The Balfour Declaration was signed in 1917. It set out British support for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. 

But when the Balfour Declaration was signed, the British had already promised Palestine to Arabs as an independent state and promised the French government that it would be an internationally administered zone.

Even then, most of the land was still under Ottoman control. So why did Britain make these three conflicting promises? How did it try to resolve them? And how did Britain’s strategy in the Middle East help to cause a century of conflict?

 

The Origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict

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Voice Over: This is the Balfour Declaration. Signed in 1917, it set out British support for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. It’s a famous document, a crucial piece of the puzzle in understanding today’s conflicts in the Middle East. But this it the beginning of the story. 
In fact, when the Balfour Declaration was signed, the British had already promised this land to Arabs as an independent state and promised the French government that it would be an internationally administered zone – and even then, most of the land was still under Ottoman control. So why did Britain make these three conflicting promises? How did it try to resolve them? And how did Britain’s strategy in the Middle East help to cause a century of conflict?

Alan Wakefield: How's that, is that okay?

Cameraman: That's good, yeah.

Alan Wakefield: Well at the turn in 20th century Britain's primary interest in the Middle East isn't oil, we might think of oil, oil and the Middle East they always sort of go together, especially now. But what we're really looking at then is an imperial lifeline, it's the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal is the quickest route from the Empire, especially India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, to Britain. You don't have to go all the way around the horn of Africa.

Voice Over: Britain had controlled Egypt since 1882 and believed that the Sinai Desert was enough of a buffer to defend the canal. But when the First World War began in 1914, the Ottoman Empire took Germany's side. In February 1915, the Ottomans launched a surprise attack across the desert to attack the Suez Canal.

Alan Wakefield: It's easily beaten off by the British and Indian defenders, but the British are really worried that the Ottomans are going to use Sinai as a launchpad for further attacks on the canal. There's then a total mind change in British strategy back in London. There's stalemate on the Western Front, the Russians are collapsing into revolution, and the idea now is to look for a quick victory somewhere else away from France and Flanders. And Lloyd George thinks Palestine is where we can do it. We can knock the Ottomans out of the war, but also the Suez Canal will be safe from any threat.

Voice Over: The area Britain had set its sights on was a larger one than today's Israel/Palestine, made up of different regions east and west of the River Jordan. There were small Christian and Jewish populations, but the majority were Muslim Arabs. After centuries of Ottoman rule, many Arabs now wanted a nation of their own.

Alan Wakefield: Nationalism is growing across the multinational empires of Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the Ottoman Empire is no stranger to this. The main reason for this is in 1908 there's a revolution within Turkey to try to strengthen and modernise the Empire, it's called the Young Turk Revolution. And what happens is some very nationalistic Turks take over the government and are really into centralising and pushing the idea of Turkish identity. And this really starts to rile a lot of these Arab leaders and this is where we start to get Pan-Arab nationalism coming up and the idea of one independent land for all of those Arab peoples.

Voice Over: One of those leaders was Sharif Hussein of Mecca. In charge of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, he was held in high regard by the local people. The British decided to use this to their advantage, promising him rulership over an independent Arab state if he rebelled against Ottoman rule. Sure enough, in 1916 the revolt began with Hussein's sons Faisal and Abdullah leading the fighting. As British and Commonwealth troops under General Allenby advanced through Palestine. Arab militia with help from T. E. Lawrence distracted the Ottomans.

Alan Wakefield: This is a typical Arab head cloth and its accompanying agal which is the headband that you keep the head cloth firmly on your head. And these were actually worn by an Arab who took part in in that Arab Revolt up through the Hejaz and into Palestine and Syria towards the end of the war. This comes from the regular forces of the Sharifian Army. These men were former Ottoman soldiers and they volunteered to fight for Arab Independence. And they were particularly important because of their previous military training and skills with modern weapons, such as artillery and machine guns. So these men of the Arab forces, they attack lines of communication, they blow up railways, they attack small garrisons, and that makes it very difficult for the Ottomans to move troops and supplies around. And finally of course on the 1st of October 1918, Faisal and the Arab army have the honour of taking the surrender of Damascus.

