British Mandate & British Policy – Hubert_Luns

8/6/2019 British Mandate & British Policy Hubert_Luns

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THE BRITISH MANDATE

How the British sought to strangle

the Jewish National Home


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Introduction

This is part of the story of how the British sought to strangle the Je-wish National Home, incredible as it may seem, but true. The Britishplaced heavy restrictions on Jewish arrivals in Israel while allowingArabs to enter the country freely, which came in the wake of the rio-

ting by Arab mobs. In handling each riot, the British did everything intheir power to prevent Jews from protecting themselves, but madelittle or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking Jews.

In 1947 Milord Ivan Rand explained in his public letter at the UN whythe mandate over Palestine could not in good conscience be returnedto a bigoted and malicious British administration and why partition wasthe only reasonable means to dealing with the two conflicting commu-nities. He said:

Britain has betrayed their own solemn commitments, eventheir own laws to use administrative processes with malice

aforethought. We cannot assist or acquiesce in this persecutorydiscrimination of a people who have just barely survivedexterminatory persecution inflicted by Germany and her helpers.It is a travesty that His Majestys Government have abused theirtrust to such a degree of betrayal and corruption. If the Jewishpeople are denied self determination in their contiguously heldancestral homeland, then no other nation on earth has any rightsunder international law to their own home other than through theapplication of the force of arms.

By the way, Milord Ivan Rand was a Justice of the Supreme Court ofCanada from 1943 until 59. In 1947, he was Canadas representativeon the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP).

The British policy of accommodating the militant Arabs to the detri-ment of the Jewish settlers in Palestine intensified after the importantUnited Nations resolution of establishing the partition of Palestine be-tween the Jews and Arabs, with Jerusalem having an internationalstatus. The two parts were bound together by means of an economicunion, Jordan already having been separated in 1922. The transitionperiod was to end in May 1948, the official date of the foundation ofthe State of Israel. All the while, clandestine arms shipments conti-nued, in the knowledge that they would be used for Arab aggression.The British chose to sabotage the plan and made the Arabs believethat partition would be substituted by a federal state, where in view oftheir numbers the Arabs would call the tune. The British also insistedwith the Arabs to chase the Jews out of the country, at least to maketheir life miserable. The UN resolution for partition was therefore re-jected by all the Arab states. Ironically this rejection was instrumentalin the creation of the State of Israel, the very institution it sought toprevent.


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1 - The repartition of the Middle East region

In the course of World War I the fall of the Ottoman Empire was consummated, therebypaving the way for the creation of the modern Middle East in a setting hitherto unknown.Part of the deal, in April 1920, was that the territory now comprising Israel, Jordan, theWest Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem was awarded to the United Kingdom as its man-

datary. In 1922 it was agreed to create within this mandate the semi-autonomous ArabEmirate of Transjordan, to be situated east of the river Jordan, that comprised three quar-ters of the mandate, in its entirety originally called Palestine. Henceforth Palestine wasgoing to be used only to denote the remainder. This secession has remained a grievancewithin Zionist circles, who refer to their proposals at the time and like to cite Biblical textsto prove their point, but the issue is not that easy. Maps drawn by the Zionists and presen-ted for consideration during the deliberations regarding the mandate included only a partof Transjordan. In the aftermath of World War I the name Palestine had but a vague mea-ning: there were no Palestinians, only Arabs - and that is how they felt, and the name didnot elicit political aspirations. It was a name, based on a Roman practice, applied in diffe-rent circumstances and in a different age. The linking of both areas for the mandate, to theeast and west of the River Jordan, was an administrative convenience and there was no

suggestion that it was meant to indicate recognition of Zionist claims to parts of Trans-jordan. Under the League Mandate of 1922, the mandate which concerns us most, Englandretained some control over Transjordan via the High Commissioner appointed for the areawest of the River Jordan, called Palestine. The span of control ended in 1946 when theArab Emirate became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, simply cal-led Jordan after the annexation of the West Bank in 1950.

2 To the detriment of Jewish settlers

Thus, in 1922 the League of Nations ratified the British Mandate for Palestine. The docu-ment covering the Mandate defined Britains responsibilities and powers of administrationin the area. It copied and amplified the text of the Balfour Declaration, originally drawn up

in 1917, concerning the establishment of a Jewish homeland: The Government of His Bri-tannic Majesty is in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the

Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might pre-

judice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the

rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.Adding to it that recog-nition was given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to thegrounds for reconstituting their national home in that country. Article 6 stated: The Admi-nistration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the

population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable condi-

tions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish Agency, close settlement by

Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

From this text we might infer that there would be a tendency to prejudice the rights of thenon-Jewish communities in Palestine. The fear proved groundless. The Peel Commissionreported in 1937 that the shortfall of land is due less to the amount of land acquired byJews than to the increase in the Arab population.As time went by, the rights of the Arabresidents and immigrants were increasingly favoured to the detriment of Jewish settlers.Contradicting the provisions of the Mandate the British placed restrictions on Jewish landpurchases. During the Mandate, that lasted until 1948, the British allotted 87,500 acres ofthe 187,500 of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres of it to Jews. At the inceptionof the State of Israel, Jewish holdings amounted to about 463,000 acres, of which at the


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time of acquisition most were lying waste and judged unfit for cultivation. These malaria-infested swamps and arid and semi-arid fields had to be developed at great cost and bystrenuous effort. What is more, they commonly had to be purchased at exorbitant pricesfrom absentee landlords who were often living abroad, in places like Cairo, Damascus andBeirut. (1)Tenfold prices paid for rich black soil in the United States were not uncommon.

3 - Al-Husseinis only passion

The first High Commissioner under the Mandate was Herbert Samuel, who was ready toappease the fanatical faction of the Arabs, for he did not perceive their trickery. Induced byanti-Jewish officials on his staff he pardoned Haj Amin al-Husseini for inciting the 1920riots in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. (see article: The 1920 Riots) In 1922 the HighCommissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (who fled the country in 1937).Simultaneously, he was made President of the newly created Supreme Muslim Council,despite opposition from the Muslim High Council, who regarded him as a hoodlum (cf.William Ziffs classic: The Rape of Palestine - 1937, p. 22). He thereby became the defacto religious and political leader of the Arabs. This proved to be a very unfortunatedevelopment. Al-Husseini was a hard-liner. By the application of brute force he quenched

all the cooperative efforts between Arabs and Jews, some of which looked very promising.Indeed, there were many Muslims who did not believe that to be a good Muslim one mustnecessarily be anti-Zionist. However, al-Husseinis only passion - in the tradition of anEdomite - was to drive the Jews out and butcher them. In the Talmudic interpretation of theprophecy of Genesis 25:23 the two - Edom and Israel - could never be mighty simulta-neously: the rise of one would be contingent on the fall of the other. The agitation wouldcontinue until the coming of the Messiah, for it is believed that in the end the youngerwill prevail and that is Israel; all commentators agree that the prophetic reference is not tothe two individuals, but to the two powers they represent. It is fully consistent with theforegoing that the 1929 riots, to be characterized as a small civil war, were orchestrated byal-Husseini, who issued the call Itbach el-Yahud! Slaughter the Jews! After the mur-dering of 67 Jews in Hebron, in one day, he disseminated photographs with the claim that

the corpses were Arabs killed by Jews. This gloomy figure became the special protg ofAdolf Hitler who liked to treat him as an honorary Aryan because of the red beard and blueeyes he had inherited from his Circassian mother (incidentally, Edom means red).

4 An ugly stain on the history of England

As regards immigration, the British placed heavy restrictions on Jewish arrivals while allo-wing Arabs to enter the country freely. In 1930 the Hope Simpson Commission, sent fromLondon to investigate the 1929 riots, said the British practice of ignoring the illegal Arabimmigration had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. In 1939 Chur-chill challenged the common notion that Jewish immigration into Palestine had uprooted itsArab residents. During the parliamentary debate following the issuing of the White Paper,

Churchill said near the end of his speech: So far from being persecuted, the Arabs havecrowded into the country and multiplied till their population has increased more than even

all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.(Gilbert, Vol. V, p. 1072) This viewwas demonstrated to be essentially true thanks to Joan Peters research, presented in herbook published in 1984: From Time Immemorial (the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflictover Palestine). The author used an array of statistics to argue that the Zionists, as modernEuropeans, brought with them resources and skills that created wealth and economic op-portunity, which in turn attracted large numbers of Arabs to the Palestinian lands situated


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west of the river Jordan. The British governor of the Sinai from 1922 to 1936 had alreadyobserved: This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also fromTransjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out of the misery of the Arabs

if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in

to share that misery.During World War II the immigration of Jews came practically to ahalt, due to the inconsiderate British policy of banning all Jewish immigration, which left

them at odds with Hitlers final solution. After the war the British confined the Jews whohad escaped the nightmare of the extermination camps to displaced persons camps inEurope. The Jewish resistance used to smuggle them into Palestine. When caught on theway they were transferred, fifty thousand in all, to concentration camps on Cyprus. Morethan half of them were still imprisoned at the time of the foundation of the New State. Thisremains an ugly stain on the history of England.

