ZIONISM: The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

 
By Jonathan Schneer

THE Balfour Declaration of 1917 was the foundation stone on which, with British support, the Zionist movement was able to set about creating what would become the state of Israel in 1947.

It consisted of two simple but pregnant sentences: 1. His Majesty's government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people, and 2. His Majesty's government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisation.

Jonathan Schneer, in this path-breaking new study of how this declaration came to be made, comments: "Note that the first sentence implies an unbroken link between Jews and Palestine despite the nearly 2000-year separation. Note that the second sentence posits the Zionist Organisation as official representative of Jewish interests."

He is correct in both cases. Yet if there was, in fact, to be a national home for the Jews, where else would it naturally have been, if not in Palestine? And since the Zionist movement had been the advocates of just such a reconstitution of Jewish nationalism for decades before 1917, was it not the logical partner for such an endeavour on the part of the British government in 1917?

The more important questions, surely, are why did the British government see fit to make such a declaration and why were the Arabs so opposed to it then and ever after?

The first of these questions is the chief object of Schneer's inquiry in The Balfour Declaration. The second question he addresses only obliquely and not, in my judgment, satisfactorily. This may be because his professional specialty is modern British history, not Middle Eastern history. It also may be because, as a founding editor of Radical History Review, he tends to accept without too much critical reflection the idea the Arab rejection of Israel is rooted in justified grievances, exacerbated since 1948 by the power and toughness of Israel as a state. Certainly, he nowhere digs down into the roots of Muslim or Arab anti-Semitism, confining his explanation of Arab grievances to the double and, indeed, triple dealing in which Britain engaged during World War I. This, I think, is a weakness in an otherwise fascinating work of history.

The great strengths of the book are Schneer's mastery of his British sources and his wonderful portrait gallery of the key British, Jewish, Arab, Turkish and other figures involved in the intrigues that led up to the declaration. Nowhere is this more in evidence than in his fine-grained depiction of the many personalities in the Jewish community in Britain and their sometimes nuanced, but often vehement disagreements about the merits of Zionism.

He is notably even-handed and deeply humane in his descriptions of the characters and their opinions. His book is not an anti-Zionist polemic. Rather, it underscores, in rich and fascinating detail the many considerations that played in the minds of Jews in the West's most liberal and tolerant society regarding the fate of Jews elsewhere, the feasibility of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, its acceptability in the light of Judaic religion and its likely effect on anti-Semitic feeling across Europe rather more than among the Arabs or other Muslims.

Above all, what Schneer shows in sometimes exquisite and occasionally excessive detail, is that the British decision to support Zionism was due much less to the lobbying of the Zionists than to the opportunism of British statesmen in the increasingly desperate struggle against the Central Powers and their illusions regarding the true global power and influence of the Jews. He remarks that "the Balfour Declaration sprang from fundamental miscalculations about the power of Germany and about the power and unity of the Jews".

Given that some of the wealthiest and most powerful British Jews were not Zionists and that Britain's design in finally backing Zionism was an opportunistic gambit in a terrible war, Schneer argues the idea would never have gotten up had it not been for the British establishment forming the erroneous opinion that the Jews carried enormous influence in world finance and the secret counsels of governments and that this should be brought to bear against the Central Powers before the Central Powers themselves exploited it. Schneer doesn't say so, but the terrible irony of this history is the associated pernicious libels against Zionism and the anti-Semitic myths are shown to be false by the historical archives but actually seemed to be confirmed by historical events.

Schneer begins his book with a few lines from Apollodorus about Cadmus, Athena and the sowing of dragon's teeth which then rose up from the ground in the form of armed men. He concludes with the lines: During World War I, then, Britain and her allies slew the Ottoman dragon in the Middle East. By their policies they sowed dragons' teeth. Armed men rose up from the ground. They are still rising.

His account of Allied ambitions and intrigues aimed at dismembering the Ottoman Empire and the manipulative promises made to the Arabs in an effort to enlist them against the Turks makes clear enough how the dragon's teeth were sown.

But Schneer leaves almost untouched the question of why it was always going to be so difficult for the Jews to find a homeland again in Palestine. True, there had not been a Jewish state there for almost two millennia. But there had never been a Palestinian Arab state. The prospect in 1917 was a Middle East made up of new nations. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Islamic world. Why should they not have been a welcome, constructive part of the Semitic world? That question goes to the dark heart of Islam. There Schneer does not venture.

Paul Monk is founder of Austhink Consulting. His most recent book is The West in a Nutshell.