Why I wrote From Coexistence to Conquest
From Coexistence to
Conquest was a difficult book to
write. The manuscript went through so many drafts, the title, and
even the subject matter changed so many times that I could probably
write an article on that process alone. Initially, I had
intended not
to write a history book. I was supposed to
write a legal book on the International Court of Justice’s 2004
advisory opinion on the Wall. But my publisher protested; “Why
write a book on just the Wall?” I was asked. If I was going to do
that, I was told, I must address the conflict’s history from an
international law perspective to place the proceedings in context.
But I was not quite sure where I was supposed to start my
story.
When I first put pen to paper in January
2006, I wrote about the events which led to the 1947 U.N. Partition
Plan when there was an attempt by several Arab states to refer a
list of grievances to the International Court of Justice for an
advisory opinion. These grievances took the form of a series of
questions that were related to various aspects of the Palestine
problem during the era of British Mandate over Palestine
(1917-1948), such as whether Palestine was promised independence in
the Hussein-McMahon correspondence in 1915, and whether
Palestinians had a right of self-determination. It was at this
point that it suddenly dawned upon me that the 1947 UN Partition
Plan was actually the end of a long chain of events that had
already been in play for fifty years leading up the conflagration
that sparked the 1948 conflict. So instead of writing a brief
historical chapter leading up to the 2004 advisory opinion I ended
up on a detour that took me further back in time, and what a can of
worms I uncovered through this digression.
It was my general dissatisfaction with
most of the history books on the Arab-Israeli conflict that kept me
going. The more time I spent in libraries looking at dusty books
and files from the National Archives the more I realized how much
of the conflict’s history had not been written. And yet there are
so many books on the history of the conflict! How is it then that
they do not answer what I think is one of the most important
questions any scholar should first consider: why did the conflict
start? Ask any historian: Zionist, anti-Zionist, Jew, or gentile,
and you will get a different answer. Was it British imperialism and
the Balfour Declaration, the aims of the Zionist movement, European
anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the
1967 occupation, or a combination of factors? Is it really fair to
describe the conflict as a clash of nationalisms as most history
books do, considering that Zionism was foreign to the Jewish
community living in Palestine prior to the 1897 First Zionist
Congress? If this is an accurate description, then surely one
must first explain how Jewish nationalism, which emerged in Eastern
Europe, ended up being manifested in a distant corner of the
Ottoman Empire. Was it just Manifest Destiny that millions of Jews
should uproot themselves from Europe and settle in Palestine? Did
international law even assume a prominent role among the
protagonists?
To answer the last question first. The
Zionist movement considered gaining international legitimacy, and
that meant legality, to be of the utmost importance. I was struck
by the close, one might say almost intimate, collaboration between
the Zionist Organization and the British Government when the
mandate was being drafted at the British Foreign Office and
the Quai d’Orsay
in 1919. The travaux préparatoires in Kew were most revealing. The Zionist Organization was
even asked to submit several drafts of what they desired to be in
the Mandate. And they got their way on many, albeit not all, the
issues. Contrary to what Leonard Stein asserts in his book
The Balfour
Declaration, A. J. Balfour, the
British Foreign Minister in 1917, and formerly Britain’s Prime
Minister, took a keen interest in the Zionist movement. This
interest was not out of altruism or for any general concern for the
welfare of European Jews. The truth is that Balfour, who was a
confidant of Cosima Wagner, the wife of the famous composer, did
not really care much for the Jews. Nor, for that matter, did he
care for the Arabs. As for the question of self-determination and
who was ultimately to control the destiny of Palestine, this is
what Mr. Balfour told the Zionist Federation at a meeting he
attended in 1923:
…the critics of this
movement shelter themselves behind the phrase – but it is more than
a phrase – behind the principle of self-determination, and say
that, if you apply that principle logically and honestly, it is to
the majority of the existing population of Palestine that the
future destinies of Palestine should be committed. My lords, ladies
and gentlemen, there is a technical ingenuity in that plea, and on
technical grounds I neither can nor desire to provide the answer;
but, looking back upon the history of the world, I say that the
case of Jewry in all countries is absolutely exceptional, falls
outside all the ordinary rules and maxims, cannot be contained in a
formula or explained in a sentence.
