Balfour Declaration Research Articles

The deal of the century? The attempted sale of the Western Wall by Cemal Pasha in 1916

ABSTRACT This article discusses the offer made by Cemal Pasha in 1915 to Albert Antébi to sell the area in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in order to dismantle the nearly thirty houses owned by the Moroccan inhabitants of the Maghrebi Quarter and create a space ‘reserved for the prayers of the Jewish people’. European Jews had already sought to purchase the same area from the Ottomans for several decades but had been denied, a situation that did not change under British rule despite the support given to the Jews with the Balfour Declaration. After the 1929 riots in Palestine, any possibility of acquiring the Western Wall or converting the Maghrebi Quarter into a plaza was postponed. This article will address relevant correspondence available at the Zionist Archives that chronicles this decades-long effort and discuss the questions relating to failure and secrecy. The individuals involved took an oath promising never to discuss this business out of concerns about revealing divisions among Zionists in relation to holy places and symbols.

Before the Mandate: British Rule in Palestine, 1920–1922

The article argues that most of the contentious issues which flared up during Britain’s Mandate for Palestine, including Jewish immigration, ineffective policing, inadequate funding, ethno-religious violence, conflicting sympathies among British officials, and Arab displeasure over the Balfour Declaration, were already visible to Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill and other British officials in the eighteen months before the Mandate officially began, and that the seeds of Britain’s administrative failure in Palestine had already taken root.

The Balfour Declaration's Territorial Landscape: Between Protection and Self-Determination

The Balfour Declaration's Territorial Landscape: Between Protection and Self-Determination

There Will Be Peace in the Holy Land

a ESSAY I n the late 1950s, in the middle of the United States (we lived in Ferguson, a quiet, leafy community barely known even by people on the other side of St. Louis), my Palestinian father, Aziz Shihab, received many speaking invitations—from church groups, civic organizations, and schools. The word “holy” often figured into his presentation titles as it became known that my charismatic, thin father, who resembled a Palestinian Desi Arnaz, was able to “create a scene” in his melodious English and maintain his optimistic hopes about a better day coming soon, for all. He talked about his simple childhood, his lack of toys, the echoing streets of Jerusalem, the friendliness of people from different backgrounds and faiths, the openness of his own Muslim family when he wanted to march, as a boy, with candlecarrying pilgrims to Bethlehem. Palestinians played bagpipes. Kids traded desserts. The world was full of mixing and mingling. He spoke of Jesus and Mohammed, priests at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre vying for the best spots to erect their own shrines, and the fragrance of pita cooking in a fire, and yes, he was sure the people would figure it out, understand how to live together, and the Holy City would be holy again, for Palestinians, Jews, and Christians all together. He had come from a magical, spartan world full of mystical stories and twining histories, and even a waft of incense could spirit him away. I recall people asking him how he could speak English so well. There was a British mandate, he said. I worked for the BBC starting at age fourteen. I learned it in school. His parents could not speak English. He liked short sentences. No, they had no camels. It was more a donkey kind of place. Some people had camels, Bedouins, maybe. My grandmother remembered cowering in a ditch as a child, when Turkish soldiers came blazing through on horseback during the Turkish mandate. Why were there so many mandates? In retrospect, it shocks me that my father’s high hopes were so firmly entrenched despite the 1948 Balfour Declaration being so recent in memory for him. Colonization was still an aberration. There Will Be Peace in the Holy Land by Naomi Shihab Nye In memory, Aziz Shihab 1927–2007 He would actually pitch his well-described suitcase into the New York harbor upon arrival on a ship. WORLDLIT.ORG 43 SLIMAN MANSOUR / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST COVER FEATURE THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE HOLY LAND | BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE Second-class citizenship could not stand. We lived in Ferguson. His family had been thrown out of their middle-class home in old downtown Jerusalem and skedaddled to a West Bank village where my grandmother had inherited a ruin of an ancient house. She would live out her 106 years there. My father’s best friend had been killed right next to him by an armed Jewish commando as the two young men sat on a bench. My own mother, whispering in the kitchen, did not ever ask him about that. How could anyone be so hopeful? Everything was in turmoil. One person’s victory, another person’s tragedy. My father had stared at the horizon, fixated, applied for a Palestinian-studentsabroad scholarship from somebody, and fled the country. I think he felt guilty about leaving. He hadn’t stayed to help fix things up. Carrying the word “hope” with him in his pants cuffs and jacket sleeves and the slim satin pocket of his beat-up suitcase, he would actually pitch his well-described suitcase into the New York harbor upon arrival on a ship. Why, Daddy, why? Why would you throw your clothes away? I was tired of them. I was starting over. That’s really sad, Daddy! No, it isn’t. It was—hopeful. I thought it was terrible because he had also thrown away family photographs, family memories, which he only remembered later. He told the religious hopefuls of greater St. Louis that things would be solved very soon if only outsiders would stop intruding in the Holy Land’s affairs. My Palestinian grandfather, whom I never met, died when I...