The restrictions on Jewish emigration came in the wake of the rioting by Arab mobs. Inhandling each riot, the British did everything in their power to prevent Jews from protec-ting themselves, but made little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking Jews. Wil-liam Ziff documents that Arab murderers of Jews were given six months because the judgesaid that the death was unintentional, the goal being merely rape. On the other hand, Jewish

security guards were given twenty years hard labour for killing an Arab terrorist attacker.After each riot, a British commission of inquiry would always conclude the same: TheArabs are afraid of being displaced by the Jews and the proper way to establish peace is to

place restrictions on Jewish immigration.But instead of tranquillity, the policy of appea-sement incited further rioting, as the perpetrators understood that rioting paid off.

5 Ernest Bevins disgraceful policy

The British policy of accommodating themilitant Arabs to the detriment of the Jewishsettlers in Palestine intensified after the im-portant United Nations resolution of Novem-

ber 29th 1947 establishing the partition ofPalestine between the Jews and Arabs, withJerusalem having an international status. Thetwo parts were bound together by means ofan economic union, Jordan already havingbeen separated in 1922. The transition periodwas to end on May 14th 1948, the officialdate of the foundation of the State of Israel.All the while, clandestine arms shipmentscontinued, in the knowledge that they wouldbe used for Arab aggression. A little morethan two weeks before partition came into

effect, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Be-vin still refused to halt the arms supplies.From the highly confidential Fortnightly In-telligence Newsletters that were made avai-lable to reporters from The Nation - NewYork, it is abundantly clear that the British Government knew of every single Arab troopmovement in Palestine and could have halted them if she had wanted to. Besides, relationswith them were such that Britain could have asked Arab leaders to request the terrorists to

Lord Ernest Bevin


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show restraint. The British chose to sabotage the plan and made the Arabs believe that par-tition would be substituted by a federal state, where in view of their numbers the Arabswould call the tune. The UN resolution was therefore rejected by all the Arab states. Iro-nically this rejection was instrumental in the creation of the State of Israel, the very insti-tution it sought to prevent. Their rejection obstructed the partition plan in favour of truenationhood and made 80% of the Arabs flee the country, having been urged to do so by

their Arab leaders living in luxury mansions abroad, where they had fled immediately afterthe acceptation of the UN resolution. A small number of the refugees were driven out bythe Israeli forces from regions of strategic military importance, but they were not forced toleave the country - and yet they did. Ever since, the world has known the refugee pro-blem. (See my article: The Palestinian Refugee Problem)

Freda Kirchwey, the president of The Nation Associates, wrote on May 8 th1948 in a me-morandum submitted to the special session of the General Assembly of the United Nations:

The British prejudice against the Jews has been clearly indicated in their refusal toallow the Jews to arm for defense against Arab attack, and their blowing up of Jewishdefense posts; in their turning over to the Arabs - and to certain death - members ofthe Haganah (the Jewish paramilitary self-defense organization in Palestine); in theirconfiscation of Haganah arms; in their treatment of Jewish defense personnel as crimi-nals. The British have connived at the starving of the Jewish population of Jerusalemby their failure to keep the highways open. They have refused armed escorts to theJews. Their attitude to the Arab community is quite different. By British admission,the Arab community has been armed by the British. Arab train robberies, which havebeen frequent, have been met with shooting over the heads of the robbers. Arabdesertions from the police, for the purpose of joining the attackers, accompanied bythe stealing of arms, have never been prevented, and Arab violators of the peace gounpunished. To this record can be added the detailed facts concerning the fashion inwhich the British have destroyed central authority, and, under the guise of establishinggreater local authority, turned over in largest part to the Arabs the various services ofthe Palestine government created and maintained chiefly by taxation of the Jewish

community. Simultaneously, assets have been dissipated and vital communicationsdisposed of to foreign agencies. The effect of this has been to seal the Jewish commu-nity in a limited area, cut off its access to the outside world by land and sea, andsurround it by Arabs in order to create such a state of siege as would cause the Jews tosend up a white flag.

The Janus-faced policy of Britannia, pretending one set of convictions and treacherouslyacting under the influence of another, was prominent again. On December 12th1947 ErnestBevin told the House of Commons:

I am not going and His Majestys Government is not going to oppose the UnitedNations decision. () There that decision is of the world organism whether we agree

with it or not. It is on the statute book of that great organization. May it be possible toimplement it! If it is, and if my colleagues or I can render any assistance, with advice,with help, with our officials, with our administrative ability, with our historical know-ledge, to smooth out the transition, to try to prevent the divisions from being widened- in other words to do anything possible to promote concord, friendship and amitybetween these peoples - we shall do it.


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A day earlier Colonial Secretary Creech Jones, asserted to the House of Commons:

So long as the British remained in any part of Palestine, (the Mandatory Govern-ment) would maintain law and order in the area of which it was still in occupation.() and it will do its duty in protecting the life and property of citizens irrespective ofrace. (As later developments would show these pledges were null and void.)

6 The Arab Liberation Army

The Arab revolt was openly projected in the autumn of 1947 at the very time the UnitedNations were meeting in regular sessions to discuss the implementation of the Jewish natio-nal home. The decision to create havoc was made at a meeting of the Council of the ArabLeague in Sofar, Lebanon. This meeting was attended not only by the heads of the Arabgovernments taking part in the League, but also by the British representative in Egypt, Bri-gadier P. A. Clayton, together with a number of his associates from Cairo and Jerusalem. Itwas at this meeting that the formation of an undercover volunteer force for the liberationof Palestine was decided upon, as against the use of regular Arab troops, a decision thatwas adopted under the influence of Clayton. The Arab League itself was the intellectual

child of Clayton who put forward the idea to Anthony Eden, then Foreign Secretary, whowas favourably inclined. This resulted in its formation in 1945.

Richard Crossman, a Member of Parliament, said in his address to the House of Commonsin the meeting on December 11th already referred to:

British diplomacy has, alas, concentrated Arab attention to the Zionist issue. Atmeetings of the Arab League, British representatives have been in attendanceregularly even when the most violent anti-Jewish actions were approved. We are nowsuffering the consequences of creating the Arab League on the basis of a singleprogramme of denying a Jewish state to the Jews.

The Fortnightly Newsletter No. 62, dated February 27, 1848 (quoted from the memo-

randum of The Nation), has an interesting observation:

The Arab leaders are anxious not to aggravate the British in any way but thequestion is whether so many men, possibly ten thousand of them at present in thiscountry (the Arab Liberation Army in Palestine), with their bitter hatred of the Jewsand their excitable character, whose sole raison detre is the killing of Jews, can holdthemselves in check until the British forces have quitted.

A United Nations report counted over a four month period about an equal number of deadArabs and Jews, in total more than 1,800, and a small number of British casualties. A dis-gusting detail, as told in the next Fortnightly Newsletter, is the training of the Arab Libe-ration Army by former German officers of the Nazi regime and some Yugoslav Moslems,who had had wartime experience in guerilla warfare, the training taking place in the Ras elAin area and Jaffa. Despite this, Foreign Secretary Bevin maintained he had no knowledgeof non-Arab fighters in Palestine. As concerns the withdrawal from Palestine of a few thou-sands belonging to the Arab Legion, which owed allegiance to the king of Transjordan,Bevin promised in December that these forces would be withdrawn. But on April 16ththese forces were still engaged in a series of unprovoked aggressions on peaceful Jewishresidents and passersby. The following day, King Abdullah of Transjordan announced thathe would send his Arab Legion into Palestine to help his Arab brothers. Could the kinghave carried out his threat without British knowledge and consent? The fact is that Trans-


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jordan was a military appendage of the British at the time, and he could not have acted inthis way without their knowledge and consent. The Arab Legion was under command of aBritish officer and was organised, trained, officered, and paid for by the British govern-ment. Nonetheless, Bevin told the House of Commons on April 28th: I am not going to bedrawn into promises and commitments about the Transjordan Force until I know the final

decision of the U.N. on Palestine.

