The Promised Land
A brief history of modern Israel
This article, based on solid research, provides helpful background information that is essential to understanding the conditions that gave rise to the present scenario in the Middle East.
The Protectorate
Lord Balfour was the man who famously gave his name to the concept of providing a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. But he was by no means the first.
The concept had been around since the days of the Reformation, and the one whose efforts probably had the greatest historical significance is a lady by the name of Joanna Cartwright. She and her son Ebenezer were Puritans who escaped persecution in England by going to reside in Holland. They petitioned the British Parliament on behalf of the Jewish people in 1649:
“That this nation of England, with the inhabitants of the Netherlands, shall be the first and the readiest to transport Israel’s sons and daughters in their ships to the land promised to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for an everlasting inheritance.”1
It was the beginning of the Protectorate, and Oliver Cromwell shared their biblical views and began letting Jews come back into Britain. There was a widespread belief among the Puritans that the return of the Jews to the Promised Land had to occur before the second coming of Jesus. Many among the Pilgrim Fathers believed that in facilitating the return of the Jews they would actually hasten the Parousia.
There was a widespread belief among the Puritans that the return of the Jews to the Promised Land had to occur before the second coming of Jesus.
Early Zionism
These beliefs became firmly held among those who settled in New England, which laid the foundations of Zionism among evangelical Christians in America that is still to be strongly found there today and is influential in the support of modern Israel. The settlers used the pattern of the ‘New Jerusalem’ in Ezekiel and Revelation for the layout of their new cities, even in the Dutch and Catholic regions of Maryland.
It was this belief in the importance of the return of the Jews to their ancient biblical land that was strongly influential in the Zionism of David Lloyd George, Chancellor then Prime Minister during the First World War. Although born in Manchester, he grew up in the Welsh valleys, raised by his uncle, who was the evangelical pastor of an independent church and had a powerful influence on the young David. He grew up enjoying the great Bible stories of the Jews in their historical homeland. Manchester was second only to London for a large community of Jews, and when Lloyd George entered politics he found much in common with both Balfour and Churchill, who were Members of Parliament for areas of Manchester. C.P. Scott, Editor of The Manchester Guardian, a great Liberal newspaper, also a committed Zionist, was said to be Lloyd George’s closest friend.
The Zionist movement was only formed at the end of the 19th century with the first Zionist Congress in 1897, which was an outcome of the expulsion of Jews from one country after another across Europe. This coincided with the increased persecution in Russia of some 6 million Jews who had no rights of citizenship and were frequently subjected to organised massacres – pogroms. Large numbers tried to leave but the only places where they were allowed to enter were Britain and America. A large number settled in the East End of London between 1895 and 1910.
This coincided with the increased persecution in Russia of some 6 million Jews who had no rights of citizenship and were frequently subjected to organised massacres – pogroms.
This gave momentum to the need for a homeland for the Jews. A strip of land near Sinai and another in Cyprus were considered but ruled out by the British Government. Then in 1903 Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour offered a strip of land in Uganda. This offer of establishing a Jewish community in a part of the British Empire was the first offer of the creation of a Jewish colony anywhere in the world since AD 135, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem, banished all Jews and renamed Judaea and the Galilee, ‘Palestine’– ‘land of the Philistines’– as a deliberate insult to the Jews.
A Jewish state
A world Zionist Congress was convened in 1903, but the East African refuge was not seen as a viable promised land and the Congress leader Theodore Herzl died the following year. The Zionist movement faded during the years leading up to the First World War. In 1917 Lloyd George, now Prime Minister, saw the opportunity of defeating Turkey, breaking up the Ottoman Empire, and establishing Palestine as a Jewish state within the British Empire. A strong part of his motive for the post-war Middle East was to foil the expansionist aims of France, who already had powerful interests in Lebanon and Syria and aimed to annex Palestine. Jewish interests were not even considered in the Sykes/Picot agreement between Britain and France for the post-war division of the Middle East.2
Lloyd George wanted a British base in the Middle East, and he thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would be good for the British Empire as it would provide a land bridge between Europe and India. This was supported by The Times, which, on 26 October 1917, urged a public announcement:
“Do our statesman fail to see how valuable to the Allied cause would be the hearty sympathy of the Jews throughout the world which an unequivocal declaration of British policy might win?”
