People always ask me: “So what’s the solution?” What do I know? Surely, however, it’s time to forget the eight two-state solutions that have never worked. What about a three-state solution: Gaza to Egypt, West Bank to Jordan (the 1967 borders)? Then they say: “But they don’t want them back!” The answer is Churchill’s idea of the only things that work in the Middle East: “force and bribery.” Whatever it costs us to bribe them is less than a war, and we back the deal with air power. Better yet (in the words of an old friend in a ’70s panel discussion on the woes of the British car industry): “Go back to 1945 and start all over again.”
*****
Editor’s Note: The following account of U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s perspective on Israel and Palestine, written by Richard M. Langworth, was originally published in two parts, “Timeline: Winston Churchill on Palestine, 1945-46” and “Timeline: Winston Churchill and the Road to Israel, 1947-49,” by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project on Nov. 27, 2023, and Dec. 5, 2023, respectively. The original pieces can be found here and here. Both have been republished with permission by the author and publisher, with small edits made by the request of the author.
In 1906, attributing the remark to “a witty Irishman,” young Winston Churchill told Parliament: “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.” Has anything changed 120 years later? Recent events prompt a review of events in Palestine after the Second World War. What did Churchill say about them? Is there is anything to learn from him?
READ MORE: The Secret to Winston Churchill’s Greatness
Churchill’s responsibility for British policy ended with the election of July 1945. He was, however, by no means silent about Palestine (West and East), and Britain’s role in it. He had had a great deal to do with it over the past quarter century. His thoughts and proposals in the early postwar years illustrate how the region became what it is today.
West Palestine simmered from 1945 to early 1947. Events came thick and fast toward the end of 1947. A year later, a war had been fought, and the State of Israel had been founded. The United States and Soviet Union immediately recognized the new nation. Britain did not, and indeed nearly went to war with Israel during its 1948 war with Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Because of length I have divided this timeline into two parts. This first installment covers the period of “simmering”: Juxtaposed with events are Churchill’s comments. I have avoided personal opinions, leaving conclusions to the reader. “History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.” —RML
“As 1945 began, three independent Arab States—Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq—wanted to know what Britain and the United States intended with regard to the Jewish future in Palestine. Churchill continued to seek a Zionist solution whereby the 517,000 Jews then in West Palestine, just under a third of the Arab population, would have their own State in which they would not be at the mercy of a hostile Arab majority, but able to govern themselves, albeit in only about a third of the area they had hoped for.
“In February, off the coast of Egypt, Churchill called on Roosevelt on board the American warship Quincy. Roosevelt was gravely ill. Churchill had already been shocked at his pallor at the Yalta Conference a week earlier and felt that he did not have long to live. He had in fact only two months.
“Shortly before Churchill called on him on Quincy, Roosevelt had spent several hours with the Saudi monarch, Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman, known as Ibn Saud. It was Churchill who had urged Ibn Saud to meet Roosevelt. FDR, Churchill told the Saudi monarch, was ‘one of my most cherished friends.’ The President’s meeting with Ibn Saud on 14 February was not encouraging for Churchill’s hopes of a future Jewish State in Palestine.” —Martin Gilbert
14th. King Ibn Saud to President Roosevelt, USS Quincy: “Arabs and Jews can never cooperate, neither in Palestine nor in any other country…. [What] changed the whole picture was the immigration from Eastern Europe of people who were technically and culturally on a higher level than the Arabs [who] had greater difficulty in surviving economically. [That these] energetic Europeans are Jewish is not the cause of the trouble. It is their superior skills and culture.”
17th. King Ibn Saud to Winston S. Churchill, Lake Faiyum, Egypt: “The Jews in Palestine are continuously increasing in number; they are even forming a sort of Government of their own, with a prime minister, a foreign minister and a minister of defence. They also had formed a military force of 30,000 men with modern arms and equipment. They have thus become a great danger to the Arabs…. The Arabs would fight the Jews, and, even if they were not victorious, they would not mind because they would go to Paradise. I have continually advised moderation to the Arabs with regard to Palestine, but fear that a clash might come….”
