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Articles
Timeline: Winston Churchill and the Road to Israel, 1947-49
- By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
- | December 5, 2023
- Category: Churchill and the East Explore
Part 1 of this Timeline for West Palestine and Israel, with Winston Churchill’s comments juxtaposed, covered 1945-46. 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
Retrospective: 1941
1947 Timeline
January-July
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, House of Commons (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.”1
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.”2
August-December
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.
1948 Timeline
January-March
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.
April-June
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.”3
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.”4
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.”5
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.”6
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.”7
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.”8
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.”9
1949 Timeline
January
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.”10
31st. Great Britain recognizes Israel.
February-July
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.”11
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.
Afterword
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.”12
***
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), Europe Unite: Speeches 1947 and 1948 (London: Cassell, 1950), 2-3, 7-9. £30-40 million in 1947 equates to £1.2-1.7 billion in today’s money.
2 Quoted by Martin Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 265-66. Sir Martin added: “Truman’s cruel comments were not limited to Jews. ‘Put an underdog on top,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.’”
3 WSC, drafted but not released, in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8, Never Despair 1945-1965 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 411.
4 Ibid.
5 Robert Rhodes James, ed., “Chips”: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), 426. A Chamberlain loyalist, Channon never got over WSC’s denunciations of the Munich agreement.
6 WSC to Henry Mond, Lord Melchett, in Gilbert, Churchill and the Jews, 269-70.
7 Lord Boothby, My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow (London: Hutchinson, 1962), 211-12. Martin Gilbert writes: “Churchill went on to say that he had always been reluctant to meet Weizmann during the war because he found him so fascinating that he would spend too much of his time talking to him. ‘Weizmann gives a very different reason,’ Boothby said. ‘What is that?’ Churchill asked. ‘Last time I saw him,’ Boothby replied, ‘he said that the reason you would not see him was because, for you, he was Conscience.’ Churchill was silent.”
8 WSC, Europe Unite, 423.
9 Ibid., 498-99.
10 WSC, In the Balance: Speeches 1949 and 1950 (London: Cassell, 1951), 6-7, 10-11, 14.
11 Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta Books, 2016), 169.
12 Ibid., 439.
Further reading: Palestine through 1946
Richard M. Langworth: “Timeline: Winston Churchill on Palestine, 1945-46,” 2023.
David Fromkin, “The Modern Middle East: How Much is Churchill’s Fault? 2023.
William John Shepherd, “A New Account of Churchill Remaking the Middle East, by Brad Faught,” 2023.
Ronald I. Cohen, “Churchill, the Jews and Israel,” 2016.
Erica L. Chenoweth, “British Miscalculations and the Rise of Muslim Fanaticism, by Isaiah Friedman,” 2016.
Audio
Sara Reguer: “A Conservation on Churchill and the Middle East, 1919-1922,” 2021.