Lloyd George wanted a British base in the Middle East, and he thought that the establishment of a Jewish state would be good for the British Empire as it would provide a land bridge between Europe and India.
Hence, Lloyd George backed his then Foreign Secretary, Balfour, in his ‘Declaration’ that Britain would support the establishment of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine. He reported this to the new leader of the British Zionist Federation, Dr Chaim Weizmann, and in a letter to Lord Rothschild on 2 November 1917, he said:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavour to facilitate the achievement of this object.”3
Churchill, who had always been strongly pro-Zionist, shared this objective when he became Colonial Secretary in 1921. He told an Arab delegation in Jerusalem on 30 March 1921:
“It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national centre and a national home reunited and where else but in Palestine with which for 3,000 years they have been intrinsically and profoundly associated? We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews, good for the British Empire, but also good for the Arabs in Palestine and we intend it to be so; they shall share the benefits and progress of Zionism.”4
Churchill and the Arabs
Churchill encountered huge opposition from the Arabs who never admitted that their opposition was on grounds of race and religion. They always argued that the land could not sustain large numbers of immigrants, but the total population of Palestine in 1920, both Arab and Jewish, was only 600,000, and Churchill claimed that the land could sustain some 2 or 3 million migrants because it was grossly under cultivated. The Arabs of Palestine were mostly nomadic people living in tents and moving from place to place while their goats ate every bit of vegetation. The Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1900 said there were only 100 trees in the whole of Palestine that included Transjordan. It was largely a deserted unproductive wilderness.
Churchill encountered huge opposition from the Arabs who never admitted that their opposition was on grounds of race and religion.
To prove his point, Churchill approved a hydroelectric scheme put forward by a Jewish Russian engineer, Pinhas Rutenberg to benefit the whole Galilee area. Defending this in the House of Commons, Churchill said,
“I am told that the Arabs would have done it for themselves. Who is going to believe that? Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine.”5
Churchill constantly assured the Arabs that they would never be evicted from their land. He wanted to see Jews and Arabs sharing the land, believing that the work-ethic of the Jews would transform the environment, bringing prosperity to everyone. He told a delegation in London in August 1921:
“I have told you again and again that the Jews will not be allowed to come into the country except in so far as they build up the means for their livelihood. They cannot take any man’s land. If they like to buy land and people like to sell to them and if they like to develop and cultivate regions now barren and make them fertile, then they have the right to do so.”6
It later emerged that the leader of the Arab delegation and several others had already secretly sold land to the Jews. Most of the Arabs who were settled in Palestine rented land from rich Arabs who lived in other countries – and the rich landowners were only too happy to sell land to the Jews at grossly inflated prices.
Churchill ... wanted to see Jews and Arabs sharing the land, believing that the work-ethic of the Jews would transform the environment, bringing prosperity to everyone.
But Palestine was a disordered area of tribal conflict. The Bedouin were an anarchic people, stealing from the peasantry and having a low work-ethic. They were the gypsies of the Arab world and Churchill became immensely frustrated with their refusal to negotiate. They simply came back with the same demands every time, making no concessions. He told the London delegation,
“The Jews have a far more difficult task than you. You only have to enjoy your own possession, but they have to try to create out of the wilderness, out of the barren places, a livelihood for the people they bring in.”7
Britain’s errors
A major problem that the Government in London faced was that practically everyone in the British Army in Palestine favoured the Arabs. On 29 October 1921 General W.N. Congreve, Commander of the British army in Egypt and Palestine, sent a note to all troops saying, “The army officially is supposed to have no politics, but it does have sympathies. In the case of Palestine these sympathies are rather obviously with the Arabs.”8 .The Government then replaced all the army administrators with a civilian administration. Sadly, the same thing happened. The civil servants who volunteered for jobs in the Middle East were those who had a romantic affection for the Arab lifestyle. This prompted Churchill to circulate a note to the Cabinet advocating “the removal of all anti-Zionist civil officials, however highly placed.”9
This of course was impossible, so Westminster was frustrated in attempting to carry out the pledges made in the Balfour Declaration. Britain set up a Middle East department of the Colonial Office in London with a High Commissioner in Palestine to implement its policy under the Mandate agreed by the League of Nations, but there was never any cooperation between London and the administration in Palestine.
