy to Retain Palestine
Britain Restricts Jewish Immigration to Palestine
Increasing Arab Immigration to Palestine
Britain Repudiates the Balfour Declaration
The British Ruling Class and the Holocaust
Britain sends surviving Jews to camps
Britain Organizes the Arab Attack on Israel in 1948
Conclusion
WHY DIDN'T BRITAIN CLAIM PALESTINE AS A COLONY?
The first question that arises when studying this topic is: why did Britain choose the mandate system to establish control over Palestine, rather than simply declaring it a colony, as happened with India or South Africa?
The answer is that after 1919 the creation of new colonies became impossible.
"After World War I ... various national leaders agreed to create the mandate system, which proved to be a compromise between outright colonial expansion and genuine independence, whereby the former German and Turkish colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were mandated to the conquering nations in trust until the indigenous peoples were deemed ready to administer their own governments and societies.." [2]
THE IMPORTANCE OF PALESTINE TO BRITAIN
The second question is: why, of all the mandated territories, was Palestine of such exceptional importance to Great Britain that London sought to hold on to it until the collapse of the British Empire?
In April 1920, the League of Nations granted Great Britain a mandate to govern Mesopotamia, Transjordan and Palestine.
Already in 1921, the Kingdom of Iraq emerged on the territory of Mesopotamia, which gained sovereignty in 1932.
In the same year 1921, the Emirate of Transjordan received broad autonomy, and in 1946 it became an independent state.
Only Palestine remained under direct British control until 1948, a time that coincided with the beginning of the collapse of the empire itself.
Historians agree that the main factor that gave Palestine its special significance was the port of Haifa. It was the final destination of the Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline, [3] which carried Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean coast. Royal Navy ships and oil tankers bound for the British Isles refueled here. For London, it was the closest and most important source of "black gold".
Palestine also had strategic significance: it served as a buffer zone covering the Suez Canal, the artery of the British Empire. Through the canal, Persian oil produced by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was delivered to the metropolis on Shell tankers. [4-6]
American economist Daniel Yergin, in his book "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power", provides the argument that guided the British establishment:
"The fuel shortage of the First World War made oil a key element of Britain's national interest and placed Mesopotamia at the centre of the action. War Secretary Sir Maurice Hankey wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour: Oil will be even more important in the next war than coal is in this. The only large reserves that we can bring under British control are in Persia and Mesopotamia." [7]
Time magazine on April 21, 1941, summed up the importance of the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline by calling it "the carotid artery of the British Empire". [37]
BRITAIN WAS INITIALLY OPPOSED TO THE CREATION OF A JEWISH STATE
Given the economic and strategic importance of Palestine, the British ruling class, despite the commitments made in the Balfour Declaration, did not initially intend to hand over the territory to the Jews. This is evidenced by the article 'The Creation of Israel, 1948,' published on the website of the US State Department:
"The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees to the region." [11]
Professor Carroll Quigley, in his book "The Anglo-American Establishment", summed up the position of the Milner Group (one of the most influential factions of the British ruling class) regarding the future of Palestine:
"The attitude of the Milner Group toward the specific problem of Zionism was expressed in explicit terms by Lord Milner himself in a speech in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923. (which he concluded with the words): Palestine... must never become a Jewish state." [12]
A remarkable fact: the Balfour Declaration was addressed not to the World Zionist Organization, which represented the interests of the Jewish people, but to Lord Walter Rothschild, who, according to Carroll Quigley, was at the core of the Milner Group.
The Balfour Declaration was thus essentially a ploy by the British ruling class to keep Palestine under its control for as long as possible. The methods by which this goal was achieved will be discussed in the next chapter.
DIVIDE AND RULE - BRITISH POLICY TO RETAIN PALESTINE
The divide-and-rule policy that had kept Britain in control of its colonies for centuries proved no less effective in Palestine.
The initiator of this policy was Herbert Samuel, a member of the British ruling class, an ethnic Jew related to the Rothschild family. On July 1, 1920, he was appointed the first High Commissioner of Palestine. In a short time, Samuel succeeded in raising the intensity of Arab hostility towards the Jews to the maximum.
