A History of Zionism (106 page)

The congress marks the midway passage between the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the state. In political terms it had been a failure. An English newspaper noted that Weizmann had been overthrown by a ‘coalition of incompatibles’ which included the revisionists and Mizrahi on the one hand, and left-wing labour on the other.
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The yishuv was disappointed: fifty-three long speeches and countless shorter interventions had not resulted in any clear and concrete policy decisions. American Zionism was deeply split as a result. Stephen Wise withdrew from office in the ZOA, which in his words had become a ‘collection of personal hatreds, rancours and private ambitions’.

But for Weizmann’s departure, the newly elected executive of the Jewish Agency and of the Zionist movement hardly differed from the previous one. The General Zionists received somewhat stronger representation; Eliahu Dobkin of Mapai became head of the organisation department; Moshe Shapira was made director of the department of immigration; and Fritz Bernstein, an old Dutch Zionist, was coopted as a full member. There was no change in the direction of political affairs.

The conference called by Bevin early in 1947 was a repeat performance for those who had been to St James’ Palace eight years before. There were no new proposals to be discussed, nor, as in 1939, were there any direct meetings between Jews and Arabs. The latter expressed the view both privately and on occasion in public, that historical conflicts are always settled by force of arms and that one might as well have the struggle right away and get it over. The Zionist plan (partition) was unacceptable to the British, and of course to the Arabs. Bevin’s attempt to save the conference through a modified version of the Morrison-Grady scheme was rejected by both sides. The main purpose of the London meeting was apparently to give Bevin a last opportunity to find some compromise solution. When it appeared that the Arab delegation was not only opposed to the idea of a Jewish state in principle, but rejected Jewish immigration and land sales under any circumstances, Bevin and his advisers lost interest in the proceedings. On 18 February 1947 it was announced in the House of Commons that the only course open to Britain was to submit the problem to the judgment of the United Nations, since it had no power under the terms of the mandate to award the country either to Jews or Arabs or to partition it between them. On 2 April the secretary-general of the United Nations was asked to arrange for a special session of the General Assembly on Palestine; it was held later that month.

The possibility that the Palestine issue might be referred to the United Nations had been considered by the Zionist leaders on various occasions. In a speech on 1 August 1946 Churchill had said that the ‘one rightful, reasonable, simple and compulsive lever which we held was and is a sincere readiness to lay our mandate at the feet of the UNO and thereafter to evacuate the country’. Nevertheless, when the decision was announced, the Zionist reaction was one of ‘scepticism and distaste’.
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Scepticism, because they suspected that Britain, banking on the east-west stalemate in the United Nations, expected that no decision would be reached in New York and that therefore the mandate would continue. Such calculations may have influenced some British advisers, but it is unlikely that this was the decisive factor. Both the British government and public opinion were fed up with Palestine and ready to accept almost any solution to relieve them of the burden. The Zionists viewed the move to the UN with not a little apprehension because they feared that their cause would not fare any better, and most probably much worse, in Flushing Meadows and Lake Success than in Whitehall.

Thus the centre of the political scene again shifted to New York, and the Zionist executive, working against time, set out to win the support of the nations, big and small, which were soon to decide the fate of Palestine. It was an uphill task, above all because the American position at this stage was not helpful. President Truman and his advisers were firmly resolved not to give any lead to the United Nations but to wait for the emergence of a consensus. Much to the surprise of the Zionists, the Soviet attitude was much more positive. This first became evident when the Jewish Agency asked to be permitted (‘as a matter of simple justice’) to appear at the UN on behalf of the Jewish people, since the Arabs were already represented there. They had the immediate support of the Soviet delegation, and, on 15 May, Gromyko spoke not without sympathy about the ‘aspirations towards Palestine of a considerable part of the Jewish people’, of the calamities and sufferings they had undergone during the last war (‘which defy description’), and the grave conditions in which the masses of the Jewish population found themselves after the war. He mentioned partition as one of several possible solutions.
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This unexpected support continued throughout 1947 and led later that year to the Soviet decision to vote for partition. Traditionally, the Soviet attitude to Zionism had been extremely hostile, and since Moscow reverted to its earlier position not long after the state of Israel came into being, one can only conclude that the short-lived
rapprochement
came exactly at the right moment for the Zionists. Without it they would not have stood a chance. What then were the Soviet motives? It was the Soviet aim to diminish western influence in the eastern Mediterranean and, if possible, advance its own interests in the power vacuum that was bound to follow the western withdrawal. Ten years later Stalin’s heirs were to pursue this policy in close collaboration with the radical forces which had come to power in the Arab world. But in 1947 Egypt was still ruled by King Faruq, and Iraq and Jordan by the Hashemites, régimes linked to Britain by many ties. In the circumstances a vote for the partition of Palestine must have seemed to most Soviet policy-makers a reasonable course of action.

