A History of Zionism (96 page)

Partition schemes

Weizmann reports that this was the first time the idea of partition was broached to him. As a good diplomat he did not reply immediately, but asked for time for reflection and to consult his colleagues. The more he thought about the idea, the more he liked it. A private meeting with Professor Coupland was arranged. To keep it secret, it was held in a hut belonging to the girls’ agricultural training farm in Nahalal.
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Coupland was firmly convinced that no two peoples who had developed national consciousness could live together as equal partners in a single state. From this rule he was willing to except only the British who had established reasonably happy relations with the Afrikaners in South Africa.
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He told Weizmann that it was quite unrealistic in the given world situation to expect any decisive help from Britain for the future development of the Jewish national home. There had to be surgery; no honest doctor could recommend aspirin and a water bottle as a cure.
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Nine years later, in conversation with Abba Eban, the future Israeli foreign minister, Coupland said that his decision had been the right one, that it was the only solution compatible with justice and logic or, at any rate, the one involving least injustice. Coupland took it upon himself to persuade his colleagues that cantonisation, favoured by the mandatory administration, would not work, and that partition was the only way out. Weizmann was more than satisfied. When he left the hut in the evening he told the farmers assembled outside: ‘
Hevra
[comrades], today we laid the foundation for the Jewish state!’

The Peel Report was published in July 1937. Since its main recommendations were not accepted by the British government a very brief summary should suffice. In contrast to previous commissions, the Peel Commission realised that an irrepressible conflict had arisen between the two communities and that there was no common ground between them. The British people would have little heart to continue ruling the country without the consent of its inhabitants, nor could the problem be solved by giving either side all it wanted. After dismissing cantonisation, the commission recommended the termination of the mandate on the basis of a partition scheme which would have to fulfil three essential conditions: it would have to be practical, it would have to conform to British obligations, and it would have to do justice to both Arabs and Jews. The commission presented a plan (and a map) according to which Palestine was to be divided into three zones: a Jewish state, including the coastal region from south of Tel Aviv to north of Acre, the Valley of Esdraelon and Galilee; an Arab state, including the rest of Palestine as well as Transjordan; and a British enclave under permanent mandate, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and a narrow corridor to the Mediterranean including Lydda and Ramle.

Some of the provisions made this plan very difficult for any Zionist to accept, quite apart from the question of Jerusalem: Haifa, Acre, Safed and Tiberias, though within the borders of the proposed Jewish state, were to remain temporarily under British mandate, Nazareth was to be part of the British enclave, and Jaffa part of the Arab state. British official reactions were at first favourable: the White Paper accompanying the report stated that the government adopted its recommendations since partition on the general lines suggested represented the most hopeful solution of the deadlock.
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Pending completion of the details of the plans, immigration was to be drastically restricted. Only eight thousand certificates were to be granted for the next seven months.

The partition scheme was contemptuously rejected by the Arabs, and sharply criticised by most Zionists, while in Britain itself second thoughts produced grave doubts. In an impressive speech in the House of Lords, Viscount Samuel, the first high commissioner, pointed to the many contradictions of the new plan: there were to be 225,000 Arabs against 258,000 Jews in the proposed Jewish state. He ruled out a population transfer as entailing too much hardship. The scheme would have the effect of creating a Saar, a Polish Corridor, and half a dozen Danzigs and Memels in a country the size of Wales.