7 - England forsakes its duty

The duty of England, according to the UN resolution of November 29 th, was to cooperatewith the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations in establishing Jerusalem as an inter-national city, but the notion of cooperation was dropped. I quote from the memorandum ofThe Nation:

Under the guise of spurious neutrality the British Government made possible aseries of events initiated by the Arabs which have splattered the sanctity of the HolyCity with blood. Thus, thanks to British neutrality Ben Yahuda Street, the chief com-mercial centre of Jewish Jerusalem, was bombed; the Arabs could bomb the offices of

the Jewish Agency, killing thirteen and wounding forty-five; within full sight of aBritish army post, the Arabs could attack a medical convoy in the course of which 76persons were killed of the medical staff of the Hadassah Hospital and when the Haga-nah tried to intervene, they were blocked by the British. Despite the fact that the Muftiof Jerusalem was directing the whole operation, no arrests had been made, but on thecontrary Jewish defense posts were blown up and food supplies to the city were prohi-bited.

This is part of the story of how the British sought to strangle the Jewish National Home,incredible as it may seem, but true.

Hubert Luns

See also: The British Record on Partition- The Nation, May 8, 1948

(photocopyor plain text)

Land purchases by Jewish settlers

(1) At the end of 1947, Jewish holdings in Palestine amounted to about 463,000 acres (or43.5 km x 43.5 km) of which 80% had become arable land. This was less than 50% of theaggregate arable land in the new state of Israel. Approximately 45,000 of these acres wereacquired from the Mandatory Government, 30,000 from various churches and 387,500, or5/6 of the total, were purchased from Arabs. Records of land purchases from 1880 to 1948

show that three-quarters of Jewish plots were purchased from large landowners, not frompoor fellahin as the Jews have been accused of doing. Those who sold land included themayors of Gaza, Jerusalem and Jaffa. Asad el-Shuqeiri, a Muslim religious scholar andfather of PLO chairman Ahmed Shuqeiri, took Jewish money for his land. In fact, many lea-ders of the Arab nationalist movement, including members of the Muslim Supreme Coun-cil, sold land to Jews.


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September 30, 2014

Hi Barry(Chamish),

The following article (U.K. encouraged Arab armies to invadeIsrael in 1948 is an echo of Ivan Rands UNSCOP findings (United

Nations Special Committee on Palestine), but this one comes from

French Intel archives, while the British claim that all their records

have been burnt! Yeah. By the way, this does give me a bit of a smile.

When I first found Rands UNSCOP dossier in the Dunn Library, at first

I wondered how this could be so completely overlooked, how this

history could have been omitted by our own people. When I took this

info to the CIJA people (The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs),

they thought I was making it all up, and pressed Jon not to allow me

access to the media as an AJC representative (Global Jewish Advo-cacy). At the time Jon and I were in contact with the news people over

stuff I found about the Jewish Legion and Ben Gurion in Windsor,

Nova Scotia. They were irritated at me for that too.

All the historical facts, the treaties and laws, that led to the nation

state of Israel were summarized by a Canadian Supreme Court Justice,

Milord Ivan Cleveland Rand in 1947. Ivan Rand, born in Moncton, New

Brunswick, became a leading legal mind of the British Empire in the

famous 1936 case Rex vs the Dominion Coal Company, where he found

a fair resolution for workers and owners in what is now taught in

advanced economics as the Rand formula. Rand was appointed to the

Supreme Court of Canada in 1942. In 1946 Earnest Bevin, Englands

foreign minister was at first happy to see Rand appointed to be the

secretary of the UNSCOP and thought he would give Britain what it

wanted on Palestine. Bevin, in a telegram to Rand, outlined the official

British policy on Palestine. He wanted Rand to steer the committee

into telling the UN that the mandate should be returned to Britishcontrol with the abolishment of the Balfour letter and extended in

order to create an Arab state, as according to the British, Arabs made

up more than 60% of the mandates population.

Rand responded to Bevin: Palestines legal status was inter-

nationally recognized by the Ottoman Moslim rulers at the Treaty of

Malta in 1535 between Suleiman the Magnificent and Francis I of

France as a land sacred to Christians and Jews. This treaty wasacknowledged by all other European powers at the treaty of West-

phalia in 1648. The Americans confirmed the Malta treaty in 1913

with the USA/France Arbitrations & Extensions treaty. So it was not

Jews alone who had legal rights here. The French nation and its

Christian charges also had legal interests here, ipso facto thus allChristian nations; the Jewish people held prior legal rights to whoever

was claiming them now. And this was upheld by the previous high

contracting party, the Ottoman Empire.

Shabbat shalom,

Meir


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THE REASON BEHIND ENGLANDS DUPLICITY

Uncovered: U.K. intel encouraged Arab armies to invade Israel in 1948

Intelligence obtained by the French secret services in the Middle East

sheds new light on Britains role in the Arab-Israeli War of Independence.

By Meir Zamir | The Telegraph | Sep. 14, 2014

The writer works for the Haaretz newspaper

Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin (left) and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee

Some highlights

Without the knowledge of their cabinet, from June 1947 until May 1948, British secretagents conducted their own covert policy. While officially seeking to convince the Arabgovernments of the importance of concluding defense agreements with Britain to counterthe escalating Soviet threat, they secretly instigated an Arab-Jewish confrontation in Pales-tine to advance Britains strategic ends.

They sought to use a war in Palestine to deflect the Arab publics attention from the con-

troversial treaty negotiations; as an incentive for the Arab governments to conclude defensetreaties with Britain; to demonstrate to the Arab rulers their countries need for militarycollaboration; to reinforce the Arab states military dependence on Britain, while at thesame time preventing the establishment of a Jewish state or limiting its size. An Arab-Jewish conflict would also validate Britains long-held position regarding the solution tothe Palestinian problem and demonstrate that, despite its good intentions, it was caught inthe middle. Moreover, it would help Britain secure its strategic assets in Palestine: Haifa,with its port and refineries, and the Negev region in the south.


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In this brief article, it is impossible to detail all the maneuvers and intrigues of the BritishArabists in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad to instigate an Arab attack on the Jewish state. TheBritish secret agents used almost all the dirty tricks in their arsenal fear, jealousy, greed,false promises, misleading information and playing on inter-Arab rivalries to provoke theArab rulers into a war in Palestine. Nuri al-Said (until the failure of the Portsmouth Trea-ty); King Abdullah (between June 1947 and May 1948); and Azzam, Mardam Bey and

Sulh, and other co-opted agents of influence all allowed the British secret services tooperate behind-the-scenes to implement their schemes. King Ibn Saud aptly described theBritish agents as master puppeteers.

The Arab leaders were trapped between their reluctance to go to war and pressure fromtheir public that they themselves had incited with inflammatory rhetoric on destroying theJewish state. Azzam admitted to a Jewish Agency representative that we have no choicebut to go to war, even if we will be defeated.

(1) Alarming developments

September 11, 1947 On the eve of the Arab Leagues political committee meeting todecide on the Arab response to UNSCOP [the United Nations Special Committee on Pales-tine] report [supporting the end of the British mandate and partitioning the land betweenJews and Arabs], the Lebanese newspaper LOrient published an article. Bloc Oriental etextension de la Ligue argued that, like the Greater Syria plan [that aimed to unite Syria,Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine], the Oriental Bloc a French term for Britains plannedregional defense pact hung over the independence of Arab countries and the Arab Leaguelike the Sword of Damocles, and that its authors were one and the same: [Iraqi PrimeMinister] Nuri al-Said and [Jordanian] King Abdullah.

On September 20, the Lebanese newspaper Le Jour reported that after the Arab Leaguemeeting in Saoufar, Lebanon, Brig. Iltyd Nicolas Clayton whom it defined as head ofthe British intelligence in the Middle East had left for Damascus. It quoted a Syriannewspaper speculating on whether his visit was connected to the Greater Syria scheme andthe tense relations between the Syrian and Lebanese presidents [Shukri al-Quwatli andBishara al-Khuri] and Jordans King Abdullah, or to events in Palestine.

