Encyclopaedia Britannica: Excerpt From Israel & The Cold War

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Encyclopaedia Britannica -- The coming of the Cold War, 1945–57 » The Cold War in the Middle East and Asia » The creation of Israel

Islāmic and South Asian nationalism, first awakened in the era of the first World War, triumphed in the wake of the second, bringing on in the years 1946–50 the first great wave of decolonization. The British and French fulfilled their wartime promises by evacuating and recognizing the sovereignty of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria in 1946 and Iraq in 1947. (Oman and Yemen remained under British administration until the 1960s, Kuwait and the Trucial States [United Arab Emirates] until 1971.) The strategic importance of the Middle East derived from its vast oil reserves, the Suez Canal, and its position on the southern rim of the U.S.S.R. While the Islāmic kingdoms and republics were not drawn to Communist ideology, the Soviets hoped to expand their influence by pressuring Turkey and Iran and involving themselves in the intramural quarrels of the region. Chief among these was the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The Zionist movement of the late 19th century had led by 1917 to the Balfour Declaration, by which Britain promised an eventual homeland for Jews in Palestine. When that former Ottoman province became a British mandate under the League of Nations in 1922, it contained about 700,000 people, of whom only 58,000 were Jews. By the end of the 1920s, however, the Jewish community had tripled, and, with the encouragement of Amīn al-Ḥusaynī, grand mufti of Jerusalem and admirer of the Nazis, Arab resentment exploded in bloody riots in 1929 and again in 1936–39. For self-protection the Jews formed Haganah (Defense), an underground militia that by 1939 had grown into a semiprofessional army. The Zionist cause then began to benefit from the worldwide sympathy caused by the Nazi Holocaust and by Haganah cobelligerency in the British war against Germany. The Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), a Zionist terror organization under Menachem Begin, and the Abraham Stern Group, which found even the Irgun too mild, turned against the British occupation in 1944 despite vehement opposition from Chaim Weizmann and others promoting the Jewish cause overseas. The newly formed Arab League, in turn, pledged in March 1945 to prevent the formation of any Jewish state in Palestine.

Meanwhile, Zionists concentrated on the United States, whose large Jewish voting bloc was believed likely to influence policy. In the 1944 campaign Roosevelt endorsed the founding of a “free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth,” and U.S. policy subsequently clashed with Britain’s, which aimed at maintaining paramountcy in the region through good relations with the Arabs. Foreign Secretary Bevin opposed and Truman endorsed a proposal in April 1946 by an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry to allow another 100,000 Jews into Palestine, an idea dwarfed by David Ben-Gurion’s demand for 1,200,000. Jewish terrorism exacerbated British hostility through such incidents as the flogging and murder of British soldiers, culminating in the bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, in which 41 Arabs, 28 British, and 22 others died. All told, Jewish terrorists killed 127 British soldiers and wounded 331 from 1944 to 1948, as well as thousands of Arabs. On the other hand, heartrending tales of Jewish survivors of Nazi Europe being turned back from their “promised land” also tugged at Western consciences.

On April 2, 1947, Bevin washed his hands of Palestine and placed it on the docket of the UN, which recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states. The United States and Britain feared that the Arabs would turn to the Soviets for aid, but the U.S.S.R. mystified all parties in October by agreeing with the American plan for partition. The Soviets apparently hoped to hasten British withdrawal, insinuate themselves into Middle Eastern diplomacy, and profit from the discord following partition. The General Assembly approved partition on November 29, granting to Jews some 5,500 square miles, mostly in the arid Negev. When the Arab League proclaimed a jihad (holy war) against the Jews, Truman’s advisers began to reconsider partition, for the loss of Arab oil might cripple the Marshall Plan and the U.S. military in case of war. When, however, the British pulled out and Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, Stalin and Truman (whether out of sympathy or domestic politics) immediately advanced recognition.

At the moment of partition the number of Jews had risen to some 35 percent of the total population of Palestine, and they were faced with Arab League forces totaling 40,000 men. The Haganah fielded about 30,000 volunteers armed with Czechoslovakian weapons sent at the behest of the U.S.S.R. On the day after partition the Arab League launched its attack, but the desperate Jewish defense prevailed on all five fronts. The UN called for a cease-fire on May 20 and appointed Folke, Count Bernadotte, as mediator, but his new partition plan was unacceptable to both sides. A 10-day Israeli offensive in July destroyed the Arab armies as an offensive force, at the cost of 838 Israeli lives. Members of the Stern Group assassinated Bernadotte on September 17. A final offensive in October carried the Israelis to the Lebanese border and the edge of the Golan Heights in the north and to the Gulf of Aqaba and into the Sinai in the south. Armistice talks resumed on Rhodes on Jan. 13, 1949, with the American Ralph Bunche mediating, and a truce followed in March. No Arab state recognized Israel’s legitimacy, however. More than a half-million Palestinian refugees were scattered around the Arab world. Between 1948 and 1957 some 567,000 Jews were expelled from Arab states, nearly all of whom resettled in Israel. The 1948 war thus marked only the beginning of trouble in the region.