the revolt, 1948, and afterward  Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved. War, al-Nakba, and Arab Tutelage The decade from 1939 until 1949 marks a new low point in the story of the Palestinians’ eƒort to achieve their national objectives of independence and statehood, low even by comparison with what preceded it. Worse was still to come. For most of this ten-year period, the key actors in this story are not Palestinian, and many are not Arab. Its most important element is how the Palestinians themselves lost agency, whether to the nascent Israeli state, to the neighboring Arab states, or to international actors. It was here, in the bitter endgame of the Palestine Mandate, that the Palestinians suffered the most from their previous failure to establish a recognized representative national body. They were unable to defend their society in the civil war that erupted as soon as the United Nations General Assembly voted for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state in Resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947. Even before that, they were either not consulted, or were eƒectively ignored by the various international eƒorts that culminated in this resolution. This was true of the actions of the British government at the end of World War II, when it still believed it could hang on to Palestine, of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry of 1946, created in response to increasing American involvement in the Palestine question in support of Zionism, and of the committee set up by the new United Nations organization in 1947 to make recommendations on the future of Palestine once the problem was thrown into its lap by Britain’s abdication of its responsibilities in Palestine. Even if the Palestinians were occasionally nominally represented in the post–World War II deliberations that sealed their fate as a people, in practice they were eƒectively ignored. Most frequently, if spoken for at all, they were spoken for by the Arab states, each of which had its own considerations and calculations, all of which were weak, and some of which, like Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan, had only just won a precarious independence. Even Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved.  the iron cage such limited Palestinian eƒorts to speak for themselves internationally as took place were entirely dependent on the support of Arab states. These eƒorts ultimately foundered because of these states’ inconsistency and because of divisions among them (as well as among the Palestinians themselves). It is clear that for most of the major actors dealing with Palestine at this stage, the Palestinians were considered a negligible factor if they were considered at all. British, American, and other international diplomats and statesmen paid them little heed, except for occasional eƒorts to exclude them. Even the Arab states, while generally hoping that the Palestinians would not be overwhelmed by the Zionists, were often most concerned about how the endgame of the Palestine Mandate would aƒect their relations with Britain and the other great powers, the other Arab states, and the Jewish state that was gradually emerging. This was even true of the Palestinians’ Zionist rivals for control of Palestine. For all the shifts in momentum of the civil war that erupted in Palestine at the end of 1947—at least in its earlier stages —the eyes of planners for the Israeli state about to be born were already firmly on the Arab armies across the frontiers of mandatory Palestine, even as they dealt with the Palestinians. It was of course vitally important to these planners that Zionist and later Israeli forces first overcome Palestinian resistance and then clear as much of the country as they could of its Palestinian population. They understood perfectly that otherwise the Jewish state called for by the partition plan would not have control of its internal lines of communication. Most importantly, they understood the wellestablished demographic calculus of Palestine, which meant that without such ethnic cleansing, the new state would have had nearly as many Arabs as Jews (the expanded territory eventually incorporated into Israel after the 1949 armistice agreements would have had many more Arabs). But at least as important as this objective was the driving forward and establishing of strategic lines on which the Arab armies could be confronted should they enter Palestine, as they did after May 15, 1948. Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved. the revolt, 1948, and afterward  Thus the Palestinians began this phase of their tortured national history in a particularly disadvantageous position. Even when important elements of the Zionist movement turned against the British starting at the end of World War II, with attacks on British targets such as senior o‰cers, the British headquarters in Jerusalem, trains, and barracks, by militia groups like the Irgun, founded by followers of Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and its even more extreme oƒshoot Lehi (known to the British as the Stern Gang) led by Yitzhaq Shamir, the Palestinians did not benefit. Unlike the 1936–39 revolt, when the British allied themselves with the Zionist movement in confronting the Arab uprising, now the British ignored the Palestinians. The reasons for this were simple: the Palestinians