To stir up antagonism among the Arab population, Samuel relied on radical Arab nationalists led by Amin al-Husseini. Husseini later became an ally of Hitler and after World War II his name appeared on the list of war criminals that collaborated with the Nazi regime. [13, 14]
In April 1920, Husseini organized riots in which five Jews were killed and several hundred injured. For these actions, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. [15]
Samuel appreciated the useful zeal of the Arab nationalist leader. In March 1921, Husseini was pardoned, and in May he was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, a position specially created for him by Samuel. [5,13]
Husseini lived up to the expectations of his British patrons: using his post as mufti, he united Arab nationalists and Islamic forces against Zionism, increasing antagonism towards the Jewish population.
From May 1 to 7, 1921, Husseini organized anti-Jewish riots in Jaffa, during which 90 Jews and 62 Arabs were killed. [5]
Russian historian Alexei Tsvetyansky, in his article 'The British Occupation Administration in Palestine and the Formation of Arab-Jewish Contradictions (1917-1920),' notes that Husseini's anti-Jewish activities received tacit support from the British military administration:
"[The British] generals... were opposed to the establishment of a Jewish national home and were deliberately slow in reacting to Arab unrest; and some military men - members of the administration - even encouraged Arab-Muslim leaders to take to the streets." [16]
Russian historian Lyudmila Samarskaya in her work 'British Policy in Palestine: Interests versus Reality (1917-1922)' cites the opinion of British historian James Renton:
"Renton argues that both Zionism and the Arab national movement were used by the British government for purposes that had little to do with the practical realisation of their aspirations to create their own states. According to the author, the creation of a Jewish state was never part of Great Britain's plans, but the idea of supporting local national movements turned out to be a very convenient tool for ensuring its influence in the Middle East." [17]
To sum up, Samarskaya quotes a monograph by a group of MGIMO historians:
"Great Britain foresaw in advance the emergence of a conflict between the Jewish and Arab national movements and planned to act as an arbitrator in the future, guided in its policy by the traditional principle of "divide and rule"" [18]
Following the Arab riots of 1921, the British government expressed doubts about the possibility of creating an independent state in Palestine. [5]
Thus, the British-inspired Arab-Jewish conflict served as a convenient justification for them to maintain control over Palestine as a guarantor of stability until 1948.
BRITAIN RESTRICTS JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO PALESTINE
In response to the unrest in Jaffa, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill issued the First White Paper on 3 June 1922, which began Britain's gradual withdrawal from the commitments made in the Balfour Declaration.
The First White Paper:
limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, tying it to the country's economic capacity to absorb new arrivals;
asserted that "it was impossible to make Palestine a Jewish country to the extent that England was English" and that the Balfour Declaration had provided for "the establishment of a Jewish national home only in part of Palestine";
limited the area for the establishment of a "Jewish national home" to the territory west of the Jordan River (about 30% of Palestine);
secured the allocation of about 70% of Palestine for the creation of the Arab emirate of Transjordan. [19, 20]
The creation of the state of Transjordan on 70% of the territory originally intended for the Jewish national homeland was the first violation by Great Britain of its obligations under the Balfour Declaration. Supporters of the idea of establishing an Arab state in Palestine usually pass over in silence the fact that it appeared two years before the Jewish one.
The emergence of Transjordan was connected with the promise of the British to the Sharif of Mecca Hussein ibn Ali to create kingdoms for his sons Faisal and Abdullah as a reward for the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The promise was fulfilled: Faisal became the king of Iraq, and Abdullah received the throne of Syria. However, the French soon expelled Abdullah, and then the British created the Kingdom of Transjordan for him on the territory of Palestine. [10]
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill liked to boast that he had established the Emirate of Transjordan "with the stroke of a pen". [5]
INCREASING ARAB IMMIGRATION TO PALESTINE
By restricting Jewish immigration, the British administration turned a blind eye to the influx of Arab migrants from neighboring countries, whose numbers increased many times over thanks to the economic development of the region, stimulated by the activities of Jewish and British entrepreneurs. [21]
A British report to the League of Nations in 1935 noted that illegal Arab immigration to Palestine was almost twice as high as Jewish immigration. [21]
Speaking in the House of Commons on 23 May 1939, Winston Churchill noted the rapid growth of the Arab population of Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, mainly due to migration from neighbouring Arab countries:
"[Unlike the Jews] So far from being persecuted [by our administration], the Arabs have crowded into the country [Palestine] and multiplied till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population. Now we are asked to decree that all this is to stop and all this is to come to an end. We are now asked to submit-and this is what rankles most with me-to an agitation which is fed with foreign money and ceaselessly inflamed by Nazi and by Fascist propaganda." [22]
The reality is that the so-called "Palestinian people" are largely composed of Arabs who migrated to Palestine during the British Mandate period (1920-1947).