Voice Over: But while the battle for Palestine was still raging, the British were doing secret backroom deals elsewhere. Between November 1915 and January 1916 British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and Francois George Picot carved up the Ottoman Empire into British and French spheres of influence. The borders were largely arbitrary, with little regard for ethnicity or religion of the local populations. France would receive modern day Syria and Lebanon as well as parts of Turkey and Iraq, while Britain claimed the rest of modern day Iraq and southern and eastern Palestine. The remainder of the territory was to be under international control.

Alan Wakefield: What the British are really looking for is an extra large buffer zone, again for the Suez Canal, it's all about the Suez Canal. The idea of making Palestine an international area, it's really because the British don't want to give this to the French, but the French don't want the British to have it. So, it's a compromise and, in fact this whole agreement is a compromise. It's a wartime compromise between two countries that happen to be allies, but are both still big political and imperial rivals and they will go back to being imperial rivals after the First World War.

Voice Over: Having already made commitments to Arab nationalists and the French government, in November 1917 the British made one more promise regarding the land in Palestine, this time to Zionists seeking to set up a national Jewish State. Zionism was a social movement that began in the 1800s. It was founded on the belief that Judaism was not only a religion but a nationality, and that Jewish people deserved a state like British or French people did. Due to historical and religious ties to the region, Palestine became the desired location for this future Jewish state.

Alan Wakefield: So this armband or brassard was worn by a Palestinian Jewish volunteer with British forces serving in that area of the Middle East during 1918. Interestingly, there were three battalions of Jewish volunteers, one battalion of British, one of Americans, and one of Palestinian Jews. The British volunteers weren't really interested in Zionism at all, they were more interested in using that military service, service to the crown to assimilate into British society. It was really the American volunteers and the local Jewish volunteers from Palestine who were really fired up by Zionism and wanted to use this to defeat the Ottoman Empire and secure that Jewish homeland. So what this object shows us and the story behind it is that although Zionism was a popular movement, the majority of Jews were not Zionists and didn't want to move to Palestine.

Voice Over: Jewish immigration to Palestine had been slowly increasing throughout the 1900s, mainly fuelled by brutal antisemitism and terrible pogroms in Russia. By 1914, the Jews in Palestine numbered around 60,000 or 8% of the population. But for the British, it was Zionists elsewhere that they were concerned with. In an effort to win the support of Jewish communities in both Allied countries like the United States, and enemy countries like Austria Hungary, the UK foreign secretary signed the Balfour Declaration. Vowing to set up a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Alan Wakefield: So the Balfour Declaration is signed in late 1917, in fact just after Allenby's victory at the Third Battle of Gaza and this map shows the situation just before that battle. And it shows the confidence the British have that they are going to win the war in the Middle East. Let's face it, on this map, they haven't taken all of this territory yet but they're already looking at the post-war settlement in this area.

There are people within the British cabinet, Prime Minister Lloyd George is one of them, who thinks that having a Jewish homeland in Palestine is the right thing to do. But it's also politically expedient. The British and French War efforts by this time are pretty much under pressure, there's a manpower crisis, there's a crisis in raw materials. The Americans have joined the war in April 1917 and we really need the Americans to ramp up and get stuck into the war effort. So the idea is by supporting this Zionist idea it will get Jewish financiers and industrialists in America on side and they will put big pressure on the American government to keep them involved in the First World War and fight for the Allied cause. This idea, this is an antisemitic idea, that the Jews control world finance and business across capitalist countries. And that idea takes hold and is one of the reasons we think they can put pressure on the American government.

Voice Over: The declaration was vague. It said that the homeland would be "in Palestine", but didn't say where. It also vowed to protect "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" but made no mention of their political rights. For the British these conflicting promises were worth making to assure that they came out on top in the world's first Total War. And they were effective, Britain and France were victorious over the Central Powers in 1918. But now that the war was at an end, the British would have to face the consequences. The choices they made would help to spark a century of conflict.