British Policy in Palestine: Interests versus Reality (1917-1922)

The period between the publication of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and League of Nations mandates official assignment to Great Britain in 1922 was not lengthy, but highly eventful. All this time England was maneuvring between the Jewish and the Arab national movements, which also gradually formed their own demands and objectives. The problem was, pursuing British interests was possible through maneuvring only, as support of just one local force was not quite strategically advantageous. Britains official commitment to the Balfour Declaration remained at the core of its policy, however it could not completely ignore the demands of the Arab polutaion of Palestine. Although there were quite a number of British administrators and imperial politicians, who were sympathetic towards the Zionist cause and thus were ready to meet their requests to a certain extent, adherence to the British Middle East interests remained crucial to them. The idea of a Jewish national home (not a state, though) in Palestine did not come into contradiction with the general policy of Great Britain in the Middle East: it was rather its integral part. At the same time implementing the Zionist project had to be in line with it: any relatively radical (from the British administrators point of view) proposals were rejected or postponed indefinitely. Towards the Arabs of Palestine Great Britain was conducting mainly declarative policy without any serious consideration of their problems and grievances, although trying to appease their demands to a certain extent. Even the Arab riots of 1920 and 1921 did not cause a serious change in the British political course in Palestine, although they did contribute to the emergence of Churchills White Paper in 1922, declaring certain concessions to the Arab national movement, which never accepted the document. At the same time British policy in general was neither pro-Zionist, nor pro-Arab: England was pursuing its long-term strategic goals in the Middle East, skillfully utilizing Zionist and Arab national movements to achieve them.

Mauqif al-Nāsyitīn al-Islāmiyyīn fī Indonesiā

Since setlement of Jewish aprroved by Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Palestinian problem not only been the concern of the Chalif of Ustmani and the Arabic leader around Baitul-Maqdis. At the time, many leaders and poeple of Moslem in Indonesian country (yet: Hindia Belanda) gave attention to this problem as well as other Muslim around the Islamic world. They were involved with this complicated problem even if in the same situation colonialized for long time by the Dutch. This colonized situation not be an obstacle for the Indonesian Muslim activists to make many real actions for standing up with Baitul Maqdis and speaking up the liberation of Palestine from Jewish occupation. The aims of this paper are to know: (1) the standpoint of the Indonesian Islamic activist for Baitul-Maqdis issues? and (2) what they did to make action to deal with this issues? To answer this questions, I plan to search the otentic historical resourches in the magazines and newspapers were issued between 1917 to 1948 by the Islamic movement as well as Sarekat Islam (SI), Muhammadiyah, Nahdhatul Ulama (NU), Persatuan Islam (Persis), and many others. This resourches will be analized by the historical method to result the naration about what asked above. By pre-analysis, the informations that many times Indonesian Islamic activist held the event to support Baitul-Maqdis were found up in several books and journals. For the instance at July 5th 1937 held the big conference in Surabaya. In this conference, Palestinian Comittee’s formed. This comittee’s chaired by Wondoamiseno from Sarekat Islam (SI). The chairpersons form many others movement such as KH. Mas Mansur (Muhammadiyah), KH. Abdoel Wachab (NU), Sayyid Noeh Al-Kaff (Habaib), Oemar Hoebeis (Al-Irsyad). K.H. Kahar Muzakkir (Sarekat Islam), and others came and gave the speeches for this conference. This event can be first sign for us to search other fact that will reach this paper’s questions.