Churchill, 27 February, House of Commons (HofC): “[King Saud’s] aid will be needed…. I have hopes that when the war is over good arrangements can be made for securing the peace and progress of the Arab world, and generally of the Middle East, and that Great Britain and the United States, which is taking an increasing interest in these regions, will be able to play a valuable part in proving that well-known maxim of the old Free Trader, ‘All legitimate interests are in harmony.’”
2nd. Emir Abdullah to WSC: “The inhabitants of the Arab world are in a ferment over the future of Palestine. The Arabs believe at present that the Jews want to have Palestine only as a means of their future domination of the whole Arab world economically as well as politically.”
10th. King Ibn Saud to WSC (paraphrased): “The ambitions of the Jews are not confined to Palestine alone. The preparations they have made show that they intend to take hostile action against neighbouring Arab countries…. to create a form of Nazi-Fascism within sight of the democracies and in the midst of the Arab countries….
“Joshua captured the land of the Canaanites—an Arab tribe—with great cruelty and barbarity. The Arabs have been in Palestine since 3500 years before Christ. They have ruled it, alone or with the Turks, for 1300 years. The disjointed rule of the Jews did not exceed 380 confused and sporadic years, ending in 332 BC. For 2200 years there have been few Jews there and they have had no influence…. [They were] aliens who had come to Palestine at intervals and had then been turned out over two thousand years ago.”
22nd. Chaim Weizmann to WSC: “The Jewish people have waited till the end of the German war, not only for their deliverance from Hitler, but also from the injustice of the White Paper of 1939, which has so intensely aggravated both their sufferings and the loss of human life. We remember with gratitude how, in the debate on May 23rd, 1939, the voice of British conscience spoke through you. We have noted how, during the years of war, you have never let yourself be drawn into saying anything which could be interpreted as an acceptance of the White Paper.
“This has enabled me to urge upon my people patience. But now the German war is over. Under your leadership victory has come. Your word could never carry greater weight than it does now. The White Paper still stands. It is prolonging the agony of the Jewish survivors. Will you not say the word which is to right wrongs and set the people free?”
Churchill to Weizmann, 9 June: “I have received your letter of 22 May, enclosing a Memorandum on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. There can I fear be no possibility of the question being effectively considered until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace table.”
15th. Weizmann to WSC: “[Your message] came as a great shock to me. I had always understood from our conversations that our problem would be considered as soon as the German war was over. But your phrase, ‘until the victorious Allies are definitely seated at the Peace table,’ substitutes some indefinite date in the future. I can hardly believe this to have been your intention…. [T]he continuation of the White Paper means confinement to a territorial ghetto consisting of five percent of the area of Western Palestine. They could hardly put up with this during the war; now it becomes unbearable.”
Churchill to Weizmann, 29 June: “I am afraid I can add nothing to my letter of June 9 except to explain that the Peace table means the Peace table…. I do not know what course the Great Powers will take about this. But I trust that after the July [Potsdam] Conference, before the end of the year, there will be some coherent attempt on the part of the major Allies to settle the various outstanding territorial questions, and that would be the time when the Jewish position in Palestine would rightly fall to be considered….
“It has occurred to me for some time… that it might be a solution of your difficulties if the Mandate were transferred from Britain to the United States who, with her great wealth and strength and strong Jewish elements, might be able to do more for the Zionist cause than Great Britain. I need scarcely say I shall continue to do my best for it. But, as you will know, it has very few supporters in the Conservative Party, and even the Labour Party now seem to have lost all zeal.”
12th: Franklin Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia; Harry Truman becomes U.S. President.
18th: Allied armies encounter horrific scenes while liberating the concentration camp at Ohrdruf, near Gotha, with Buchenwald: “the acme of atrocity.”
Churchill, 19 April, HofC: “No words can express the horror which is felt by His Majesty’s Government and their principal Allies at the proofs of these frightful crimes now daily coming into view…. I have this morning received an informal message from General Eisenhower saying that the new discoveries, particularly at Weimar, far surpass anything previously exposed.”
