UN General Assembly Resolution 181 – UN Special Committee on Palestine (3 September 1947) and UN Ad Hoc Committee (25 November 1947) partition plans. The UN Ad Hoc Committee proposal was voted on in the resolution and adopted 29 November 1947 (map – public domain image)
(16) PALESTINE – INSURGENCY, CIVIL WAR & ARAB-ISRAELI WAR
(1939-1948)
And now we come to my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars fought after the Second World War, but which took definitive shape during that war – above all in Asia.
Historian Ronald Spector, author of The Eagle Against the Sun, encapsulated this in the titles of his books, The Ruins of Empire and A Continent Erupts, reflecting their subject. In western Europe, the end of the war may have “marked the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and prosperity…labelled the long peace”, but “east and southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe”.
However, one region of western Asia soon vied as contender for the most turbulent region of the globe – the British mandate of Palestine or Mandatory Palestine, which Britain had administered since the end of the First World War as territory taken from the former Ottoman Empire.
The nascent conflict in Palestine, between Arabs and Jews, originated in the First World War – arguably in 1916-1917, with the Arab Revolt, Sykes-Picot Agreement, and Balfour Agreement in those years, although Palestine as the focus of Zionism or Jewish settlement and a Jewish “national home” originated earlier than that.
During the Mandate, there was further Jewish immigration and the rise of nationalist movements in both Jewish and Arab communities, culminating in the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine. Britain ultimately suppressed the Arab Revolt, but in part by means of the 1939 White Paper, severely restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases – hence my choice of 1939 as starting date for this special mention.
The combination of Arab Revolt and White Paper led to the formation of Jewish underground militias, primarily the Haganah which was to become the core of the Israeli Defence Force – as well as increasing Jewish sentiment that they could not achieve their aims in cooperation with the British, particularly after the war. It also contributed to the idea of partition as solution, as it became clear that Arab and Jewish communities in Palestine could not be resolved.
The Second World War saw some suspension of this conflict, as Palestine even came under Axis air attack and within potential reach of Axis armed forces with Rommel’s victories in 1942. That saw British training of forces within the Haganah, as well as the subsequent creation of the Jewish Brigade within British armed forces.
However, the Second World War had not even ended when the Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine began in 1944 and persisted through to 1948, albeit in fairness the tide of war had passed well away from Palestine when it began. The primary insurgents were the more radical Jewish militias or underground groups – Lehi (or the Stern Gang) and Irgun. Even the Haganah sought to suppress them in cooperation with Britain or at least avoiding direct confrontation with British armed forces, instead mainly supporting immigration spurred by Jewish refugees from or after the Second World War.
From there, the conflict spiralled out of British control or even its ability to do so, and like many or most of Britain’s commitments elsewhere, Britain could not (or did not want to) maintain it and instead handed it over to someone else – in this case, the newly founded United Nations, which formulated a partition plan.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan – proposing the division of Palestine between Arab and Jewish states – prompted the 1947-1948 civil war between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. In turn, the conflict escalated into the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as five Arab states – Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq – declared war (and lost) against the new state of Israel that Jewish leadership declared when Britain ended the Mandate and withdrew its forces.
Arab-Israeli wars, and even more so Palestinian-Israeli wars have defined the region ever since. While Jewish immigration to and settlement in Palestine predated the Second World War, it gained new impetus from the war – albeit more before and after the war than during the war itself – and it is difficult to see that the formation of the state of Israel would have had the same force or support without the events of the war, one event in particular above all, perhaps to the extent that it may not have been formed at all in Palestine.
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
