One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate [Paperback]

The modern United Nations and the old Soviet Union have obtusely called it a synonym for "racism" or "colonialism".

Rather than being colonialist, political Zionism in Segev's conception seems more like a skilful surfer riding the wave of British colonialism. It's a big difference.

Britain supported Jewish self-determination for various reasons. Of these, desire to curry favor with the (perceived) powerful forces of international Jewry is as significant as it is anti-Semitic in Segev's view, and is played like a symphony by Zionist leaders like the charismatic Chaim Weizmann.

Before the end of WW1 ,when the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" has just rolled off the Tsarist presses to the murmur of some Europeans and the shouts of a certain mustachioed German - we see Weizmann in numerous meetings with the likes of then Prime Minister Lloyd George and key cabinet officials Lord Balfour and Churchill.

His efforts result in what we now call the Balfour Declaration, the famous Nov 2, 1917 letter committing Britain to establishing a "Jewish National Home in Palestine".

It became a "declaration" when published in the London Jewish Chronicle one week later on 9/11/ in 1917, (the same day as the Bolshevik revolution).

The clout of the Balfour letter snowballs when its key phrases appear in the Mandate document incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles in 1918.

A few years later (British) Zionist Jew Herbert Samuel became Palestine's High Commissioner.

While notching these milestones, we see, Weizmann intimating of contacts (in fact superficial) with American Supreme Court Justices Brandeis and Frankfurter, and of his "knowledge" (untrue) that "Lenin's mother was Jewish" and that Jews were behind the Russian revolution.

Segev's hypothesis is that the image of Zionist power helped lubricate Zionist interests onward throughout the Mandate, until the Nazis decimated German Jews and hurt the perceived "power of world Jewry". Treating this eventuality in realpolitik terms, Britain then made efforts to please the Arabs before and during WW2 (for example, by curtailing Jewish immigration), seeing as the Jews were already in their pocket.

Yet even at the Mandate's very beginning, England was careful to temper Zionist ambitions and was generally responsive to the ant-Zionist views of influential expatriates and Orientalists.

The wording "Jewish National Home" was ambiguous. As for "Palestine", most its pre-war territory was immediately after WW1 carved into a new country called Trans-Jordan. British administrators delegated positions of power to rich Palestinian Arab families like the Husseinis.

Perhaps, muses Segev, Britain thought they might perpetuate a role for themselves, or that the Arabs would accommodate a significant Jewish presence in but one corner of their world.

Whatever their thinking, they miscalculated.

One of the characters whose views the author uses as a touchstone throughout the book is writer and teacher Khalil al-Sakakini, who is back-slapped by his fellows for ironically sneering from the newspaper Falastin:

"Welcome, cousins. We are the guests and you are the masters of the house. We will do everything to please you. You are, after all, Gd's chosen people."

While rulers like the British or Ottomans impinge upon the native population to some extent, Palestinians were affected at a visceral level by the immigration of numbers of sovereignty-minded, organized, European Jews.

Tel Aviv steadily grew from an outpost into a Jewish city while strategically located Jewish agricultural settlements flowered up and down country.¡¡

The Jewish immigrants called themselves Palestinians, resurrecting the Hebrew language.

They paid little heed to Arabic culture or language. Technically there was little need to entreat Palestinian Arabs, as the Zionists already had from the British the necessary legalities to pursue self-determination.

But legalism proved to be only part of the equation.

Significant Arab riots broke out in 1920, 1921, 1929.and 1935.

For the many who believe the Arab-Israel conflict began in 1947, or that Zionism first became significant following the onset of Nazism, these preceding events are an eye-opener.

On the question of what might have been we see that even in the early years there is lively debate.

In one Arab view, the Jewish predicament was a European problem that might concern European land.

The Jewish claim to Palestine, said some, was akin to Muslims claiming Spain by virtue of having sovereignty there for a very limited period many centuries ago.

In the eyes of the Zionists' British detractors, they invited trouble by the deliberate tactic of being so very public with their endeavors.