8th: V-E Day: Germany surrenders; the war in Europe is over.
31st: Churchill calls for cease-fire in French-Syrian hostilities after France attempts to reassert its authority in Syria and Lebanon. Franco-Syrian negotiations begin.
Churchill, 14 June, HofC: “We have no wish to steal anybody’s property in any portion of the globe…. We are very glad if France can manage for herself in discussions with the Syrians and the Lebanese, so that a satisfactory treaty will be arrived at, and we have said that the moment that that treaty has been reached we will withdraw our troops from the country.”
25th: Labour landslide in British general election. Clement Attlee becomes Prime Minister, Ernest Bevin Foreign Minister. Churchill becomes Leader of the Opposition.
27th: Bevin denies entry into Palestine of 100,000 Holocaust survivors. He rejects Churchill’s assurances to the 1937 Peel Commission “that the British Government contemplated, in due course, a Jewish majority and a Jewish State in Palestine.”
13th: Bevin announces that 1939 White Paper restrictions on Jewish immigration to Western Palestine will continue; that Britain favors a Jewish homeland but not a state. President Truman counters that the 100,000 survivors had been authorized by the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee. Riots follow in Tel Aviv, with attacks on police, British military and government buildings.
12 January: Jewish paramilitary Irgun derails a British payroll train, stealing £35,000 and injuring three constables.
25 February: Irgun and Lehi paramilitaries attack RAF airfields at Lydda, Qastina, and Kfar Sirkin.
March: Jerusalem Arab Office submits “The Arab Case for Palestine” to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: “Arabs of Palestine are descendants of the indigenous inhabitants who have been in occupation of it since the beginning of history. [The Jewish] claim is based upon a historical connection which ceased effectively many centuries ago.”
17 April: Lebanon and Syria achieve independence as French forces are withdrawn.
25 May: Jordan (East Palestine) achieves independence as British Mandate ends.
29 June: “Black Sabbath”: British Operation Shark searches for arms and makes 787 arrests in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and several dozen Jewish settlements.
22 July: Retaliating for “Black Sabbath,” Irgun bombs the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, killing ninety-one Arabs, Britons and Jews.
25 July: First meeting of London conference on the future of Palestine, with Arab and Jewish representatives, invited by Prime Minister Attlee.
1 August: Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, tells Parliament: “The future of Palestine shall not be decided by terrorism and by violence….”
Churchill, 1 August, HofC: “[Cripps] spoke of the past 25 years as being the most unkind or unhappy Palestine has known. I imagine that it would hardly be possible to state the opposite of the truth more compendiously. The years during which we have accepted the Mandate have been the brightest that Palestine has known and were full of hope.
“Of course, there was always friction, because the Jew was, in many cases, allowed to go far beyond the strict limits of the interpretation which was placed upon the Mandate….
“Meanwhile, how did we treat the Arabs? We have treated them very well. The House of Hussein reigns in Iraq. Faisal was placed on the throne, his grandson is there today. The Emir Abdullah, whom I remember appointing at Jerusalem, in 1921 to be in charge of Transjordania, is there today…. Syria and the Lebanon owe their independence to the great exertions made by the British Government….
***
“In fact, all sorts of hopes were raised among the Jews of Palestine, just as other hopes were raised elsewhere. However, when the months slipped by and no decided policy or declaration was made by the present Government, a deep and bitter resentment spread throughout the Palestine Jewish community….
“The disappointment and disillusionment of the Jews at the procrastination and indecision of the British Labour Government are no excuse, as we have repeatedly affirmed here, for the dark and deadly crimes which have been committed by the fanatical extremists, and these miscreants and murderers should be rooted out and punished with the full severity of the law.
“It is quite clear, however, that this crude idea of letting all the Jews of Europe go into Palestine has no relation either to the problem of Europe or to the problem which arises in Palestine.”
