Episode Two: Life in Mandatory Palestine, The Arab-Revolt, and The White Paper

Welcome back to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, explained. Now, I just want to take it back a little. The first episode ended with a brief description of the Arab revolt, which was a response to life under British mandatory rule in historic Palestine. I think it's important to flesh out the details without getting too much into the workingness here. I guess I want to take you to mandatory Palestine between the years 1920 and 1936, paint a picture for you. What was life like and how ultimately did that lead to the Arab revolt and quite frankly the series of political changes of wars and of violence in general that was to come? I think the best way to talk about this is to break it down. Or the defining factors of play in mandatory Palestine, as I see it and how I want to divide it into three parts. I'll go into all these in detail, but for one thing we have Jewish immigration, and then we have something I want to call infrastructure and state building. And lastly, we have representation and leadership. And all these things sort of describe how the relationships between Jewish immigrants, Palestinians, and the British government functioned. So we have to start with Zionist immigration and land purchasing. This was, after all, the foundation of a Jewish population in mandatory Palestine. I want to start long before the British came to the scene when Palestine was still under Ottoman control. There were these waves of Jewish immigration called alias. That's Al-I-Y-A-H-S. The first took place in 1882 and the second, and arguably the more important one, took place in 1904. Second Alia was made up of young people. Young people who were socialists and committed to communal agriculture, something called the Khabit movement. They thought they were coming to a destitute land, abandoned poverty stricken. They believe Palestine was a country without a people for people without a country. Just as a side note that phrase is relatively famous and has been used throughout Zionist history. But anyway, when the immigrants arrived, they realized the land was actually inhabited by an existing population. As a result, they committed themselves to something called Hebrew labor, which means that the land they bought could not be cultivated by Arabs. They wanted to work the land themselves. And by only using Hebrew labor, they created an exclusive Jewish economy and society. There was no integration with the Arabs. This laid the groundwork for Jewish immigration during the mandate period, which, just as a reminder, began in 1920. In order to fulfill their Zionist dream, they had to get the demographics right. They had to purchase land, and they had to immigrate. They had to create a real presence on the ground. This happened throughout the following 19 years from 1920 to 1939. And there was a major spike in immigration when Hitler came to power in Germany and as anti-Semitism grew throughout Europe. The Jewish immigrants typically purchased land from Palestinian absentee landlords, who owned property mostly in the coastal areas of Palestine. So the selling was voluntary. But there were also tenant peasants living and working on the land who were ultimately evicted and left landless. As I said in the previous episode, in 1920, Jews made up about 8% of the population in Palestine. But by 1936, they became a sort of powerful minority, growing to be about one-third of the population. Meanwhile, the legacy of the second alias Hebrew labor and the exclusion of Arab workers continued. There were even employment commissions, which explicitly stated that, quote, "The settler undertakes that if and whenever he may be obliged to hire help, he will hire Jewish workmen only." So now that we've talked about Jewish immigration, I want to discuss infrastructure and state building. And what I mean by this is the creation of both the political and physical aspects of what it means to be a state. Now the story wouldn't be accurate or complete if I ignored the different approaches used by the Palestinians and Jews in this so-called state building. In a broad sense, the Palestinians were largely ineffective and reactive, while Zionists were intensely focused and committed to creating a real sense of state. They created a military force, the Haganah, a labor organization, the history group, an education system, a health care system, and governing institutions. At the same time, Palestinians were unsuccessful at doing the same thing. But it's not enough to just say the Palestinians were ineffective or reactive. We have an obligation to analyze why this was the case. And when we do, the reasons become blatantly obvious. When Palestine was still under Ottoman control, long before the British arrived, there was already a sort of established system of social order and governing. It's often referred to as the politics of notables. And what this means is basically, there were these wealthy, powerful, notable families who served as go-betweens for the government and the peasant population. And I'm only bringing this up because it meant that the existing population had very little tradition or means for that matter to govern or mobilize popular