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One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate
One Palestine, Complete explores the tumultuous period before the creation of the state of Israel. This was the time of the British Mandate, when Britain's promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land, set in motion the conflict that haunts the region to this day.
Drawing on untapped archival materials, Tom Segev reconstructs an era (1917 to 1948) of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces an array unforgettable characters, tracks the steady advance of Jews and Arabs toward confrontation, and puts forth a radical new argument: that the British, far from being pro-Arab, consistently favored the Zionist position, out of the mistaken--and anti-Semitic--belief that Jews turned the wheels of history. Rich in historical detail, sensitive to all perspectives, One Palestine, Complete brilliantly depicts the decline of an empire, the birth of one nation, and the tragedy of another.
Drawing on untapped archival materials, Tom Segev reconstructs an era (1917 to 1948) of limitless possibilities and tragic missteps. He introduces an array unforgettable characters, tracks the steady advance of Jews and Arabs toward confrontation, and puts forth a radical new argument: that the British, far from being pro-Arab, consistently favored the Zionist position, out of the mistaken--and anti-Semitic--belief that Jews turned the wheels of history. Rich in historical detail, sensitive to all perspectives, One Palestine, Complete brilliantly depicts the decline of an empire, the birth of one nation, and the tragedy of another.
640 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Tom Segev
31 books96 followersTom Segev (Hebrew: תום שגב) is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
December 21, 2022
Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete offers an engaging reconstruction of Britain's three-decade rule over the Palestine Mandate (modern Israel). Segev, an Israeli historian, provides a crisp narrative filled with engaging character sketches and vivid anecdotes: familiar figures (Lord Allenby, Lawrence of Arabia, Chaim Weitzman and David Ben-Gurion) brush shoulders with lesser-known individuals like George Antonius, Khalil al-Sakakini and Herbert Samuel to create a vivid portrait of a contentious time and place. Segev follows other historians of Britain's Middle East adventure in depicting the conquest as ad hoc, the seizure of Jerusalem in particular achieved more for propaganda purposes than a conept of what came next. The result was 30 years of low-level civil war between Arab nationalists and Zionist Jews, each asserting nationhood and each feeling betrayed and oppressed by British promises, with Perfidious Albion haplessly trying to referee - a situation which grew untenable after the Second World War. A clear-eyed account of an historic tragedy that resonates to this day.
January 26, 2008
segev continues his career of iconoclasm within israeli historiography with this noted book covering the critical period of british rule. in a rhapsodic style the book slays a key boogey-man of much israeli scholarship on the mandate: the supposed opposition of the british to zionism and its project of erecting a state. instead he argues that though key british figures in government were often motivated by anti-semitic notions of jewish power in the world, this paradoxically led them to generally assist in the project of zionist state-building.
while there should be no doubt the british served an irreplaceable role in helping create the conditions for the birth of israel, segev's narrative on this count is somewhat lacking. for instance, the key british interventions in local political economy which greatly damaged the majority arab population while giving advantage to young zionist economic ventures - are not well-treated in the book.
likewise, although it is a lush account of the period, full of robust detail, often using diaries and personal papers to add real persons' experiences during the period, it gives relatively short shrift to producing a serious account of palestinan arab history during the mandate. there is one main arab character in the book - khalil al-sakakini - and while his writings have much to offer, he can hardly stand in for the arab majority.
the book is also marred by several themes and tropes from dominant israeli sociology and discourse, which takes a dim if not hostile view of palestinian culture and history. thus, for instance, palestinians who revolt against the british and the zionist program to take over the territory are often labeled 'terrorists', demonstrating once again the limits of the israeli 'new historians'.
the book's style will appeal to non-specialists, and it is highly readable on that account, but precisely this style and its narrative foci often make it somewhat less serious than its pretensions would have it.
while there should be no doubt the british served an irreplaceable role in helping create the conditions for the birth of israel, segev's narrative on this count is somewhat lacking. for instance, the key british interventions in local political economy which greatly damaged the majority arab population while giving advantage to young zionist economic ventures - are not well-treated in the book.
likewise, although it is a lush account of the period, full of robust detail, often using diaries and personal papers to add real persons' experiences during the period, it gives relatively short shrift to producing a serious account of palestinan arab history during the mandate. there is one main arab character in the book - khalil al-sakakini - and while his writings have much to offer, he can hardly stand in for the arab majority.
the book is also marred by several themes and tropes from dominant israeli sociology and discourse, which takes a dim if not hostile view of palestinian culture and history. thus, for instance, palestinians who revolt against the british and the zionist program to take over the territory are often labeled 'terrorists', demonstrating once again the limits of the israeli 'new historians'.
the book's style will appeal to non-specialists, and it is highly readable on that account, but precisely this style and its narrative foci often make it somewhat less serious than its pretensions would have it.
January 17, 2024
This book will get 2 Stars. Not great, not bad. Too limited in Arab sources, really only one Christian Arab, Al-Sakakini, provides most of the pro-Arab, anti-Zionist side. A lot of personal accounts but I never felt like I was seeing the big picture. I also felt the author was applying an anti-Zionist filter to the narrative. But then it is a Haaretz journalist, so no surprise.
The main theme of the author is the British were pro-Zionist, not nearly so pro-Arab as usually assumed. That may be true up to 1939, but then the tables turn. Up to that point, British acceptance of the Mandate and their actions do seem to favor the Zionist enterprise.
As the world superpower, the British take on responsibilities that will be difficult to manage:
Why did the British wind up in Palestine?
Sometimes prophecy becomes reality—and Allenby gets promoted from general to “prophet”
Across the city people quoted a prophecy the Arabs used to tell to glorify the Ottoman Empire: the Turks would leave Palestine only when a prophet of God brought the water of the Nile to Palestine. The British had laid pipes that supplied their army with water in the desert, and so Allenby was called “Allah an-nabi,” a prophet of God.
In the aftermath of WWI, Zionist leaders get attention for their dream:
There was a real push to have the US take on the Mandate for Palestine. One of Wilson's advisors pointed out that the US administration of the Philippines didn't work out well. The Zionists wanted the British-they had the colonial experience and expertise to succeed. The Zionists also recognized the American political system would not serve:
As WWII approaches, the British calculate the Arabs could pose a threat if they ally with the Axis powers. Changes are made in the immigration program and other areas to restrict:
The British Empire is exhausted after WWII. Palestine is not critical yet sacrifices are being made and scarce resources consumed. The end of the Mandate is coming:
The main theme of the author is the British were pro-Zionist, not nearly so pro-Arab as usually assumed. That may be true up to 1939, but then the tables turn. Up to that point, British acceptance of the Mandate and their actions do seem to favor the Zionist enterprise.
As the world superpower, the British take on responsibilities that will be difficult to manage:
Why did the British wind up in Palestine?
Sometimes prophecy becomes reality—and Allenby gets promoted from general to “prophet”
Across the city people quoted a prophecy the Arabs used to tell to glorify the Ottoman Empire: the Turks would leave Palestine only when a prophet of God brought the water of the Nile to Palestine. The British had laid pipes that supplied their army with water in the desert, and so Allenby was called “Allah an-nabi,” a prophet of God.
In the aftermath of WWI, Zionist leaders get attention for their dream:
There was a real push to have the US take on the Mandate for Palestine. One of Wilson's advisors pointed out that the US administration of the Philippines didn't work out well. The Zionists wanted the British-they had the colonial experience and expertise to succeed. The Zionists also recognized the American political system would not serve:
As WWII approaches, the British calculate the Arabs could pose a threat if they ally with the Axis powers. Changes are made in the immigration program and other areas to restrict:
The British Empire is exhausted after WWII. Palestine is not critical yet sacrifices are being made and scarce resources consumed. The end of the Mandate is coming:
May 26, 2021
In diesem Buch geht es hauptsächlich um die britische Herrschaft zwischen 1917 bis zur Gründung Israels 1948. Zusammengefasst wird alles von Tom Segev, ein jüdischer Historiker und Journalist erklärt. Meiner Einschätzung nach anti-zionistisch angehaucht. Laut den Quellen zu entnehmen sind historische Quellen der Zitate aus Archiven rund um die Welt. Trotzdem hat man hier natürlich überwiegend die israelische Historie im Blick.
Nach der 500 Jahrelangen Herrschaft unter den Türken im Osmanischen Reich, war die Bevölkerungsmehrheit hauptsächlich muslimisch in Palästina. 400.000 waren Muslime, 13.000–20.000 Juden und circa 42.000 orthodox Christen. Durch die britische Herrschaft im ersten Weltkrieg erhofften sich die arabische Bevölkerung durch den McMohan Brief eine Zusage, dass sie die Unabhängigkeit erlangen.
Doch Großbritannien ging immer mehr Allianzen mit den zionistischen Bewegungen ein, denen man zusicherte, dass Tel Aviv und Teile Palästinas ein Zufluchtsort für verfolgte Juden wird. Tatsächlich kamen neben politischen Flüchtlingen immer mehr Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge - bis die Bevölkerungsmehrheit die der Araber überstieg. Und mit der Zunahme der Bevölkerungsdichte, wurden dementsprechend auch zionistische Forderungen laut einen eigenen autonomes Land zu bekommen. Was konträr zur binationalen Forderungen der Juden war. Was der arabischen Bevölkerung nicht gefiel weil man seit der Osmanischen Übernahme auf die politische Unabhängigkeit mit Händen ringte und kein Interesse daran hatte, dass Land aufzuteilen. Versuche auf einen gemeinsamen Nenner mit den Briten zu kommen, verzagten kläglich und die Situation wurde immer brisanter und gewalttätiger.
In diesem sehr detailreichen Ausführungen des Buches bekommt man einen sehr tiefen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Forderungen und Gruppierungen und natürlich auch den tief verankerten Vorurteile der Zionisten den Arabern gegenüber und umgekehrt. Seit eh und je leben unterschiedliche Nationen und Religionen miteinander aber äußere Kräfte durch die Besatzungen schienen kein Interesse daran zu haben, dass man friedlich miteinander lebt - auf beiden Seiten.
Tatsächlich ist es zum Teil auch sehr irritierend wie viele unterschiedliche Meinungen, Forderungen und politische Intrigen geschnürt werden, damit am Ende während der britischen Herrschaft britische Interessen vertreten werden. Gerade im zweiten Weltkrieg drehte sich alles wie eine Fahne im Wind.
Ob ich nachdem Lesen des Buches schlauer geworden bin? Nein. Es war zu detailreich, es kamen zu viele Akteure hinzu, dass man irgendwann den Überblick verloren hat, wer eigentlich was will und was gar nicht möchte.
Trotzdem sehr lesenswert weil Tom Segev sehr viele Echt-Zitate verwendet, dass einem einen sehr guten Einblick gibt, wie die Beziehungen untereinander waren und wie wenig man voneinander hielt.