***
Mr. Sidney Silverman: “The Rt. Hon. Gentleman is not suggesting, is he, that any Jew who regarded a country in Europe as nothing but the graveyard and cemetery of all his relatives, friends and hopes should be compelled to stay there if he did not want to do so?”
Mr. Churchill: “I am against preventing Jews from doing anything which other people are allowed to do. I am against that, and I have the strongest abhorrence of the idea of anti-Semitic lines of prejudice.
“We have never sought or got anything out of Palestine. We have discharged a thankless, painful, costly, laborious, inconvenient task for more than a quarter of a century with a very great measure of success…. It is Great Britain, and Great Britain alone, which has steadfastly carried that cause forward across a whole generation to its present actual position, and the Jews all over the world ought not to be in a hurry to forget that.
“I had always intended to put it to our friends in America, from the very beginning of the postwar discussions, that either they should come in and help us in this Zionist problem, about which they feel so strongly….
“We declare ourselves ready to abandon the mighty Empire and Continent of India with all the work we have done in the last 200 years, territory over which we possess unimpeachable sovereignty. The Government are, apparently, ready to leave the 400 million Indians to fall into all the horrors of sanguinary civil war—civil war compared to which anything that could happen in Palestine would be microscopic; wars of elephants compared with wars of mice.
***
“Here is the action—action this day. I think the Government should say that if the United States will not come and share the burden of the Zionist cause, as defined or as agreed, we should now give notice that we will return our Mandate to U.N.O. and that we will evacuate Palestine within a specified period. At the same time, we should inform Egypt that we stand by our treaty rights and will, by all means, maintain our position in the Canal Zone.
“Those are the two positive proposals which I submit, most respectfully, to the House. In so far as the Government may have hampered themselves in any way from adopting these simple policies, they are culpable in the last degree, and the whole Empire and the Commonwealth will be the sufferers from their mismanagement.”
4 October: President Truman supports Jewish Agency proposal for separate Arab and Jewish states, angering British Foreign Minister Bevin, who believes this ends any chance of agreement.
8 October: London Conference on Palestine adjourns, having rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan for Anglo-American Trusteeship of Western Palestine with autonomous Arab and Jewish areas. Churchill and Truman had both supported Morrison-Grady.
November: Arabs propose an Arab state in West Palestine with minority protection and citizenship for the Jewish population. Jewish Agency rejects any plan that does not include an independent Jewish State.
Churchill, 12 November, HofC: “[I]t is impossible to avoid expressing deep regret at the many changes of tactics and method, at the needless disappointment created throughout world Jewry by the failure to fulfill the hopes which the party opposite excited by their promises and convictions at the General Election, and above all, at the lack of any policy worthy of the name. This absence of any policy or decision on these matters, which have become more complicated as they proceed, has allowed havoc and hatred to flare and run rife throughout Palestine for more than a year and no one knows where we are today.
***
“I cannot, in any way, recede from the advice which I have ventured to give, namely, that if we cannot fulfill our promises to the Zionists, we should without delay place our mandate for Palestine at the feet of the United Nations, and give due notice of our impending evacuation of that country. If this offer is accepted, a burden, which has become too heavy and too invidious for us to bear alone, will have been lifted from our shoulders and placed in international safe-keeping….
“I am not at all deterred in recommending this course by the fact that it has been demanded by the Soviet Government. I was rather glad to find that our minds are flowing in the same direction in one aspect of international affairs….
“To abandon India, with all the dire consequences that would follow therefrom, but to have a war with the Jews in order to give Palestine to the Arabs amid the execration of the world, appears to carry incongruity of thought and policy to levels which have rarely been attained in human history.”
On 14 February 1947 the London Conference on Palestine adjourned for the last time with no decisions reached. Arab delegates denied any form of partition or the renewal of Jewish immigration. The Jewish Agency, whose attendance had been sporadic, rejected any solution other than partition into two separate states.
On 17 February, Ernest Bevin announced that Britain was unable to solve the problem. It would therefore pass it to the United Nations. Prime Minister Attlee announced that Britain would terminate the Mandate of Western Palestine on 15 May 1948. The stage was set for a definite British departure date, as it would be for India. As in India, this also set the stage for violence.
