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THE MIDDLE EAST 1917-2012 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Balfour's motives in sending the letter are unclear. Here are some possibilities.
        
        Perhaps Balfour was sympathetic to Zionist aims. He knew Lord Rothschild well and a political colleague, Herbert Samuel, was Jewish and a keen Zionist. Balfour also knew Chaim Weizmann, leader of the World Zionist movement, and had met him before the war.
        
        One thing certain: Balfour did not consider the views of the Arabs living in Palestine.
        
        The Balfour Declaration contradicted the promises made to the Palestinian Arabs in the McMahon Letter of 1915 (that the British promised to recognise the independence of Arabs in return for their help against the Ottoman Empire)
        
        More likely the declaration was related to the war effort. Balfour hoped that American Zionists would put pressure on their government to send more troops to help on the Western Front, where casualties were enormous. America had declared war on Germany 8months earlier, but only 14000 troops had arrived.
        
        Perhaps Balfour was also looking to the future: this was a way to win American support for Britain's plans in the Middle East after the war. Britain needed to secure its hold on all territory close to the Suez Canal, which was crucial for British trade with India.
  - - - Although there were only about 84000 Jews in Palestine in 1922 (11 per cent of the total population), they were well organised about attracting new settlers.
        
        The Jewish Agency was set up to encourage immigration to Palestine and to help new arrivals to buy land and organise schools. A defence force (the Haganah) was formed to protect new settlements. By 1931, Jewish numbers in Palestine had more than doubled to about 175000(about 17 per cent of the population). From 1933 to 1935, another 135000 arrived. They were mostly German Jews fleeing Nazism and Hitler's anti-Semitic policies. By 1936, more than a quarter of Palestine's population was Jewish.
  - - - Tension soon turned into violence. Clashes between two rival Jewish political parties on May Day in 1921 led to a rumour that Jews were attacking Arabs. This angered Palestinian Arabs in the city of Jaffa, who attacked local Jews and Jewish property, leaving 47 Jews and 48 Arabs dead. In August 1929, angry clashes occurred over holy cites in Jerusalem.
        
        This grew into 4 days of bloody riots and mob violence throughout Palestine, leaving 133 Jews and 116 Arabs dead. Some Jews were angry that the British had not provided enough protection: one group formed Irgun, a terrorist organisation dedicated to forming a Jewish state by violence if necessary.
        
        THE ARAB STRIKE 1936
        
        Seven years later, a full-blown Arab protest began. Encouraged by the fact that Syrian and Iraqi Arabs had won political rights by going on general strike, Palestinian Arabs decided to use the same tactic. They demanded an end to Jewish immigration an end to land sales and a national government of their own. Until those conditions were met, they refused to work or pay taxes, and boycotted all trade with the British. At the same time, roads, railways and oil pipes, and British troops, were attacked.
        
        The British reaction to the strike was harsh: Palestinian leaders were arrested, rebels were flogged and suspect villages were searched for weapons. For 6 months, 20000 British troops struggled to control the situation. Then, in October 1936, at Britain's request, neighbouring Arab states got involved and called for calm. Palestinian Arabs agreed to end the strike (perhaps because they needed time to collect in the orange harvest).
  - - - It set up a commission to investigate the causes of unrest in Palestine and to propose a solution. Led by William Peel, the commission investigated the situation for 6 months. Over 100 witnesses were questioned.
        
        In 1937, Lord Peel published a 400 page report. He said that the Mandate could never succeed. There was no common ground between the Arab and Jewish communities. The situation had reached a deadlock.
        
        Peel said the only solution was to end the Mandate and partition the country between the two communities. Only a small part would remain under British control. In the meantime, he recommended that all Jewish immigration to what would be Arab territory should stop.
        
        REACTIONS
        
        Though they disliked the details of the plan, most Jews accepted the idea of partition. It was better than nothing, in the view of David Ben-Gurion. However, Palestinian Arabs rejected the Peel Partition Scheme completely. From their point of view, giving any land at all to Jews was unjust. Almost 3000,000 Arabs would have to live in the Jewish state (unless they were moved to the proposed Arab state, something Peel favoured). Furthermore, the scheme would mean that most fertile land- including 90 per cent of the orange groves - being in Jewish hands.
        
        Palestinian Arabs reacted angrily to Peel's recommendations. This time, their revolt involved increasingly violent attacks against British forces and Jews.
        
        Helped by 15000 men from the Haganah, 50000 British troops used harsh tactics. Rebel houses were destroyed, curfews were put in place, and thousands of Arabs were arrested and held without trial. Many were beaten or tortured. Villages suspected of helping rebels were occupied and their inhabitants expelled. Weapons were confiscated. To prevent sniper attacks, British soldiers tied Arab hostages to the bonnets of their lorries.
        
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  - - - Moderate groups like the Haganah aimed to
        
        Help as many Holocaust survivors as possible to reach Palestine by whatever means necessary
        
        While Irgun and Lehi conducted their campaign of terror, the Haganah and the Jewish Agency smuggled Jews into Palestine. They acquired ships, filled them with would-be immigrants and then tried to break through the British blockade.
        