Nach der 500 Jahrelangen Herrschaft unter den Türken im Osmanischen Reich, war die Bevölkerungsmehrheit hauptsächlich muslimisch in Palästina. 400.000 waren Muslime, 13.000–20.000 Juden und circa 42.000 orthodox Christen. Durch die britische Herrschaft im ersten Weltkrieg erhofften sich die arabische Bevölkerung durch den McMohan Brief eine Zusage, dass sie die Unabhängigkeit erlangen.
Doch Großbritannien ging immer mehr Allianzen mit den zionistischen Bewegungen ein, denen man zusicherte, dass Tel Aviv und Teile Palästinas ein Zufluchtsort für verfolgte Juden wird. Tatsächlich kamen neben politischen Flüchtlingen immer mehr Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge - bis die Bevölkerungsmehrheit die der Araber überstieg. Und mit der Zunahme der Bevölkerungsdichte, wurden dementsprechend auch zionistische Forderungen laut einen eigenen autonomes Land zu bekommen. Was konträr zur binationalen Forderungen der Juden war. Was der arabischen Bevölkerung nicht gefiel weil man seit der Osmanischen Übernahme auf die politische Unabhängigkeit mit Händen ringte und kein Interesse daran hatte, dass Land aufzuteilen. Versuche auf einen gemeinsamen Nenner mit den Briten zu kommen, verzagten kläglich und die Situation wurde immer brisanter und gewalttätiger.
In diesem sehr detailreichen Ausführungen des Buches bekommt man einen sehr tiefen Einblick in die unterschiedlichen Forderungen und Gruppierungen und natürlich auch den tief verankerten Vorurteile der Zionisten den Arabern gegenüber und umgekehrt. Seit eh und je leben unterschiedliche Nationen und Religionen miteinander aber äußere Kräfte durch die Besatzungen schienen kein Interesse daran zu haben, dass man friedlich miteinander lebt - auf beiden Seiten.
Tatsächlich ist es zum Teil auch sehr irritierend wie viele unterschiedliche Meinungen, Forderungen und politische Intrigen geschnürt werden, damit am Ende während der britischen Herrschaft britische Interessen vertreten werden. Gerade im zweiten Weltkrieg drehte sich alles wie eine Fahne im Wind.
Ob ich nachdem Lesen des Buches schlauer geworden bin? Nein. Es war zu detailreich, es kamen zu viele Akteure hinzu, dass man irgendwann den Überblick verloren hat, wer eigentlich was will und was gar nicht möchte.
Trotzdem sehr lesenswert weil Tom Segev sehr viele Echt-Zitate verwendet, dass einem einen sehr guten Einblick gibt, wie die Beziehungen untereinander waren und wie wenig man voneinander hielt.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 17, 2016
This is a one volume history of the British Mandate by an Israeli journalist who was trained as an historian. It is a fine book, richly detailed and fun to read in parts. It is also a long book.
What is most interesting about the book, however, is its perspective. The author makes use of new information to provide a story of the Mandate period from three different perspectives - the British, the Jew, and the Arabs. Within each of these perspectives there is extraordinary diversity and clashes of subgroups. It is hard to keep track of the players without a scorecard, which is provided (at least a list of actors). What comes out of this ménage a Trois is a new view on the Mandate that spreads around praise and blame more evenly among the participants (not to mention additional external participants). The result challenges the view that Israel came into existence as the Zionists fought and triumphed against the British and the Arabs. Segev clearly documents that there was much more cooperation between Britain the the Jewish residents of Palestine than was claimed in prior histories. The book also challenges simplistic claims about the role of the Holocaust in the rise of Israel. It no doubt was an important factor, but Segev shows how there were initiatives for a Jewish State from the very beginnings of the Mandate and that Britain was tired of its role in Palestine by 1939, but got distracted by the onset of WW2.
The book is filled with issues of determinism versus choice versus chance and whether the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians were necessary or whether a more cooperative solution was possible. In this sense, the book is the story of an idea. The title refers to the idea of a Palestine that included both Arabs and Jews on an equal basis. The stories in the book chronicle how this idea ultimately failed, leading to the birth of Israel. This involves regret over missed choices and roads not taken, especially how the conflict Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come to dominate relations in the region. I sympathize with the regret but have trouble seeing how development could have developed other than they dead. This conflict is part and parcel of the conflict between high principles and power politics that dominated the world after the end of the First World War. High principles did not work out well for Woodrow Wilson or for the British Empire and they certainly did not work out well here.
Segev works to humanize the story by going into the lives and loves of a whole cast of characters, some of whose stories frame the entire Mandate period. I liked this aspect of the book but note how a narrative filled with the personal stories of the key actors will come across necessarily as messy and not supporting broad clear stories. In this sense, the style of the book contributes to its more revisionist message. I do appreciate the broadening of perspectives with the suggestions that the Palestinian Arabs may have a bone or two to pick with how everything turned out for the Mandate. If anything, even more of the Arab perspective would have helped, although what was provided was well done and worthwhile.
The book is filled with fascinating trivia and levels of detail for those who appreciate it. For others, there is much the work through, even if you know how the story turned out.
What is most interesting about the book, however, is its perspective. The author makes use of new information to provide a story of the Mandate period from three different perspectives - the British, the Jew, and the Arabs. Within each of these perspectives there is extraordinary diversity and clashes of subgroups. It is hard to keep track of the players without a scorecard, which is provided (at least a list of actors). What comes out of this ménage a Trois is a new view on the Mandate that spreads around praise and blame more evenly among the participants (not to mention additional external participants). The result challenges the view that Israel came into existence as the Zionists fought and triumphed against the British and the Arabs. Segev clearly documents that there was much more cooperation between Britain the the Jewish residents of Palestine than was claimed in prior histories. The book also challenges simplistic claims about the role of the Holocaust in the rise of Israel. It no doubt was an important factor, but Segev shows how there were initiatives for a Jewish State from the very beginnings of the Mandate and that Britain was tired of its role in Palestine by 1939, but got distracted by the onset of WW2.
The book is filled with issues of determinism versus choice versus chance and whether the establishment of Israel and the expulsion of the Palestinians were necessary or whether a more cooperative solution was possible. In this sense, the book is the story of an idea. The title refers to the idea of a Palestine that included both Arabs and Jews on an equal basis. The stories in the book chronicle how this idea ultimately failed, leading to the birth of Israel. This involves regret over missed choices and roads not taken, especially how the conflict Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come to dominate relations in the region. I sympathize with the regret but have trouble seeing how development could have developed other than they dead. This conflict is part and parcel of the conflict between high principles and power politics that dominated the world after the end of the First World War. High principles did not work out well for Woodrow Wilson or for the British Empire and they certainly did not work out well here.
Segev works to humanize the story by going into the lives and loves of a whole cast of characters, some of whose stories frame the entire Mandate period. I liked this aspect of the book but note how a narrative filled with the personal stories of the key actors will come across necessarily as messy and not supporting broad clear stories. In this sense, the style of the book contributes to its more revisionist message. I do appreciate the broadening of perspectives with the suggestions that the Palestinian Arabs may have a bone or two to pick with how everything turned out for the Mandate. If anything, even more of the Arab perspective would have helped, although what was provided was well done and worthwhile.
The book is filled with fascinating trivia and levels of detail for those who appreciate it. For others, there is much the work through, even if you know how the story turned out.
April 24, 2011
Israeli journalist Tom Segev offers a 520-page history of the 31-year British Mandate in Palestine that is both panoramic and intimate. Perhaps his main thesis, stated on p. 490, is that “Once the Zionist Movement came to Palestine with the intention of creating an independent state with a Jewish majority, war (that is, between Jews and Arabs) was inevitable.” The early parts of the book, especially, read like watching people setting out on a journey that you know is going to lead to a train wreck, as Segev shows that Palestinian nationalist aspirations began to emerge and coalesce as soon as significant Jewish settlement was underway. Segev describes how some Zionist leaders tried to deny, obscure, or minimize the reality of nationalist sentiments among Palestinian Arabs, while others, Ben Gurion, among them, were well aware of and openly acknowledged their extent.
Segev’s method is to layer depiction of the larger developments with detailed accounts of individual people, famous and obscure, who participated in these historic events. So, for example, we follow the life of Khalil Sakakini, a Palestinian educator and nationalist from 1917, when he gave refuge to a Jewish insurance salesman and sometime poet named Alter Levine who was fleeing from the Turks, until 1947, when Sakakini had to flee from his beloved home in the Katamon section of Jerusalem as Jewish forces took parts of the city. Segev’s method works by bringing British, Arab, and Jewish individuals with colorful stories into sharp focus.
One particular figure, who stands out in Segev’s account, is David Ben Gurion. We learn that in the face of terrorism directed against Jews (including the sickening massacre of Jews in Hebron), Ben Gurion, as leader of the mainstream Jewish governing body and movement, strongly resisted resorting to “tit for tat” acts of reprisal against innocent Palestinian, despite intense pressure from younger members of his movement who believed that it was necessary to “fight fire with fire” as the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, eventually began doing. Instead, Ben Gurion tried to channel his followers’ ardor and energies into resisting the British by smuggling illegal Jewish immigrants from Europe to Palestine. Eventually, faced with the prospect of mass defections from his movement, Ben Gurion and his colleagues cooperated with the anti-terror terror campaign. We also learn that at one point, while Ben Gurion spent two weeks in Paris engaged in diplomatic activity, he spent a large part of his time in the company of another guest at the hotel, Ho Chi Minh.
The Balfour Declaration pledged Britain’s commitment to the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Although Britain tried to strike a balance between Jews and Arabs, and certainly curtailed and limited its support for Jewish immigration and military activity at times, Segev details the many ways in which the British authorities and the Jewish Agency worked hand in hand and the British government provided support and a permissive environment for Jewish self-rule to develop.
Segev maintains that although the Holocaust created worldwide sympathy for Jews, Israel would have become an independent Jewish State even if the Holocaust hadn't occurred, since by the time World War II began, the Jews in Palestine had already established a fully functioning, self-governed community.
If you read this book, the next time you read about Qassam rockets being fired into Israel, you will know who al-Qassam was.
These are just a few examples of the detailed and eye-opening material that Segev provides for us in this fine book.
Segev’s method is to layer depiction of the larger developments with detailed accounts of individual people, famous and obscure, who participated in these historic events. So, for example, we follow the life of Khalil Sakakini, a Palestinian educator and nationalist from 1917, when he gave refuge to a Jewish insurance salesman and sometime poet named Alter Levine who was fleeing from the Turks, until 1947, when Sakakini had to flee from his beloved home in the Katamon section of Jerusalem as Jewish forces took parts of the city. Segev’s method works by bringing British, Arab, and Jewish individuals with colorful stories into sharp focus.