The Balfour Declaration as a Pound of Flesh

ABSTRACT The Merchant of Venice has haunted the Arab–Israeli conflict for over a century, its spectre perhaps no more apparent than in the metaphorical afterlife of the Balfour Declaration – reimagined by both Israelis and Palestinians as a pound of flesh. Issued at the height of the First World War as a brief and ambiguous letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, President of the Zionist Federation, the Balfour Declaration has become a convenient touchstone for strident commentary on the formation of Israel, Zionist impostures, Arab injustice, Palestinian suffering, and the duplicity of the West in adjudicating the Arab–Israeli conflict. Both the Balfour Declaration and the Pound of Flesh had long-lasting and unanticipated consequences. While Zionists viewed the Balfour Declaration as an inchoate legal endorsement of a Jewish state, just as Shylock understood his bond as sanctioning his demand for Antonio's flesh, Arabs viewed it more literally as carving off a Jewish state from the body of Palestine. The Balfour Declaration's legacy, and its various Shakespearean resonances, has been far less as a binding policy document than as effective propaganda for both Israelis and Palestinians in advancing their completing claims.

Palestinian citizenship: past, present, future

INTRODUCTION. The article deals with the evolution of the Palestinian citizenship and the possibility of its development under the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Citizenship is a classic institution of public law and is perceived in a similar way in various legal systems. In this case, however, there is a very special phenomenon, the content of which is due to a number of historical, political and international legal factors.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research is based on the analysis of Balfour Declaration 1917, UN Partition Plan for Palestine 1947, Agreement Oslo II 1995, Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in relation to the Succession of States (ILC, 1999), Articles on Diplomatic Protection (ILC, 2006), Israeli law governing the status of Palestinians, nationality laws of the Arab states, political and regulatory acts of Palestinian institutions. The research methods include historical method, methods of formal logic, comparative method and various methods of interpretation. A significant part of the research is a comparison of positions of Israeli and Palestinian lawyers, as well as an analysis of various options for the development of the Palestinian citizenship.RESEARCH RESULTS. Currently, the status of residents of the occupied territories is determined by the Oslo II Agreement of 1995: the administrative powers are delegated to the Palestinian Authority; Israel retains the right of control. The resident status is not equivalent to the status of a citizen and is sui generis. This status implies a number of Israel’s obligations: to end it and provide a citizenship to Palestinians; recognize its international elements; transfer more powers to Palestinian institutions. The lack of regular citizenship makes it difficult for Palestinians to enjoy diplomatic protection from Palestinian institutions.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Presently, there are conditions for the establishment (declaration) of the Palestinian citizenship, which would fix a political connection sui generis, implying the rights of Palestinians to participate in administration of the occupied territories, their membership in a nation striving for self-determination, the right of Palestinian institutions to provide diplomatic and other protection, etc. This citizenship should be provided automatically, since it involves not naturalization, but consideration of existing social and vital ties of Palestinians to their people. The solution of the problem of diplomatic protection may consist in the development of customary law and the search for new tools, for example, protection on the part of international organizations.

The Crusades in the Arab Discourse on Palestine (1917-1948): cultural aspect

In the late XX – early XXI century, the Arab discourse on the issue of Palestine remains saturated with references to the Crusades (1099-1291), and likening the current tribulation of the history of Palestine to the medieval events. Modern historiography traces the growth in popularity of such reminiscences beginning from 1948, while modern literature practically has no mentions of the used of the “anti-Crusades rhetoric” by the Arab cultural figures prior to this data. The object of this research is the mobilization of historical memory in Arab culture of the first half of the XX century; the subject is reference to the topic of the Crusades in the Arab literary texts of 1917-1948 dedicated to the Palestinian issue. Analysis of literary works of the Arab cultural figures of the early XX century demonstrated that way before Arab-Israeli War of 1948-1949, such events as Balfour Declaration (1917) and Arab revolt (1936-1938) were being actively compared by the Arab poets and dramaturgists to the era of the Crusades. In the period from 1917 to 1948, the author highlights the following types of references of the Arab cultural figured to the era of the Crusades in relation to the Palestine issue: blaming of Europe for conducting a new Crusade, manifestations of which were declared the activity of the mandate administrations and arrival of the Jewish settlers; reminding of failure of the Crusades, which should have served as the warning for the modern Europeans; revival of heroic memory of the Palestinians in confrontation of the European crusaders in the Middle Ages, which should have inspire the contemporaries to fight for their land.

