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Summary History of the Middle East: H13-H26
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Samenvatting van het boek van William Cleveland: A History of the Modern Middle East
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Samenvatting Cleveland
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Book Summary History of the Middle East (Bunton & Cleveland)
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History of the Middle East - Weeks 6 to 12
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By: mtikka • 5 year ago
By: cristinacastiglioni92 • 6 year ago
missing the last 4 chapters. I noticed it too late.
By: mlgsmo • 6 year ago
The title: chapter 13 - chapter 26 (because that is what I had to study). In the description: edition 1 of the book
By: ajaym4270 • 6 year ago
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History of the Middle East 2: H13-H26H13: The Palestine Mandate and the birth of the state of Israel
The emergence of political Zionism
In the face of oppression and prejudice in Europe, the belief in an eventual return to Zion offered
Jewry a measure of hope with which to endure the hard reality of the Diaspora. Yet although the
sentiment of Zionism was deeply ingrained in Jewish religious life, it received little organizational
expression until the late nineteenth century.
The forces that gave rise to organized political Zionism were spawned by conditions in nineteenth-
century Europe. During the era of liberal nationalism, the states of Western Europe eventually
adopted legislation to provide for the legal emancipation of the Jews. With emancipation came
assimilation; many Jews looked upon assimilation as the process that would end anti-Semitism. If
development in Western Europe appeared to favor the integration of Jews into national life, the
situation in Eastern Europe was starkly different. In Russia and Poland, active persecution of the
Jewish communities intensified during the late nineteenth century. Millions of East Europeans Jews
sought a new life by immigrating to the United States. For others, Zionism offered an alternative hope
for escape from persecution.
Modern political Zionism – Jewish nationalism focusing on Palestine – originated in Russia. Jewish
groups formed with the specific objective of assisting Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Lovers of
Zion sponsored small agricultural settlement, but suffered from lack of funds. In the 1890s, various
Zionist organizations emerged, each with its own solution to the problems of Jewish identity and
persecution. At this stage, Zionism was an uncoordinated movement without direction.
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) forged the existing strand of the ideology into a coherent international
movement. He wrote The Jewish State (1896) which provided the ideological basis for political
Zionism. The two factors – the existence of a Jewish nationality and the absence of a Jewish state –
combined to make the Jews aliens in the lands in which they lived. The only resolution to Herzl was
for the Jews to acquire political sovereignty in a state of their own. Also Herzl did not specify Palestine
as the location of the future Jewish state. Largely because of his efforts, the first Zionist Congress was
convene din Basel in 1897. The congress adopted a program stating that the objective of Zionism was
to secure a legally recognized home in Palestine for the Jewish people. Herzl recognized that the
movement would not succeed until it secured the diplomatic support of a Great Power and the
financial assistance of members of the Western Jewish community. Herzl was to be disappointed on
both counts. During WWI, however, the diplomatic status of Zionism would improve dramatically.
The Balfour Declaration
During WWI, several factors combined to bring the question of Zionism to the attention of the British
cabinet. The most pressing was the belief that Jewish groups in the United States and Russia had the
capacity to influence their respective governments’ attitudes toward the war. Chaim Weizmann, the
Zionist spokesman in London, also played a significant role in British policymaking. He set up contacts
with leading figures among the British political establishment. Britain’s sponsorship of Jewish
settlement in Palestine would require a British presence in the region and would thus keep France out
of an area that was contiguous to the vital Suez Canal zone.
,On November 2, 1917, the cabinet had approved the declaration of sympathy for Jewish Zionist
aspirations: Balfour Declaration. It was a brief document filled with such ambiguities and
contradictions that it confused all the parties named in it.
The mandate for Palestine: British administration
The territory that became the Palestine mandate was not a distinctive administrative entity during
the Ottoman era. Britain occupied Palestine from 1917 to 1920. During these years, Britain sought to
reconcile the conflicting aspirations of Zionism and Arabism by facilitating discussions between
Weizmann and Faysal of Syria. When the French occupied Syria the provisions of the Faysal-
Weizmann agreement were violated and the document became void.
Meanwhile, the San Remo Conference (1920) awarded Britain the mandate for Palestine, and a
civilian administration replaced the military government. The appointment of Sir Herbert Samuel as
civilian high commissioner in 1920 further encouraged the Zionists. The Arab rejection of Samuel’s
proposals for unitary representation was of the utmost significance in determining the mandate’s
future course because it meant that the high commissioner and his officials alone governed Palestine.
The Arab and Jewish communities, rather than jointly participating in the development of a ‘national’
institutions, became increasingly hostile to one another.