On February 19, 1948, the Lebanese newspaper Le Soir published an article titled Claytonmade. Based on Zionist sources, it reported that Brig. Clayton architect of the Grea-ter Syria plan, the Oriental Bloc and the bilateral defense treaties with the Arab states was now advocating a new scheme for the partition of Palestine. The plan proposed that:Imperialist Lebanon will annex the Western Galilee up to Shavei Zion; Syria the north-

eastern part of the Galilee and part of its southern region; Egypt will have part of the

cake; and Transjordan will swallow up the rest.In fact, these and other reports in the Le-

banese press on the activities of British secret agents were part of a secret war being wagedby French intelligence against the British.

Information conveyed by the French intelligence services to the Haganah [the prestateunderground Jewish army] in the fall of 1947 indicated that Brig. Clayton and his assistantswere involved in a new initiative to secure Britains strategic position in the Middle East,and linked Clayton to the escalating Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. The sources alsoreferred to a new partition plan proposed by Clayton, which, contradicting that of the Uni-


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ted Nations, aimed to split Palestine between the neighbouring Arab states and limit the de-signated territory of the Jewish state to the coastal area between Atlit [just south of Haifa]and Tel Aviv.

The French tied this initiative to renewed British efforts to implement the 1946 Morrison-Grady Plan [aka the Cantonization Plan] and warned of the danger of an attack on the Yi-

shuv [Jewish community in Palestine] by irregular forces organized by the Arab League.They also warned that an invasion by the regular Arab armies to prevent the establishmentof a Jewish state could not be ruled out.

Information passed on by the French, after the UN partition vote on November 29, 1947,was even more alarming. On January 13, 1948, Maurice Fischer the SHAI [Haganah in-telligence service] liaison officer to French intelligence reported from Paris that, based ontotally reliable information from French sources, Brig. Clayton had, on December 17,1947, reached an understanding with Lebanese Prime Minister Riyad al-Sulh, according towhich the British forces would evacuate northern Palestine and give free rein to the irre-gular forces of the Arab Liberation Army, headed by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, to attack Jewishsettlements.

David Ben-Gurion

The next day, January 14, two French intelligence officers from Beirut arrived in Haifa andinformed the French military attach that the Syrian prime minister, Jamil Mardam Bey,was mobilizing an irregular force of 20,000 volunteers to invade Palestine, with tacit Bri-tish agreement. Previously, at the end of August 1947, Eliyahu Sasson David Ben-Guri-ons chief Arabist adviser had been called urgently to Paris. He remained until mid-Sep-tember, sending information and instructions to warn Jordans King Abdullah and the

Egyptian government that British agents were planning to provoke their countries into awar against the Jews in Palestine. Reports in the Haganah archives from those months where Claytons name figures frequently tie the escalation in the Arab-Jewish conflict toBritains efforts to secure its strategic position in the Middle East. They, too, alluded to anew scheme, promoted by the British secret services in Cairo, to divide Palestine betweenthe neighboring Arab states. In the early months of 1948, information continued to reachSHAI on secret British attempts, orchestrated by Brig. Claytons clique in Cairo, to re-concile the Arab leaders and convince them to join forces to prevent the establishment of aJewish state.


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(2) Interviewing Clayton

Ben-Gurions concern regarding the undercover activities of Brig. Clayton and Arabistexperts in the Foreign Office and the Middle East intensified after August 1947. On No-vember 11, 1947, he sent a British-Jewish former officer to interview Clayton, who wasunaware that Ben-Gurion had drafted the questions. The urgency to uncover the British

secret services intentions prompted Ben-Gurion to approve the Acre Operation in whichthe Haganah seized the files of the British Legation in Beirut, on December 25, 1947, asthey were being transferred from Beirut to Haifa, en route to Britain.

On January 11, 1948, Sasson sent King Abdullah a letter warning him of a plot being hat-ched in London and Cairo promoted by Clayton, Nuri al-Said and officials in the Fo-reign Office and Colonial Office against the UN Partition Plan that aimed to provokeTransjordan into a war against the Yishuv, contrary to Abdullahs understanding with theJewish Agency.

In February, Ben-Gurions chief intelligence officer, Reuven Zaslani [Shiloah], arrived inLondon to establish whether Britains failure to ratify its defense treaty with Iraq in

January 1948 [the Portsmouth Treaty] had influenced its stand on Palestine, and if therewas indeed a British plot to thwart the establishment of a Jewish state. He reported backthat although the British cabinet did not intend to oppose partition, the experts whoargued that it could not be implemented were working against it. Zaslani counted the fol-lowing against them: Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevins adviser, Harold Bailey; Brig. Clay-ton; and Gerald de Gaury, a Foreign Office Arabist and liaison officer. Zaslani noted thatthese experts, who advocated a collective military agreement with the Arab countries,believed that a future Jewish state could not be relied upon. He added that they were rein-forcing the Arab side without the cabinets agreement.

Nevertheless, he assessed that they would not be able to influence the cabinets decision toend the mandate and withdraw British forces from Palestine, as it was supported by the twohighest-ranking British officials High Commissioner of Palestine Alan Cunningham andthe commander of the British forces in Palestine, Gen. Gordon MacMillan. A similarassessment was made by Ben-Gurion in a conversation with a French diplomat in earlyMarch. In a March 7 entry in his diary, Ben-Gurion notes: Clayton went to Syria; theBritish want to make Syria their base after failing in Iraq and Egypt. The situation in the

Arab world is difficult riots in Iraq and Britain is trying to concentrate Arab thought on

Palestine.The above examples from the Arab press and French and Zionist sources raiseintriguing questions. Was there indeed a connection between Britains efforts to concludebilateral military treaties with Iraq, Egypt and other Arab states to form a collectiveregional defence organization, and the alleged attempts by its secret services in Cairo toprovoke a Jewish-Arab war in Palestine? Why was Clayton associated with a scheme tosplit Palestine between its neighbouring Arab states? Why was he implicated in provokingArab attacks, initially on the Yishuv by irregular forces and, later, on the newly establishedJewish state by the regular Arab armies? Like Charles de Gaulle, who blamed Britain forconspiring to evict France from the Levant, Ben-Gurion accused it of trying to sabotage theestablishment of a Jewish state and secretly provoking an armed invasion by Arab states.Syrian and British documents uncovered in French archives confirm de Gaulles accusa-tions and those of Ben-Gurion. These documents and French intelligence reports revealthat the British-Arabist secret agents, who engineered Frances eviction from the Levant in1945, took similar steps to prevent the formation of a Jewish state in 1947- 48.


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(3) The Missing Dimension

The question of Britains role in the war between Israel and the Arab states in 1948 is oneof the most studied issues in the historiography of the War of Independence. And yet, des-pite the considerable efforts of historians, they found no evidence of Ben-Gurions allega-tions that Britain had instigated the Arab leaders to invade Israel a day after its establish-

ment. In fact, confirmation of Ben-Gurions allegations can be found in French archives,especially in the files of French intelligence, whose officers closely followed the activitiesof the British secret services in the Middle East in the 1940s. A major hurdle when study-ing the 1948 war is the lack of access to Arab archives. The Syrian documents, obtained byFrench intelligence which contain uncensored private correspondence and secret agree-ments between the Arab leaders, as well as diplomatic exchanges give scholars a closerlook at the Arab stand toward a Jewish state in Palestine without having to rely solely onIsraeli and Western archives, Arab rulers inflammatory public rhetoric and memoirs, ornewspaper articles.

Syrian President Shukri Al-Kouatly with Saudi King Ibn Saud

and Iraqi PM Al Said, at the pan-Arab meeting in 1946

The Syrian documents reveal that the Arab leaders attitudes toward the Zionists aspi-rations derived not only from their hostility toward a Jewish state, but were far more com-plex. This emphasizes the need for scholars to study the Arab-Zionist conflict in the con-text of Anglo-Arab and inter-Arab rivalries, rather than merely Anglo-Jewish or Arab-Jewish relations. The thousands of Syrian and other Arab documents found in the Frencharchives, together with British intelligence reports obtained by French intelligence, confirmthat the role of the British secret services in the Middle East during and after World War II

comprises the missing dimension in the historiography of the region in the 1940s.