One particular figure, who stands out in Segev’s account, is David Ben Gurion. We learn that in the face of terrorism directed against Jews (including the sickening massacre of Jews in Hebron), Ben Gurion, as leader of the mainstream Jewish governing body and movement, strongly resisted resorting to “tit for tat” acts of reprisal against innocent Palestinian, despite intense pressure from younger members of his movement who believed that it was necessary to “fight fire with fire” as the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, eventually began doing. Instead, Ben Gurion tried to channel his followers’ ardor and energies into resisting the British by smuggling illegal Jewish immigrants from Europe to Palestine. Eventually, faced with the prospect of mass defections from his movement, Ben Gurion and his colleagues cooperated with the anti-terror terror campaign. We also learn that at one point, while Ben Gurion spent two weeks in Paris engaged in diplomatic activity, he spent a large part of his time in the company of another guest at the hotel, Ho Chi Minh.
The Balfour Declaration pledged Britain’s commitment to the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Although Britain tried to strike a balance between Jews and Arabs, and certainly curtailed and limited its support for Jewish immigration and military activity at times, Segev details the many ways in which the British authorities and the Jewish Agency worked hand in hand and the British government provided support and a permissive environment for Jewish self-rule to develop.
Segev maintains that although the Holocaust created worldwide sympathy for Jews, Israel would have become an independent Jewish State even if the Holocaust hadn't occurred, since by the time World War II began, the Jews in Palestine had already established a fully functioning, self-governed community.
If you read this book, the next time you read about Qassam rockets being fired into Israel, you will know who al-Qassam was.
These are just a few examples of the detailed and eye-opening material that Segev provides for us in this fine book.
March 3, 2022
While One Palestine, Complete is quite expansive in its treatment of the Colonial Mandate Period, it is by no means a complete account. Relying heavily on Israeli and British Colonial archives, it fails to take into account seriously an Arab Palestinian perspectives outside of the British and Zionist lens, all while making conclusions about it. The book juxtaposes personal narratives gleaned from different diaries, published and unpublished, with larger scale historical analysis. While we have personal accounts from a number of Zionist and British inhabitants of mandate Palestine, we are really only given one from a Palestinian at that time - Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian educator, humanist and European in thought. His diaries and books happened to be confiscated by Israel after he and his family fled from Jerusalem during the Nakba - ironically, even this Palestinian perspective originates from the Israeli historical record.
While this book was surely unique, groundbreaking and controversial when it came out, critiquing and undoing many Israeli historical myths about its founding and the Mandate Period, the book still revels in a sentimentality about the wit, ingenuity, strength, and organization of the Zionists, even as it critiques their aims and actions.
With those critiques aside, the book is fascinating in its detailed treatment of the relationship between the British administration and the Zionist administration at the time. I think this is the book's strongest point, turning over a historical consensus that Zionism and British colonialism were at odds with each other. This book suggests and shows that, more often that not, Zionism and British Colonialism were partners in colonialism rather than adversaries, and that the promise of the Balfour Declaration really was kept. Often the Jewish Agency was treated as wing of government by the British, and while many officials found Zionists to be ungrateful and annoying, their common European world-view prevailed.
This book is written well and easy to read and follow. It is as entertaining as it is scholarly and is a crucial book for anyone interested studying and understanding the history of Palestine. Critiques and ratings aside, I would recommend it!
While this book was surely unique, groundbreaking and controversial when it came out, critiquing and undoing many Israeli historical myths about its founding and the Mandate Period, the book still revels in a sentimentality about the wit, ingenuity, strength, and organization of the Zionists, even as it critiques their aims and actions.
With those critiques aside, the book is fascinating in its detailed treatment of the relationship between the British administration and the Zionist administration at the time. I think this is the book's strongest point, turning over a historical consensus that Zionism and British colonialism were at odds with each other. This book suggests and shows that, more often that not, Zionism and British Colonialism were partners in colonialism rather than adversaries, and that the promise of the Balfour Declaration really was kept. Often the Jewish Agency was treated as wing of government by the British, and while many officials found Zionists to be ungrateful and annoying, their common European world-view prevailed.
This book is written well and easy to read and follow. It is as entertaining as it is scholarly and is a crucial book for anyone interested studying and understanding the history of Palestine. Critiques and ratings aside, I would recommend it!
January 29, 2024
Exceptionally detailed history but too often feels like Segev is missing the forrest for the trees. It picks up in the last hundred pages or so, but there’s so much social and cultural minutiae of British colonial life that doesn’t much help the reader understand the motivations of the British, Jews, or Arabs. This book feels like it��d be most useful to someone who knew both the pre and post Mandate history relatively well, as Segev doesn’t provide much account of early Zionism and provides almost no context for what followed post 1948. There’s really only one Arab character in the book, Khalil al-Sakakini. I was hoping Segev would include a lot more political analysis of how Arab leaders (both in Palestine and outside it) were making sense of Jewish settlement during the mandate but there’s surprisingly little of that. He details what Arabs in Palestine did in response to Jewish actions, but not so much why they did what they did.
December 22, 2007
A wonderful read; educational, well written, interesting. If you want to learn how situations got to be what they are today, this book is a mighty good start since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict owes a lot of its existence to the British mandate in Palestine...
November 5, 2009
Okay, so I read about 30 pages, decided the author was thoroughly biased and boring and gave up reading it.
August 20, 2007
Excellent history of the British Mandate in Palestine between the world wars but ending in 1948 before the nakba (the flight and/or expulsion of the Palestinian refugees) and the creation of the state of Israel (or Is-surreal as we know it in my house).
This, written by a Jewish Israeli journalist, is also a history of the rise in influence of the Zionist movement from the late 19th century onwards, achieved partly by the small core of the movement's leadership by indulging the gullibility and latent anti-semitism of key figures in the British government by playing on their beliefs that this obscure movement in fact represented the powerful and supposedly influential 'world Jewry' and should therefore be appeased.
The book turns periodically to resume the story of this period from the perspective of a selection of individuals, a mix of central and sometimes peripheral figures, often using their contemporary diaries and letters.
The book is not a polemic pushing a particular agenda (the title is not a provocative call for a unified and singular independent Palestine but in fact refers to the joke 'receipt' left to the British by the Turks as they cleared out), and it works hard to remain balanced, in particular charting the atrocities committed by leaders and ordinary people on both sides. But as the book progresses, it eventually becomes easy to detect the distaste Segev feels for the ruthless single-mindedness and methods with which the Zionist movement manufactured a mass movement from its marginal worldview and pursued and won its objectives.
This, written by a Jewish Israeli journalist, is also a history of the rise in influence of the Zionist movement from the late 19th century onwards, achieved partly by the small core of the movement's leadership by indulging the gullibility and latent anti-semitism of key figures in the British government by playing on their beliefs that this obscure movement in fact represented the powerful and supposedly influential 'world Jewry' and should therefore be appeased.
The book turns periodically to resume the story of this period from the perspective of a selection of individuals, a mix of central and sometimes peripheral figures, often using their contemporary diaries and letters.
The book is not a polemic pushing a particular agenda (the title is not a provocative call for a unified and singular independent Palestine but in fact refers to the joke 'receipt' left to the British by the Turks as they cleared out), and it works hard to remain balanced, in particular charting the atrocities committed by leaders and ordinary people on both sides. But as the book progresses, it eventually becomes easy to detect the distaste Segev feels for the ruthless single-mindedness and methods with which the Zionist movement manufactured a mass movement from its marginal worldview and pursued and won its objectives.
April 18, 2008
A fascinating read, told with acid compassion. Ok, so I stole that line from the Times' review on the book jacket. Sue me. No, actually, please don't sue me.
Anyway, the times' review is a great one liner about the book. One Palestine, Complete offers a range: street level story-telling, mostly from primary sources, to opinion. Of course, the topic may be the most argued history in the world. But this seems like a real story.
However, I don't think I agree with the thesis, which is that the pre-war brits anti-semitism, revealed as their belief that the jews were all-powerful, led them to curry favor with the zionists.
That seems suspect, and too simplistic... but the book doesn't really carry it's thesis too heavily. Only the beginning really argues this idea. The rest of it is a nice history, told from a variety of all-too-human perspectives that reveal the composit. "Acid compassion" indeed.
The book also forced me to remember that history is the sum of a lot of individual actors. Not an easy trick to pull off without boring the reader to tears with too much detail. Overall, a really great read, even if the thesis is weak.
ps the title refers to the receipt handed over from one brit overlord to another upon transfer of power. It was a joke... such cheek those brits!
Anyway, the times' review is a great one liner about the book. One Palestine, Complete offers a range: street level story-telling, mostly from primary sources, to opinion. Of course, the topic may be the most argued history in the world. But this seems like a real story.
However, I don't think I agree with the thesis, which is that the pre-war brits anti-semitism, revealed as their belief that the jews were all-powerful, led them to curry favor with the zionists.
That seems suspect, and too simplistic... but the book doesn't really carry it's thesis too heavily. Only the beginning really argues this idea. The rest of it is a nice history, told from a variety of all-too-human perspectives that reveal the composit. "Acid compassion" indeed.
The book also forced me to remember that history is the sum of a lot of individual actors. Not an easy trick to pull off without boring the reader to tears with too much detail. Overall, a really great read, even if the thesis is weak.
ps the title refers to the receipt handed over from one brit overlord to another upon transfer of power. It was a joke... such cheek those brits!
December 29, 2023
For someone who knew mainly the big outlines of the Mandatory period, this was a nice foray into narrative detail. The perspective is that of the British (especially in the beginning of the book) and that of the Zionists (especially in the end), with token nods to the 'Arab' experience. Segev does argue convincingly that the British establishment was under the thumb of the Zionists from the very beginning of the Mandate, challenging the more familiar Israel as compensation for the Holocaust -narrative. He also shows in detail how the British seemed to have little idea what they were doing in Palestine to begin with. Although especially towards the end, the practised balancing act shifts to detailed description of Arab 'terrorism' and glossing over of the Zionist atrocities, the book shows well how the issue was never about Jews, but Zionist nationalism. Everyone knows the mufti's Nazi sympathies, but the appreciative nods to Hitler and eugenicist ideas among the Zionists are less well known. What is most sorely missed, however, is an overall view. There are many fascinating stories here, but less analysis and assessment. This is a good book to read alongside serious histories of the Palestinian side of the occupation.
February 16, 2024
Given all the horror that has erupted in the Middle East recently, I thought it was high time I pulled this book off the top row of my bookshelf, blew the dust off and read it cover to cover. As a Brit, I have always accepted the notion that the British really screwed up in making various incompatible promises to both Arabs and Jews during the First World War. Tom Segev is one of a group of Israeli historians who question the usual Zionist narrative about the founding of the state of Israel. In One Palestine, Complete, it feels to me that he gives a pretty balanced account, although unfortunately the Arab nationalist viewpoint is mostly carried by the voice of only a single individual, Kalil al-Sakakini, while a much larger sampling of contemporary British and Zionist opinions are heard throughout the book.