... there was never any cooperation between London and the administration in Palestine.
The civil servants in Palestine made their own decisions. One of the worst of these was when the ‘Mufti of Jerusalem’ died. The Arabs put forward two names of leading Muslim clerics for the post which had to be ratified by the British High Commissioner. Both names were ignored. Ernest T Richmond, a member of the British High Commissioner’s Secretariat who was violently opposed to Zionism, managed to secure the position of Mufti for Amin al Husseini in 1921. He was a renowned rabble-rouser who had been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for leading Arab riots in 1920. His appointment was confirmed and he was given a new title of ‘Grand Mufti of Jerusalem’.10 When Hitler came to power, the Mufti went to Berlin and made a pact of alliance with Germany to destroy all Jews, with disastrous results for the Arab population who had backed the losing side in the First World War and lost all their rights of occupation of Palestine that they had in the Ottoman Empire.
Churchill’s own assessment of the failure of the British Government to implement the Balfour Declaration was that it was due to the anti-Semitism of the British administration in Palestine, meaning that London was unable to carry out its policy. But Churchill never faced the reason why the Palestinians refused to have any Jews into the land and why they would not discuss a basis for sharing. He always hoped that Palestinians would enjoy sharing the prosperity that the Jews would bring to the land – as many of them do today as citizens of Israel in towns such as Nazareth, where the population is predominantly Arab, and they have votes for parliamentary elections to the Knesset.
A Two State Solution
Alternatively, Churchill could have insisted that Transjordan was for the Palestinians and west of the Jordan was a homeland for the Jews, but there was never a clear separation. Churchill’s decision to separate off Transjordan (75% of Palestine) was originally intended to be the first step, to be followed later by reuniting Transjordan with West Palestine as part of the Jewish homeland and this was agreed by both the Zionist leaders and the Colonial Office at the Cairo Conference of 1921.
“Yet the Zionist leaders did not campaign strongly against the administrative separation of Transjordan; they regarded it – not without reason – as a merely provisional measure. So did the Colonial Office. Views of the leading officials differed, but Shuckburgh summarised the agreement he and his colleagues had reached by saying that it had been decided not to allow Zionism in Transjordan for the present, but also not to bar the door against it for all time.”11
This agreement was never given a date of completion under the Mandate agreed by the League of Nations or by the international lawyers at San Remo in 1922.
Churchill’s own assessment of the failure of the British Government to implement the Balfour Declaration was that it was due to the anti-Semitism of the British administration in Palestine.
These errors were compounded by the British Government’s appointment of an Arab family to govern Jordan, who banned Palestinians in the same way as they are banned by other Arab nations, which accounts for their plight in the Middle East today. There is still a colony of Palestinians in Jordan who went there many years ago but still have not been given rights of citizenship to settle in the country. The Palestinians remain the pariahs of the Arab world with the same Bedouin mindset, multiplying at a considerable rate while not developing the infrastructure and industry to support their needs, but relying instead upon the provision of external aid.
Endnotes
1. Christians for Zion, 1600-1919 on JSTOR
2. David Fromkin, A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, Phoenix, London, 2003, chapter 24, pp 188 – 199.
3. Chaim Weizmann, Trial And Error, The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann, Harper, New York, 1949, p 208
4. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume 4, Part Two: 1916 – 1922, The Stricken World, Boston, 1975, p 524
5. Gilbert The Stricken World, p 894
6. Lowell Thomas, With Lawrence in Arabia, Century, New York and London, 1924, p308
7. Ibid Thomas, With Lawrence in Arabia, p 407
8. Fromkin, A Peace To End All Peace, p 524
9. Ibid Fromkin p 524
10. Ibid Fromkin p 518
11. Aaron S. Klieman, Foundations of British policy in the Arab world: the Cairo Conference of 1921, John Hopkins Library Press, 1970, London, p 233
Additional Info
Author:
Rev Dr Clifford Hill