The Two-State Two-Step -- Israel’s Century-Long Dance Marathon, or Why Joe Biden Thinks He Can Succeed Where Winston Churchill Failed -- PART II

Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with Heinrich Himmler

Author’s Note: This week’s article presented in two parts. Part II is presented today in lieu of an article next week.

1936 to 1944:  The Peel Commission and Neville Chamberlain Tries His Hand

By 1936, the loss of control by the European powers of the Middle East was accelerating.  In Syria, a general strike caused the French to begin negotiations to leave that country.  Similar talks were occurring in Egypt.  It was inevitable that this renewed conflict would reach Palestine.  The spark was the murder of a recent Jewish immigrant from Greece.  Violence quickly escalated, and became more organized.  The Grand Mufti created the Arab Higher Committee, which united Arabs under his leadership.  The Committee called for a general strike.

The reaction of Jewish leaders to the violence was, as Kessler termed it, one of patience and forbearance, or havlagah.  Jews would act solely in self-defense, in the hopes that the British would see them as a more reliable alternative to the Arabs.

The riots became a general uprising against the British lasting not days, as before, but months.  It ended when the Mufti, as a result of the economic hardship engendered by the general strike, appealed to the three Arab kings neighboring Palestine to call for an end to the strike and violence.  The British seized upon this ceasefire, but by recognizing the involvement of other Arab countries, they inadvertently converted what had been a local issue into a pan-Arab one.

As a result of the uprising, the British appointed a six-man commission, headed by William Robert Wellesley Peel, 1st Earl Peel, to determine a solution to the unrest in Palestine.  To maintain the status quo, the British Colonial office placed a further limited quota on Jewish immigration.  However, even this small quota was unsatisfactory to the Grand Mufti, who insisted upon a complete cessation before he would even participate in the talks.

The Peel Commission remained in Palestine for nearly two months, but for almost the entirety of that period, it did not hear from a single Arab witness.  Notwithstanding the objections of the Arab kings and the Nashashibi clan, the Mufti continued his boycott unless his precondition was met.  Even Ibn Saud considered the boycott to be “folly,” preventing a workable solution.  Only at the last minute did the Mufti relent, but his position, as articulated by one Arab leader, remained the same: “[T]he Arabs could neither forsake ‘one meter’ nor the country absorb one more immigrant.”  Even a so-called moderate, Musa al-Alami, who served in the British administration, said: "I would prefer that the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years, until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own."

Kessler writes:

Foreign Secretary Eden commented that even if the Arab claims were reasonable, their “hectoring and threatening” tone left commissioners cold. Wauchope called the testimonies self-defeating and “crude”; he lamented that until recently many prominent Arabs had been moderate; now, led by the mufti, extremism was the rule.

The Peel Commission issued its report on July 7, 1937.  It called for Palestine to be partitioned between the Jews and the Arabs, with the Zionist receiving 20% of the territory (or 5% of the original Palestine under the Mandate), albeit more of the fertile land.  It also called for the transfer of populations to render the two states to be more homogeneous.  “Any attempt to combine ‘virtually two civilizations’ into one system was bound to face hurdles,” according to the commission.

The Zionists were disappointed, but, at a minimum, saw the Peel plan as a basis for further negotiation.  Certain Arabs agreed.  Abdullah informed the British that he approved of the plan.  Numerous Arab moderates, including Ragheb Nashashibi, the long-time mayor of Jerusalem, as well as the mayors of other cities, also endorsed the plan.  However, one figure remained unmovable: the Grand Mufti.  In the face of his opposition, the moderate voices quickly retreated, in large part because several of their supporters were murdered by followers of the Mufti.

The disclosure of the Peel report set off a new round of rebellion, one that was even deadlier than prior ones, and one which lasted for years.  Ultimately, the British, with significant help from the nascent Haganah, brutally put it down.  Five-hundred Jews were killed, two hundred and fifty British soldiers, and at least five thousand Arabs, many at the hands of fellow Arabs.  Nevertheless, as World War II approached, the British recognized that it would need its resources elsewhere.  It dispatched to Palestine a new commission, under John Woodhead.  Ostensibly tasked with determining how to implement the Peel Commission’s recommendations, the Woodhead Commission quickly came to be seen as undoing it, with critics labeling it the “Re-Peel Commission.”  The Woodhead report determined that the problems implementing partition were insurmountable and that it could not recommend a feasible partition plan.

The Woodhead report led to another summit, attended by leaders of both the Jewish and Arab sides, although the Arabs refused to deal directly with the Jews, instead meeting separately with Malcom McDonald, the new Colonial Secretary.  Indeed, when McDonald informed the Mufti’s representative that he would relay his remarks to the Jewish delegation, the latter responded: “As a matter of fact, we would like to ignore the existence of the other Conference as far as possible.” As Neville Chamberlain wrote to his sisters, the Arab position was “so completely intransigent & shows such an extremist spirit that I doubt the possibility of an agreement. In that case we shall just have to impose the settlement we have worked out ourselves.”