        On one level, the campaign was a failure, as very few vessels got trough. But, in terms of publicity for the Zionist cause, it was a huge success. Every time the Royal Navy turned a ship away, or put refugees into camps on Cyprus, Britain's reputation was damaged and the sympathy for the Jewish cause was increased.
        
        THE SS EXODUS
        
        In July 1947, for example, the Haganah bought an old American passenger ship, renamed it Exodus 1947, and sailed it to France. There it picked up 4500 Jews, many of them Holocaust survivors, and sailed for Palestine. There, it was stopped by the Royal Navy and the passengers were transported back to France. The passengers refused to leave the ship and went on a hunger strike, so the British took them to Hamburg in Germany, where they were forced to return to refugee camps.
        
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        Get worldwide sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish state.
      - Extremist groups like the Irgun and Lehi aimed to
        
        wage a campaign of violence against the British to force them to remove their troops from Palestine.
        
        Led the campaign of violence. Over the next 24 months (after October 1945), they targeted anything that was British. They blew up the offices, attacked police stations, sabotaged oil pipes, bombed airfields and bridges, placed landmines on roads, and destroyed radio stations and telephone lines. They stole British weapons and robbed banks to gain money. 73 British troops were killed in 1946 alone.
        
        horrify the British public into demanding a British withdrawal from Palestine.
        
        THE BOMBING OF THE KING DAVID HOTEL, 1946
        
        On 22 July 1946, just before noon, a lorry drove up to the tradesmen's entrance of the hotel. In it were Irgun members disguised as Arabs, who then entered the building and placed milk churns containing explosives by the main columns supporting the southern wing of the Hotel. The bombs were timed to go off at 12.37 p.m. Menachem Begin later said that three warnings were telephoned trough. If so, the warnings never reached the right people. The building was never evacuated and the explosion destroyed much of the southern wing, killing 91 people, including 41 Arabs, 28 Britons and 17 Jews. Most were civilians.
        
        This caused outrage. The Haganah publicly criticised the Irgun and the British announced a high state of alert. Palestinian Jews were subject to increasingly harsh restrictions, including random searches, military curfews, road blocks and mass arrests. However, government policy on Jewish immigration to Palestine remained unchanged.
        
        In October 1945, both extremist and moderate groups worked together: they blew up the Palestine railway system in 153 places to hamper the British communications.
- - - - In May 1947, the UN set up a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate the possible solutions to the problems.
        In September 1947, UNSCOP reported back. By majority decision, it recommended the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Each state would be in three separate parts that were linked together. The two new states would have economic unity, with a shared currency and railways, roads, postal, telephone, and telegraphic services all run for the common good. Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be under international control, since both had holy places that were sacred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
        
        Reactions
        
        The British
        
        The British government said the plan would lead to war because Arabs would find it unacceptable. Nor would Britain stay to implement the plan. Refereeing an Arab-Jew war would be hugely expensive and the British public were angrily demanding a quick withdrawal from the Mandate.
        
        Arabs
        
        Arabs completely rejected the plan. From their point of view, the UN had no right to take away land against the wishes of its inhabitants. They complained that the Palestinians were made to pay for the Holocaust. Nor was the plan even fair. It gave over half to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact that Jews formed only one-third of the population. Jews only owned about 7 per cent of the land, but they had also been given the most fertile parts of Palestine, the north and on the coast.
        
        Jews
        
        Most Jews accepted the plan, reluctantly. Many felt that the plan at least recognised the right of Jews to an independent state. However, for extremist Jews the plan was unacceptable. They insisted that Jerusalem had to be part of the new state (the plan would make even visiting Jerusalem difficult since it would be located deep within Arab territory).
        
        UN resolution
        
        In November 1947, the Partition Plan was put to the vote in the full General Assembly of the United Nations. To be accepted, two-thirds majority was needed. The USA knew that most western European countries would vote in favour, as a result of the sympathy for a Jewish homeland after the second word war.
        
        The vote was taken on 29 November 1947. The vote in favour of partition was clear. 33 nations voted for, 13 against, and 10 abstained. UN resolution 181 passed, meaning that the British would end their Mandate and the Partition Plan would be put into action by August 1948.
  - - - THE WAR
        
        PHASE ONE (May-June 1948)
        
        In the first three weeks of the war, Israel struggled for survival. Only one in three of its troops had weapons, and it had only five field guns. The Arab forces had 152. For a time, it appeared that the new country might be cut in two.
        
        Then, on 11 June, the UN intervened. Its negotiator, Count Bernadotte, managed to arrange a month's truce. Without this truce, Israel might not have survived. During the truce, Israel established a military structure with only one man in charge, David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv who gave orders to four regional commands. Money from Zionist supporters in the USA were used to buy weapons from Czechoslovakia, including 30.000 rifles, 4.5000 machine guns, 47 million round of ammunition, and 84 aeroplanes.
        
        PHASE TWO (July 1948)
        
        Two days before the truce ended, Israeli forces went on the offensive. Surprise was their main weapon. Following intensive fighting around Tel Aviv, Israeli forces occupied the Arab towns of Lydda and Ramleh, and expelled the Arab populations of these towns. A second truce was arranged by the UN. This one lasted for three months.
        
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      - The reasons for Israeli victory
        
        The Arab states did not send their entire armies to the war. Over-confidently they thought that Israel would be easy to defeat.