Two conclusions can be drawn from research into these documents, which are relevant to

the role of British intelligence in the war in Palestine:

The first is that, in the 1940s, Britain conducted a two-track policy in the Middle East:one, a well-documented, official policy defined by Whitehall under both the Conservativeand Labour parties; the second was informal and secretive, which can be termed regional,implemented by agents in the field, which left few traces in British archives. It wasperpetrated by a small, influential group of Arabist secret agents who manipulated the cabi-


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net in London and implemented their own policies, which deviated from the official posi-tion. These agents enjoyed a unique status as intermediaries between Whitehall and localArab leaders. Either intentionally, or because of deep-seated personal beliefs, they pro-vided biased assessments. They did not merely gather and interpret information and recom-mend policy, but controlled the flow of information and implemented their own policieswhile keeping the London decision makers in the dark. They joined forces with Arab ru-

lers, whom they portrayed as voicing the Arab view, in order to mislead their government.Their tactics, which were backed by senior military officers in Cairo, gathered momentumunder the post-WWII Labour government and during the crisis in Palestine in 1947- 48.

The second conclusion is that the British secret agents succeeded in implementing theirpolicies due largely to their use of indirect control over local agents of influence. Theyemployed undercover political operations, clandestine diplomacy and covert propaganda tomanipulate Arab leaders and public opinion methods widely used in the Middle Eastduring World War II. The Syrian and British documents provide a unique insight into themodus operandi of the British secret services in co-opting prominent Arab leaders, and hel-ping them to positions of power in return for their collaboration. President Quwatli andPrime Minister Mardam Bey in Syria; President Khuri and Prime Minister Sulh in Leba-non; Arab League Secretary-General Abd al-Rahman al-Azzam these are prime examp-les, but there were many others. This is not to say, however, that the British intelligenceofficers entirely controlled those leaders. Relations were complex and entailed variousmeans of coercion. Apart from political and financial bribery and, when necessary, pres-sure and extortion an effective tactic was to convince them that collaborating with Britainwas in their own and their countrys interests. But such manoeuvres, as was the case withPresident Quwatli, did not always succeed. After World War II, as Britains prestige wanedand its military and economic standing diminished, undercover political operations werestepped up, becoming an essential tool for the Arabist secret agents to safeguard theircountrys strategic and economic interests in the Middle East.

(4) The Secret British Scheme

On May 28, 1947, Najib al-Armanazi, the Syrian ambassador to London, informed his fo-reign minister of an incident involving Brig. Clayton a confrontation between the ForeignOffice and the secret services, who had categorically refused to remove him from Egypt.Armanazi noted that support for Clayton surpasses the imagination,adding that he hadbeen given carte blanche to direct the vast program he aims to complete, whichconsisted of advancing the Greater Syria plan and securing British control over Libya. Thesame day, Mardam Bey instructed Armanazi to alert officials in Britains Foreign Officethat the Syrian government would forcibly oppose any intervention by King Abdullah inSyrian affairs. He had previously notified Armanazi that British agents were inciting theDruze and Bedouin tribes against the Syrian government. In early June, Mardam Bey wrotedirectly to Bevin, complaining of the intrigues of British officers in the Arab Legion againstSyria, adding: What makes the situation even more delicate is that the plot organized

against Syria is welcomed by all the British officials in the Near East.He warned that ifSyria had no other way to safeguard its independence, it would seek foreign assistance,including from the Soviet Union. Reports on increasing subversion by British agents inSyria came during the Syrian parliamentary elections, and the escalating tension along theborder between Syria and Jordan in the summer of 1947. An Arab intelligence report re-veals that British secret agents were also provoking members of the Muslim Brotherhoodin Syria to act against its republican regime. It also reveals that British agents in Egyptwere collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood there, against the growing Communistpropaganda. The deterioration in Syro-Jordanian relations coincided with the Anglo-Iraqi


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negotiations on a new military agreement to replace the 1930 treaty as relations betweenthe Iraqi government and King Abdullah were improving. These were the initial steps ofthe scheme devised by the British secret services in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad that wereimplemented between July 1947 and May 1948.

In the summer of 1947, British policy in the Middle East reached an impasse. Egyptian

Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi backed by King Faruk insisted that Britainundertake to evacuate its forces before the Egyptian government would agree to proceedwith negotiations on an Anglo-Egyptian treaty and the future of Sudan. In July, the Egyp-tian government went further when it brought its case before the United Nations. Britishpolicy in Palestine reached a deadlock as well. After the failure of negotiations with Araband Zionist representatives in London in early 1947, the British cabinet had declared itsintention to return the Mandate over Palestine to the United Nations. Britain was losingground in the propaganda war, especially in the United States, as the Zionists successfullyportrayed the conflict in Palestine not as Arab-Jewish, but an Anglo-Jewish one between aZionist liberation movement and a colonial power. Also, its harsh measures against theillegal immigration of Holocaust survivors from the European refugee camps to Palestinedrew international criticism, which culminated with the Exodus ship affair in July 1947.

Continued reports of Zionist attacks on British soldiers stirred up intense public resentmentand hardened the resolve of the cabinet to evacuate Palestine. As the U.K.s economic cri-sis deepened, Prime Minister Clement Attlee was compelled to cut the costs of retaininglarge armed forces overseas to defend an empire that Britain was no longer capable of sus-taining, either militarily or economically. In early 1947, the cabinet dramatically announ-ced Britains intention to withdraw unilaterally from India. Arab rulers closely followedthe dramatic events unfolding in London, indicating that Britains imperial order in theMiddle East was beginning to crumble. They saw Britain failing to suppress the Zionistinsurgency, gradually losing its grip over the Middle East and being relegated to an inferiorposition vis--vis the United States. President Harry Trumans March 1947 declaration thatthe United States would defend Turkey and Greece against the Soviet Union reinforcedthese beliefs. Britains plan for a regional security pact was perceived as being less likely;

Turkish and Arab leaders were less inclined to be part of it. But President Quwatli believedthat Britain would not give up the Middle East without a struggle, while King Faruk toldMardam Bey: Great Britain played us all and exploited us in its own interest, and won onall fronts simultaneously.The French intelligence service estimated that Britain was farfrom losing its grip over the Middle East and still had many cards to play.

Note on the Exodus affair: The ship Exodus became a symbol of Aliya Bet illegalimmigration of those who did not conform to the British unjustifiable restrictions toJewish immigration to Palestine. After World War II, the so-called illegal immigrationincreased and the British authorities decided to stop it by sending the ships back to theports of embarkation in Europe. The first ship to which this policy was applied was theExodus in July 1947. After having failed to disembark in Marseille, the British decided

to return the immigrants to Germany, and so the ship left for the port of Hamburg, thenin the British occupation zone. The immigrants were forcibly taken off and transportedto two camps near Lubeck. Journalists who covered the dramatic struggle described tothe entire world the heartlessness and cruelty of the British. World public opinion wasoutraged and the British changed their policy. Illegal immigrants were not sent back toEurope anymore; they, including those of the Exodus, were henceforth brought todetention camps in Cyprus.


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In the summer of 1947, a shift took place in the British Arabists stand especially those inthe secret services toward the Labour cabinets Middle East policy. Unable to influencePrime Minister Attlee, who was resolved to withdraw a substantial part of the Britishforces from the region, they hijacked Britains Middle East policy, taking matters intotheir own hands. They were determined to act against what they perceived as a policy thatwas endangering their countrys vital strategic interests in the face of the Soviet thrust into

the region. From June 1947 until May 1948, Britain thus conducted two contradictorypolicies in the Middle East one official, carried out by the cabinet and foreign secretary;the other, unauthorized and secretive, devised by Arabist secret agents in Cairo, Ammanand Baghdad. Brig. Clayton played a key role in coordinating and implementing this covertpolicy. This brief analysis examines only whether the Arabist secret agents intentionallyinstigated Arab armed attacks against the Jewish community in Palestine, and later againstthe State of Israel, without their cabinets knowledge or sanction. It does not address theinter-Arab balance of power [which was closely tied to the war in Palestine; the militaryand diplomatic counterstrategy adopted by Ben-Gurion and his close advisers after learningof the secret British scheme], nor the French or Soviet counteraction in underminingBritish designs in the Middle East.

