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Britain

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aliasesUnited Kingdom, Great Britain, England

9 min read

Summary

Britain is the central hidden actor of Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace in the range read (PDF p.1-119): the Mandatory power that ruled Palestine to 15 May 1948 and, in the book’s Chapter 1 thesis, directed the 1948 war against the Yishuv through the Arab League and Brigadier Clayton — so that the war was understood at the time, by Jews and Arabs alike, as in essence a war against British rule — and thereafter the patron behind Abdullah’s annexation of the West Bank, the author of the Tripartite Declaration (1950), and a continuing maker of territorial pressure on Israel (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.17-43, 61-62, 74-76, 108-109).

Details

  • Chapter 1: the contemporary record. Weizmann’s Trial and Error, quoted at length: the Mandatory Power refused the UN Committee entry into Palestine, refused a Jewish militia, refused to open a port of immigration and dismantled the administration, while Palestine’s frontiers stood open to irregular Arab forces crossing the Allenby Bridge — “I shall never understand how the Mandatory Government could allow foreign Arab forces to cross freely by bridge and road into Palestine” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.21). Ben-Gurion (Davar, 8/1/48) charged Britain with violating the UN resolution and trying every scheme to nullify it, by obstructing the Implementation Committee and encouraging violent Arab attacks; Haaretz (29/6/48) called the conflict artificial, incited by a third party that was dissociating itself by propaganda (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.22-23).
  • Chapter 1: direction through the League. Ben-Gurion (18/2/48) said that following the accord between Salah Jaber and Bevin and “following Clayton’s participation in the League’s meetings, the borders were opened for the invasions of Syrians, Iraqis and others”, the war being, in Churchill’s words as he quoted them, “covert and two-faced and is being waged by mercenary forces”; the authors gloss Ben-Gurion: the Arab League served as Britain’s “pawn”, and “it is not Britain that is behind the Arab initiative, but the Arabs are serving as a pawn of the British initiative” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.24-25). Rozenblum (Yedioth Aharonoth, 13/5/48) wrote that military England would now wage the war with Arab encouragement, Abdullah’s Legion having become “even legally” a British army and Clayton standing at the head of the Egyptian battalions; Sharett (Davar, 16/5/48) called the Legion a British military tool and the League an instrument of British influence; Meyerson (Davar, 28/3/48) held the British “responsible for every drop of blood that has been shed in this country” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.25-26).
  • Chapter 1: the plan attributed to Britain. Sharett (Knesset, 20/6/49) reconstructed Britain’s UN gambit — expecting no partition decision, it meant to reply “Actually, I wanted to leave the country, but if I am imposed upon to administer, I will do so as I see fit”, followed by another White Paper or a Morrison Plan; Begin (Knesset, 3/5/50) described Abdullah, “on the command of Glubb and Clayton”, storming Jerusalem so that Bevin could “intervene” and put the surviving remnant of Israel into a ghetto (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.27-28). The authors summarize the assessment rivals shared: after the Partition vote (33 in favour, 13 opposed, 10 abstentions), Britain conducted a covert war — first inciting the Arabs through the Higher Arab Committee, then, on Clayton’s proposal, invasion by irregulars, and when that failed a plan worked out at the Arab Chiefs-of-Staff conference in Bludan for invasion by the regular armies, the columns meeting at the approaches to Tel Aviv, at which stage Britain, the kind “saviour”, was to appear and renew its rule (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.28).
  • Chapter 1: why the war’s nature was British. A war’s nature is set by the politicians who decide it, the authors argue, and in 1948 the governments of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq could make no important decision without the British Foreign Office’s approval, while a substantial part of the technical officer corps was British; Sharett summed the campaign up as waged “by the force of British arms, British command, British money and British diplomacy” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.28-29). The chapter adds overt acts charged to Britain: the Ben-Yehuda Street bombing of 22 February 1948 (50 dead, hundreds wounded) attributed to British policemen, the blowing up of The Jerusalem Post’s presses, the freezing of the Jews’ sterling reserves and petroleum sabotage, and the Anglo-American arms embargo while Transjordan, Egypt and Iraq received arms “for the purpose of defence against Communism” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.29). García-Granados records telling Senator Warren Austin on 26/4/48 that Britain would withdraw openly “only to return through the back door on the skirts of Abdullah” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.31).