The British during the First World War wanted the Arabs on their side to fight against the Ottomans and promises were made. But words were cheap in the turmoil of war, especially when final outcomes remained uncertain. Some Brits back then were almost fanatically pro-Arab (well, Lawrence of Arabia was anyway). Interestingly, Segev makes it clear that most of the British military serving later in Mandatory Palestine also tended to privately express more sympathy towards the Arabs than the Jews.
Ironically, Segev also makes it clear that, in agreeing to support Zionism in 1917, both Lloyd George and Balfour were influenced by the most classic antisemitic trope of them all – that the Jews actually controlled the world just below the surface of international politics. For they strangely believed that Jews inside both the US and Russia might have been able to help persuade these two countries to stay in the war. In 1917, the US had just joined so the concern about them staying in seems especially hard to understand. Chaim Weizmann almost single-handedly managed to persuade them to publish the Balfour Declaration in November of 1917 by entirely misrepresenting himself as the official voice of world Jewry. In fact, at that time, the vast majority of Jews living outside Palestine were probably not in favour of the Zionist project. After all, if you didn't particularly wish to move to Palestine, the setting up of a Jewish homeland might encourage your antisemitic neighbours to suggest to you that you now “go back home”. Two months earlier, The US President, Woodrow Wilson, warned the Brits that it was not a good time to support Zionism. But then he suddenly changed his mind. In the interim, Weizmann had leaned on the influential American Zionist Louis Brandeis to help make this happen. Segev suggests that this rapid turnaround seemingly provided Lloyd George and Balfour with a dramatic confirmation of their notions about the global power of world Jewry. But Louis Brandeis had provided an enormous amount of help to Wilson in his earlier political campaigns, so his influence was in fact purely personal.
Politicians in the West were bound to think that if they helped the Arab world as a whole to gain - at some time in the future - full independence from Ottoman rule, surely there would be room within that vast geographical region for a few million Jews to eventually establish their own homeland or even possibly a separate independent state. Surely the 700000 or so native Arab Palestinians could be absorbed into places like the future neighbouring country of Jordan? As it turned out, many Palestinians did end up becoming fully naturalized citizens of Jordan, but only as a result of being pushed out as refugees in 1948.
Given that the Balfour Declaration became incorporated into the official British Mandate, it is hardly surprising that the British High Commission in Palestine allowed and enabled the Zionists to build up a shadow government in waiting. But the Arabs had another distinct disadvantage. For, whereas Zionism as a movement had started in the 1880s and was gathering momentum and could tap into a lot of energy and money from American and Europeans Zionists, most of the Arab population were simply trying to recover from Ottoman rule and the mass starvation that had occurred towards the end of the war (which Segev describes very graphically).
During Ottoman rule, when some Jews started to be allowed to settle in Palestine, the Arab leaders had been able to persuade the Ottomans to prohibit the selling of land to the incoming Jews. When the British reversed this rule, Jews usually found themselves able to purchase as much land as they needed in the early days. The problem, common in many parts of the world, was that the people displaced by these land purchases were often tenant farmers and it was absentee landlords who were happily selling the land that the farmers lived on. Sometimes, according to Segev, those selling the land were, somewhat ironically, also vocal Arab nationalists.
There is plenty of criticism implied simply in the facts that Segev presents, but he never outlines what he thinks the British should have done differently. Should Britain not have supported Zionism? Several other countries made murmurings of support around the same time, apparently including Germany which rather panicked the British. And, while I have stressed here the weirdly antisemitic reasoning that Lloyd George and Balfour used to convince themselves to support Zionism, a more decent ethical response to the historical suffering of European Jews was also undoubtedly part of the picture as well. I have always tended to think of pogroms in Eastern Europe as a horror of the nineteenth century, but Segev reminds us that around 1918-20 there were the most appalling pogroms going on in what is now the Ukraine-Moldova region, where the White and Red Russians were battling things out and the Jews were often hated equally by both sides. This naturally put pressure on the British to loosen Jewish emigration into Palestine.
It does seem strange that President Wilson was so easily persuaded to change his mind and to end up in support of the Balfour Declaration. Imagine how the peace talks of 1919 would have proceeded if the Jewish claim to land in Palestine – based on the fact that they had called it their own two thousand years earlier – had been employed by others as a precedent for their claims to ancient lands.
But, having read Segev's book, I'm not convinced that the Balfour Declaration was the full extent of the problem. Segev quotes various British administrators who concluded that the Zionists were able to pull the strings during the British Mandate because there was no clear policy from London. Indeed it looks as though, while there was almost no explicit policy, there were some very definite implicit assumptions. It was assumed (with some justification) that, having just been released from rule by the Ottoman empire, countries like Palestine needed to develop over a period of time before become fully independent. The ostensible purpose of a finite duration Mandate was to enable this to occur. The next assumption was that it would be the minority European Jews who would inevitably be the group within Palestine most able to lead the country into full independence, whether the British stacked the game in their favour or not. And the final rather weak assumption was that the majority Arab population would understand that this could also all be in their best interests as well, since the European experience of the Jewish population would supposedly help modernise the country for the benefit of all.
Could better planning have secured a more peaceful end result? Perhaps but it seems unlikely. Unfortunately, the British clearly didn't have enough self-interest in the area to justify pouring in the amount of money required to make any plan they might have had really work. The fact that the British were initially quite worried about the financial burden should perhaps have been reason enough to decline accepting the responsibility of the Mandate in the first place. But, having requested it, they then proceeded to treat the Arabs very much as second-class citizens, both with regard to accepted pay scales and how they were treated by the justice system. Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that the Arabs would early on start to resent the clearly favoured status of the Jews. They had no real power to influence British policy and so violence against the Jewish settlers was the inevitable response.
The Zionist plan was to use immigration to try to build up a Jewish majority, which was expected to take many years. But, when the British started to clamp down on illegal immigration, some Jewish factions turned to violence against the British. This hastened the desire of the British to leave in a hurry, with no time to even consider a proper handover to any international UN Mandate. The UN had in any case only just been created and would have been completely ineffective in 1948. Any hope for a peaceful coexistence had been totally shattered as a result of British policy. Looking back at the situation in 1917, and considering the Balfour Declaration as a done deal, it is nevertheless perhaps conceivable to imagine a relatively benign (if not totally fair) policy. The Arab population could have been explicitly offered the choice to peacefully join with the Jewish population in an attempt to create some sort of secular state or joint federation of Arab and Jewish states. This would have required the British to come up with the funds to enable it to commit to properly ushering in such an arrangement as smoothly as possible during the Mandate. Those Arabs who wanted to live in a clearly Arab majority state could perhaps have been offered very favourable financial incentives to move to Transjordan. I’m speculating wildly here, and I want to stress that I am not suggesting that this would have been a particularly fair proposal from the Arab point-of-view. The real point I am trying to make is that there may have been some room for cautious optimism back in 1917 but by 1948 the British had completely blown it. By then the Arab population had been conditioned to utterly resent the presence of the increased Jewish population. The Jews, still a minority in 1948, and having seen plenty of violent Arab resentment, correctly concluded that their only hope for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East required them to quickly attempt to drive out the Arabs.
My reading of this book confirms my initial sense that the whole responsibility for the tragedy of modern-day Israel-Palestine lies with the lack of any coherent British policy or commitment to a peaceful future during the Mandate. And so, the road to someone else's tragedy was paved with a smattering of good intentions and a massive dose of extraordinarily irresponsible behaviour by a waning “big power”.
One Palestine, Complete was published just before the complete failure in 2000 to resolve anything at Camp David. I'm sure there are some great books that have been written since then that also cover this period of history. But I did learn a lot from this one, and the personal recollections that Segev managed to dig up really make this earlier period of history come alive. I have already mentioned the unfortunate paucity of Arab voices. However, Segev does quote what one Arab nationalist (Aouni Abd al-Hadi) once said to the Zionist leader Ben-Gurion:
“If I were in your place I would be a Zionist, and if you were in my place you would be an Arab nationalist like me.”
In other words, there was no lack of mutual understanding, at least between these two important leaders. They would probably also have agreed with each other that a violent conflict was by then inevitably written into the future for both of their peoples to endure.
The British during the First World War wanted the Arabs on their side to fight against the Ottomans and promises were made. But words were cheap in the turmoil of war, especially when final outcomes remained uncertain. Some Brits back then were almost fanatically pro-Arab (well, Lawrence of Arabia was anyway). Interestingly, Segev makes it clear that most of the British military serving later in Mandatory Palestine also tended to privately express more sympathy towards the Arabs than the Jews.
Ironically, Segev also makes it clear that, in agreeing to support Zionism in 1917, both Lloyd George and Balfour were influenced by the most classic antisemitic trope of them all – that the Jews actually controlled the world just below the surface of international politics. For they strangely believed that Jews inside both the US and Russia might have been able to help persuade these two countries to stay in the war. In 1917, the US had just joined so the concern about them staying in seems especially hard to understand. Chaim Weizmann almost single-handedly managed to persuade them to publish the Balfour Declaration in November of 1917 by entirely misrepresenting himself as the official voice of world Jewry. In fact, at that time, the vast majority of Jews living outside Palestine were probably not in favour of the Zionist project. After all, if you didn't particularly wish to move to Palestine, the setting up of a Jewish homeland might encourage your antisemitic neighbours to suggest to you that you now “go back home”. Two months earlier, The US President, Woodrow Wilson, warned the Brits that it was not a good time to support Zionism. But then he suddenly changed his mind. In the interim, Weizmann had leaned on the influential American Zionist Louis Brandeis to help make this happen. Segev suggests that this rapid turnaround seemingly provided Lloyd George and Balfour with a dramatic confirmation of their notions about the global power of world Jewry. But Louis Brandeis had provided an enormous amount of help to Wilson in his earlier political campaigns, so his influence was in fact purely personal.
Politicians in the West were bound to think that if they helped the Arab world as a whole to gain - at some time in the future - full independence from Ottoman rule, surely there would be room within that vast geographical region for a few million Jews to eventually establish their own homeland or even possibly a separate independent state. Surely the 700000 or so native Arab Palestinians could be absorbed into places like the future neighbouring country of Jordan? As it turned out, many Palestinians did end up becoming fully naturalized citizens of Jordan, but only as a result of being pushed out as refugees in 1948.
Given that the Balfour Declaration became incorporated into the official British Mandate, it is hardly surprising that the British High Commission in Palestine allowed and enabled the Zionists to build up a shadow government in waiting. But the Arabs had another distinct disadvantage. For, whereas Zionism as a movement had started in the 1880s and was gathering momentum and could tap into a lot of energy and money from American and Europeans Zionists, most of the Arab population were simply trying to recover from Ottoman rule and the mass starvation that had occurred towards the end of the war (which Segev describes very graphically).