Churchill, 12 March 1947: “Then there is Palestine: £82 million since the Socialist Government came into power squandered in Palestine, and 100,000 Englishmen now kept away from their homes and work, for the sake of a senseless squalid war with the Jews in order to give Palestine to the Arabs, or God knows who. ‘Scuttle,’ everywhere, is the order of the day—Egypt, India, Burma. One thing at all costs we must preserve: the right to get ourselves world-mocked and world-hated over Palestine, at a cost of £82 million.”
*****
We now turn to crux of the story—the stark events of 1947-49. Britain’s Mandate of East Palestine ended in May 1946, when that territory became the independent, Arab state of Jordan. West Palestine (today’s Israel, West Bank and Gaza) proved a much thornier problem. Violence broke out among Jews and Arabs as the British Government hesitated, unable to decide what to do. Finally, with local populations arming for battle, they decided to abdicate, referring the dispute to the United Nations. The UN-proposed “two-state solution,” with contiguous Arab territory, was rejected by the Arabs, and civil war ensued. —RML
Churchill, 19 May 1941 (Cabinet Papers 120/10): “I have for some time past thought that we should try to raise Ibn Saud to a general overlordship of Iraq and Transjordania. I do not know whether this is possible, but the Islamic authorities should report. He is certainly the greatest living Arab, and has given long and solid proofs of fidelity. As the custodian of Mecca, his authority might well be acceptable. There would, therefore, be perhaps an Arab King in Syria and an Arab Caliph or other suitable title over Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Transjordania.
“At the time of giving these very great advancements to the Arab world, we should, of course, negotiate with Ibn Saud a satisfactory settlement of the Jewish problem; and, if such a basis were reached, it is possible that the Jewish State of Western Palestine might form an independent Federal Unit in the Arab Caliphate. This Jewish State would have to have the fullest rights of self government, including immigration and development, and provision for expansion in the desert regions to the southward, which they would gradually reclaim.”
This may be Churchill’s first mention of a Jewish State rather than a Homeland, although he had rejected the 1937 Peel Commission, the original “two-state solution.” The area of “Western Palestine,” in Churchill’s view, extended from the River Jordan to the Sea. He always favored offering the Jews the Negev, arguing that they had a unique ability to “make the desert bloom.”
30 January: British government announces that in 1946 Jewish terrorists killed forty-five British soldiers, twenty-nine British police and 137 civilians, Jewish, Arab and British.
Churchill 31 January, HofC: “The idea that general reprisals upon the civil population…would be consonant with our whole outlook upon the world [is] one which should never be accepted in any way. We have, therefore, very great difficulties in conducting squalid warfare with terrorists…. [E]very effort should be made to avoid getting into warfare with terrorists; and if a warfare with terrorists has broken out, every effort should be made—I exclude no reasonable proposal—to bring it to an end….
“All my Hon. Friends on this side of the House do not agree with the views which I have held for so many years about the Zionist cause. But promises were made far beyond those to which responsible Governments should have committed themselves. What has been the performance? The performance has been a vacuum, a gaping void, a senseless, dumb abyss—nothing.
***
“We are told that there are a handful of terrorists on one side and 100,000 British troops on the other. How much does it cost?… Between £30 and £40 million a year—which is being poured out and which would do much to help to find employment in these islands, or could be allowed to fructify in the pockets of the people….How much longer are [British troops] to stay there? And stay for what? In order that on a threat to kill hostages we show ourselves unable to execute a sentence duly pronounced by a competent tribunal. It is not good enough. I never saw anything less recompensive for the efforts now employed than what is going on in Palestine….
I earnestly trust that the Government will, if they have to fight this squalid war, make perfectly certain that the willpower of the British State is not conquered by brigands and bandits, and that unless we are to have the aid of the United States, they will at the earliest possible moment, give due notice to divest us of a responsibility which we are failing to discharge and which in the process is covering us with blood and shame.”
