Final Timeline Palestine Flashcards
Late 1930s(Palestine)
- Chaim Weizmann’s Meeting with Firoz Khan Noon
- Trying to convince the British that if they lose the sympathy of the Muslims countries, “the Jews can supply a million men to fight for England…”
- This meeting marks an intersection of overlapping networks: Zionist, Indian Muslim, Secular Muslim, Arab networks
- According to British, they realized that losing Muslim alliances would not actually be THAT much of a loss
- See pp for quote (10/13 pp I think)
- Overall, WWII was a quiet time in Palestine
Aug. 1937(Palestine)
- General officer commanding British forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan(arab awakening)
Continuation of Arab revolts. Very violent
Significance/connection(s): legalized lawlessness → advocated using military tribunals. This attracted Indian anger towards the British response to the Arab Uprising.
“Dealing with the rebellion was a very unsatisfactory and intangible business”
1943(Palestine)
- Churchill’s cabinet committee on Palestine
- Wartime discussion of Palestine partition
- Palestine Committee proposed new partition of Palestine
- Implication that partition could be like a surgical procedure → clean and fast
- Amery (sec. of state of India) was a key committee member → in favor of Zionist posistion
1943-44(Palestine)
- Palestine Partition debate → conversation of the Palestine Partition
Significance/connection(s): role of British fears of Indian-Muslim reactions, orientalism, imperial fear
*Problem inherent in partition: creating minatory populations in new states
Dividing populations inherit in the concept of partition, few to no cases that can ever done clearly, possible international implicaitons
Palestine: new Jewish and Arab minorities
India: new Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim minorities
Nov 1944(Palestine)
- Loyd Moyne assassinated by Zionist gang
- Assasination angered Churchill because they were close
- Was the end of any remaining British support
Significance/connection(s): end to any serious British consideration of partition/support for Zionism in Palestine
*A key example of an individual impacting history
End of WW2(Palestine)
- Increasing Zionist anti-colonial violence
- British were not going to return to a pro-Zionist posistion
- The trouble in Palestine over the last 26 years is the result of strategie ambiguity
- Intense dynamic; British ended up with a huge military presence in Palestine and spent lots of political will to be there
- Expensive politically, militarily, etc.
- Felt they had to deploy troops to Palestine to maintain control (British side lots of people wanted their troops to come home)/ Expensive and unwanted military problem
- Feb 1947 – British made clear that it was impossible for them to hold onto the mandate and handed the problem over to the United Nations → resulted in UNSCOP
Significance/connection(s): British imperial decline, US pressure for Britain to decolonize → increasing American sympathy for Zionists, Disgusted with lack of British support (larger historical trend)
1945(Palestine)
- Anglo-American Committee (AAC)
- The purpose of the AAC was to examine the situation of Jewish refugees in Europe
- Could Palestine be an area of refuge?
- Buying time to put off pressure to make a decision (temporarily took some pressure of the British shoulders
- The British hoped the AAC would protect British interests
- Also a way for the British government to pass off responsibility for Palestine on to the US
Benefits for the British:
- Temporary breathing room
- US sympathy for Britain’s difficult posistion in Palestine
Results:
- AAC recommended that 100,000 Jewish refugees go to Palestine → enraged the British
- The British rejected the plan out of fear of Arab reaction
- Wavell called the AAC report disastrous
*The ACC was not as helpful as the British had hoped → huge understatement
Significance/connection(s):
British fatigue
Use of commission to preserve imperial interests
Buying time, covering up messiness
Multiple pressures to decolonize
1946(Palestine)
- King David Hotel bombing
- Increasing anti-British terrorist attacks
- This was an attack in Britain on a symbolically important building
Significance/connection(s): Growing colonial resistance
Feb 1947(Palestine)
- British requested that the UN solve the Palestine problem
- British made clear that it was impossible for them to hold onto the mandate and handed the problem over to the United Nations
Significance/connection(s): resulted in UNSCOP
Summer 1947(Palestine)
- UN Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP)
The majority proposed another partition plan, the minority advocated for a federal state - Genreral Commission made UNSCOP to investigate the cause of the conflict in Palestine, and, if possible, devise a solution.
- Weizmann said “There is a great similarity… between the Indian problem and our problem here [in Palestine]…”
- “A Palestinian Pakistan would be a rational way out.”
India as a model - Weizmann saw partition as a path to achieving Zionist goals
Significance/connection(s): analogies between Palestine and South Asia
Nov 1947(Palestine)
- UN General Assembly approves the UNSCOP plan
May 14, 1948(Palestine)
- Israeli declaration of independence
May 15, 1948(Palestine)
- First Israeli War
- When the British Mandate of Palestine expired on 14 May 1948, and with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the surrounding Arab states—Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq and Syria—invaded what had just ceased to be Mandatory Palestine, and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements.[9] The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