On September 23, 1947, shortly after the Arab League meeting in Saoufar, the Frenchattach in Baghdad reported a secret British scheme to instigate an Arab-Jewish war inPalestine, in order to facilitate the implementation of the Greater Syria plan. The report, re-produced in part here, disclosed that the Iraqi prime ministers militant stand in Saoufarhad been coordinated with British agents and marked a turning point in Britain's MiddleEast policy: It seems, in effect, that the British government, urged on by the young ele-ments in the Foreign Office and the Intelligence Service, has decided, after months of

hesitation, to undertake a large-scale manoeuvre that will enable it to consolidate, at little

cost, its present wavering position in this part of the world. The British believe that the UN

will no doubt ratify the UNSCOP decisions. Disturbances will thus begin in Palestine. The

English will benefit from the situation to build new positions as advantageous as those they

have lost in Egypt. According to information from an English source, the British plan will

be as follows: England will give up its mandate over Palestine as soon as possible andreturn it to the UN, which will oversee, if necessary, an international force to re-establish

order in this country. A retreat from Palestine of most of the British troops can already be

envisaged. In the event of open conflict between Jews and Arabs, the English, under the

pretext of not wanting to be attacked from both sides in these hostilities, where it maintains

an officially neutral position, will retreat to Transjordan, from where one or two British

divisions will be able to immediately intervene if necessary. British agents will now push

the Arab countries to intervene to help their brethren in Palestine if they are attacked by

the Jews.

(5) All-out Arab-Jewish War

While many British politicians and officials shared this belief, neither Bevin nor other

cabinet ministers were aware that their secret services in Cairo and Arabist diplomats inLondon and the Middle East, supported by the senior military authorities, were determined,contrary to cabinet decisions, to hold on to the Middle East even if it led to an all-outArab-Jewish war. While the attachs report from Baghdad focuses on a secret scheme byBritish agents to provoke an Arab-Jewish war to further Greater Syria and its union withIraq, other French reports disclose that its immediate goal was to safeguard Britainsstrategic position in the Middle East. Another goal was to prevent the establishment of aJewish state or an Arab-Palestinian state based on the UN partition. There were also emer-


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gency safety measures both military and diplomatic to prevent the Jewish state fromexpanding its territory if the Arab armies were defeated. In this event, British forces sta-tioned in Transjordan and Egypt would intervene, while British diplomats in the UN Secu-rity Council would act to impose a cease-fire.

A report filed by a French intell igence off icer regarding

his conversation with Eliyahu Sasson,

who was responsible for contacts with the French

French intelligence sources present the scheme as an attempt by Britain to shuffle its cardsin the Middle East and inflame Arab hostility toward a Jewish state in order to secure itsdominance in the region. Whether the Arabs won or were defeated, its instigators assumed


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that Britain would be in a better position than it had been in the summer of 1947. Indeed,the attach's report concluded: The British position, which for some time has appearedprecarious, will thus find itself again dominant, all the more so as Egypts termination of

the Anglo-Egyptian treaty will enable the British forces to maintain their position on the

Suez Canal.

During deliberations in London and Cairo in 1947 on a defence strategy in the Middle East,it was decided that Britain would seek bilateral military treaties with each Arab state rather than a collective agreement brokered through the Arab League to replace existingtreaties. It was assumed that Britain would be in a better position to initially conclude bila-teral treaties with friendly Hashemite Iraq and Transjordan, and later with other Arab go-vernments, especially Syria. A treaty with Egypt remained a high priority for the BritishHigh Command. The Foreign Office expected that after failing at the UN that July, Egyptwould be more amenable to renewing negotiations, thus ensuring Britains military use ofits territory and solving the Sudan question. But King Faruk and his prime minister, as wellas Syrias President Quwatli, were reluctant to conclude treaties with Britain, a decliningcolonial power. They faced an upsurge of nationalist passion among the younger genera-tion, who were demonstrating in the streets for independence and social and economic re-

forms, and refused to be drawn into a war between the Western powers and the Soviet Uni-on. As the communist threat became less convincing, British agents believed that they hadto come up with more effective leverage to persuade the Arab governments and public thattheir countries needed Britains assistance.

Without the knowledge of their cabinet, from June 1947 until May 1948, British secretagents conducted their own covert policy. While officially seeking to convince the Arabgovernments of the importance of concluding defence agreements with Britain to counterthe escalating Soviet threat, they secretly instigated an Arab-Jewish confrontation in Pales-tine to advance Britains strategic ends. They sought to use a war in Palestine to deflect theArab publics attention from the controversial treaty negotiations; as an incentive for theArab governments to conclude defence treaties with Britain; to demonstrate to the Arab

rulers their countries need for military collaboration; to reinforce the Arab states militarydependence on Britain, while preventing the establishment of a Jewish state or limiting itssize. A war in Palestine would pressure the United States to revise its position on partition.No longer would Zionist propaganda be able to portray the struggle against Britain as thatof a national movement fighting to liberate itself from colonial rule. An Arab-Jewish con-flict would also validate Britains long-held position regarding the solution to the Pales-tinian problem and demonstrate that, despite its good intentions, it was caught in the mid-dle. Moreover, it would help Britain secure its strategic assets in Palestine: Haifa, with itsport and refineries, and the Negev region in the south.

Brig. Claytons frequent visits to the Arab capitals in the last months of 1947, and his be-hind-the-scenes involvement in the Arab Leagues meetings in Saoufar, Aley and Cairo,

were part of the scheme hatched by the secret agents in Cairo, Baghdad and Amman. Nurial-Said, the Arab Leagues Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh were used to implement it.King Abdullah was essential for its success, as he and his Arab Legion were to serve as ameans to pressure Quwatli, Saudi King Ibn Saud and Egypts Faruk, while forcing theZionist leaders to acquiesce on Britains proposals. Also part of the ploy were attempts byBritish agents in Transjordan to intimidate the Syrian president; the Iraqi governmentsmilitant stand in Saoufar and Aley, and its insistence that the Arab League take action inPalestine; and Claytons proposal to split Palestine between the Arab states.


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Lebanese President El Khoury (left) withArab League Secretary General Abd al-Rahman al-Azzam

Arab leaders found themselves trapped between fears

of embarking on a war - and public pressure

In mid-January 1948, the Arabists scheme seemed on the verge of success. With the Arabpublics attention turned to events in Palestine, Britain concluded a defence treaty withIraq. A similar agreement with Transjordan was to be signed without any hindrance. Afterfailing to persuade kings Ibn Saud and Faruk to conclude an agreement with Syria againstAbdullah, President Quwatli was more predisposed to give in to British pressure, particu-larly as British agents had undertaken to restrain the Jordanian monarch. He was also anxi-ous to prevent them from jeopardizing his efforts to be elected president for a second term.

Prime Minister Sulh, who opposed a Jewish state on Lebanons border that might reinforceMaronite separatism, secretly collaborated with Clayton and publicly endorsed a treatywith Britain. But when Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador to Egypt, and Brig.Clayton proposed to Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi that Britain foil the establishmentof a Jewish state or limit its territory in return for a treaty, Nuqrashi rejected any attempt tolink the conflict in Palestine with Egypts demands for the evacuation of British forces andunity of the Nile Valley. Alongside negotiations with the Arab governments on defencetreaties, the British secret agents stepped up their efforts to fuel violent Arab-Jewishclashes, urging the Arab leaders to close ranks against the Zionist threat.

Between September and December 1947, Brig. Clayton and other secret agents tacitly col-

laborated with Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh to organize an irregular force the ArabLiberation Army, under Qawuqjis command to be activated before Britain formallywithdrew from Palestine. While Azzam regarded this force as a means for the Arab Leagueto intervene in Palestine, Mardam and Sulh and President Quwatli in particular saw itmore as a means to pre-empt an attempt by Abdullahs Arab Legion to take over thenorthern part of Palestine than to help their Palestinian brethren against the Jews. A Britishmilitary mission under Col. Fox, an unofficial adviser to the Syrian High Command since1946, tried to obtain arms and ammunition from British army stocks in Palestine to armArab volunteers in the Katana camp south of Damascus. French intelligence sources re-


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ported that British army and police deserters, disguised as Arabs, were to be seen in thestreets of Damascus. Scores of British employees of the Iraq Petroleum Company arrivedin the city, leading to Syrian press speculation on why the Syrian capital had suddenlybecome an attraction for British tourists. British agents also negotiated with the GrandMufti of Jerusalem initially indirectly through Sulh and later with his envoy, followinghis demand to command his own armed forces in Palestine. The Arab Liberation Army

entered Palestine in the first half of January 1948; Qawuqji later wrote that the Britisharmy had hardly hindered the advance of his forces on northern Palestine.