During Ottoman rule, when some Jews started to be allowed to settle in Palestine, the Arab leaders had been able to persuade the Ottomans to prohibit the selling of land to the incoming Jews. When the British reversed this rule, Jews usually found themselves able to purchase as much land as they needed in the early days. The problem, common in many parts of the world, was that the people displaced by these land purchases were often tenant farmers and it was absentee landlords who were happily selling the land that the farmers lived on. Sometimes, according to Segev, those selling the land were, somewhat ironically, also vocal Arab nationalists.
There is plenty of criticism implied simply in the facts that Segev presents, but he never outlines what he thinks the British should have done differently. Should Britain not have supported Zionism? Several other countries made murmurings of support around the same time, apparently including Germany which rather panicked the British. And, while I have stressed here the weirdly antisemitic reasoning that Lloyd George and Balfour used to convince themselves to support Zionism, a more decent ethical response to the historical suffering of European Jews was also undoubtedly part of the picture as well. I have always tended to think of pogroms in Eastern Europe as a horror of the nineteenth century, but Segev reminds us that around 1918-20 there were the most appalling pogroms going on in what is now the Ukraine-Moldova region, where the White and Red Russians were battling things out and the Jews were often hated equally by both sides. This naturally put pressure on the British to loosen Jewish emigration into Palestine.
It does seem strange that President Wilson was so easily persuaded to change his mind and to end up in support of the Balfour Declaration. Imagine how the peace talks of 1919 would have proceeded if the Jewish claim to land in Palestine – based on the fact that they had called it their own two thousand years earlier – had been employed by others as a precedent for their claims to ancient lands.
But, having read Segev's book, I'm not convinced that the Balfour Declaration was the full extent of the problem. Segev quotes various British administrators who concluded that the Zionists were able to pull the strings during the British Mandate because there was no clear policy from London. Indeed it looks as though, while there was almost no explicit policy, there were some very definite implicit assumptions. It was assumed (with some justification) that, having just been released from rule by the Ottoman empire, countries like Palestine needed to develop over a period of time before become fully independent. The ostensible purpose of a finite duration Mandate was to enable this to occur. The next assumption was that it would be the minority European Jews who would inevitably be the group within Palestine most able to lead the country into full independence, whether the British stacked the game in their favour or not. And the final rather weak assumption was that the majority Arab population would understand that this could also all be in their best interests as well, since the European experience of the Jewish population would supposedly help modernise the country for the benefit of all.
Could better planning have secured a more peaceful end result? Perhaps but it seems unlikely. Unfortunately, the British clearly didn't have enough self-interest in the area to justify pouring in the amount of money required to make any plan they might have had really work. The fact that the British were initially quite worried about the financial burden should perhaps have been reason enough to decline accepting the responsibility of the Mandate in the first place. But, having requested it, they then proceeded to treat the Arabs very much as second-class citizens, both with regard to accepted pay scales and how they were treated by the justice system. Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that the Arabs would early on start to resent the clearly favoured status of the Jews. They had no real power to influence British policy and so violence against the Jewish settlers was the inevitable response.
The Zionist plan was to use immigration to try to build up a Jewish majority, which was expected to take many years. But, when the British started to clamp down on illegal immigration, some Jewish factions turned to violence against the British. This hastened the desire of the British to leave in a hurry, with no time to even consider a proper handover to any international UN Mandate. The UN had in any case only just been created and would have been completely ineffective in 1948. Any hope for a peaceful coexistence had been totally shattered as a result of British policy. Looking back at the situation in 1917, and considering the Balfour Declaration as a done deal, it is nevertheless perhaps conceivable to imagine a relatively benign (if not totally fair) policy. The Arab population could have been explicitly offered the choice to peacefully join with the Jewish population in an attempt to create some sort of secular state or joint federation of Arab and Jewish states. This would have required the British to come up with the funds to enable it to commit to properly ushering in such an arrangement as smoothly as possible during the Mandate. Those Arabs who wanted to live in a clearly Arab majority state could perhaps have been offered very favourable financial incentives to move to Transjordan. I’m speculating wildly here, and I want to stress that I am not suggesting that this would have been a particularly fair proposal from the Arab point-of-view. The real point I am trying to make is that there may have been some room for cautious optimism back in 1917 but by 1948 the British had completely blown it. By then the Arab population had been conditioned to utterly resent the presence of the increased Jewish population. The Jews, still a minority in 1948, and having seen plenty of violent Arab resentment, correctly concluded that their only hope for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East required them to quickly attempt to drive out the Arabs.
My reading of this book confirms my initial sense that the whole responsibility for the tragedy of modern-day Israel-Palestine lies with the lack of any coherent British policy or commitment to a peaceful future during the Mandate. And so, the road to someone else's tragedy was paved with a smattering of good intentions and a massive dose of extraordinarily irresponsible behaviour by a waning “big power”.
One Palestine, Complete was published just before the complete failure in 2000 to resolve anything at Camp David. I'm sure there are some great books that have been written since then that also cover this period of history. But I did learn a lot from this one, and the personal recollections that Segev managed to dig up really make this earlier period of history come alive. I have already mentioned the unfortunate paucity of Arab voices. However, Segev does quote what one Arab nationalist (Aouni Abd al-Hadi) once said to the Zionist leader Ben-Gurion:
“If I were in your place I would be a Zionist, and if you were in my place you would be an Arab nationalist like me.”
In other words, there was no lack of mutual understanding, at least between these two important leaders. They would probably also have agreed with each other that a violent conflict was by then inevitably written into the future for both of their peoples to endure.
April 25, 2024
Video book reviews:
https://youtu.be/2WZoc_j1qEA pt 1
https://youtu.be/ChPaEPsVRQc pt 2
https://youtu.be/dMN4OerwHVs pt 3
A well-written treatment of the conditions during the Mandate and the run up to the 1948 War. While some critics of the book (validly) note its paucity of Arab sources, the overall portrait that Segev gives us does not suffer from inaccuracy as a result, only richness. Perhaps in the future, when we have access to more Arab archives and the Palestinian state is allowed to exist and have its own archives, we will be able to color in what Segev was only able to (reasonably, and mostly accurately) sketch.
"The British kept their promise to the Zionists. They opened up the country to mass Jewish immigration; by 1948, the Jewish population had increased by more than tenfold. The Jews were permitted to purchase land, develop agriculture, and establish industries and banks. The British allowed them to set up hundreds of new settlements, including several towns. They created a school system and an army; they had a political leadership and elected institutions; and with the help of all these they in the end defeated the Arabs, all under British sponsorship, all in the wake of that promise of 1917. Contrary to the widely held belief of Britain's pro-Arabism, British actions considerably favored the Zionist enterprise." (p. 5)
"For a time the British clutched at the hope of creating a single local identity in Palestine, common to both Jews and Arabs, and in this context they even spoke of the 'people of Palestine.' These were empty words. The British were fooling the Arabs, fooling the Jews, and fooling themselves." (p. 6)
"Many of the Jews living in Palestine did not support Zionism; indeed, much of the pre-Zionist Jewish population — that is, those who lived in Palestine before the 1880s ‚ were ultra-Orthodox. They were deeply hostile to the notion of secular Jewish autonomy in the Holy Land, which, according to religious doctrine, would be redeemed only through divine intervention in the messianic age." (p. 16-17)
"'The Jewish race,' Lloyd George explained in his memoirs, had worldwide influence and capability, and the Jews had every intention of determining the outcome of the World War — acting, he said, in accordance with their financial instincts." (p. 38)
(quoting James Balfour) "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." (p. 45)
(referring to the Balfour Declaration) "Thus it did not say that Palestine would become the national home of the Jews, but that the national home would be established in Palestine — in other words, only in part of it." (p. 49)
"Here was one nation promising another nation the land of a third nation..." (p. 50)
"The episode followed the well-established dynamic between the Jews and Arabs: the Jews believed that they could buy the Arabs' consent to Zionist rule with money but managed to bribe only a few collaborators here and there." (p. 72)
"Overall the army did not reject Zionism as an idea, or on moral or political grounds, but felt that Britains's support for the movement was liable to complicate matters in Palestine, and warned the government in London." (p. 86)
(quoting Lt General Sir Walter Congreve) "Had the Jews acted wisely, quietly, and slowly, he later wrote, everything might have worked out; but the Jew is 'aggressive, contentious, and unbridled.'" (p. 92)
"One should keep in mind the link between the Jews and the Bolsheviks..." (p. 93)
(quoting James Pollock) "The Jews are the most intolerant and arrogant people in the world." (p. 94)
"This was a confrontation between cultures, but also between Israel and 'the Exile,' as it was called — leaders in Palestine had their own ideas how to run matters and saw the commission as a foreign body. This conflict would deepen over time." (p. 100)
(from an 1891 pamphlet) "The Jewish settlers...'treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so.'" (p. 104)
"The Arabs in Palestine had no organized national movement compared to the Zionists', nor did they have a recognized leader." (p. 105)
"We do not at all oppose the Jews...We only oppose Zionism. That is not the same thing. Zionism has no roots at all in Moses' law. It is an invention of Herzl's." (p. 106)
"The Arabs made three basic demands: independence, no Jewish immigration, and a prohibition against Jewish land purchases." (p. 107)
"If you want to kill a nation — conquer its land and tear out its tongue. That is exactly what the Zionists want to do to the Arab nation." (p. 108)
"The Zionists did aspire to an independent Jewish Palestine, but the less they spoke of it, the better..." (p. 110)
"The Zionist movement could not continue to deny the existence of a problem and maintain that the Arabs were 'just a bunch of ignoramuses and bootlickers willing to sell everything for a mess of pottage.'" (p. 115)
"The Arabs believed that the Jews wished to expel them from the country." (p. 115)
"The Zionist dream map submitted to the conference had included southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and a large area east of the Jordan River." (p. 117)
"[Balfour] is inclined to believe that nearly all Bolshevism and disorder of that sort is directly traceable to Jews. I suggested putting them, or the best of them, in Palestine, and holding them responsible for the orderly behavior of Jews throughout the world. Balfour thought the plan had possibilities." (p. 119)
"[T]he Zionist dream ran counter to the principles of democracy." (p. 119)
"Britain may be about to commit the greatest injustice that has ever been done by any nation in modern times." (p. 147)
"The policy of the Balfour Declaration is an unjust policy." (p. 193)
"Palestine was an underdeveloped, underpopulated country, and only the Jews could develop it for the good of all its citizens, because only they had the necessary money, enthusiasm, and manpower." (p. 200)
"Even at the height of Jewish immigration, only 4 out of every 1,000 of the world's Jews came to Palestine." (p. 225)
"The most desirable candidates for immigration were young unmarried men, 'brave and idealistic,' who would commit to work for two years in the agricultural settlements...only the continuous mass immigration of young people who know how to wield a hoe and hold a rifle can save the Yishuv from obliteration." (p. 229)
"The two cities represented vastly different cultural and political worlds. Jerusalem was very religious, political, intolerant, even fanatical, five thousand years old, and built on rock. Tel Aviv had no history, was built on sand, and exuded up-to-the-minute, secular frivolity — neither past nor future but rather life itself was on the agenda." (p. 239)
(quoting Ze'ev Jabotinsky) "There is a need to create a new Jewish frame of mind, I am almost prepared to say a new psychological race of Jews." (p. 257)
"The Arab leaders' willingness to sell land to the Jews heightened the contempt Zionist figures felt for the Arab national movement." (p. 276)
(quoting Menachem Ussishkin) "The Jewish people wants a Jewish state without compromises and without concessions, from Dan to Be'ersheva, from the great sea to the desert, including Transjordan." (p. 304)
"The British neglected Arab education because they did not want to finance it and feared its political effect." (p. 355)
"The tendency to see the Jews of Europe as 'human material' necessary to establish the state, rather than seeing the state as a means to save the Jews, guided the Zionish leadership in setting its immigration policy." (p. 394)
(quoting Arthur Ruppin) "I do not believe in the transfer of an individual. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." (p. 405)
"The notion of population transfer is deeply rooted in Zionist ideology, a logical outgrowth of the principle of segregation between Jews and Arabs and a reflection of the desire to ground the Jewish state in European, rather than Middle Eastern, culture." (p. 407)
"[T]he cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland." (p. 465)
(quoting Sir Henry Gurney) "The pressures the Zionist creates makes the world hate him, but apparently he does not care. he has a suicidal urge. That was what made him so desperate and self-centered." (p. 497)
(considering the Nakba) "People left their country dazed and directionless, without homes or money, falling ill and dying while wandering from place to place, living in niches and caves, their clothing falling apart, leaving them naked, their food running out, leaving them hungry. The mountains grew colder and they had no one to defend them." (p. 508)
"Education standards differed for city and village children and for boys and girls, and only three out of every ten Arabs went to school. The other seven, mostly in the villages, grew up illiterate. They were a lost generation. The result of this loss for the Arab community was catastrophic. A nationwide system of education would have forged national cohesion. But the war of 1948 found the Arabs rent by regional, social, and economic divisions, with profound differences between city dwellers and villagers." (p. 514)
https://youtu.be/2WZoc_j1qEA pt 1
https://youtu.be/ChPaEPsVRQc pt 2
https://youtu.be/dMN4OerwHVs pt 3
A well-written treatment of the conditions during the Mandate and the run up to the 1948 War. While some critics of the book (validly) note its paucity of Arab sources, the overall portrait that Segev gives us does not suffer from inaccuracy as a result, only richness. Perhaps in the future, when we have access to more Arab archives and the Palestinian state is allowed to exist and have its own archives, we will be able to color in what Segev was only able to (reasonably, and mostly accurately) sketch.