Having captured Damascus in 1918, the British military left Faisal and his men in charge of a military occupation zone, an area that Faisal declared the Arab Kingdom of Syria. However, the French were not happy. Hoping to maintain their influence in the region, they expelled Faisal in a short war. It was a crushing blow to the pan-Arab cause.

Instead, it was the victorious Allied Powers who drew the new borders of the Middle East in a series of conferences from 1919 to 1923. With the formation of the League of Nations, Britain and France took control under a series of mandates. These were intended to prepare the local populations for independence. Initially, France was given the mandates for Syria and Lebanon while Britain was given the mandates for Mesopotamia and Palestine. But after Faisal's defeat the British decided to split Palestine in two. Faisal was given the crown of Mesopotamia and his brother, Abdullah, was given the crown of the newly created Transjordan. The remainder of Palestine would be strictly British.

Alan Wakefield: So this 1924 map shows the Palestine that came into being after the First World War. It is not part of a pan-Arab state, in fact there is no pan Arab state in this region. Also, it is not an internationally controlled area or an area in which the French have any control at all. It is a British-administered League of Nations mandate. What this Mandate for Palestine does have however written into its statute is the Balfour Declaration of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Voice Over: Jewish immigration to mandatory Palestine continued to grow. By 1931 there were 176,000 Jewish people living there, making up 17% of the population. This led to increased tensions, riots, and violence between the new arrivals and local Arabs, who, along with existing Christian populations, were starting to see themselves not only as Arabs but as distinctly Palestinian people.

Alan Wakefield: What these new Jewish settlers bring in is lots of financial backing and they start to buy up more and more land. So it's more of the fertile agricultural land of Palestine which actually makes the Jewish population increasingly economically dominant in the area. The British government gets very, very worried about this. In 1930 the Colonial Secretary puts forward a white paper to drastically limit Jewish immigration into the Palestine mandate. The following year 1931, pressure from Zionists within the British government and also World Zionist leaders talk Ramsey McDonald in to dropping the white paper. And from that moment there is no limit on Jewish immigration into Palestine.

Voice Over: This reversal coincided with events elsewhere that would supercharge the conflict. In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and began instituting a wave of antisemitic policies. This sent shockwaves through the Jewish communities of Europe. However, for those seeking to flee options were few, with most governments maintaining strict limits on Jewish immigration. For many Jews, Zionists or not, traveling to Palestine became the only option.

By 1936 the Jewish contingent inside Mandatory Palestine had doubled to 28% of the population. Now tensions began to escalate at an alarming rate. What began as a general strike among Palestinian Arabs in 1936,  devolved into violent attacks on Jewish settlements and British military installations. This event became known as The Great Revolt.

Alan Wakefield: From this point really you can see Palestinian Arab nationalism as opposed to pan-Arab nationalism. They're fighting against an issue, that Jewish homeland and British control in the region, that no other mandate or any other has to fight against. And they want their own Palestinian State, an independent country free from British control.

Voice Over: The British response was to crush the revolt as quickly as possible with overwhelming strength. They brought a surge of new troops, more men than were serving in India at the time, and declared Martial Law in 1937. Favouring tactics of collective punishment, they destroyed homes and burned villages to the ground, they used aerial bombing even on urban areas, and arrested, killed or exiled Arab leaders fracturing their movement.

Alan Wakefield: In addition, the British use Jewish auxiliary units to fight the Arabs during the revolt. But this is a real turnaround from 1921 when they disband the Jewish Legion. Now, in 1936/37 the British are so overstretched that they really don't care. They just need boots on the ground to sort this situation out and to end this revolt as quickly as possible. So by the end of the Arab Revolt 17% of the Arab male population are either killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. This really weakens the Arab cause in Palestine, just at the moment when the Jewish population is getting more and more power.

Watch the next video on the Middle East: How did the conflict in Israel/Palestine begin?

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