31 January (announced mid-February): Labour Government announces that Britain will return the West Palestine Mandate to the United Nations and leave as soon as possible.
21 July: President Harry Truman Diary: “’The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons, as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.”
3 September: United Nations Special Committee on Palestine delivers new partition plan dividing West Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab States.
October: Azzam Pasha, General Secretary of the Arab League: “Personally I hope the Jews do not force us into this war because it will be a war of elimination and it will be a dangerous massacre which history will record similarly to the Mongol massacre or the wars of the Crusades…. We will sweep them into the sea.”
29 November: United Nations General Assembly votes 33-13 with ten abstentions to adopt non-binding resolution recommending partition of West Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, and an internationally administered city of Jerusalem.
30 November: Jewish Agency accepts UN partition plan. Arab League unanimously rejects UN plan.
6 December: United States begins arms embargo to Middle East, primarily affecting Jews, since Arab states have arms agreements with Britain.
12 December: Jewish Paramilitary force Haganah mobilizes.
13 December: Irgun militants bomb Arab shoppers at Damascus Gate, killing six and wounding forty.
15 December: Arabs blow up water pipes supplying Jerusalem, subsequently repaired by the British. Jewish contingency plan aims to prevent reoccurrence.
30 December: Irgun bombs crowd of Arab job-seekers at Haifa, killing six and wounding forty-two.
31 December: Arabs block bus route into and commence siege of the Jewish Quarter, Jerusalem. Jews smuggle men and supplies in British convoy.
4 January: Haganah demolishes Semiramis Hotel in Katamon, mistaking it for Arab militant headquarters, killing 26 including a Spanish diplomat.
7 January: Irgun uses stolen British armored car to bomb Arab crowd at Jaffa Gate, killing seventeen.
9 January: Two hundred volunteers of Arab Liberation Army (ALA) cross into West Palestine from Syria, attacking Jewish settlements of Dan and Kfar Szold in upper Galilee. British armored cars drive Arabs off.
12 January: Britain confirms alliances with and military aid for Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. Baghdad Arabs riot in protest; Anglo-Iraqi agreement subsequently cancelled.
14 January: Abdel Kader el-Husseini leads 1000 Arabs attacking Jewish Etzion Bloc, Jerusalem, defended by 280 settlers and a reserve company of Haganah strike force Palmalch.
21 January: Syrian trucks carrying 700 ALA fighters cross into West Palestine.
7 February: Britain supports Jordan’s annexation of West Bank in West Palestine.
14 February: Moshe Kelman leads Haganah raid on Arab village Sasa, near Lebanon, blowing up thirty-five houses and killing 60 before retreating.
16 February: UN Palestine Commission reports to Security Council that Arabs in and out of West Palestine are defying General Assembly settlement plans.
1 March: Jerusalem British Officers Club bombed, fourteen killed, highest British daily death toll to date.
12 March: Jewish Agency bombed by Arab using car from American Consulate. Jews ambush and destroy Arab arms convoy from Lebanon, one of 11, of which nine were destroyed.
31 March: Forty-truck convoy from Tel Aviv ambushed and 16 trucks destroyed by Arabs besieging Jerusalem.
1-20 April: Jewish Operation Nachshon attempts to open Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, failing when Arabs take the heights above Bab el-Wad.
22 April-17 May: Operation Ben-Ami seizes Arab strongholds around Acre and links with Jewish settlements in Western Galilee. Acre falls on 17 May.
26-27 April: Jewish forces begin to consolidate Jewish areas of Jerusalem.
1 May: RAF Spitfires strafe Irgun positions in Jaffa; Britain lands troops and tanks at Jaffa. Despite Irgun losses, British forces ultimately admit defeat.
4 May: First clash between Jewish and Arab regulars at Etzion Bloc; Arabs withdraw with 42 casualties.
8 May: Arab League declares truce in Jerusalem through 14 May.
12 May: Arabs shut off water supply to Jerusalem.
13 May: First Jewish offensive against Lebanese army occupies Kalkieh army camp. Lebanese counterattack forces Jews to retreat with 120 casualties.
