Shlaim - Britain and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948

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Britain and the Arab-Israeli War of 1948

Avi Shlaim

Journal of Palestine Studies

, Vol. 16, No. 4. (Summer, 1987), pp. 50-76.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X%28198722%2916%3A4%3C50%3ABATAWO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

Journal of Palestine Studies

is currently published by University of California Press.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/ucal.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgMon Jun 25 18:47:44 2007

Britain and the ArabHIsraeli War

of

1948

Avi

Shlaim*

At midnight on 14 May 1948, the British high commissioner forPalestine left Palestine with all his staff, and twenty-eight years of Britishresponsibility for Palestine came to an end. The story began with theBalfour Declaration of November 1917 followed in April 1920 by the SanRemo conference's entrusting of Britain with the Mandate for Palestine, sothat it would be administered according to the terms of the BalfourDeclaration and prepared for self-government. The way in which themandate was established left a terrible blot on Britain's entire record as thegreat power responsible for governing the country. And there was, to saythe least, something unusual about the way in which Britain retreated fromthe mandate. As Rees Williams, undersecretary of state for the colonies,told the House of Commons: "On the 14th May, 1949, the withdrawal ofthe British Administration took place without handing over to a responsibleauthority any of the assets, property or liabilities of the Mandatory Power.The manner in which the withdrawal took place is unprecedented in thehistory of our Empire."'What were the reasons behind the inexcusably abrupt and recklessfashion in which the British government chose to divest itself of the

Avi Shlaim is a Reader in Politics at the University of Reading, England. This paper was prepared forthe conference on "British Security Policy 1945-1956" at King's College, London, 25-26 March 1987.The author would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council and the Ford Foundationfor research support.

BRITAIN AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI WAR

OF

1948

51

Mandate for Palestine? Very different answers are given to this question bythe two nations most directly affected by the British decision. On the Jewishside the predominant view is that Britain departed with full knowledge thatthe surrounding Arab countries would immediately attack and in theexpectation that the Jewish population of Palestine would be massacred ordriven into the sea. Zionist historiography is riddled with suspicions of darkplots hatched during the twilight of British rule in Palestine. A typicalexample is JonKimche's claim that the Foreign Office, the chiefs of staff,and the Palestine administration wanted to see the physical destruction ofthe Jewish national home and encouraged the Arabs to carry it out: "Thesemen were determined,

if

the British had to leave Palestine, to put noobstacles in the way of the Arabs driving the Jews into the sea."2 RichardCrossman lent his authority to this Zionist charge and explained the Laborgovernment's Palestine policy largely in terms of the allegedly anti-Jewishbias of its foreign secretary:

Once it has been decided

.

.

.

to end the mandate, Bevin's aim, apparently,was to ensure that Abdullah's Arab Legion should over-run most of Palestine,leaving a rump Jewish state, so weak that it would throw itself at the mercy ofthe British Go~ernrnent.~

The Palestine Arabs, on the other hand, believed that Britain'ssympathies lay with the Zionists and saw the creation of the state of Israelas the culmination of the process that had begun with the BalfourDeclaration. Particularly sinister in the eyes of the Palestinians was thecombination of the United Nations partition resolution of

29

November

1947

and the British withdrawal six months later. As Walid Khalidi pointedout:

Since the

UN

had not provided for an international force to implement itsresolution, the British decision to withdraw was an invitation to both sides tofight it out. Given the balance of power inside Palestine, which was crushinglyin favour of the Zionists-a fact of which all parties were well aware-theBritish withdrawal was an open invitation for a Zionist military take-over of thecountry.

Moreover, British presence in the remaining six months of the mandate"acted virtually as a shield against external Arab help behind which theZionist military forces could conduct their business." Another feature of theBritish withdrawal plan, according to Khalidi, played into Zionist hands, asit was expected to do: "the pattern of British withdrawal, even when itaffected the areas of Arab concentration, merely

increased

the fragmentation

of 00

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