On 3 August 1937, less than a month after the publication of the report, the twentieth Zionist congress opened in Zurich. The delegates had barely enough time to study the bulky document and to ponder its implications, but passions were running high, for everyone believed, wrongly as it soon appeared, that the Zionist movement was facing a decision as momentous as at the time of the Uganda debate. Weizmann was the chief protagonist of the partition plan, or to be precise, of the principle of partition, even though his enthusiasm too had waned after studying the commission’s map. But he regarded partition as the lesser evil. Of the six million Jews waiting in Europe, two million, he thought, could be saved if there were a state to give them shelter. Through intensive cultivation of the fertile areas it would be possible to bring in one hundred thousand immigrants annually. It was easy to criticise the scheme, but what was the alternative? The restriction of immigration, with the Jews a permanent minority. Never had the Zionist movement faced a heavier responsibility.
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Weizmann was opposed by many of his General Zionist colleagues, by Ussishkin and his followers, the Mizrahi, Grossman’s Jewish State Party, and the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair. Ussishkin, like most other opponents, attacked the scheme both in principle and on practical grounds: the proposed Jewish state would simply not be viable. Without Jerusalem it would be a body without a head, said Berl Katznelson, one of the Mapai opponents of partition (together with Golda Meirson). The Mizrahi opposed it because the basis of the Jewish claim to Palestine was the Bible, a covenant which could not be changed at will. Hashomer Hatzair, on the other hand, rejected the scheme because it had not abandoned the idea of a bi-national state. But what was the alternative to partition, a young Polish Zionist, Moshe Kleinbaum (Sneh) asked. The opponents answered that if the Zionist movement offered determined resistance to the British attempt to repudiate the mandate, Britain would be compelled to adhere to its original provisions. Rabbi Wise in a dramatic speech proclaimed his ‘
non possumus
’; there were some things which a people simply could not do. One delegate read out a letter from Field Marshal Smuts in which he, one of the architects of the Balfour Declaration, expressed his opposition. Even Brodetsky, usually one of Weizmann’s faithful followers, was doubtful: the absorption of two million immigrants was an illusion. Weizmann interjected that sooner or later things would in any case move towards partition, ‘even if we had sixty thousand immigrants annually over a period of ten to twelve years and if we had attained majority status’.

Those who supported partition, like Ben Gurion, emphasised that time, the most important factor, was working against the Jews. The international situation was deteriorating, so was the position of the Jews in Europe. The other ‘A’ mandates had been abolished. The only question was when it would be Palestine’s turn. A Jewish state, however small, would generate new faith, and at the same time create the possibility of saving many hundreds of thousands of Jews. It was not an end but a new beginning.
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Gruenbaum, who on so many past occasions had been in the camp opposing Weizmann, now agreed with him. The alternative to a Jewish majority in a Jewish state was a Jewish minority in Arab Palestine. Shertok admitted that partition would be a cruel operation, but should they forgo an historical opportunity because, as someone had argued, Modi’in and Massada, those two symbols of resistance in Jewish history, would not be within the borders of the state? They had to make the greatest possible use of historical opportunities.
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Partition was risky, Goldmann admitted, but there were no other solutions. He recalled that some Zionist leaders, such as Victor Jacobson, had envisaged it years before.

Ussishkin, in his final speech, reiterated his view that a state without land could not exist in the long run: the experience of Carthage and Venice should serve as a warning. Or would they be compelled to build skyscrapers in Tel Aviv for want of land? ‘We have to make the best of it,’ Weizmann replied. They had eight thousand certificates for seven months. How could the critics claim that the prospect of two million immigrants should count as nothing? Gruenbaum believed that Arab-Jewish relations would improve as the result of partition; the alternative was ‘permanent terror’. There was a struggle within the soul of each delegate, as Rubashov (Shazar) said. Old friends found themselves in opposed camps; even Hagana in Palestine was divided, with Eliahu Golomb favouring partition and Shaul Meirov (Avigur) opposing it.

Eventually 300 delegates voted in favour of the Weizmann resolution and 158 against. The majority was substantial but only because the resolution adopted was fairly vague, evading a clear stand on most of the critical issues. It rejected the assertion of the royal commission that the mandate had proved unworkable and demanded its fulfilment. It refused to accept the conclusion that the national aspirations of Jews and Arabs were irreconcilable, and condemned the ‘palliative proposals’ put forward by the commission. The strongest protest was directed against the decision of the British government to fix a political maximum for Jewish immigration. Thus the scheme of partition as put forward by the commission was rejected as unacceptable, but at the same time the Zionist executive was empowered to enter into negotiations with a view to ascertaining London’s precise terms for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The congress was followed, as usual, by a session of the Jewish Agency Council. There, too, strong opposition to partition was voiced, albeit for different reasons. The non-Zionist representatives were no supporters of the idea of a Jewish state. The point which had received most attention at the congress — that the state as envisaged would be too small — was not their chief concern. They suggested that an Arab-Jewish conference should be convened by the British government to seek a solution within the terms of the mandate.

