1 gen 2012 anni - Jake Murray FB comment on Steven Daly thread

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I think the key thing here is that fulfilling the purpose of the Mandate of Palestine never had to prejudice the religious and other rights of its Arab population. Handled correctly a Jewish state could have been created with equal rights for the Arab population enshrined in its constitution. The original Zionist movement didn’t want to drive the Arab population out & genuinely thought they would live in peace in a successful majority Jewish state. Throughout the 20s & 30s there was no violence from the Jewish settlers. They began to organise in their defence towards the end of the 30s but the rise of Zionist terror groups such as Irgun, Stern & Lehi didn’t happen until the 40s. This was after two decades of broken British promises and, essentially, a refusal to engage with how the Mandate could be fulfilled. They knew they had a legal obligation to form a Jewish state but didn’t really want to. The British authorities needed Jewish expertise and finance in the region during the war effort of WW1 & 2 but were fundamentally anti-Semitic. They didn’t like the Jews and largely favoured the Arabs.
But even this tells only part of the truth, because even though they favoured the Arabs over the Jews in actuality they viewed both as lesser peoples. Neither were to be taken seriously compared to Britons. Although the Mandate was not officially a colony or imperial holding the British treated it as one. Strategically it was vital, and I don’t think they ever intended to let it go to the Arabs or the Jews if they could have avoided it. As it was the only left when Arab- Jewish violence got so bad they couldn’t control it.
I say all this not only as a Brit but someone related bt marriage to the Sykes of the Sykes-Picot agreement. As with India and Pakistan we didn’t take the indigenous populations seriously so we never out the effort in to make the transition to independence work.
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Jake Murray
The was one governor of the Mandate who did engage with it, Orde Wingste. He was a remarkable man who was sent there to get him out of the way because he was difficult to deal with & didn’t fit in with the British military establishment. A religious man, he was philosemitic and sympathetic to the Jewish cause, but also respected the Arabs and recognised that fulfilling the Mandate was not going to be simple. He taught the Jews how to organise and fight back when attacked by Arab raids.
But he also taught himself Arabic and Hebrew so he could talk to both communities & worked hard to build bridges between them.
Eventually the British government brought him back as they felt he had ‘gone native’. Before he returned he wrote and submitted a detailed proposal as to how the Mandate could be fulfilled so that the needs of Arabs and Jews could be met. It was completely ignored.

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