Summary
Military Governor of Jerusalem who, in the United Nations study’s account, answered the Zionist Commission’s April 1918 complaints by telling the Zionists themselves to explain their aims accurately and conciliatorily to the Arabs and Syrians (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 415-441).
Details
- Storrs held a place in the War Cabinet secretariat alongside Leopold Amery and Ormsby-Gore in Chaim Weizmann’s account as quoted in the study (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 233-241).
- As Military Governor (Colonel, later Sir), Storrs commented on Weizmann’s letter to the Foreign Office after the Zionist Commission’s arrival: it was not the military authorities’ business to bring home to the Arabs and Syrians that His Majesty’s Government had a definite policy on the Jews’ future in Palestine — Balfour and the press had done that — but the Zionists’ own business to give “an exposition at once as accurate and conciliatory as possible of their real aims and policy in the country” (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 423-433).
- “Speaking myself as a convinced Zionist”, Storrs held the Commission lacked “a sense of the dramatic actuality”: a Moslem country had fallen to a Christian Power which on the eve of conquest had announced a considerable portion of its land was to be handed over for colonization to “a nowhere very popular people”, the Commission had been warned in Cairo of grave misconceptions and strongly advised to make a public pronouncement, and no such pronouncement had yet been made (Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I), lines 433-441).
Related pages
Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947 (Part I)