Arabs always rejected the idea of a home for Jews, and they still do
By Peter Wertheim
6 June 2017
This year is peppered with landmark anniversaries of key events in the history of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours: the charge of the Australian Light Horsemen at Beersheba in 1917; the Balfour Declaration two days later that endorsed the reconstitution of the Jewish national home; the resolution of the UN General Assembly in 1947 that recommended the partition of the Holy Land into a Jewish state and an Arab state; and the Six-Day War in 1967.
A lesser known but no less important date is July 7, the 80th anniversary of the publication of the report of the Palestine Royal Commission, established by Britain under the chairmanship of Lord William Peel.
It was this report in 1937, not the UN report on which the General Assembly based its famous resolution a decade later, that contained the first official recommendation in favour of partition based on the principle of two states for two peoples.
Far from being an obscure footnote of history, the Peel Commission inquiry repays close study today. The transcript of its proceedings and the brilliant summary of its findings by historian Reginald Coupland, one of the commissioners, lay bare the clash of claims, grievances and aspirations that lurk beneath what we now call the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and explain precisely why anything other than a two-state solution would result in far worse bloodshed than the conflict has produced to date.
Here is Coupland’s summary, as apposite today as when it was first published: “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single state … But, while neither race can justly rule all Palestine, we see no reason why each race should not rule part of it … If (partition) offers neither party all it wants, it offers each what it wants most, namely freedom and security.”
The Palestine Royal Commission was established in August 1936 to investigate the causes of the six-month-long Arab revolt in what was then the British Mandate territory of Palestine. Its hearings across several months included a memorable session with the Palestinian national leader at the time, the mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini.
Husseini shocked the commissioners with his extremism when he suggested that most of the existing Jewish population of Palestine should be forced to leave the country or be exterminated. When asked whether he thought the 400,000 Jews already living in Palestine could be assimilated into the country, he gave a one-word answer: “No.”
When pressed whether he meant that some of the Jews “would have to be removed by a process kindly or painful, as the case may be”, he replied: “We must leave all this to the future.” Husseini’s answer takes on an especially sinister connotation in light of the fact he was soon to become one of Nazi Germany’s most fanatical and devoted allies.
Following the mufti’s evidence, the commission noted ironically, “We are not questioning the mufti’s intentions … but we cannot forget what recently happened, despite treaty provisions and explicit assurances, to the Assyrian (Christian) minority in Iraq; nor can we forget that the hatred of the Arab politician for the (Jewish) National Home has never been concealed and that it has now permeated the Arab population as a whole.”
The Peel Commission recommended partitioning the land into separate Arab and Jewish states, and creating an international zone from Jaffa on the coast up to and including Jerusalem.
The plan was never implemented. The Arab leaders met in Damascus and resolved that partition would be rejected outright and that the British would have to choose “between our friendship and the Jews”. Although Jewish leaders took issue with some of the details of the plan, they were willing to accept the principle of partition and the rationale for it.
On May 17, 1939, as the Arab riots ended, the British issued a white paper severely limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine and land purchases. Published on the eve of World War II and the Holocaust, the white paper tore up the Balfour Declaration’s commitment to foster the Jewish national home and effectively signed the death warrant for tens of thousands of European Jews who otherwise might have found refuge from the approaching Nazi genocide. The existing Jewish population in Palestine would be relegated to permanent minority status in a future majority-Arab state.
Yet, incredibly, this too was rejected by Husseini and his followers. As Husseini’s evidence to the commission had revealed, they were resolved to expel or kill off most of the Jews already living in Palestine.
This rejectionist attitude sadly persists and remains at the core of the conflict.
A recent examination of the results of 400 surveys carried out by five Palestinian research centres in regular polls in the West Bank and Gaza has shown that during the past 20 years 70 per cent of Palestinians have continued to seek an immediate end of the State of Israel, or to see a two-state solution as merely a stepping stone towards that goal rather than as the basis of a permanent peace.
No peace initiative can succeed until this attitude changes fundamentally, and a majority of Palestinians is prepared to accept a declaration from its leaders similar to the memorable words uttered by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in his speech to the Israeli Knesset in 1977: “We used to reject you … Yet today I tell you, and declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice.”
Peter Wertheim is executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
This article was originally published in The Australian