Great Britain and Abdullah's plan to partition Palestine: a ‘natural sorting out’

Abstract

When Britain surrendered the Mandate on 15 May 1948, the British Officers of the Arab Legion of Transjordan led their forces, by all accounts the most well-trained and disciplined of any of the Arab states, into Palestine. Their goal was to occupy and protect the areas allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition plan passed by the General Assembly in November 1947. The Arab Legion 'had strict orders on no account to enter any area allotted by the U.[nited] N.[ations] to the Jews. It was also forbidden to enter Jerusalem which was to be a United Nations enclave'.' The de facto partition of Palestine and the envisioned absorption of the Arab sectors with neighboring Transjordan was an integral part of British thinking during the tumultuous final months of the Mandate. Yet scholars in recent years have disagreed as to the extent of Britain's involvement with Abdullah's plan to take control of the Arab areas of Palestine contiguous with his country.2 The purpose of this article is to explore the extent of British cooperation with Abdullah in attempting to implement this scheme and consequently the burden of responsibility it shared for the debacle that followed. King Abdullah's ambition of creating a 'Greater Syria' under his leadership is well-known and needs little elucidation here. What is much less known was the British attitude regarding Abdullah's plans for Arab Palestine and particularly that of the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. This holds the key to understanding British policy as the Palestine Mandate was being terminated. As early as July 1943 while Britain was still engaged in the war effort, the Coalition Cabinet appointed a Palestine Ministerial Committee under Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, to 'consider and report on a long term policy for Palestine'. Reporting in December, the Committee, with only one dissenting vote, endorsed the solution of partition proposed by the Royal Commission in 1937. This report was approved in principle in January 1944 and the Colonial Secretary, Oliver Stanley, was given the task of working out the details. By October of that year, a proposal was formulated that would create a Jewish state, establish a small Jerusalem state under a Mandate and amalgamate the remainder of Arab Palestine with Transjordan.3 In July 1945 the Labour Party swept to power and Ernest Bevin, who had served in the War Cabinet as Minister of Labour, was appointed Foreign Secretary. Confident, strong-willed and decisive, he personally forged Britain's Palestine policy during these final years. With his background in the trade union movement and as an experienced negotiator, he believed the differences of opinion between the Arabs and the Jews were similar to those of workers and management: a compromise could always be found.4 Consequently, he tackled the thorny Palestine issue, deeply concerned but