Churchill and Zionism: Jaffa Riots 1921

From A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

As Colonial Secretary in 1921-2, Churchill encountered even greater difficulty in dealing with the vexing problems of Palestine west of the Jordan river than with those of Transjordan and Iraq. The issue in Palestine was Zionism, and so intense were the passions it aroused that it was not always easy to remember what was really at issue. The Zionists pictured Palestine - correctly, as we now know - as a country that could support at least five or ten times more people than lived there at the time; so that without displacing any of the perhaps 600,000 Arab inhabitants, there was room to bring in millions of Jewish settlers.

At the time nothing like that many Jews were prepared to settle as pioneers in Palestine, but Zionists hoped and Arabs feared that they would do so, and the unrestricted right of Jews to enter the country became the central issue in Palestinian politics. Friends of Zionism claimed - and later demonstrated - that Jewish enterprise could enrich the country, but impoverished Arab peasant farmers were persuaded that they were being asked to share what little they possessed with foreigners.

As seen earlier, there had been Arab anti-Zionist riots in Palestine a year before Churchill became Colonial Secretary in February 1921. Not long after he attempted to solve the problems of the Middle East at the Cairo Conference that March, Palestine erupted again. In Jaffa, on May Day 1921, rioting broke out, beginning with looting, but going on to murder: during the first day the Arab mobs killed thirty-five Jew . In the course of a blood-soaked week, fighting spread to the entire country as Arabs besieged Jewish farm colonies outside the principal towns.

The High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, responded to the Arab attacks by temporarily suspending Jewish immigration into Palestine. Zionist leaders feared that by rewarding Arab violence, Samuel had guaranteed that it would be renewed and that the history of the British Mandate for Palestine would be a stormy one.

Samuel' s administration was slow to restore order; on 10 August 1921 The Times reported that "Public security, particularly in the north, is for all practical purposes, non-existent. Raids take place almost daily from Transjordania …" The Times correspondent claimed that "neither Jews nor Arabs have any confidence in the authorities." He added that "The older inhabitants say that public security was far better maintained under the Turks."

Although Arab riots seemed likely to recur, Zionist leaders continued to seek accommodat ion with the Arabs and to express confidence that most Arabs were in favor of peace and cooperation.

As Churchill recognized, one of his greatest problems in quelling the Arab riots while going ahead with a pro-Zionist program was that the British forces upon whom he relied were unwilling to enforce his policy.

The anti-Zionist case was easy for the British in Palestine to understand: Arabs had lived in the country for ages and did not want their life and landscape changed. British soldiers and officials worked every day among Arabs who told them so. Of course Jews lived in Palestine too, and their connection with the land was even more long-standing; but much of the case for Zionism, strong though it was, was not entirely tangible: it was partly historical, partly theoretical, and partly visionary (in the sense that it was only in the future that Jewish enterprise would bring a much higher standard of living

According to Vladimir Jabotinsky , the militant Zionist who had founded the Jewish Leg ion in Allenby's army, the British military found Zionism to be a "fancy" theory, far-reaching and aiming to repair the world's ills, and therefore unsound. According to Jabotinsky, such fancy schemes for improving the world ran counter to all the instincts of the average Englishman of the ruling classes. 3

Jabotinsky pointed out, too, that the administration was staffed by professional Arabists. These were people (he wrote) so attracted to the Arab world (as they conceived it to be) that they underwent the discipline of learning the Arab language and qualifying themselves for the Civil Service, and were willing to leave Britain to spend their professional lives in the Arab Middle East; and it was natural that they would not want to see the Arab character of Palestine changed.

Jabotinsky touched on, but did not stress, what may have been the principal reason for British opposition to the Balfour Declaration policy: it caused trouble. It was unpopular with the Arabs who constituted the bulk of the population, while the job of the British colonial administration was to keep the population quiet and satisfied. British civil and military personnel in Palestine had reason to believe that they could have enjoyed an easy and peaceful tour of duty in a contented country, if it were not for London's policy, adopted for reasons not readily grasped, that excited communal tension and violence and exposed the local British administration to difficulty and even danger.

However disaffection in the British ranks led ironically to an increase in the difficulty and danger, by encouraging Arab resistance and intransigence at a time when London was not yet prepared to yield. A particular episode that was to have lasting consequences was the intervention of the Palestine administration in the selection of a new religious leader for the Moslem community.