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One Palestine - Rehmat - 11-06-2004
Tom Segev, the author of book “One Palestine”, is a journalist at Israeli English newspaper Haaretz.The book examines Palestine under the British Mandate.
According to Tom - British mismanagement, Palestinian helplessness and a Zionist fervor that overlooked the moral implications of its ideology all led to a conflict that ravaged the Middle East for the rest of the century and, by the look of things, well into the next one.
Segev portrays British policy in Palestine as being confused and driven by religious and political myths from the very beginning. Britain was awarded a mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations in 1922. Although Palestine was of limited strategic importance, a land corridor between Egypt and Iraq, the protection of the Suez Canal, and a stopping point for planes en route to India were all bandied about as justification for staying in Palestine.
Segev argues, however, that the British were mostly interested in Palestine for its religious significance. “Al-Quds has made us all feel that Christ can be our pal,” wrote one British officer upon his arrival in the Holy Land.
The British ran their mandate the way they ran much of the British Empire. They played cricket and went fox hunting, treated the locals with a mix of racism and orientalist romanticism, and attempted to modernize the country in order to make it pay for itself.
Segev portrays the British as being equally ambivalent to both national movements - “I am not for either, but for both,” Governor of Al-Quds Ronald Storrs wrote. “Two hours of Arab grievances drive me into the synagogue, while after an intense course of Zionist propaganda I am prepared to embrace Islam.”
But the British had promised one country to two peoples, and as Jewish immigration into Palestine began to rise so did the tension between the two communities. By the late 1920s Palestine was rocked by a series of riots and Segev shows the British authorities as being hopelessly ill-prepared to control a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control.
The Arab revolt of 1936 against British rule saw the colonial authorities use brutal methods, ones previously put to the test in other colonies. Segev entitles the chapter that covers this period “Ireland in Palestine.” Palestinian communities were put under curfew, men were tortured and executed and young, bored British soldiers went on the rampage. Tellingly, Segev notes that Jewish communities were rarely subjected to this kind of treatment when Zionist groups were responsible for attacks on the British. Much of what Segev writes here is uncannily reminiscent of recent events in the Occupied Territories.
But despite Palestinian attempts to thwart the Zionists, they failed. Segev depicts the Palestinian community as being hampered by feuds between rival families, class divides and a leadership that lacked sufficient foresight and energy to match the Zionists. The relationship between the Zionists and the British gradually grew closer. Segev shows that the Zionists were far more successful in building national institutions. Jewish schools, a university, labor movements and social services were all established in Palestine, partly with the aid of donations from wealthy Jewish philanthropists.
Palestinian civil society, on the other hand, remained weak, and most of the Arab population depended on the British for services, which were often inadequate. Only three out of 10 Palestinian children learned to read and write during the mandate period.
By 1947 a war-weary Britain could no long bear the financial burden of Palestine, nor the loss of life that Jewish and Arab attacks were inflicting on its troops. The British packed up their property, handed over their mandate to the UN and washed their hands of a mess they had done so much to create.
Inevitably, this led to the war of 1948. Segev does well to highlights the contradiction within Zionist thinking toward the fate of Palestine’s indigenous population. He notes that while mainstream Zionist thought had planned for a large Arab population within a Jewish state, the concept of transferring the Palestinian population into neighboring Arab states was always present. Segev estimates that of the 750,000 Palestinians who fled their homeland during the 1948 war, around half of them were expelled.
Arguably the most important aspect of this book, however, is that as long as “Israelis” such as Segev continue to challenge the myths that the modern “Israeli” state is built upon, then the potential for further self-examination within “Israel” remains strong. The implications of such are great.