  • Chapter 1: the Arab side, and the verdict. In Iraq, the January 1948 Portsmouth (Salah Jaber–Bevin) treaty — in practice a continuation of British rule — provoked the uprising that forced Jaber’s resignation; in Egypt, Al-Gamahir and Yusuf Hilmi describe the Palestine war as a British-plotted diversion from the struggle to cancel the 1936 treaty and evacuate British forces; and the IDF’s own history records Allon asking the surrounded Col. Taha at Falluja, “Do you not think that you have fallen victim to a foreign imperialist scheme supported by its allies in Egypt?” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.32-36). Against the theory that the Arab rulers had an independent interest in diversion, the authors answer that Faruq, Abdullah and Nuri Said ruled only by Britain’s grace: “When a puppet’s strings are pulled by a puppeteer, it is hard to speak of the independent interest of the puppet”; the party harmed by the Partition Plan was Britain, which lost its political and economic rule in Palestine and a strategic base held since the First World War (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.38). The chapter’s conclusion: the judgment that the war was between Jews and Arabs “is inaccurate and misleading”; in essence it was a war of the Jews of Palestine against British rule (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.43).
  • Chapter 2: patron of the annexation. Four days after Abdullah’s proclamation of 24/4/50, Britain recognized the annexation of the West Bank, extended its military alliance to the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” including the annexed territory, and recognized Israel de jure without recognizing the ceasefire lines as permanent borders — extending its patronage, the authors say, over an act it had itself covertly initiated (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.61-62). Britain had advised Abdullah to proclaim the annexation without waiting for the negotiations and without Israel’s explicit agreement, which would have openly confirmed the collusion; Alec Kirkbride, its ambassador in Jordan, “was in fact the leader of the state”, playing politically the role Glubb played militarily, and Elath records Kirkbride’s negative role in thwarting the Israel–Jordan negotiations (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.71-73). To prevent Israeli military intervention Britain expanded its military front with Transjordan into the annexed territory (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.73).
  • Chapter 2: author of the Tripartite Declaration, and the Guildhall turn. Britain stood behind the annexation yet needed to appear in compliance with UN resolutions: “Thus was born the tripartite declaration. Britain initiated it in order – among other things – to legitimize the status quo in the region, without its being the only power to conspire behind the UN’s back”, the USA and France willingly responding (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.76). In November 1955 it was Britain’s own prime minister, Eden, whose Guildhall speech brought the discussion back to its starting point — the authors’ point being that the West itself, supposed to preserve the status quo under its declaration, reopened the question, with the intention of winning over the hearts of the Arabs; Ben-Gurion’s reply noted that the British government, “and only it”, had recognized the annexation in April 1950 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.79-80).
  • Chapter 2: Britain and the refugee problem. Jarjora’s first-Knesset speech, and the authors’ conclusion from it, give Britain a significant part not only in organizing the invasion but also in creating the refugee problem, many Arabs having become refugees before the Mandate ended (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.87).
  • Chapter 3: arms, pressure, and the orientation contest. Britain continuously supplied large amounts of arms to the Arab armies while the US embargo harmed only Israel (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.102), and its Foreign Office reminded Eban on 13/10/55 that Israel had received arms from Czechoslovakia in 1948 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.104). At the end of December 1948 Britain threatened to invoke its 1936 treaty with Egypt and enter the war unless Israeli troops withdrew from Egyptian soil — a threat transmitted and sharply backed by Washington, after which, in James McDonald’s account, by Sunday, January 2nd, “not an Israeli hoof remained in Egypt” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.108-109). Sharett’s explanation of Soviet support turns on Britain: the Soviet Union’s interest was “to uproot the British regime from this country”, and it accepted partition as the shortest path to that removal (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.117-118).
  • The 1999 introduction’s framing: in 1956 Britain and France planned the invasion of Egypt after the Suez Canal’s nationalization and signed the secret Sèvres accord with Ben-Gurion, under which Israel invaded on 29 October 1956 as the pretext for the Franco-British invasion of the Canal zone; the authors’ list of compromises imposed on Zionism by foreign powers begins with the withdrawal from Sinai in 1956, imposed by the USA (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.7-10).

Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Soviet Union, United States, Arab League, Brigadier Clayton, Ernest Bevin, Alec Kirkbride, John Glubb, Tripartite Declaration (1950)

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