On 15 May 1947 the General Assembly approved the establishment of a committee of eleven to investigate the Palestine question, to make proposals for a settlement, and to report back by September. None of the big powers was represented on this committee, which entered history under the name of
UNSCOP
. It consisted of delegates from Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, The Netherlands, Persia, Uruguay and Yugoslavia. Its chairman was Judge Sandstrom, a Swede, with Ralph Bunche representing the UN.

UNSCOP
heard witnesses for three and a half months in America, Europe and Palestine, and toured DP camps and Arab and Jewish cities and rural settlements. Among the Zionist representatives the most effective was again Weizmann, appearing for once in an unofficial capacity. The committee was given a brief lecture on the nature of antisemitism: what are Poles? What are Frenchmen? The answer is obvious, Weizmann said; but if one asks who is a Jew, lengthy explanations are necessary, and these are always suspect. Why did the Jews insist so stubbornly on Palestine rather than some other country? It was no doubt the responsibility of Moses who had taken them to Palestine. Instead of the Jordan they might have had the Mississippi: ‘But he chose to stop here. We are an ancient people with a long history and you cannot deny your history and begin afresh.’

When asked about the prospects of bi-nationalism, Moshe Shertok made the point that willingness to work together was the prerequisite for the existence of a bi-national state, but unfortunately it did not exist. A Jewish state was needed because Palestinian Jewry had come of age, to save the remnant of European Jewry, and to ensure the future of the Jewish people.
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Questioned by Sandstrom, Ben Gurion said that he foresaw the settlement of the first million Jews in a Jewish state in the shortest possible time - three to four years. In the period of transition he envisaged a régime of diarchy with the mandatory power, as in India. Ben Gurion rejected the idea of parity, which would result in permanent deadlock on all vital issues such as immigration. Instead of an Arab-Jewish federation he proposed a confederation of states.

As the members of
UNSCOP
came to grasp the complexity of the situation, two opposed views emerged: India, Iran and Yugoslavia favoured a federation, not altogether dissimilar to the Morrison-Grady plan. There was to be common citizenship, and a federal authority controlling foreign policy, national defence, immigration and most economic activities. During the transitional period, which was to last for three years, the administration was to be conducted by an authority appointed by the United Nations.

The
UNSCOP
majority came out in favour of partition, but recommended at the same time economic union, without which they believed the proposed Arab state would not be viable. All members of the commission agreed that the transitional period should be as short as possible. There was also a consensus on keeping the Holy Places accessible to all, and there was an appeal to Arabs and Jews to refrain from acts of violence. But on matters of political substance no common denominator could be found to reconcile the majority and minority views, and consequently there were two separate reports.

The
UNSCOP
findings were published on 31 August 1947. Both the majority and the minority reports had been drawn up by the same man - Dr Ralph Bunche. The majority plan envisaged a Jewish state and an Arab state (both of which were to come into being by September 1949) with the city of Jerusalem remaining under international trusteeship. The Jewish state was to consist of three sections: upper Galilee and the Jordan and Beisan valleys; the coastal plain from a point south of Acre to a point north of Isdud, including the city of Jaffa and most of the Valley of Esdraelon; and lastly, most of the Negev. The Arab state was to include western Galilee, most of the West Bank down to and including Lydda, and the Gaza Strip, from the Egyptian border to a point some twenty miles south of Tel Aviv.