Nevertheless, the conference was a disaster for the Zionists.  The exigencies of the coming war were too great.  As MacDonald cynically reasoned, the Jews would ally themselves against Hitler no matter what the outcome (although leaders of the so-called Stern Gang, an extreme off shoot of Irgun, would be so disgusted with the British that they would approach the Nazis).  Conversely, the Arabs needed to be persuaded.

The British issued a new white paper, the MacDonald White Paper, which called for a single Palestinian state within ten years, ensured a permanent Arab majority by placing severe limitations on Jewish immigration for a period of five years, whereafter any immigration would be conditioned upon Arab approval, and placed similar restrictions upon Jewish land purchases.

The Peel Report was dead, replaced by the MacDonald White Paper.  According to Benny Morris, author of 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israel War, “The Palestinian Street was overjoyed.”  The editor of Palestine’s leading newspaper wrote: “Who among the Arabs ever dreamt to get so much?  Immigration finished. Sale of lands finished. Dangers of Jewish predominance and such nonsense finished.”

Remarkably, however, the Grand Mufti rejected even this proposal, managing, in Morris’s words, “to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory.”  Instead, he demanded a complete cessation of further Jewish immigration and the immediate establishment of an Arab state. 

Once again, the old pattern was repeated.  The British announced a policy.  The Arabs rejected it outright and resorted to violence.  That violence caused the British to reconsider and demand more concessions from the Zionists. The adjustment to policy was not enough to satisfy the Arabs.  Here, however, it was not even a two-state solution that was a non-starter.  Even a one-state solution with a significant Jewish minority was unacceptable.

1948:  The United Nations Tries Its Hand

Over the next few years, as World War II consumed the attention of Great Britain, matters in Palestine remained on a low simmer.  Twenty-thousand Palestinian Jews fought with the British Army, acquiring military knowledge that would prove essential in the wars to come.  By contrast, most Arabs supported the Nazis, with the Grand Mufti spending the war in Berlin.

As the war wound down, new players on different sides entered discussions over the future of Palestine.  In November 1944, seven Arab nations met in Cairo and formed what would become known as the Arab League.  The League would become influential in determining the position of Arabs in Palestine.       Britain, seeking to achieve a solution as it was preparing to leave Palestine, inevitably created yet another commission. This commission also had a new player, the United States, and it was dubbed the Anglo-American Commission, or AAC.  The AAC was to examine conditions, not just in Palestine, but also in Europe – specifically, the state of the Holocaust survivors who needed to be reintegrated back into society.  All of this occurred as the landscape was changing in Palestine: the main challenge to British rule no longer came from the Arabs, but from disaffected Zionists, including, most prominently, successors to Jabotinsky’s Revisionist group, led by Menachim Begin. This challenge accelerated Britain’s timetable to be rid of Palestine, as they now deployed 100,000 troops in that country – more than three times the number necessary to quell the 1936 revolt.

The AAC called for a United Nations trusteeship, an increase in Jewish immigration, and later independence for Palestine within a unitary or binational framework.  This recommendation satisfied no one.  The AAC report was followed by the Morrison-Grady Plan, Britain’s final attempt at a compromise, which called for Palestine to be subdivided into four autonomous “cantons,” under British or UN supervision, with independence in the future.  When this final plan gained no traction, the British, beset by Jewish terrorism, handed the problem over to the UN, in February 1947.

Two months later, the UN established the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine or UNSCOP, to examine the Palestinian question.  Twelve countries were asked to send representatives, none of which was from the great powers.  UNSCOP spent five weeks in Palestine, speaking with British and Jewish representatives.  Once again, the Arabs announced their boycott of the Committee, calling for a general strike when it arrived and threatening any Arab who spoke with it.  Consequently, the Committee was able to speak only with Arab representatives from neighboring countries.  Among those was King Abdullah of Transjordan, who privately supported a two-state solution, but was more equivocal publicly.

By the end of August, UNSCOP reached its determination.  The majority of the committee proposed a partition that gave the Jews over sixty percent of the land (although most of it desert), with international control of Jerusalem and the holy places.  A minority report recommended a unitary state, with Jewish autonomous zones, and a limitation on immigration that would ensure that the country always maintained an Arab majority.  The Arabs rejected both recommendations.

The UN took up the Committee’s recommendations.  The map was altered to take some territory allotted to the Jewish state and transfer it to the Arab.  As revised, the proposal was put up for a vote by the General Assembly, which required two-thirds for passage.  The Arab states, believing that there was no chance of the proposal’s reaching the requisite majority, made little to no effort to affect the vote until the very end.  The resolution passed on November 1, 1947.