Western Interest dalam Proses Perkembangan Negara Israel (1917-1948) Sebagai Akar Utama Konflik Israel-Palestina

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is often found to continue for more than 7 decades is inseparable from the root of the problem itself, namely; designation of the Palestinian territories as a national home for the Jews which would later lead to Israeli independence in 1948. Referring to the Balfour Declaration 1917 under the British decision, the massive migration of Jews from Europe to Palestine was inseparable from the benefits that were gained by Western hegemonies in the West. the winner of the war at the time. This can be studied using a realism perspective which views the state as a rational actor with all its decisions under the national interest. Using the literature review method, this article tries to answer whether the tension that occurs in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based solely on differences in religious identity between the two? Or are there interests of several parties that do not appear on the surface? Why can the annexation case in the formation of an Israeli state that violates international law continue without strict sanctions? The economic and political motivated interests of the West and the connection of Zionism in the founding of the state of Israel will be examined as concrete evidence. This article is expected to be useful as a reference for later literature for similar research.

Władza, przywództwo i siła polityczna w amerykańskim ruchu syjonistycznym w latach 1914-1920. W stulecie ustanowienia Brytyjskiego Mandatu Palestyny

World War I marked the beginning of a significant role of American Jewry in global affairs. Both the emergence of the United States as the new world power and the financial status of the Jewish American community contributed to a considerable participation of American Jews in the councils of world Jewry. The war and its aftermath brought fundamental changes to the Zionist movement, which offered the pragmatic approach to the actual problems of Diaspora Jews. There appeared both the necessity and possibility for uniting all the American Zionist factions into a powerful organization with an efficient party apparatus and prominent leadership which revitalized the Zionist movement and made it responsive to its main aim, i.e., the establishment of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine. Louis D. Brandeis’s leadership marked a turning point in the history of American Zionism through a combination of his potent personality with a coherent ideology that reflected the American conditions. All those developments helped create the most powerful American Zionist organization in the world, with the sole aim to effectually implement the idea of a home for the Jewish people. The Americanization of Zionism, based on practical work in building up Palestine, was a direct reason for a bitter conflict between Brandeis and Weizmann, the leader of European Zionism, that is between fostering Jewish settlement in Palestine through a systematic and methodical economic process on the one hand, and through implementing a synthesis of socio-ethical and cultural values that Zionism in Weizmann’s view should represent, on the other. The article discusses the circumstances which triggered the American Zionist movement to assume power, prestige, and large following; it also analyzes the reasons for an orchestrated and determined diplomatic action on the part of both the Zionist Organization of America and the World Zionist Organization to articulate and achieve their direct aim first through the Balfour Declaration and then through the San Remo Conference decision of entrusting the Mandate over Palestine to Great Britain. They both proved to have been the indispensable prerequisites for the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine.

Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe ed. by Jason Crouthamel et al.