The Zionist leaders had fought very hard throughout the
UNSCOP
hearings for the inclusion of western Galilee and the Negev in the Jewish state, so as to have at their disposal sparsely populated areas for future development. They failed as far as western Galilee was concerned, and the fate of the Negev was uncertain, for when the
UNSCOP
majority plan came to the vote later that year, the American delegation wanted the Negev to be assigned to the Arabs, to make the scheme more palatable to them. Weizmann went to see a most reluctant President Truman to prevent any change in the proposed borders.

The minority report was rejected without further ado by the Zionists. On the majority report counsels were divided. While abstaining from the vote on partition in Paris a year earlier, Ben Gurion had clearly retreated from Biltmore. In a letter to Weizmann of October 1946 he had said that ‘we should be ready for an enlightened compromise even if it gives us less in practice than we have a right to in theory, but only as long as what is granted to us is really in our hands’.
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Rabbi Silver said that the boundaries as drawn by
UNSCOP
were a great blow and had to be fought.
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But after this initial negative reaction Silver, too, retreated, having realised that the majority report was the maximum the Zionists could possibly hope for. He understood that the commandment of the hour was not to press for more, which was unrealistic, but to work for acceptance of the report by the United Nations.

The prospects were by no means rosy: Britain was clearly opposed to partition, so were the Arab countries and most of the Asian nations. As the views of the rest were not at all clear, the American position was likely to be a factor of paramount importance. In Washington the State Department (General Marshall, Dean Acheson, Robert Lovett, Loy Henderson) was clearly against a Jewish state, as was Forrestal, the secretary of defence. Truman wrote in his diary that the nation’s military leaders were primarily concerned about Middle East oil and, in long-range terms, about the danger that the Arabs, antagonised by western action in Palestine, would make common cause with Russia. These were weighty arguments and they were pressed home with immense concern by Forrestal and others. Forrestal argued that the failure to go along with the Zionists might lose the Democrats the states of New York and California. But was it not high time to consider whether giving in to Jewish pressure ‘might not lose the United States’? Since the Soviet Union was a co-sponsor of partition, and since Forrestal could not have foreseen the switch in the Soviet position, his anxiety was exaggerated. Since the west was the only major market for Arab oil, there was no reason to fear that the Arabs would try to boycott their best customers.

Subsequent developments seem to have partly justified Forrestal’s warnings, for Palestine was no doubt one of the main issues as the radical Arab countries moved to a position hostile to the United States. However, the evidence is by no means conclusive. Similar processes took place all over the Third World, with the exception of a few countries directly threatened by the Soviet Union. King Faruq may have lasted a few more years but for the emergence of a Jewish state, but there is little doubt that political and social change sprang from indigenous conditions in the Nile Valley. On the other hand, it could be argued that but for the existence of Israel, serving as a lightning conductor, the ‘moderates’ would have been overthrown by the ‘radicals’ everywhere, or that in the absence of a common enemy the Arab world would have fallen into a state of anarchy. All this, of course, is highly speculative; no one can say what might have happened but for the emergence of the state of Israel.

A hesitating President Truman gave his assent to the partition scheme on 9 October 1947. He faced considerable opposition within his administration, and the strident tone of American Zionist propaganda and the pressure constantly brought on him, had antagonised him. Nevertheless, he seems to have given instructions in November to give assistance to the Zionist representatives in New York who were trying hard to gain the necessary majority for the
UNSCOP
report. There were delays and it was not certain up to the last moment whether the motion would succeed. The vote was taken on Saturday, 29 November, and the motion carried by thirty-three to thirteen. Among those against were the Arab and some Asian states as well as Greece and Cuba. Among those who abstained were Argentina, Chile, China, Ethiopia, Britain, Yugoslavia and several South American republics.