Notice what Balfour says about the case of "Jewry in all countries" being absolutely exceptional and that they fall "outside all the ordinary rules and maxims." The idea that Jews were so exceptional that the law of nations did not apply to them, struck me as rather suspicious coming from the lips of Balfour, and one will understand why from reading my book. Moreover, were Jews not nationals of the countries they inhabited? And had they not just been emancipated? Why did Balfour, the main supporter of the 1905 Alien’s Act, which restricted Jewish immigration into England just after the height of the pogroms in Romania and Russia, which led to a mass Jewish exodus into Western Europe and the United States, identify with the cause of the Zionist movement? Suffice it to say that Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, and the only Jewish politician in the British government who was specifically consulted about Balfour’s intention to issue the declaration, opposed it. In the first of three memorandums addressed to Balfour in the summer of 1917, Montagu made the following astute observation:
…at the very time when these Jews
[referring to Jews in Russia] have been acknowledged as Jewish
Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that
Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government,
and that Mr. Balfour should be authorised to say that Palestine was
to be reconstituted as the 'national home of the Jewish people.' I
do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that
Mohammedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews, and that
the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be
peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England
is with this English or France with the French, that Turks and
other Mahommedans [sic] in Palestine will be regarded as
foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated
as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also
citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious
test.
Montagu’s memorandum was most prescient.
If Palestine was to become the home of the Jewish people as the
Zionists desired, so that it would, in the words of Theodor Herzl
cure centuries of anti-Semitism, then why issue the declaration in
the aftermath of their emancipation in the country where they had
suffered most from persecution? Besides, the principle of
self-determination, which in the early twentieth century was
understood to imply majority rule, favored the Arab case. This
would explain why Balfour wanted it set aside in Palestine. He did
not, however, get his way entirely. George Curzon, his successor at
the Foreign Office, was adamantly opposed to Balfour’s policy, and
did his best, once in office, to "water dawn" the mandate he had
inherited. "I want the Arabs to have a chance," he wrote one of his
colleagues, "and I don’t want a Hebrew State." And of course,
whatever the Zionists may have privately desired, the Balfour
Declaration never explicitly stipulated Jewish statehood as the end
result.
Writing a book is an education. During
the research I found so many documents that I had never come across
before, or seen in any other history book. For instance, I
discovered memoranda and maps that supported the Arab
interpretation of the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, and I found
the first reaction of the U.S. Government to the Balfour
Declaration, which, believe it or not, was negative. I also
uncovered the British Foreign Office legal advice on the 1948
conflict, which completely contradicts the Zionist narrative. "If
the Arab armies invade the territory of Palestine but without
coming into conflict with the Jews," they wrote, "they would not
necessarily be doing anything illegal, or contrary to the United
Nations Charter.” And then there was Anthony Eden’s top-secret
memorandum to Winston Churchill lambasting the partition plan and a
document prepared by the Foreign Office to tackle what they
referred to as "inaccurate Jewish political propaganda" on the
refugee question. As that document noted, "many Arabs fled before
the Arab invasion of 15th May owing to the brutality and the
atrocities of IZL [the Irgun] and Haganah, e.g. at Deir Yassin.
This policy of intimidation had since been pursued fairly
consistently." It continued: "Jewish settlers have systematically
moved into houses and land of Arab refugees."
While writings on Palestine abound, one
thing I have definitely learned through the writing of this book,
is that there is still a great deal of information on Palestine's
Nakba that has not made the journey from the dusty archive to the
vibrant realm of common knowledge. There is still much work to be
done.