In addition, most of the Arab clans in Palestine are of non-Palestinian origin. According to Michael Chernin's study "The Arab Population of Israel and the Palestinian Territories" (Russian Institute of the Middle East, 2007), there is not a single indigenous Arab clan living in Gaza City. The majority of them are of Egyptian origin; in second place are people from the Maghreb (North Africa), followed by clans from Syria, Arabia and Iraq. [38]
The heterogeneity of the Arab population of Palestine is one of the reasons preventing the formation of a "Palestinian people". However, the main reason lies in the peculiarities of ethnic psychology. This issue is the subject of my article "Why was the Palestinian people not born?".[39]
BRITAIN REPUDIATES THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
Husseini's continuing anti-Jewish activities, encouraged by the British administration, culminated in a wave of Jewish pogroms in the cities of Hebron, Safed and Haifa in August 1929. The Hebron massacre was the most brutal, taking the lives of 67 of the city's 700 Jewish residents. The evacuated community of Hebron, which had existed since biblical times, ceased to exist. [23]
By 1936, Husseini had achieved such influence that he was able to organize an Arab armed revolt that began to threaten the British Empire itself. It took the British more than two and a half years to suppress the rebellion. During this time, more than five thousand Arabs, about 400 Jews, and 200 Britons died. [24]
After Husseini had fulfilled his role, the British administration removed him from his post as chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council and arrested its members. Fearing arrest, Husseini fled to Lebanon.
The Arab Revolt resulted in Colonial Secretary MacDonald's Sixth White Paper, published in May 1939, three months before the outbreak of World War II.
Under the terms of the Sixth White Paper, Great Britain:
abandoned its commitments under the Balfour Declaration and declared that the new "aim of His Majesty's Government is the establishment within ten years of an independent State in Palestine" (with an Arab majority);
prohibited Jews from acquiring land in Palestine;
restricted the establishment of new Jewish settlements on Jewish-owned land;
limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to 15,000 a year for the next five years;
closed Palestine completely to Jews from 1944 onwards. [25,26]
The pro-Arab orientation of the Sixth White Paper was dictated by economic considerations. Britain preferred an Arab state in western Palestine to a Jewish one, since the latter would threaten the operation of the Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline. In addition, the Arabs' weak capacity for self-government left London with room to maintain control.
THE BRITISH RULING CLASS AND THE HOLOCAUST
In the spring of 1944, the British policy of closing Palestine to Jews was threatened. The Nazi leadership offered Jewish leaders in Great Britain, the United States and Palestine an exchange of 800,000 Hungarian Jews for goods the Nazis needed.
In response, the British ruling class tasked Jewish leaders with thwarting this initiative and ensuring the deportation of Hungarian Jews to concentration camps.
In carrying out this task, the leadership of the Jewish Agency, headquartered in London, entered into a conspiracy with the leadership of the Third Reich. The aim of the conspiracy was to facilitate the accelerated deportation of 800,000 Hungarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps. As a result, almost all Hungarian Jews were sent to death camps during the three summer months of 1944.
In addition, Jewish leaders in Britain and the United States, with the support of British intelligence services, organized a so-called "conspiracy of silence" by prohibiting the publication of information about the genocide coming from continental Europe. Any information about the extermination of Jews was carefully suppressed, and those who tried to disseminate it were discredited.