13-15 May: Jewish secure Jerusalem up to the old city as British withdraw. Haganah seizes Jaffa.
14 May: Last day of the British Mandate in West Palestine. David Ben-Gurion of Jewish Agency issues Declaration of Independence establishing the State of Israel. Jewish forces occupy former British positions. Arabs drive Jews from Zion Gate, blockading Jewish Quarter.
***
Churchill, 14 May, London: “When I became convinced that all chance of making and enforcing a settlement by partition was lost, I advised the Government in the House of Commons on August 1, 1946, nearly two years ago, to return the Mandate to the United Nations Organisation and quit the country at the earliest moment. More than another year passed before this decision was taken by His Majesty’s Government, and during all this period the situation grew steadily worse….
“The renunciation of our responsibilities was in any case a most grave decision. I never conceived it possible that the Government, in carrying it out, would not show the strictest impartiality between Jew and Arab. Instead of this it appears that the Arab Legion, led by forty British officers, armed with British equipment and financed by a British subsidy, has fired on the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem…. This is a violation of the impartiality which at the least we were bound to observe.”
15 May: Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Syria invade Israel.
16 May: Arabs attack Jerusalem Jewish Quarter from all sides; Jews hold out.
20 May: Azzam Pasha: “We are fighting for an Arab Palestine. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate, they will have complete autonomy.”
22 May: Arabs capture one-third of the remaining area of the Jewish Quarter.
23 May: U.S. Consul General Thomas C. Wasson assassinated in Jerusalem.
24 May: Arab Legion unsuccessfully attempts to drive Israel forces from Hospice of Notre Dame of France, a turning point in the battle of Jerusalem, defining the postwar border between Israel and Jordan.
***
28 May: Israel armed forces (Haganah, Palmach, Irgun, Stern Gang) become the Israel Defense Force (IDF). British officers in the Arab Legion withdraw from its attack on Jerusalem.
Churchill, 28 May, Perth, Scotland: “’It would be amazing, in any Government but this, that the danger of allowing British officers to be compromised in this way was not seen beforehand.”
29 May: Egyptians converging on Ashdod via coastal roads turned back by Israel Defense Force.
30 May: Arab Legion driven from village of Latron.
2 June: Egyptian tanks and infantry driven off by IDF from attack on Kibbutz Negba. “Chips” Channon writes: “I think that the Party resents both [Churchill’s] unimpaired criticism of Munich, recently published, and his alleged prop-Zionist leanings.”
6 June: Syrians repulsed after attempting to cross to West Bank at Mishmar Hayarden.
Churchill, 7 June, London: “I do not think events would have taken this particular course if they had not been wrested from my hands in the moment of our general victory. Then there was a chance of a good solution, now I can do no more.”
10 June: Arab Legion counterattack loots village of Gezer. First Tel Aviv convoy arrives in Jerusalem.
20 July: Second truce declared.
***
Churchill, 28 September, Aix-en-Provence, France: “I could put the case for the Jews in ten minutes. We have treated them shamefully. I will never forgive the Irgun terrorists. But we should never have stopped immigration before the war.”
Churchill, 1 October, Lladudno, Wales: “The Socialists, more than any other Party in the State, have broken their word in Palestine and by indescribable mismanagement have brought us into widespread hatred and disrepute there and in many parts of the world.”
Churchill, 10 December (HofC): “[In 1945] we had the power and the chance to impose and enforce—I must use that word—a partition settlement in Palestine by which the Jews would have secured the National Home which has been the declared object and policy of every British Government for a quarter of a century. Such a scheme would, of course, have taken into account the legitimate rights of the Arabs, who, I may say, had not been ill used in the settlements made in Iraq, in Transjordania and in regard to Syria.