"The British kept their promise to the Zionists. They opened up the country to mass Jewish immigration; by 1948, the Jewish population had increased by more than tenfold. The Jews were permitted to purchase land, develop agriculture, and establish industries and banks. The British allowed them to set up hundreds of new settlements, including several towns. They created a school system and an army; they had a political leadership and elected institutions; and with the help of all these they in the end defeated the Arabs, all under British sponsorship, all in the wake of that promise of 1917. Contrary to the widely held belief of Britain's pro-Arabism, British actions considerably favored the Zionist enterprise." (p. 5)
"For a time the British clutched at the hope of creating a single local identity in Palestine, common to both Jews and Arabs, and in this context they even spoke of the 'people of Palestine.' These were empty words. The British were fooling the Arabs, fooling the Jews, and fooling themselves." (p. 6)
"Many of the Jews living in Palestine did not support Zionism; indeed, much of the pre-Zionist Jewish population — that is, those who lived in Palestine before the 1880s ‚ were ultra-Orthodox. They were deeply hostile to the notion of secular Jewish autonomy in the Holy Land, which, according to religious doctrine, would be redeemed only through divine intervention in the messianic age." (p. 16-17)
"'The Jewish race,' Lloyd George explained in his memoirs, had worldwide influence and capability, and the Jews had every intention of determining the outcome of the World War — acting, he said, in accordance with their financial instincts." (p. 38)
(quoting James Balfour) "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land." (p. 45)
(referring to the Balfour Declaration) "Thus it did not say that Palestine would become the national home of the Jews, but that the national home would be established in Palestine — in other words, only in part of it." (p. 49)
"Here was one nation promising another nation the land of a third nation..." (p. 50)
"The episode followed the well-established dynamic between the Jews and Arabs: the Jews believed that they could buy the Arabs' consent to Zionist rule with money but managed to bribe only a few collaborators here and there." (p. 72)
"Overall the army did not reject Zionism as an idea, or on moral or political grounds, but felt that Britains's support for the movement was liable to complicate matters in Palestine, and warned the government in London." (p. 86)
(quoting Lt General Sir Walter Congreve) "Had the Jews acted wisely, quietly, and slowly, he later wrote, everything might have worked out; but the Jew is 'aggressive, contentious, and unbridled.'" (p. 92)
"One should keep in mind the link between the Jews and the Bolsheviks..." (p. 93)
(quoting James Pollock) "The Jews are the most intolerant and arrogant people in the world." (p. 94)
"This was a confrontation between cultures, but also between Israel and 'the Exile,' as it was called — leaders in Palestine had their own ideas how to run matters and saw the commission as a foreign body. This conflict would deepen over time." (p. 100)
(from an 1891 pamphlet) "The Jewish settlers...'treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so.'" (p. 104)
"The Arabs in Palestine had no organized national movement compared to the Zionists', nor did they have a recognized leader." (p. 105)
"We do not at all oppose the Jews...We only oppose Zionism. That is not the same thing. Zionism has no roots at all in Moses' law. It is an invention of Herzl's." (p. 106)
"The Arabs made three basic demands: independence, no Jewish immigration, and a prohibition against Jewish land purchases." (p. 107)
"If you want to kill a nation — conquer its land and tear out its tongue. That is exactly what the Zionists want to do to the Arab nation." (p. 108)
"The Zionists did aspire to an independent Jewish Palestine, but the less they spoke of it, the better..." (p. 110)
"The Zionist movement could not continue to deny the existence of a problem and maintain that the Arabs were 'just a bunch of ignoramuses and bootlickers willing to sell everything for a mess of pottage.'" (p. 115)
"The Arabs believed that the Jews wished to expel them from the country." (p. 115)
"The Zionist dream map submitted to the conference had included southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and a large area east of the Jordan River." (p. 117)
"[Balfour] is inclined to believe that nearly all Bolshevism and disorder of that sort is directly traceable to Jews. I suggested putting them, or the best of them, in Palestine, and holding them responsible for the orderly behavior of Jews throughout the world. Balfour thought the plan had possibilities." (p. 119)
"[T]he Zionist dream ran counter to the principles of democracy." (p. 119)
"Britain may be about to commit the greatest injustice that has ever been done by any nation in modern times." (p. 147)
"The policy of the Balfour Declaration is an unjust policy." (p. 193)
"Palestine was an underdeveloped, underpopulated country, and only the Jews could develop it for the good of all its citizens, because only they had the necessary money, enthusiasm, and manpower." (p. 200)
"Even at the height of Jewish immigration, only 4 out of every 1,000 of the world's Jews came to Palestine." (p. 225)
"The most desirable candidates for immigration were young unmarried men, 'brave and idealistic,' who would commit to work for two years in the agricultural settlements...only the continuous mass immigration of young people who know how to wield a hoe and hold a rifle can save the Yishuv from obliteration." (p. 229)
"The two cities represented vastly different cultural and political worlds. Jerusalem was very religious, political, intolerant, even fanatical, five thousand years old, and built on rock. Tel Aviv had no history, was built on sand, and exuded up-to-the-minute, secular frivolity — neither past nor future but rather life itself was on the agenda." (p. 239)
(quoting Ze'ev Jabotinsky) "There is a need to create a new Jewish frame of mind, I am almost prepared to say a new psychological race of Jews." (p. 257)
"The Arab leaders' willingness to sell land to the Jews heightened the contempt Zionist figures felt for the Arab national movement." (p. 276)
(quoting Menachem Ussishkin) "The Jewish people wants a Jewish state without compromises and without concessions, from Dan to Be'ersheva, from the great sea to the desert, including Transjordan." (p. 304)
"The British neglected Arab education because they did not want to finance it and feared its political effect." (p. 355)
"The tendency to see the Jews of Europe as 'human material' necessary to establish the state, rather than seeing the state as a means to save the Jews, guided the Zionish leadership in setting its immigration policy." (p. 394)
(quoting Arthur Ruppin) "I do not believe in the transfer of an individual. I believe in the transfer of entire villages." (p. 405)
"The notion of population transfer is deeply rooted in Zionist ideology, a logical outgrowth of the principle of segregation between Jews and Arabs and a reflection of the desire to ground the Jewish state in European, rather than Middle Eastern, culture." (p. 407)
"[T]he cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland." (p. 465)
(quoting Sir Henry Gurney) "The pressures the Zionist creates makes the world hate him, but apparently he does not care. he has a suicidal urge. That was what made him so desperate and self-centered." (p. 497)
(considering the Nakba) "People left their country dazed and directionless, without homes or money, falling ill and dying while wandering from place to place, living in niches and caves, their clothing falling apart, leaving them naked, their food running out, leaving them hungry. The mountains grew colder and they had no one to defend them." (p. 508)
"Education standards differed for city and village children and for boys and girls, and only three out of every ten Arabs went to school. The other seven, mostly in the villages, grew up illiterate. They were a lost generation. The result of this loss for the Arab community was catastrophic. A nationwide system of education would have forged national cohesion. But the war of 1948 found the Arabs rent by regional, social, and economic divisions, with profound differences between city dwellers and villagers." (p. 514)
July 16, 2016
This is quite a pleasant read about Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. Its bias is that it tries not to have one--and at times one can argue that he perhaps bends over backwards. I read the book in Hebrew, so I cannot say what it is like in English. I would imagine there are numerous changes, since the Hebrew book was definitely written for an Israeli audience. I would have given it five stars--it really is very good and very thorough--but for the fact that in his desire to present the lives of people on the ground in Palestine, Segev often forgets to describe other events that to a great extent defined the fate of Palestine -- such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement; and, if I remember correctly, although he devotes much time to describing Chaim Weizmann's enormous influence on the British, I don't think he ever presents the date of Balfour Declaration. I would hope there are maps in the English edition. As an Israeli I didn't need any. If you want to know about Palestine under the Mandate, this book is definitely a must.