What had started as a promising venture ended in a flurry of recrimination, and Weizmann’s patience was wearing thin. His British friends had not even troubled to send him an advance copy of the Peel Report. After some sharp words to Ormsby Gore, the colonial secretary and a friend, he was told ‘not to burn his boats and to go off at the deep end’. He replied bitterly:

I have no boats to burn. I have borne most things in silence; I have defended the British administration before my own people, from public platforms, at congresses, in all parts of the world, often against my own better knowledge, and almost invariably to my own detriment. Why did I do so? Because to me close cooperation with Great Britain was the cornerstone of our policy in Palestine. But this cooperation remained unilateral — it was unrequited love.
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Parliament, the League of Nations, and the Zionist congress had, albeit with great reservations, accepted the principle of partition, but the Palestinian Arabs mobilised the heads of Arab states against the scheme. At a pan-Arab congress in Bludan (Syria) in September 1937 it was resolved that the preservation of Palestine as an Arab country was the sacred duty of every Arab. Meanwhile riots broke out again in Palestine and became more intense. In October the British district commissioner for Galilee and his escort were shot in front of a Nazareth church. The British arrested five members of the Arab Higher Committee, while the mufti succeeded in escaping. The Arab attacks continued, and it took the authorities eighteen more months before the rebellion was suppressed. This failure has baffled many observers, and it has been said that it was due to lack of will rather than lack of resources. Fawzi Kaukji, the guerrilla leader, who in 1936–8 pinned down many thousand British soldiers, was routed within a few days by the small, badly trained and ill-equipped forces of the Hagana ten years later. But it is only fair to add that at the time both the British and the Jews lacked experience in guerrilla fighting. Armoured cars and planes were quite unsuitable for coping with irregular forces supported by the local population.

To recommend new boundaries for the Arab and Jewish states yet another commission was appointed in February 1938. This group was headed by Sir Charles Woodhead; most of his colleagues were, like its chairman, distinguished ex-Indian civil servants. According to its terms of reference, the commission was at full liberty to suggest modifications. It stayed in Palestine from late April to July 1938 but was boycotted by the Arabs. Moreover, its members must have been aware that London was already retreating from the idea of partition. The appointment of yet another commission may well have been an attempt to gain time while a new policy was worked out.

The commission’s report was published in November, but in the words of one commentator it is not easy to say precisely what it did, or did not, recommend.
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It discussed three different projects. Plan A envisaged a Jewish state more or less within the boundaries suggested by the Peel Commission, in which, it was noted, 49 per cent of the population would be Arabs who would own about 75 per cent of the land. Under Plan B Galilee, mainly populated by Arabs, would be detached as well as some other areas from the Jewish state. Plan C envisaged a still smaller Jewish state, consisting of the coastal plain from Rehovot in the south to Zikhron Ya’akov in the north, four hundred square miles with a total of 280,000 inhabitants. It was essentially a Jewish Vatican, Tel Aviv and its suburbs. But even this mini-state was subdivided into two parts by the Jaffa-Jerusalem corridor. The four members of the Woodhead Commission failed to agree among themselves: one of them preferred Plan B, two had strong reservations about Plan C, and all rejected Plan A.

In essence the commission reached the conclusion that no Jewish state could be devised which, while including only a small number of Arabs, would be large enough to allow for new immigration.
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Instead of openly admitting failure, the commission felt under an obligation to produce a scheme of its own, however half-hearted and confused. Several weeks after the publication the British government, in yet another White Paper, turned partition down as impractical in view of the political, administrative and financial difficulties it raised, claiming that peace and prosperity in Palestine could be restored only if there was an understanding between Jews and Arabs.
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It was also announced that a conference would soon be held in London to which representatives of the Jewish Agency as well as Arabs from Palestine and the neighbouring states, would be invited. If no agreement was reached within a reasonable period, the government would be obliged to impose a settlement.