The Palestinian Arab Community: leadership and institutions
The Arab Executive
The existence of the Balfour Declaration and the encouragement of Jewish immigration set Palestine
apart from the other Arab mandates and created a complex challenge for the Palestinian elite. The
collective leadership of the Palestinian notables was weakened by factionalism and a tendency to
overlook the importance of forming a cohesive political organization that could attract popular
support.
The first organized Palestinian Arab response to the postwar settlement came from local Muslim-
Christian associations that were formed in large towns during 1918 and 1919. They constituted
themselves as the first Palestinian Arab Congress. At the Third Congress in 1920, a standing Arab
Executive was created and claimed to represent all Palestinians. But the British refused to accept it as
a properly elected body. The Arab Executive failed to secure either mass support or formal access to
the high commissioner. Palestinian political activity was further weakened by the bitter rivalry
between two leading Muslim families of Jerusalem, the Nashashibis and the al-Husaynis.
Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Supreme Muslim Council
Hajj Amin (1895-1974) was a mufti of Jerusalem. He was made the leader of the Palestinian Arab
community during the interwar period. The mufti’s authority greatly expanded in 1921 when Samuel
created the Supreme Muslim Council. Hajj Amin was appointed president of the council in 1922. Until
the outbreak of violence in 1936, the mufti urged restraint from his followers and demonstrated a
willingness to cooperate with the British in seeking a negotiated solution to the question of Jewish
immigration.
The Jewish Community: leadership and institutions
The Jewish Agency and the National Council
Zionist organizations were notably more extensive than Arab organizations and reflected the
differences in the resources that the two communities could marshal. The Jewish Agency became the
quasi-government of the Jewish community in Palestine, managing service that ranged from banking
to health care to immigrant settlement. The national assembly was treated by the mandate
government as the legitimate representative of Palestinian Jewry.
, Histadrut: The Political and Ideological Impact of the Labor Movement
The most important organization within the Yishuv (Jewish community) was Histadrut, the Federation
of Jewish Labor. Because one of its objectives was to ensure the self-sufficiency of Jewish labor and
produce, Histadrut instituted a boycott of Arab workers and Arab products. Histadrut also had ties
with the kibbutz workers in the agricultural sector. Histadrut’s influence on the development of the
Yishuv was made all the more extensive by its control of the Jewish defense force, Haganah.
As Histadrut’s membership and functions expanded, the organization was placed in the unusual
position of acting as both a trade union and the largest employer within the mandate, a combination
that gave its leaders substantial power in the Yishuv’s decision-making councils. In 1930, two labor
groups merged to form the Mapai Party, which would dominate the politics of the Yishuv and the
state of Israel until 1977. Mapai represented the socialist egalitarian ideal that powerfully shaped the
outlook of the Yishuw during its formative years.
Political and financial support from sources outside Palestine aided the Zionist cause. The most
influential contacts between Zionism and British officialdom were those maintained by Chaim
Weizmann. Elements of the Jewish community in the United States provided another source of
outside support. With the United States’ rise to global power during World War II, American Jewry
would be a vital influence in shaping the outcome of the Palestine conflict.
Divisions Within the Yishuw: Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism
One of the most heated of the interwar disputes concerned Zionism’s territorial objectives and the
tactics best suited to obtain them. Most Zionists accepted Weizmann’s strategy of relying on Britain
to bring about the fulfillment of Zionist objectives. However, the Revisionists condemned Weizmann’s
approach as too hesitant and too dependent on Britain. The leading spokesman was Vladimir
Jabotinsky (1880-1940) and called for massive Jewish immigration into Palestine and the immediate
proclamation of a Jewish commonwealth. Claiming that historic Palestine included Transjordan, he
insisted that large-scale Jewish colonization take place in that territory.
Arab and Jewish communities were terribly insecure throughout the interwar years and conflict
between them deepened. The Arabs were frustrated in their attempts to gain legal recognition as
Palestine’s rightful inhabitants. Likewise, Zionist leaders were convinced that the British were blocking
the establishment of a Jewish national home.
Immigration and land
Jewish immigration and land acquisition lay at the heart of the communal tensions in Palestine. The
Zionist objective was to build up the Jewish population of the mandate through unrestricted
immigration so as to have a credible claim to the existence of a national home. It was also considered
necessary to acquire as much cultivable land as possible. Zionism resembled a project of settler
colonialism undertaken at the expense of the local Arab population. The Arabs opposed them by
attempting to negotiate with Britain to restrict immigration and land transfers. When that tactic
failed, they turned to armed revolt.
Zionist interests usually acquired land by purchasing it from absentee Arab owners. The transfer of
cultivated land from Arab to Jewish ownership devastated the Palestinian peasantry. The British
taxation policy also forced peasant farmers to borrow funds and this led them to sell their lands. The
cumulative effect of land transfers, British policy and Arab notable attitudes was the increasing
impoverishment and marginalization of the Palestinian Arab peasantry.
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