February 15, 2022
Super well-written in terms of being engaging popular history, though obviously long, and sometimes hard to get through just due to the massively depressing subject matter; I'd go a week at a time being unable to bring myself to read any further. (It's told mostly in a wry tone of voice that helps, and has great throughlines of some fascinating civilian personalities, but it is impossible to write the birth of Israel and stillborn death of an inchoate Palestinian Arab nation-state in any way that isn't depressing unless you are a fanatical Zionist, especially given the state of affairs in 2022.) Good introduction to Mandatory Palestine and the overview of history of the region under late Ottoman and British rule.
January 25, 2012
Not an easy read at first, perhaps translated a bit too closely from the original Hebrew. The Israeli author describes the three way relationship between British, Arabs and Jews in Mandate Palestine. The Jews are given the most positive reference! Even so, it seems quite new for an Israeli historian to acknowledge non-jewish continuities in geographical Palestine. Some of the anecdotes from the Mandate society show a formerly little known point of view, that of the town-dwelling middle-class Jews. I think Tom Segev misses something about the British Palestine Police, in that it was a posting, like Hong Kong. Overall unusual and excellent, but not a very easy read.
November 28, 2017
Important topic, difficult presentation
Segev attacks an important topic here, but two problems with his presentation - historical presentation can have an angle/direction, but his views here are clearly biased against Zionism and in support of the Arabs’ views of their role inthe land. This is not exactly a laid out sequence of events, as I was expecting, but rather a series of personal vignettes of statesmen and private citizens in Palestine at the time. His basic writing style is somewhat awkward without clear segues between paragraphs and subchapters, making the book often cumbersome to the reader.
Segev attacks an important topic here, but two problems with his presentation - historical presentation can have an angle/direction, but his views here are clearly biased against Zionism and in support of the Arabs’ views of their role inthe land. This is not exactly a laid out sequence of events, as I was expecting, but rather a series of personal vignettes of statesmen and private citizens in Palestine at the time. His basic writing style is somewhat awkward without clear segues between paragraphs and subchapters, making the book often cumbersome to the reader.
November 3, 2009
This book was packed with historical details but the pace and chapter sections of the book do not proceed smoothly. It was hard to remember places, names, dates, etc. since it all felt jumbled together. Many times organizations and people were introduced as if the reader had some prior knowledge of the history. Segev does his best to portray all sides but usually most of the detail come from the Jewish history of that time. I did not mind reading this book and I do feel edified but I wouldn't really recommend it to someone seeking a good historical perspective on this period and place.
May 27, 2013
Very strong history of Palestine between the end of the war and emergence of Israel. In addition to reporting the thoughts and actions of the political figures which governed the area at the time this account also makes strong use of diaries and other writings from average citizens living in Palestine. Segev also strikes a strong balance, giving a complete and well-rounded picture of both Arab and Jew. Reading this history (admittedly with the benefit of hindsight) one can see the decay of the dream of two cultures peacefully co-existing into a morass of tension and violence.
June 6, 2021
A good review of the British mandate in Palestine which shows how the convivence between Christian and Muslim Arabs and Sephardic Jews was completely shattered by the arrival of Zionist Jews at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Zionism was incompatible with the Arab presence in Palestine and the British could not manage such opposed interests, something which eventually led to their retreat and the war between Arabs and Jews.
Quite sad to see the impossibility of bringing peace to the zone, a terrible situation which continues today.
Quite sad to see the impossibility of bringing peace to the zone, a terrible situation which continues today.
January 23, 2011
A superb account of the background to and implications of the British rule in Palestine 1917-1948. Completely unbiased in his appraisal, Segev doesn't shy away from either the Zionists own failings, the Arabs' misguided ineptitude, or the British accountability for the mess which is still obviously needing resolving in Israel-Palestine today. Very thorough and briliantly written. If you want a good understanding of how this lengthy conflict really began, this is the book to read.
April 8, 2011
Segev's book is still one of the better general histories on the Mandate. The book is especially good at offering vignettes detailing what life was like for the Arab, Jewish and British populations during the Mandate era. His characterization of the Mandate's end, however, is perhaps a bit too descriptive. Segev is a journalist originally so the reader should keep in mind that sometimes he is interested in telling a good story which is why he is prone to generalization.
January 9, 2013
Incredibly informative and well researched book on the British Mandate in Palestine.
October 26, 2013
How it all started! A very good book describing Palestine under the British Mandate.
February 4, 2024
This is a rich history of a key era in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- the period between World War I and UN partition — as well as a colorful account of a unique place during a unique period.
The core thesis is that the Arab/Zionist conflict had become essentially intractable and destined for war decades before partition and the creation of the state of Israel. Referring to one British official in 1929, Segev writes that he organized Jewish-Arab dialogue but "felt there was no point ... but at least ... he could tell himself, as everyone else did, that he had done his best."
The book highlights many of the uncomfortable aspects of this history. For the Zionists, this meant the early acknowledgement of its anti-democratic aims and its plans to physically move Arabs out of a Jewish state as early as the late 1800s. On the Arab side, it was the rejection of the idea of any Jewish population and the hope that Arab nationalism would simply erase the issue, even as many Arab landowners enabled Jewish settlement by selling lands to Zionists with clear political aspirations. As one prominent Arab put it, the leaders of the Arab community were addicted to land sales like "someone addicted to opium who asks people to prevent him from taking the drug, and then when they do so, complains, “Good God, they are violating my liberty.”
Segev is one of the Israeli “new historians”, who worked to revise the existing, triumphant history that Israel has told itself. To that end, he is very critical of Zionism. This is mostly (but not always) convincing. He essentially dismisses the Holocaust as a factor in the story of Israel, saying that the Zionists saw it primarily through public relations terms, and were not particularly concerned with saving European Jews, and spending almost no time on Arab support for Hitler, dismissing it as the Arab political movement just supporting whoever they thought would win at the time.
The positioning as revisionist Zionist history also means that, despite this book’s title, it is not really a dual history of Jews and Arabs in British Palestine, but an intra-Israeli debate. There is a noticeable lack of Arab sources and perspective throughout the book, even as Segev goes deep into the distinctions between the various Zionist factions. This means that the actions and failures of the Arab nationalist movement are undeveloped, and the Arabs come mostly as a population that is being acted upon by the Zionists and the British.
This thinness leaves underexplained a core part of the story: how one nationalist movement so thoroughly outmaneuvered another. Israel exists in large part because Jewish nationalists seized the moment while Arab nationalists didn’t. While Zionism built up the infrastructure for a state, Arab politics never seemed to develop beyond mass violence against Jews in an apparent attempt to get them to go away.
In the middle of all this, of course, was the British, whose opinion was split. In part, the Zionists managed to play off British antisemitic fantasies that Jews ran the world to get the colonialists to treat their marginal nationalist movement as serious. But Segev documents that a major tendency of the British was to see both Jews and Arabs are exotic nations that were ultimately to be held in contempt. “I think them each as loathsome as the other. There is only one people on earth that I am thoroughly ‘pro’ and that’s British, and I can’t see any justification for the loss of a single British soldier in the faction fight between those d—d Semites,” he quotes the British ambassador to Egypt saying. And another official: “The Arabs are treacherous and untrustworthy, the Jews greedy and, when free from persecution, aggressive.”
By the time the British left, they were basically happy to wash their hands of the situation and let the “d—d” Semites” kill one another. But maybe the most surprising part of this book was the portrait of the British colonial mindset in the decades leading up to that point. Clearly this little outpost of their empire was a place for them to play at a great adventure before heading back to a humdrum life in London. As Segev quotes on British colonialist summing up his time in Palestine: “‘Excellent climate, lovely flowers, a spice of danger, but a lot of fun.”
The core thesis is that the Arab/Zionist conflict had become essentially intractable and destined for war decades before partition and the creation of the state of Israel. Referring to one British official in 1929, Segev writes that he organized Jewish-Arab dialogue but "felt there was no point ... but at least ... he could tell himself, as everyone else did, that he had done his best."
The book highlights many of the uncomfortable aspects of this history. For the Zionists, this meant the early acknowledgement of its anti-democratic aims and its plans to physically move Arabs out of a Jewish state as early as the late 1800s. On the Arab side, it was the rejection of the idea of any Jewish population and the hope that Arab nationalism would simply erase the issue, even as many Arab landowners enabled Jewish settlement by selling lands to Zionists with clear political aspirations. As one prominent Arab put it, the leaders of the Arab community were addicted to land sales like "someone addicted to opium who asks people to prevent him from taking the drug, and then when they do so, complains, “Good God, they are violating my liberty.”
Segev is one of the Israeli “new historians”, who worked to revise the existing, triumphant history that Israel has told itself. To that end, he is very critical of Zionism. This is mostly (but not always) convincing. He essentially dismisses the Holocaust as a factor in the story of Israel, saying that the Zionists saw it primarily through public relations terms, and were not particularly concerned with saving European Jews, and spending almost no time on Arab support for Hitler, dismissing it as the Arab political movement just supporting whoever they thought would win at the time.
The positioning as revisionist Zionist history also means that, despite this book’s title, it is not really a dual history of Jews and Arabs in British Palestine, but an intra-Israeli debate. There is a noticeable lack of Arab sources and perspective throughout the book, even as Segev goes deep into the distinctions between the various Zionist factions. This means that the actions and failures of the Arab nationalist movement are undeveloped, and the Arabs come mostly as a population that is being acted upon by the Zionists and the British.
This thinness leaves underexplained a core part of the story: how one nationalist movement so thoroughly outmaneuvered another. Israel exists in large part because Jewish nationalists seized the moment while Arab nationalists didn’t. While Zionism built up the infrastructure for a state, Arab politics never seemed to develop beyond mass violence against Jews in an apparent attempt to get them to go away.
In the middle of all this, of course, was the British, whose opinion was split. In part, the Zionists managed to play off British antisemitic fantasies that Jews ran the world to get the colonialists to treat their marginal nationalist movement as serious. But Segev documents that a major tendency of the British was to see both Jews and Arabs are exotic nations that were ultimately to be held in contempt. “I think them each as loathsome as the other. There is only one people on earth that I am thoroughly ‘pro’ and that’s British, and I can’t see any justification for the loss of a single British soldier in the faction fight between those d—d Semites,” he quotes the British ambassador to Egypt saying. And another official: “The Arabs are treacherous and untrustworthy, the Jews greedy and, when free from persecution, aggressive.”