support. On top of that, here's where I want to get into that third aspect of life under the mandate, which is representation and leadership. The mandate in its language and practice specifically denied Palestinians any qualities of stateness. In neighboring Arab countries, the mandate governments established and recognized indigenous state structures. But in Palestine, the mandate recognized only Zionists as a national community, ignoring Palestinians who made up 90% of the population at the time. Arabs also weren't allowed to hold any positions of authority like Prime Minister or King. They couldn't have any independent state structures like that of the Jewish agency. And the Palestinian counterpart to the Jewish agency, the Arab agency, proposed by the British in 1923, wasn't even mentioned in the mandate, meaning it lacked any international standing or recognition. When the British did establish governing institutions for the Palestinians, they were religious in nature, like the Supreme Muslim Council. But in doing that, they defined the existing population as simply a religion, Muslim, rather than a native ethnicity like Palestinian. And in general, we have to remember Palestinians could hardly welcome any British proposed agencies because that would require them to recognize the terms of the mandate, which enshrined their inferior status in Palestine. The Jewish immigrants, on the other hand, recognized that the mandate was actually beneficial to them in that moment. So they cooperated, and their governing institutions were often recognized and aided by the British. Now tensions were sort of mounting as all of this was going on. There were instances of violence of rioting and of death throughout the 1920s and '30s, but I want to go ahead and talk about the Arab revolt, which began in 1936. Forstration and anger among Palestinians had been mounting and was coming to a head at this moment. They were rebelling against Zionists, the mandate government, and the notables. The British, for their part, had done very little to aid the peasant population. They had made an attempt to identify and resettle landless Arabs, which ultimately failed, partly because they had insufficient funds and a narrow definition of what it meant to be landless. The lack of help on their part is one of those underlying catalysts for the revolt. But I want to talk about the rebels themselves. They were mostly rural migrants, students, laborers, and youth, and their revolt began in the city of Jaffa, with spread to rural areas. And since there was no organized army of the revolt, local bands attacked by night. They destroyed roads, oil pipes, telephone and telegraph lines, army stations, police stations. They led sniper attacks and took over major cities like Ramallah and Hebron. They devastated British infrastructure, and in response, the British introduced martial law, public hangings, house demolitions, collective punishment, and air strikes. They also disbanded the Arab Higher Committee, which was a body created by the Notables to organize strikes and sort of steer the revolt in their favor. This was an ironic twist of fate, considering that the peasants were revolting against the inaction of that same notable class. The British also imprisoned, deported, and destroyed any Palestinian leadership they had created. They exhausted the Palestinian population. 10% of the male population was killed, wounded or deported. Businesses were destroyed, and more land was sold. And in rural Palestine, people were ever more divided. In terms of numbers here, we're looking at about 415 Jewish lives lost, and about 5,000 Palestinian. Before we close out this episode, I want to discuss one other major outcome of the revolt, Britain's White Paper of 1939. Historians and scholars debate if the White Paper was truly a product of the revolt. There were, admittedly, other factors at play, like the huge economic crisis in England and Europe, World War II, and the U.S. overtaking Britain as the main international power. But, either way, the White Paper still stands as a major turning point in the story of the conflict. It effectively reversed the Balfour policy, and said that in 10 years, there would be an independent Palestinian state in which Palestinians and Jews would share leadership. The Jews would be a minority in the Palestinian majority state, and it would divide up to be about one-third Jewish and two-thirds Palestinian. It also said that only another 75,000 Jews could immigrate to Palestine in the next five years. So it was an effective end to Jewish immigration, as they also banned the sale of land. The Palestinians rejected the White Paper, although it seemingly benefited them, partially because there was no leadership at the time to accept it. If you remember, the leadership was devastated by the revolt, and Britain's response to the revolt, and partially because it came too late. By 1939, the Jewish national home was already established. There was no reversing it. So now we've discussed life in mandatory Palestine, the Arab Revolt and the White Paper, which takes us to the next major discussion, the British abandonment of Palestine and why they handed over the devastated, weary country to the United Nations in 1947.