were weak and not particularly favorably disposed toward Britain, and their leader, the mufti, was discredited because of his wartime alliance with the Nazis. The British preferred to rely entirely on their own resources to fight the Zionists, with support from reliable and trusted clients such as King ‘Abdullah of Transjordan, with his small but battle-hardened British-commanded, -trained, -armed, and -financed army, the Arab Legion.22 In consequence, when Britain finally succumbed to a combination of American and international pressure in light of the awful revelations of the Nazis’ Final Solution, relentless Zionist attacks, and their own weariness with the endless Palestine imbroglio, all of this coming on top of Britain’s exhaustion in World War II, the Palestinians again did not benefit. The British threw the problem into the lap of the newly established United Nations, perhaps cynically hoping that the organization would fail to deal with this intractable problem, necessitating the maintenance of some form of British influence in Palestine.23 Their chosen instrument for the maintenance of a British role in the region was no longer their sponsorship of the Zionist project, and certainly not the Palestinians, but rather their faithful Arab allies in Transjordan, Iraq, and other parts of the Arab world. In particular, the British agreed with ‘Abdullah’s prime minister Tawfiq Abu al-Huda on a visit to Lon- Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved.  the iron cage don in January 1948 that Transjordan would take over the areas allotted to the Arabs under the partition plan.24 ‘Abdullah had come to a similar understanding in November 1947 with emissaries of the Jewish Agency such as Moshe Sharret and Golda Meir.25 Given the Palestinians’ increasing dependence on the Arab states, this reinforced connection between Britain and several key Arab states, and in particular the collusion between ‘Abdullah and the Zionist leadership, was to cause them many further problems. By contrast with British policymakers, who had come to resent the Zionists bitterly for turning against them (a sentiment that was more than reciprocated), American and Soviet planners saw the nascent Jewish state as a possible asset in their eƒorts to diminish the overwhelming influence of Great Britain in the Middle East. Both appreciated the vital strategic importance of the region, both were in search of local allies and clients, and both saw Britain as an obstacle to the enhancement of their own influence. Although we naturally tend to see the United States and the Soviet Union as the primary powers in the Middle East (as elsewhere) in the wake of World War II, in fact this only became true in the mid- to late 1950s. Their ascendancy, and the eclipse of both of the formerly dominant great powers in the region, Britain and France, was only fully brought home during the Suez crisis of 1956, when the latter, acting in collusion with Israel, were humiliated by the United States and the Soviet Union, which turned back their tripartite invasion of Egypt. In the meantime, what this meant for the Palestinians was that no great power was on their side. The United States and Soviet Union were overtly ranged against them, both voting for partition and for the establishment of a Jewish state in 1947, and immediately recognizing Israel on May 15, 1948. The reasons were simple: both looked with disfavor on the Palestinians because of the mufti’s years in Berlin, and neither had developed any links with them. The Palestinians, meanwhile, had even less of a presence in, or understanding of, the Soviet Union or the United States than they had Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved. the revolt, 1948, and afterward  had with regard to Britain. By contrast, the Zionist movement had made major inroads in the United States, developing a strong position within the American Jewish community, which became broadly supportive in the wake of the Holocaust, and building on relations with Congress and with American presidents that went back to the close links between American Zionist leader Louis Brandeis and President Wilson.26 Even with the Soviet Union, which was generally unfriendly to Zionism, during and after World War II the Zionist movement had managed to build a relationship that served them in good stead in 1948 when a major Czech arms deal helped the young Israeli state. The British, while not favorably disposed toward Israel because of the bitterness of the last years of the Mandate, were also not well disposed toward the Palestinians, against whom they still held the revolt of 1936–39 and what they perceived as the “betrayal” of the mufti. They rather looked toward their various local Arab clients and allies to advance their interests. The most important of these, King ‘Abdullah of Transjordan, was no friend of the mufti’s, and had coveted a role in Palestine at least since the 1937 Peel Commission, which recommended that the part of Palestine which was not to become a Jewish state or remain under British control be attached to his domain. Expansion of his power was ‘Abdullah’s idée fixe at this stage, and the idea of doing so westward across the Jordan animated his secret diplomacy with both Britain and the Jewish Agency, with whose leaders he met repeatedly.27 This meant that ‘Abdullah, Britain, the new state of Israel, and the United