King Abdullah the first

An emissary sent by Ben Gurion warned him and the Egyptiansthat British agents are pushing their nations to wage war on the Jews

The collapse of the Portsmouth Treaty marked the failure of the bilateral treaty approach.Although Bevin signed a new treaty in London with Jordanian Prime Minister Tawfiq Abdal-Huda, other Arab leaders, including Azzam, Mardam Bey and Sulh, openly opposedtreaties with foreign powers. British military planners and Arabists in the Foreign Officeand the Middle East now came up with a new strategy a collective defence agreementwith the Arab states through the Arab League. In March 1948, Azzam and Mardam Beybegan a campaign to revise the Arab League pact in order to consolidate ties between itsmember-states against the Zionist threat an initiative tacitly coordinated with the Britishsecret agents. After consulting with King Ibn Saud, King Faruk declared that before any

negotiations could take place on a collective defence agreement, Britain had to abrogate itsexisting bilateral treaties with the Arab states. In their reports to London, the Arabistslinked the collapse of the Portsmouth Treaty directly to events in Palestine. Their failure inIraq increased the likelihood of war in Palestine, as British secret agents became even moredetermined to provoke an Arab-Jewish conflict. The defeat in April of the Arab LiberationArmy irregular forces and of those commanded by Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini the Muftisnephew reinforced their conviction that only the regular Arab armies could prevent theestablishment of a Jewish state.


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(6) Conclusion

In this brief article, it is impossible to detail all the manoeuvres and intrigues of the BritishArabists in Cairo, Amman and Baghdad, to instigate an Arab attack on the Jewish state.The British secret agents used almost all the dirty tricks in their arsenal fear, jealousy,greed, false promises, misleading information and playing on inter-Arab rivalries to pro-voke the Arab rulers into a war in Palestine. Nuri al-Said [until the failure of the Ports-mouth Treaty]; King Abdullah [between June 1947 and May 1948]; and Azzam, MardamBey and Sulh, and other co-opted agents of influence all allowed the British secretservices to operate behind-the-scenes to implement their schemes. King Ibn Saud aptlydescribed the British agents as master puppeteers. The Arab leaders were trapped be-tween their reluctance to go to war and pressure from their public that they themselves hadincited with inflammatory rhetoric on destroying the Jewish state. Azzam admitted to aJewish Agency representative that we have no choice but to go to war, even if we will bedefeated.

Provoking Egypt to join the war in Palestine was central to the British secret strategy.French sources give details of the British agents tactics teaming up with Azzam to pressKing Faruk to instruct his army to join the war, despite the opposition of his prime minis-

ter. They also included an undertaking to supply the Egyptian army with weapons andammunition from British stocks in the Canal Zone, and a deliberate underrepresentation ofthe military strength of the Jewish forces. Like other Arab rulers, King Faruk under pu-blic pressure to take action was vulnerable to British machinations. He could not remainon the sidelines while his rival, King Abdullah, was sending forces to Palestine. The May11 report from the French military attach in Beirut, on the secret discussions of the ArabLeagues political committee in Damascus, reveals that, apart from King Abdullah, theother Arab leaders were hesitant, seeking a way to delay an invasion of Palestine. It alsoexposes the British agents direct intervention in their decisions. At the last minute, KingFaruk overruled his reluctant prime minister and commanded his army to go to war. The1948 war swept away the anciens rgimes and opened the road to power for a young gene-ration of radical Arab-nationalist officers, determined to avenge their countries defeat and

bring an end to Britains dominance in the region.

The old Arab rulers, victims of British machinations and their own ambitions, were to paydearly. King Abdullah, Iraqi Prince-Regent Abd al-Ilah, Nuri al-Said, Sulh and Nuqrashiall lost their lives. King Faruk and President Quwatli were more fortunate, losing onlypower. The British secret agents, diplomats, military officers and civil servants returnedhome, leaving behind their legacy of a divided, violent Middle East, in which the statesformed by two colonial powers in the aftermath of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement failedto withstand the test of time.

g


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RANDS FINDINGS AND THE PARTITION PROPOSAL

(a) More findings by Milord Ivan Rand

In May 1916 at the Sykes Picot agreement, France traded Palestine to Great Britains careproviding Britain keep its promises to the Jews. Then comes the Balfour letter in Novem-

ber 1917, two days after the remarkable Battle of Beer Sheba and the start of Allenby'sconquest of Palestine. The Balfour letter did not create the Jewish national home, theYishuv already existed and had been growing for at least 50 years before, but what theletter accomplished was to acknowledge that place as a homeland for Jews, which cameby a major power, and it committed the mandates function to facilitating its growth.

Britain went to Versailles with an obligation to France, Italy, Belgium, Japan and theUnited States that in their practice as the proctor of the mandatory they were to facilitate aJewish National Home. Article 22 of the Versailles treaty dealt with the mandates in exOttoman territories and the Balfour letter was appended to it. Then came the Allied powersConference of San Remo in April 1920. Yet, the same week British agents fomented apogrom in Jerusalem. The Conference of San Remo charged Britain, through its mandate,

with the duty to facilitate unrestricted Jewish immigration anywhere in Palestine and closesettlement by Jews in the territory which then included Transjordan. In June, Britain lopsoff from Palestine 35,000 square miles for the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan. Fourmonths later Turkey signs the Treaty of Severs with a clear statement that Palestine west ofthe Jordan is for the sole purpose of a Jewish National Home. This was ratified by the Uni-ted States through the Fish amendment brought forward by a representative named Hamil-ton Fish and signed into law as L622 by President Harding, which was never repealed orsuperseded. Italy France, Belgium, and Japan also held England to those same terms.

But Britain used the notion to facilitate Jewish immigration as the pretext to scrutinize,discriminate, regulate, constrict and limit Jewish immigration, while they turned a blindeye to Arab immigration. Indeed they treated Arabs from all over the Arab world as though

they were the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. The British also created a leadershipfor the Arabs to counteract the Jewish communitys form of self government, embodied bythe Jewish Agency, in rigging the Moslem election for the Mufti of Jerusalem and instal-ling the unprecedented and very young Haj Amin el Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jeru-salem. They also gave an annual stipend of 250,000 for his Moslem Supreme Council,which today would be about $8 million. The mandatory's secretariat further appointed oneof its officials Earnest Richmond to ensure that Arab sensitivities on developmentswere always to be brought to the High Commissioners ruling council. The Jewish Agencyreceived no stipends from the government. All their funds came solely from the Jewishcommunity. They had no official from the secretariat sensitive to Jewish interests to attendruling council meetings. The mandatory, who was supposed to build the structures and in-stitutions of a modern nation state, was unable to provide the Arabs any of those structures

and institutions needed, while the Yishuv quickly outstripped and out-performed all of theLeague of Nation mandatorys in internal services. That mandatory taxed the Yishuv forits public works. It must be said that during the 1930s and the Great Depression,Palestine was the only British possession to bring into London millions of pounds per year,while every other British Empire outpost drained London of cash!

Rand uncovered in the immigration branch of the secretariat that immigrants were catego-rized. One of the categories was a group called persons of moral turpitude and/or feeblemindedness.They had to be barred from entry, all in the name for the protection of the


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Jewish people they claimed. It looked as if it had been approved by Dr. Weizmann.Rand asked for a clarification about the so-called approval, but the secretariat never dis-played if they had it. Rand found out that Weizmann lived in Manchester and approachedhim. He knew nothing about it until he was informed by Rand himself. Rand found thatover 262,000 certificates had been issued in the period between 1922 and 1942 to bar Jewsfrom future entry into Palestine, which included the Ger Rebbe, who was the successor

rabbi of the Vilna Gaon, one of the natural intellectual leaders of the Jewish people. Inclu-ded was also Zeev Jabotinsky, the creator of the Jewish Legion. Meanwhile, between 1930to 1946, 686,000 Arabs entered Palestine. And there were no such certificates with anyArabs whatsoever.

A certificate meant they identified you for the official record, should you turn up at anygate, or anywhere on the boundary. It wasnt for you, it was for the mandatorys bordercontrol officials. If such a person was identified, he was immediately taken to be fractiousand he was denied entrance, and subsequently removed. In the Newfoundlander colloquialthey say: Thems the facts my son. What British administrators did, was carry on a war ofdiscrimination, barring the exclusion of Jewish people who wished immigration to theirancestral land. The Arabs got the message that Jews should never live without submission

and persecution. The British empire was more slippery and evil than imagined, and so it isthat the same Nazi-war continues even today. Only the colours have changed. Its just theAmerican government and the Arabs that continue it. Of course, the American govern-ments cant admit they are continuing Hitlers war. But I would say that the Jonathan Pol-lard case is a proof that persecutory discrimination is deeply embedded into American ad-ministrators psychic sediments. The British and Arab propaganda was so effective thateven today, despite their own historical records, American administrators and many otherssincerely believe that Jews are living on stolen Arab land.