But the most prescient view was expressed by rising labor leader David Ben Gurion in 1919: "There is no solution!... We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs."

As Segev tracks the history, he attends to fascinating detail. Like the rivalry between Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, and (assassinated) (...) Jacob de Haan.

We feel the disillusionment of British High Commissioners who came to Palestine full of idealistic intentions, see that the dedication of the Hebrew University was a controversial event involving none other than Albert Einstein. We learn the origins of Mr Qassam of missile fame, and see that the first martyr of the modern era was the Jewish Yosef Trumpledor, himself a socialist fashioned Revisionist hero.

The book is a fantastic piece of historical scholarship, though it runs out of legs at the end.

True, certain elements could be misinterpreted or used by people with existing biases.

But if you bring to the table a bit of knowledge, maturity and an open mind, it is a great read.

However, although Segev's historical documentation is impressive, his interpretation of history is most unusual. He maintains that the British were highly supportive in the formation and creation of the Jewish State, with some resistance during the period of the British Mandate. He also discounts the importance of the Holocaust in facilitating Israeli Statehood. His interpretations of Great Britain's pro-Zionist stance and motivation is highly controversial, and to be perfectly frank, I have to read more from other historians before I can put Mr. Segev's ideas into perspective. Don't be put off by the author's historical conclusions, however. The narrative does make for an interesting read.

Tom Segev is one of Israel's most notable historians and journalists and offers here a dramatic and well written account of two nationalist movements that will hopefully form the basis of two separate countries and populations, living side-by-side, and flourishing in peace one day. From my pen to God's ears.
JANA

His biggest mistake is the statement that Israel was "twice promised." There are other mistakes throughout the book, but I'll focus on this one because it is the most serious and is the basis for much of rest of the book.

Segev states in the first chapter that Palestine was "twice promised." He doesn't say how he arrived at this conclusion. He repeats it often, but the number of times he makes the claim does not make it true.

One of the best scholars on the Mandate period was Elie Kedourie, a Middle Eastern Sephardic Jew. His 1970 book, Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, sorted out from important British-Arab correspondences what various leaders intended for Palestine. It wasn't promised twice by the British, that's for sure. Historians like Martin Kramer, Efraim Karsh, Isaiah Friedman, Anita Shapira (another Israeli), Shabtai Teveth (another Israeli) and others added to Kedourie's research.

For example, David Fromkin's Peace to End All Peace and Empire of the Sands also both make it clear that Britain and the League of Nations promised Palestine to the Jewish people and that King Feisal of Iraq and his father Hussein of Mecca knew this and agreed to it.

If Segev looked at this material, he doesn't mention it, and he doesn't explain why.

Even Segev's oblique references to what was promised for Palestine are filled with mistakes. In chapter 6, Segev talks about Churchill's 1921 trip to Jerusalem with Lawrence of Arabia, an event whose importance he clutters with details about Churchill's paintings of the city and Herbert Samuel's reaction to them. (Paintings? Who cares?) Then he tosses off a sentence about Churchill crowning, as king of Jordan, Arabia's Prince Abdullah. This was Hussein of Mecca's son and Feisal's brother. Segev then digresses into a discussion of the Arab reaction.

Only in a footnote on the same page does Segev refer to the fact that Jordan was carved out of Palestine, and only in a footnote to that footnote, at the back of the book, does he tell readers where he got this bit of information. It wasn't a primary source, but a secondary one. And it's wrong.

Segev's discussion of Transjordan is also misleading. He leaves readers with the impression that Britain's decision on Transjordan was part of the Versailles treaty. But the Versailles Treaty left Palestine in one piece as a National Home for the Jews.

Britain actually acted to separate Transjordan from Palestine on its own, in 1923, without League of Nations approval. Britain had approval of Hussein and his son Abdullah. The son needed a throne because he had lost the Hijaz and the throne in Arabia to Arabia's puritan Wahhabi Saudi warriors.

One Palestine Complete mixes this history up. I didn't like it.