States and the Soviet Union, notwithstanding all the many diƒerences between them, in eƒect shared one objective in Palestine: preventing the establishment of the Palestinian Arab state that had been called for by the partition plan. The Palestinians had only a very thin reed to hang on to, those Arab states that opposed King ‘Abdullah’s ambitions in Palestine: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Through the newly established Arab League, founded in Alexandria in 1944, these states attempted to re- Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved.  the iron cage strain ‘Abdullah, albeit to little eƒect in the end. All were militarily weak (Saudi Arabia did not even have a modern army at this stage), their armies far less well-equipped and -trained and considerably less battle worthy than the Jordanian Arab Legion, which was also closest to the scene and had extensive familiarity with Palestine, having helped the British army to garrison the region until Britain’s withdrawal in May 1948. During World War II, the Egyptian and Iraqi armies had been looked on with deep suspicion by the British (indeed the latter had fought the British in 1941), who had kept them on a very short leash, and little was done thereafter to build them up. Moreover, the Arab states had limited financial means, found great di‰culty in coordinating strategy, and did not entirely trust the mufti, who by 1947 had returned to the Arab world, making Cairo his base, and with whom their experiences over more than a decade had been less than reassuring. Eƒorts to make the Palestinian case internationally were crippled by diƒerences among the Arab states, as well as among Palestinian leaders. These eƒorts included Musa al-‘Alami’s Arab O‰ce project, funded by Iraq but ultimately opposed by al-‘Alami’s erstwhile colleague the mufti, and later repudiated by the Egyptian-dominated Arab League.28 This initiative provided the Palestinians, for the first time in their existence as a people, with diplomatic representation abroad, and they initially opened o‰ces in London, New York, and Geneva. The Arab League eventually came to back the mufti as the best obstacle to King ‘Abdullah’s ambitions in Palestine and elsewhere in the region, and the Arab O‰ce project eventually died and the o‰ces were closed. The results on the battlefield in Palestine reflected the same elements as had been in evidence for twelve years, since the 1936 general strike: the weaknesses of the Palestinians, the divisions among the Arab states, the determination, organization, and competence of the Jewish Agency (which on May 15, 1948, was to transform itself into the government of the new state of Israel), and the broad international support that the Zionist movement enjoyed. The Palestine Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. Copyright © 2006. Beacon Press. All rights reserved. the revolt, 1948, and afterward  war, which began with bloody skirmishes as soon as the partition resolution was passed on November 29, 1947, escalated rapidly. This war had two major phases. The first was a civil war between the forces of the contending parties within Palestine, the Jews and the Arabs. The second was a war between the armies of the newly established state of Israel and four Arab states. The first phase involved on one side the military forces of the embryonic Jewish state, primarily the Hagana, already a single quasi-regular military force that generally coordinated with military units of the dissident Zionist splinter groups, the Irgun and Lehi. On the other side, it involved disunited Palestinian irregular forces, organized locally and led mainly by veterans of the 1936–39 revolt, together with an Arab volunteer force sent into Palestine at the end of 1947 by the Arab League, Jaysh alInqadh al-‘Arabi, the Arab Liberation Army (ALA).29 The balance between the two parties was lopsided: Zionist forces, most of them under a central command and organized as a regular army, numbered well over fifty thousand, including reserves, while the Arab forces, nearly all of them irregulars with widely divergent levels of training (if any), armament, and organization, numbered a total of under ten thousand. Even more grave, from the very outset there were profound political divisions and no cooperation whatsoever in the field between the local Palestinian forces and those of the ALA commanded by Fawzi al-Qawuqji.30 This first phase of the conflict went on for about six months until the rout of the inferior forces of the Palestinians and the ALA in April and early May 1948, a defeat marked by the fall of several major Arab cities, scores of villages, and the expulsion or flight of between a quarter of a million and 350,000 Palestinians. This phase ended on May 15, the date of the simultaneous termination of the British Mandate, the proclamation of the state of Israel, and the entry of several Arab armies into Palestine. The entry of the Arab armies marked the beginning of the second phase of the 1948 war, an interstate war fought between regular armies: those of the new state of Israel and four of its Arab neighbors. Although there were Khalidi, Rashid. Iron Cage : The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Beacon Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3117993. Created from nyulibrary-ebooks on 2021-02-01 22:18:16. 
Purchase answer to see full attachment