Note: Jonathan Jay Pollard, born in 1954, pleaded guilty in 1987 to selling classifiedinformation from the United States to Israel while working as a civilian intelligenceanalyst. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Pollard is the only American ever to

receive a life sentence for passing classified information to an ally of the U.S. Israeliofficials, American and Israeli activist groups, and American politicians, have lobbiedcontinuously for reduction or commutation of his sentence. The Israeli government hasmade repeated but unsuccessful attempts to negotiate his release. Israel granted Pollardcitizenship in 1995, but did not publicly admit buying classified information from himuntil 1998. Pollard has never been charged with treason, because that is only applicablein cases that involve an enemy state.

After the 1929 Arab disturbances the mandatory claimed that the cause of Arab grievanceswas Jews displacing peasants by their ability to outbid on any land purchases. Despite thefact that it was found to be without any basis of truth in both The Royal Commissions onPalestine [1929, Lord Passfields White Paper and the 1930 Hope-Simpson White Paper],

the High Commissioner Sir John Chancellor introduced an order in council in 1932 thatcompelled all land developers, like the JNF [Jewish National Fund] and others, upon com-pleting their agricultural restoration of a granted state land parcel, to hand over 50% of theconcession for non-Jewish purchasers exclusively. Rand called it backdoor socialism, enti-cing investors to make the expenditures and then systematically debilitating their market.As the market was rigged, it didnt take long for the Arab effendis to purchase restoredland for 10 cents on the dollar and then resell the land to Jews at $5. While an anti Jewishmyopia focused and regulated to increasing interference with those Jewish buyers, the Jewsnever sued over this in court. They were so intimidated by the mandatory, they feared that


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such steps would only make it worse. However, Rand did find out from internal papers thata Scottish land development company did sue and won over this order in council. [MilordWilkens called Chancellors OIC a sleigh of hand undoing due process.]

The more Rand delved into the administration of the mandate, the more he grew incensed,but the piece that took the cake was the McMichael 1940 Land Transfers order in Coun-

cil [by High Commissioner Sir Harold McMichael], which forbade any purchases of stateland by Jews exclusively. It divided the mandate into 14 districts where it classed certaindistricts of the mandatory where the Jews made the clear majority "A". It imposed onJewish landowners in those "A" districts that they were no longer allowed to pass on landownership through their wills to their lawful heirs, and that land was to be sequestered tobecome the property of the mandatory. Rand could come to no other conclusion than thatthe mandatory was even willing to upend the British Properties Act and that its policieswere persecutory with malice aforethought.

In May 1939 Britain passed through parliament the white paper and tried to make themandate fit into their own ambitions of sticking the Jews into a tiny enclave and formingan Arab state superimposed over their land. At that point the League of Nations on the

instruction of its members Italy, France and Turkey started legal proceeding to removeGreat Britain as the mandate protector. Then World War II started and the League went onhold. In 1946, the League set a date for the international court in the Hague, but before thedate for legal discovery Great Britain handed the mandate over to the UN. Rand furtherfound that during the period from September 1939 to May 1945 the mandatory exercisedan excessive and punitive policy on what they classed as illegal Jewish immigration.Atthe time it happened that the Royal Navy used to bar even legal Jewish immigrants; alsothe Jordanian Legion effected a blockade of Jews from Asia, and it was paid for its servicesby the mandatory. The Oxford historian Ephraim Karsh estimates that Britain interceptedat least 180,000 Jewish refugees, who escaped Europe on boats, and were then returned tothe Nazi empire.

(b) The partition proposal by Milord Ivan RandWhile Rand was digging into the facts, the American State Department informs Rand viatelegram that it would be best if the mandate was returned to Britains care without the coreBalfour letter and that the areas south of Beer Sheba be separated from the mandate toallow the physical unification of the Arab World. Rands response was that without theBalfour letter Britain had no right to any part of Palestine. He told that it was that letter inthe first place that gave Britain any legal authority as a trustee to the land and that if it wereremoved, then Frances earlier treaties must be reinstated. It would then be Frances role tomeet the Leagues objectives for that mandate. Further, without the Balfour letter, themandates of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq would all suffer serious repercussions.

Rand taught law here at Dalhousie in the 1950s before leaving to found a Law school at

Western University in London Ontario. We have here at Dal in the Dunn Library [WeldonLaw Bldg.] most of the primary documents and communications to UNSCOP. Rand wasdisgusted with both the British and the American diplomats for their insolence, their utterlack of empathy, and their treachery. Rand concluded that to return to the mandate wouldbe nothing less than embracing persecutory discrimination on a people whod just beensubjected to exterminatory persecution. Rand had a quick answer to any of the Pro-Arabassertions that Jews with a third the population were going to be getting only 56% of thealready partitioned mandate. Rands partition proposal was an attempt to redress past Bri-tish breaches of trust, like the so called Jewish illegal immigration and the other discri-


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minations in land regulations and its civil abuses. The best he could do was to offer theJews what amounted to 1/7th of the original mandate (which included Transjordania), thatonce had been promised and which was not put into effect because of the duplicitous anddevious British policy. They now had to settle for the territory west of the river Jordan.

Ivan Rand explained in his public letter to all the nations at the UN why the UNSCOP

could not in good conscience return the mandate to a bigoted and malicious British admi-nistration and why partition was the only reasonable means to dealing with the two conflic-ting communities. He said: Britain has betrayed their own solemn commitments, eventheir own laws to use administrative processes with malice aforethought. We cannot assist

or acquiesce in this persecutory discrimination of a people who have just barely survived

exterminatory persecution inflicted by Germany and her helpers. It is a travesty that His

Majestys Government have abused their trust to such a degree of betrayal and corruption.

If the Jewish people are denied self determination in their contiguously held ancestral

homeland, then no other nation on earth has any rights under international law to their

own home other than through the application of the force of arms. We must remind you

there is already a two state system in the original mandate which the mandatory did its

utmost to undo and subvert their obligations towards. You are not voting to impose a

people on another people, you are voting for a forlorn and lost people, who are the rem-nant of a vindictive persecution, to have their dignity moderately restored on 1/7th of what

they were solemnly promised by the unanimous will of the League of Nations. [the parti-tion proposal UN 181 passed on 29 November 1947 by a clear 2/3rds majority]

We all forget that UNSCOP was not originally there to make a partition. That thinking ispost hoc ergo propter hoc. Its purpose was really first an administrative & managementaudit of the mandatorys secretariat itself. So yes, there is a lot about the structure thatemerged from policy goals and how the management strived for those goals. This, Randsystematically showed, as he wrote it was not the right of a League appointed custodiangovernment to reassign its functional objectives even to a supposed majority, more espe-

cially to a majority that they contrived without the explicit permission of the High Con-

tracting Party [the League] prior to embarking on this deceitful breach of trust.The roleof UNSCOP was at first to see if the Leagues mandatory system was functioning in theright way. Could it be part of the solution or was it part of the problem? What nobodyseems to notice today is how different the current UNs Trusteeship system is now, andquite different to the Leagues mandatory system.

British governments even today have not yet declassified their mandatorys secretariat ad-ministrative and management documents, which, like all other government records, shouldhave been done in 1998. Even the Verona in which the classified status was extended,should have opened its files in 2007. The Foreign office vigorously fought for their closurein cabinet last year (2013) and want them kept closed indefinitely, or until its policyobjectives are obtained [Israel to be undone and an Arab jurisdiction overprinting it, known

as the 1980 Venice Declaration]. But Rand, as the UN investigator went through all ofthem; he doesnt have copies of it all, but we have here quite a bit to illustrate points of lawand procedures and why his conclusions to the UN were such a searing indictment to thewhole mandatory system. Rand called some of those shifts of policy goals inexplicable toadministrators unless they were motivated by a malice.

In 2012 a number of academic historians went to court to get the government to open thesecretariats files. About a month ago (August 2014) the Foreign Office claimed to thecourt they were all destroyed in a fire sometime in 2006 !!!

British Mandate & British Policy – Hubert_Luns

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Transcript of British Mandate & British Policy – Hubert_Luns