Reviewing the Roots of the Middle East Conflict
BOOK REVIEW: PALESTINE 1936: THE GREAT REVOLT AND THE ROOTS OF THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT
By Oren Kessler / Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Reviewed by I. S. Berry
The Reviewer — I.S. Berry spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA, serving in wartime Baghdad and elsewhere. She has lived and worked throughout Europe and the Middle East, including two years in Bahrain during the Arab Spring. She is the author of the spy novel The Peacock and the Sparrow which was very favorably reviewed in The Cipher Brief.
REVIEW — What is the world’s obligation to a group that’s everywhere a minority, has nowhere to call home, and faces persecution and possible extinction? Does such a plight compel the creation of a homeland—on another group’s territory? Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict raises these profound questions. Oren Kessler’s exacting and evenhanded debut granularly examines for the first time the conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine from 1936 to 1939—otherwise known as The Great Revolt—and convincingly makes the case that it formed the foundation and blueprint for a century-old dispute that continues today. As well, Kessler illuminates the world’s role in the prewar conflict: its foibles, biases, pragmatism, and, ultimately, its failures.
The seeds of modern discord between Jews and Arabs largely began in the 1930s, Kessler posits. As the Hitler-Mussolini-fascism Cerberus reared its triple heads in Europe, Britain grappled with its Mandate in Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration, clumsily trying to balance a theoretical homeland for Jews, a functional polity for Arabs, and a strategic imperial interest. The world had largely closed its doors to Jews, prompting mass immigration to Palestine; once settled, Jews bought land from Arabs at a breakneck pace. Zionism and anti-Semitism were spreading, the latter outpacing the former. Enter Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion (later, president and prime minister of Israel, respectively), and Arab leaders Musa Alami and grand mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini. From this tinderbox came an explosion: The Great Revolt, a lengthy Arab campaign to push Jews and the British out of Palestine.
Palestine from 1936 to 1939 was, as Kessler aptly terms it, a “story of two nationalisms, and of the first major explosion between them.” In meticulously researched detail, Kessler examines the Arabs’ uneven and sometimes self-defeating attempts to resist Jewish incursions and settlement in Palestine (which, if one plunges deeply enough into history, once belonged to Jews), and the concerted and determined Jewish response, which eventually produced an effective military, self-sufficient economy, and functional civil society. It was a paradox: The Great Revolt left Arabs fragmented and impoverished and accelerated Jewish independence.
Indeed, we know how the story ends. Arab efforts to dominate the land were unsuccessful: factional infighting; uncompromising leaders like the grand mufti; a floundering economy; and seeming indifference to the Jews’ humanitarian plight weakened international support and Arabs’ own warfighting efforts. Kessler’s account of The Great Revolt reveals a movement determined to eject Brits and Jews at any cost: Arabs, for example, boycotted diplomatic negotiations and Jewish commerce even when it stunted their own influence and economy. When Britain, in a bid for Arab support against Axis powers, issued the 1939 MacDonald White Paper—abandoning the Balfour Declaration, offering an independent Palestine, limiting Jewish immigration, and restricting land sales—the grand mufti still demanded more. In the end, the world had no more to give, and Jews had proven they were capable of managing their own state, even making it thrive, and were more than willing to use force in the process.
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But the end of The Great Revolt, Kessler argues, was really just the beginning. In many ways, the “first major explosion” set the tone, tactics, and stakes of the Arab-Jewish conflict for years to come. A battle for land spawned a battle for religion, culture, and political dominance; territorial disputes bled into anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism. Tactically, Arabs developed core strategies: asymmetric warfare, intransigence, boycotts, protests. Jews honed their lobbying, international engagement, and military prowess (aided by British training and equipment), and created segregated, self-sufficient institutions. Leaders on both sides adopted nonconciliatory, hard-edged positions and rhetoric. The modern Israeli inclination to extralegal, sometimes brutal, law enforcement measures (also adopted from the British) began during The Great Revolt. The idea of a two-state solution originated with the 1936-7 Peel Commission.
In describing one of the most emotionally charged conflicts of the twentieth century, Kessler does an admirable job of remaining unbiased, portraying both sides with empathy, dispassion, and equanimity, occasionally to inaccurate effect—Joseph Kennedy Sr. is described not as an anti-Semite but a “Judeophobe.” Kessler describes leaders like Alami with compassion and grace; painting whole, complex, uncaricatured portraits; recognizing companionship and solidarity across the Arab-Jewish divide (Israeli ambassador Eliahu Elath, Kessler notes, appreciated Alami’s respect “for the dignity of other people, including his opponents.”). The reader is left torn between sides, unsure which has the greater claim, respectful of both.
Still, the most interesting aspect of the book is not its faithful, objective recounting of events; it’s the questions raised. When does land ownership begin? Was a two-state solution ever viable? Was any solution viable? Arabs maintained they merely wanted to limit Jewish immigration—but objected to a Jewish presence even when numbers were low. (“…when the high commissioner moved to form an Arab Agency [in the 1920s] as a counterpart to the Jewish one, the Arabs resisted… They had never recognized the Jewish Agency…”) Arabs protested land sales even while selling their own land. A two-state solution—with or without population transfers—proved unpalatable, as did the MacDonald White Paper. For the Jews’ part, Ben Gurion became convinced “that the people of Israel could no longer exist without the Land of Israel or outside it.” He dreamt of “Jewish autonomy on every front: political, cultural, and economic.” So, the reader is prompted to wonder, just what solution would have worked?
And by the end of Palestine 1936, the most important question arises. What should the rest of the world have done? At the peak of Nazi atrocities, the world still refused to open its doors to Jews. Arabs had increasingly aligned with fascists. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had dilly-dallied with Hitler; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was slow to get involved. The Arab-Jewish conflict had become the world’s problem, but the world had failed to find a solution. Are there circumstances, readers are prompted to wonder, when an “outside” minority is justified in overtaking the majority or, more drastically, the state? It’s a question as relevant today—when the Arab-Jewish conflict still simmers, and large numbers of immigrants seek a better life in America—as it was in 1936. Kessler’s work provides a thoughtful lens for our answers.
Palestine 1936 earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats
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