This crime is documented in detail in Ben Hecht's book "Perfidy", published in the United States in 1961. [27]
BRITAIN SENDS SURVIVING JEWS TO CAMPS
During World War II, Britain imposed a naval blockade on Palestine, sinking or turning back ships carrying Jewish refugees from Europe. At the same time, London closed access to Jews not only to the British Isles, but to all colonies of its empire.
By closing off the avenues of escape, the British establishment hoped that the problem of Jewish immigration to Palestine would be 'solved' by the Nazis through the mass extermination of European Jewry.
However, the British hopes were not fully justified. For various reasons, the Nazis failed to exterminate about 300 thousand Jews. London faced a new task - to prevent their resettlement to Palestine.
To this end, camps for displaced persons were set up in the territories of Europe under the control of Great Britain and the United States, where the surviving Jews were brought. Some of these camps were set up on the premises of former Nazi camps.
Eventually, some 250,000 Jews ended up in displaced persons camps. British policy was to return refugees to their countries of origin, often by force and against the will of the survivors. [28]
Those refugees who managed to break through the British cordons headed for Mediterranean ports and boarded illegal ships bound for Palestine. However, most of these ships were intercepted at sea by the British navy and their passengers were sent to internment camps in Cyprus. [29]
The British kept the Jews in camps until 1949, trying to prevent them from joining the Jewish forces that defended the young state of Israel from the invasion of the armies of five Arab countries, organized by the British secret services. [30]
BRITAIN ORGANIZES THE ARAB ATTACK ON ISRAEL IN 1948
In an effort to prevent the creation of a Jewish state, the British ruling class placed its bets on the Arab regimes. To this end, London initiated the creation of the Arab League, which united Syria, Transjordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. The agreement to create the Arab League was signed on March 22, 1945 in Cairo. Saudi Arabia and North Yemen later joined the organization. [31,32]
Abdel-Rahman Azzam, who had previously served as Egypt's Minister of Religious Affairs, was elected the first Secretary General of the Arab League. He also headed the London office of the Muslim Brotherhood. Educated in London, Azzam eventually settled in the British capital. [33]
In 1947, on the eve of the UN vote to partition Palestine, British intelligence in the Middle East, under the leadership of General Iltiid Clayton, together with the governments of the Arab League, coordinated preparations for an attack on the future Jewish state.
On September 23, 1947, shortly after the meeting of Arab League representatives in Saufar, the French attaché in Baghdad reported on a secret British plan to foment an Arab-Jewish war in Palestine.
After the supposed victory over the Jewish state, Britain promised to divide the captured territory among the participants in the attack. Britain planned to keep Haifa with its port and oil refineries, as well as the Negev region, which opened the way to Sinai and Egypt. [30]
The British plan was put into action on May 15, 1948, when the armies of five Arab states - members of the Arab League - invaded Israel.
In January 1949, when it became clear that the Arab armies would not be able to destroy Israel, Britain decided to attack the Jewish state itself. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin issued an ultimatum: if Israel did not immediately withdraw its troops from Egyptian territory, Britain would declare war on it. However, the threat of an Anglo-Israeli conflict was averted thanks to the intervention of President Truman and the mood of the British public, which did not want another war. [34]
The collapse of the British Empire in the 1950s and 1960s did not weaken the desire of the British ruling class to destroy the Jewish state. Britain's modern war against the State of Israel has taken on more covert and sophisticated forms. It is being waged:
through the Israeli left under the slogan of the "peace process"; [25]
under the guise of demands from the UN, the Arab League and the Socialist International to create a second Arab state in Palestine;
supported by continuous terror by radical Islamic organizations supervised by London. [36]
CONCLUSION
A study of the history of the Balfour Declaration shows that the British ruling class was not guided by good intentions but by pragmatic considerations. Its policies combined economic interests, strategic calculations and the ability to manipulate ethnic and religious groups. The Arab-Jewish conflict created by the British allowed London to maintain influence in the region, preventing the formation of a Jewish state.
The Balfour Declaration remains a shining example of the divide and rule approach, where official promises mask real objectives.