By the time the British left, they were basically happy to wash their hands of the situation and let the “d—d” Semites” kill one another. But maybe the most surprising part of this book was the portrait of the British colonial mindset in the decades leading up to that point. Clearly this little outpost of their empire was a place for them to play at a great adventure before heading back to a humdrum life in London. As Segev quotes on British colonialist summing up his time in Palestine: “‘Excellent climate, lovely flowers, a spice of danger, but a lot of fun.”
June 5, 2021
Tom Segev erzählt in diesem Buch die Geschichte Palästinas in der britischen Mandatszeit und die Entwicklungen, die zur Staatsgründung Israels im Jahr 1948 und dem seitdem ungelösten Nahostkonflikt führten.
Die britische Politik verfolgte in Palästina teils gleichzeitig, teils nacheinander mindestens drei miteinander unvereinbare Ziele. Während des ersten Weltkrieges wurde mit der Balfour Deklaration den Juden eine nationale Heimstätte versprochen. Dabei spielte zumindest teilweise eine antisemitische Furcht vor dem "internationalen Judentum" und seinem Einfluss auf die Weltpolitik eine Rolle. Andererseits wurde den arabischen Führern die Unabhängigkeit als Lohn für ihre Unterstützung im Kampf gegen das mit Deutschland verbündete osmanische Reich versprochen. Nach dem ersten Weltkrieg, trat aber der Großmachtanspruch in den Vordergrund, der zur Teilung der ehemahligen osmanischen Gebiete in die Einflusssphären Frankreichs und Großbrittaniens führte und der Bildung von Staaten, deren Grenzen in europäischen Kolonialbüros gezogen wurden und unter die Verwaltung der europäischen Großmächte gestellt wurden.
Auf der Seite der Araber führte dies zu Enttäuschung und Unzufriedenheit, die schließlich im Bereich Palästinas zum arabischen Aufstand von 1936 und der Unterstützung Hitlers durch den Großmufti von Jerusalem führte.
Die zionistische Bewegung versuchte die Mandatszeit zu nutzten um eine jüdische Bevölkerungsmehrheit in Palästina zu erreichen. Dafür setzte sie auf eine Einwanderungspolitik, die streng darauf achtete, dass vor allem solche Zuwanderer Palästina erreichten, die zum Aufbau Israels beitragen konnten. Diese zeitweise von den Briten unterstüzte Einwanderungspolitik führte zu Verdrängung und Benachteiligung der arabischen Bewohner Palästinas, die den Grundstock zur Feindschaft zwischen Arabern und Juden legte.
Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg und dem Grauen der Shoa, gab es die historische Konstellation, in der es zum Teilungsbeschluss der UNO von 1947 und der Staatsgründung und dem Gründungskrieg Israels im Jahre 1948 kam.
Tom Segev stellt die Mandatszeit aus den Blickwinkeln von Arabern, Briten und Juden dar und bemüht sich sowohl die Ereignisse die zum letztendlichen Konflikt führten, als auch die Bemühungen auf allen Seiten, die zu einem anderen Ergebnis hätten führen können zu beleuchten.
Für jeden, der sich für den Ursprung des israelisch arabischen Konflikts interessiert, ist dies Buch eine Empfehlung.
Die britische Politik verfolgte in Palästina teils gleichzeitig, teils nacheinander mindestens drei miteinander unvereinbare Ziele. Während des ersten Weltkrieges wurde mit der Balfour Deklaration den Juden eine nationale Heimstätte versprochen. Dabei spielte zumindest teilweise eine antisemitische Furcht vor dem "internationalen Judentum" und seinem Einfluss auf die Weltpolitik eine Rolle. Andererseits wurde den arabischen Führern die Unabhängigkeit als Lohn für ihre Unterstützung im Kampf gegen das mit Deutschland verbündete osmanische Reich versprochen. Nach dem ersten Weltkrieg, trat aber der Großmachtanspruch in den Vordergrund, der zur Teilung der ehemahligen osmanischen Gebiete in die Einflusssphären Frankreichs und Großbrittaniens führte und der Bildung von Staaten, deren Grenzen in europäischen Kolonialbüros gezogen wurden und unter die Verwaltung der europäischen Großmächte gestellt wurden.
Auf der Seite der Araber führte dies zu Enttäuschung und Unzufriedenheit, die schließlich im Bereich Palästinas zum arabischen Aufstand von 1936 und der Unterstützung Hitlers durch den Großmufti von Jerusalem führte.
Die zionistische Bewegung versuchte die Mandatszeit zu nutzten um eine jüdische Bevölkerungsmehrheit in Palästina zu erreichen. Dafür setzte sie auf eine Einwanderungspolitik, die streng darauf achtete, dass vor allem solche Zuwanderer Palästina erreichten, die zum Aufbau Israels beitragen konnten. Diese zeitweise von den Briten unterstüzte Einwanderungspolitik führte zu Verdrängung und Benachteiligung der arabischen Bewohner Palästinas, die den Grundstock zur Feindschaft zwischen Arabern und Juden legte.
Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg und dem Grauen der Shoa, gab es die historische Konstellation, in der es zum Teilungsbeschluss der UNO von 1947 und der Staatsgründung und dem Gründungskrieg Israels im Jahre 1948 kam.
Tom Segev stellt die Mandatszeit aus den Blickwinkeln von Arabern, Briten und Juden dar und bemüht sich sowohl die Ereignisse die zum letztendlichen Konflikt führten, als auch die Bemühungen auf allen Seiten, die zu einem anderen Ergebnis hätten führen können zu beleuchten.
Für jeden, der sich für den Ursprung des israelisch arabischen Konflikts interessiert, ist dies Buch eine Empfehlung.
February 6, 2017
Segev employs archival materials to make one of the main points advanced by the Israeli New Historians: The British were the abettors, not the opponents, of Zionism. The British only occupied Palestine because it was the territory of a wartime enemy, Turkey, and they only stayed to win the favor of international Jewry, which they assumed -- in an attitude religiously reverent and antisemitic at one and the same time -- was the dominant force in world affairs. At times, presiding administrators and distant ministers alike despaired of the impossibility of reconciling the dominance of a Jewish minority over an Arab majority, but this either didn't percolate into actual policy or was easily disarmed by Zionist persuasion. The Zionists only faltered, and some of their more activist members turned to terrorism, when the advent of Hitler cast doubt over the efficacy of international Jewry's power and room to maneuver. But the key exponents of Zionism collaborated with the British til the very end, and this collaboration immeasurably assisted them in creating the foundations of a state in otherwise unfavorable circumstances.
Segev's use of diaries and journals allows him to illustrate key elements of the Mandate in ways that are intimate, unforced, and sometimes even hilariously funny. But his omniscient narrator's voice is there, too, perhaps shoving us too hard in a direction we might have already gone without it. His thesis is generally persuasive, but toward the end I felt he was trying to fit everything into its Procrustean bed. For example, it's hard to reconcile the Zionist resort to terrorism with a close collaboration with the British; since the Haganah, i.e., the hegemonic Zionist party's military organization, subverted Mandate policy alongside the more activist factions, it seems to represent a real crisis of relations. I also don't know how to mesh what I know of Ernest Bevin and Clement Atlee's spat with Harry Truman over the disposition of the Mandate with the almost relieved British relinquishment of it that I found in Segev's book. This is how I feel about the New Historians in general: Their revealing spotlight dispels some of the received knowledge as myth, but other parts of it tenaciously remain as fact.
Segev's use of diaries and journals allows him to illustrate key elements of the Mandate in ways that are intimate, unforced, and sometimes even hilariously funny. But his omniscient narrator's voice is there, too, perhaps shoving us too hard in a direction we might have already gone without it. His thesis is generally persuasive, but toward the end I felt he was trying to fit everything into its Procrustean bed. For example, it's hard to reconcile the Zionist resort to terrorism with a close collaboration with the British; since the Haganah, i.e., the hegemonic Zionist party's military organization, subverted Mandate policy alongside the more activist factions, it seems to represent a real crisis of relations. I also don't know how to mesh what I know of Ernest Bevin and Clement Atlee's spat with Harry Truman over the disposition of the Mandate with the almost relieved British relinquishment of it that I found in Segev's book. This is how I feel about the New Historians in general: Their revealing spotlight dispels some of the received knowledge as myth, but other parts of it tenaciously remain as fact.
April 30, 2020
Ein weiteres Thema, worüber ich eigentlich kaum etwas weiss. Deshalb habe ich mir das Buch auch geholt. Immerhin ist dies ein Konflikt, der auch uns noch immer prägt.
Nach der Lektüre bin ich nun wieder um einiges schlauer und habe einen vertieften Einblick darin, was genau zwischen den Juden und den Palästinensern vorgefallen ist. Nun verstehe ich auch besser, wieso dieser Konflikt nicht einfach so beiseite gelegt werden kann.
Dennoch gestehe ich, dass sich dieses Werk für Leser/innen ohne Vorkenntnisse eher weniger eignet. Es wird erwartet, dass man gewisse Informationen und Hintergründe zumindest rudimentär kennt. Segev zieht also nicht alles von ganz vorne auf, sondern setzt bei den Briten an. Auch bestimmte Namen sollten bereits bekannt sein.
Wer sich jedoch vertieft mit dem Konflikt in Israel auseinandersetzen möchte, der kommt an diesem Buch keinesfalls mehr vorbei. Es ist grundlegend für das Verständnis des weiteren geschichtlichen und aktuellen Verlaufs.
Segevs Schreibstil ist angenehm und informativ, das Quellenverzeichnis weist auf eine detaillierte und genaue Arbeitsweise hin. So ist ein wichtiges und fundiertes Buch entstanden, das auch bei mir viele Fragen geklärt hat und mir neues historisches Wissen liefern konnte.
Nach der Lektüre bin ich nun wieder um einiges schlauer und habe einen vertieften Einblick darin, was genau zwischen den Juden und den Palästinensern vorgefallen ist. Nun verstehe ich auch besser, wieso dieser Konflikt nicht einfach so beiseite gelegt werden kann.
Dennoch gestehe ich, dass sich dieses Werk für Leser/innen ohne Vorkenntnisse eher weniger eignet. Es wird erwartet, dass man gewisse Informationen und Hintergründe zumindest rudimentär kennt. Segev zieht also nicht alles von ganz vorne auf, sondern setzt bei den Briten an. Auch bestimmte Namen sollten bereits bekannt sein.
Wer sich jedoch vertieft mit dem Konflikt in Israel auseinandersetzen möchte, der kommt an diesem Buch keinesfalls mehr vorbei. Es ist grundlegend für das Verständnis des weiteren geschichtlichen und aktuellen Verlaufs.
Segevs Schreibstil ist angenehm und informativ, das Quellenverzeichnis weist auf eine detaillierte und genaue Arbeitsweise hin. So ist ein wichtiges und fundiertes Buch entstanden, das auch bei mir viele Fragen geklärt hat und mir neues historisches Wissen liefern konnte.
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