“I always had in my mind the hope that the whole question of the Middle East might have been settled on the largest scale on the morrow of victory and that an Arab Confederation, comprising three or four Arab States—Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Transjordania, Syria and the Lebanon—however grouped, possibly united amongst themselves, and one Jewish State—might have been set up, which would have given peace and unity throughout the whole vast scene of the Middle East….
***
“[A] settlement of the Palestine question on the basis of partition would certainly have been attempted, in the closest possible association with the United States and in personal contact with the President, by any Government of which I had been the head. But all this opportunity was lost.
“The Socialist Party gained votes at the Election by promising greater concessions and advantages to the Jews than anything to which Britain had formerly been committed. Then, when they came into office, they turned their backs on it all, raising bitter feelings of disappointment and anger. Their whole treatment of the Palestine problem has been a lamentable tale of prejudice and incapacity….
“We now have a new situation. The Palestine problem is not a party question. Both parties are divided upon it. Both parties have their own views about it and it is natural, at any rate while we are in opposition, that there should be a certain latitude of opinion upon it. But whatever party we belong to, and whatever view we take, we must surely face the facts. The Jews have driven the Arabs out of a larger area than was contemplated in our partition schemes.”
25th. Israel national assembly elections. Ben-Gurion’s center-left Mapai wins plurality.
Churchill, 26th (HofC): “De facto recognition has never depended upon an exact definition of territorial frontiers. There are half a dozen countries in Europe which are recognized today whose territorial frontiers are not finally settled….
“[T]he coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand two thousand or even three thousand years….
“[W]e ought not to grudge a fair share of the deserts of the Negev to the Jews…. [They] have a way of making the desert bloom. Those who have seen it can testify. The Arabs, with all their dignity and grace, are primarily the children of the desert [and] the desert lands do not become reclaimed while the Arab control is complete over them…. Hon. Gentlemen do not seem to realize that Jew and Arab have always been there. They say, ‘How would you like to have a piece of Scotland taken away and to have a lot of other races put in?’ The two races have always been there, and I trust always will be there, happily….
“The idea that only a limited number of people can live in a country is a profound illusion; it all depends on their co-operative and inventive power. There are more people today living twenty storeys above the ground in New York than were living on the ground in New York 100 years ago. There is no limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly and vigorously applied under conditions of peace and justice.”
31st. Great Britain recognizes Israel.
24 February: Armistice signed between Israel and Egypt retaining the prewar border, except that Egypt gains control of the Gaza Strip.
8 March: Ben-Gurion forms first (coalition) government of Israel.
23 March: Armistice signed between Israel and Lebanon. Israeli forces withdraw from thirteen occupied Lebanese villages.
Churchill, 29 March, New York City: “Remember, I was for a free and independent Israel all through the dark years when many of my most distinguished countrymen took a different view. So do not imagine for a moment that I have the slightest idea of deserting you now in your hour of glory.”
3 April: Armistice signed between Israel and Jordan with Jordan retaining East Jerusalem and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).
11 May: United Nations General Assembly admits Israel to membership.
11 June: First UN-brokered truce. Jerusalem resupplied. The truce would last less than a month.
10-12 July: Egypt breaks truce; Egyptian light tanks and infantry pushed back from Negba.
20 June: Second armistice between Israel and Jordan.
20 July: Second UN truce declared.
At the end of 1949, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Six months later, the Knesset passed the Law of Return, granting all Jews the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and to obtain citizenship.
Churchill, 30 June 1951 (HofC): “The decline of our influence and power throughout the Middle East is due to several causes. First, the loss of our Oriental Empire and of the well-placed and formidable Imperial armies in India. Second, it is due to the impression which has become widespread throughout the Middle East that Great Britain has only to be pressed sufficiently by one method or another to abandon her rights or interests in that, or indeed any other, part of the world. A third cause is the mistakes and miscalculations in policy which led to the winding up of our affairs in Palestine in such a way as to earn almost in equal degree the hatred of the Arabs and the Jews.”
Richard M. Langworth, CBE, is the author or editor of 10 books on Winston Churchill, including the quotations book Churchill by Himself, an expanded edition of which will appear in 2024.