The Arab response to the UN’s two-state solution was unanimous.  Even before the passage of the revolution, the Arab League was calling upon Palestinians to fight partition “without mercy,” and further stated that they would be required to take “decisive action.”  According to Morris, the leaders of the League uniformly despised Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti, and opposed his leadership of a Palestinian state, but determined that the “Arab Street” would require them to oppose partition by force.  Moreover, many of the countries of the League, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Transjordan, had their own territorial interests in Palestine.  The principal issue that divided them was whether they should invade Palestine before the British withdrew or wait until after they did, leaving the initial fighting solely to Arab Palestinians.  Ultimately, they opted for the latter option, a decision that may have been critical to the outcome of the war. 

The war of 1948 proved to be a disaster for the Arabs.  Israel expanded the territory allotted to it under the UN resolution, and would have expanded it even further if the UN and individual countries had not tempered Israeli military successes by imposing ceasefires, another pattern that would be repeated in the future, most recently by Joe Biden.  The only Arab military force to have fought credibly was the British-trained Arab Legion of King Abdullah who, having achieved his territorial objectives on the West Bank, declined to engage the Israelis further.

Although the Grand Mufti established an All-Palestine government under the auspices of the Egyptians, the two-state solution was dead.  That part of Palestine that remained in Arab hands was ruled by members of the Arab League, primarily Jordan and Egypt.  It was only after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza, that the concept was seriously revived.  Nevertheless, the Grand Mufti remained resolute in his position that Israel should be returned to the Arabs, and the Jewish population reduced to its pre-Balfour levels.  Morris writes that, in 1974, before the Mufti’s death, he was quoted:

"There is no room for peaceful coexistence with our enemies. The only solution is the liquidation of the foreign conquest in Palestine within its natural frontiers and the establishment of a national Palestinian state on the basis of its Muslim and Christian inhabitants and its Jewish [inhabitants] who lived here before the British conquest in 1917 and their descendants."

For the most part, 1948 followed the pattern of prior attempts to fashion a two-state solution.  The West proposed a compromise, the Zionists accepted it, the Arabs rejected it, and they resorted to violence.  There, the similarities ended.  The West made no further attempt to keep the peace or refashion a compromise, leaving the parties to their own devices.  Notably, the result was different.

October 7^th and Beyond:  Biden and Blinken Roll Out the British Playbook

Viewed against the backdrop of the history of this region, the Hamas attack of October 7th differs from prior attacks more in its scale than in its depravity.  It is part of a pattern, or “cycle of violence,” that has been repeated in parts of three centuries.  It was intended to influence subsequent policy in the West, like Arab violence in the past, as much as it was intended to achieve any military objective.

The position of Hamas with respect to the existence of a Jewish state, originally set forth in its official Covenant, mirrors that of Palestinian Arabs for more than a century.  In its preamble, the Hamas Covenant stated: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” 

The Covenant further provided inter alia, that: (1) “The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy       Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it.” (Article 11): (2) “Palestine is an Islamic land...  Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be.” (Article 13); and, (3) “The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” (Article 15)

Although the Covenant was purportedly revised in 2017, it continues to assert that Palestine is an integral, Islamic territory.  “The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.”  Whatever the text, it is impossible to imagine that a government capable of planning and executing the heinous massacre and rape of more than a thousand innocent civilians has seriously softened the stance espoused in the pre-2017 Covenant.  “From the river to the sea” is the same as the position espoused by the Grand Mufti throughout the 20^th Century.

Since October 7^th, the Biden administration has pursued the two-state solution with an intensified urgency.  Yet, rather than attempt an approach that differs from the repeated, failed efforts of the past, it has followed the litany of Britain and the West religiously.  If diplomacy is a dance, President Biden and Secretary Blinken have been ritually retracing the steps painted on the floor a century ago by Winston Churchill.  At virtually every point in the Palestine saga, the West has met Arab violence with a call for Jewish concessions and new negotiations.  The results have always been the same and will likely continue to be for a significant time in the future.  If, as Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” then the discussions described by the Washington Post can reasonably be characterized as insane.  Einstein’s maxim may be overused, but, in this instance, it is spot on.  The original Hamas Covenant makes perfectly clear:

“[Peace] initiatives, and  so-called  peaceful  solutions  and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”' (Article 13) (Emphasis added)

The equivocal attitude of the United States, which ostensibly supports Israel in its war efforts but at the same time undercuts those efforts by imposing conditions that hamstring them, mirrors that of the British since the implementation of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.  Why should Arab leaders engage in negotiations when the US is demanding concessions from Israel as a precondition thereto?

Benny Morris, on a recent podcast, said that, in his view, no negotiated peace would come in Israel until the Arabs were exhausted.  He did not foresee this happening in his lifetime.  Perhaps the United States will have another century to engage in the same diplomacy that characterized the prior one.