Reviewed by: Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe ed. by Jason Crouthamel et al. Judith Szapor Jason Crouthamel, Michael Geheran, Tim Grady, Julia Barbara Köhne, eds., Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion: Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe. New York: Berghahn, 2019. 407 pp. In November 2014, at the start of a long line of scholarly events commemorating the centennial of the First World War, the Center for Jewish History in New York City hosted a conference; the resulting volume, World War I and the Jews: Conflict and Transformation in Europe, the Middle East, and America (Oxford UP, 2017) was, as its editors, Jonathan Karp and Marsha L. Rozenblit stated, "one of the first academic works devoted expressly to the subject of World War I and the Jews." (17) Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion; Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe continues this exploration with a tighter scope but deeper reach. Three of the volume's four editors have contributed important monographs to the history of World War I in Germany, on topics ranging from the military, gender, and sexuality to memory and trauma, and the volume offers an even more wide-ranging survey of German Jewish war experiences. The four sections of the collection focus on Jews in the military, contested identities in the settings of front and home front, and two papers each on the representation of the war experience in film and literature and on postwar narratives, both in psychological discourse and nationalist war literature. Together, the articles offer an admirable range of disciplinary and methodological approaches with the aim of highlighting Jewish experiences and responses to anti-Semitism and introducing new sources that add nuance to Jewish and German narratives in an effort to inform but also reflect the subtle shifts in Jewish-German relationships. Any claim of a lack of studies centered on Jews and World War I should be understood in relative terms, in comparison to the still-growing scholarship on what came after—and what made most scholars see the First World [End Page 106] War as merely a prequel to—the Shoah. The significance of the war was never questioned by scholars or in popular memory; it was a paramount historical event that fundamentally affected the lives of European Jews and Jewish communities. Among the most significant of the often contradictory changes the war ushered in, it destroyed the empires the majority of Jews lived in but gave them, in the Balfour Declaration, the right to self-determination, at least in principle. Through military service and, for women, service on the home front, the war offered Jewish citizens the opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty to the state and earn full acceptance; at the same time, by displacement on a massive scale and rising anti-Semitism, it brought their identity and belonging into question. Scholarship from the 1960s until quite recently tended to approach German Jewish experiences during the First World War and in the postwar period with this hindsight understanding, and it described Jewish-German relations in the binaries of assimilation/anti-Semitism, exclusion/inclusion. Scholars highlighted the role of the 1916 Judenzählung initiated by the Prussian War Ministry as the decisive moment in the breakdown of these relations, leading to toxic anti-Semitism, and, eventually, the Holocaust. A stellar lineup of recent studies by, among others, Marsha Rozenblit, Derek Penslar, Tim Grady, and David Fine, presented a more nuanced, fluid, and complicated view of identity and Jewish experiences as well as Jewish and non-Jewish responses to and during the war, offering major corrections to this long-reigning narrative. The volume takes a firm position on the revisionist side of this debate, and most of the chapters argue that anti-Semitism was not the decisive factor in the everyday front and home front experience of German Jews. Anchoring the volume, Jason Crouthamel's chapter on Jewish and non-Jewish front soldiers supports this view by presenting their experience as a shared one and argues for an interpretation of the trends of wartime Jewish– non-Jewish relations within its own context—and with more emphasis on the testimonies...

Chaim Weizmann: The Great Enabler. From the Balfour Declaration to the Establishment of the State of Israel

Chaim Weizmann: The Great Enabler. From the Balfour Declaration to the Establishment of the State of Israel

Britain, Zionism, and the Jewish Legion

ABSTRACT In the autumn of 1917, the British government committed itself to the “Formation of Battalions for the Reception of friendly Alien Jews,” an announcement that was followed just 7 weeks later, by the Balfour Declaration. In this article, which builds on the author's previous research into the Jewish Legion, the link between Britain and Zionism, in the context of the First World War, is reconsidered. By taking into account further secondary works, some written since the publication of The Jewish Legion and the First World War in 2004, combined with a re-examination of archival sources, the roles of geopolitics, national interest, and anti-Semitism are assessed for their relative importance. The influence of prominent personalities is also included, especially as personal relationships were exploited in the pursuit of policy, perhaps accounting for the ambiguities of the Balfour Declaration. Historians continue to debate the repercussions of the Declaration, whilst its consequences continue to influence contemporary events and international relations in the Middle East.

A Neoclassical Realist Explanation of the Balfour Declaration and the Origins of the British Foreign Policy in Palestine

A number of developments in the first quarter of the 20th century have an important role in shaping the Middle East. The Sharif Hussein-Mc Mahon Negotiations, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration and other secret agreements between Britain and France that emerged during the First World War deeply affected the subsequent period of Arab geography. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 can be called one of the founding texts of Israel. In this respect, the declaration has a great impact on all the Middle Eastern politics, especially Palestine. It will not be wrong to say that the Palestine issue, which has become one of the most important problems of the region in time, has its roots in the Balfour Declaration. For this reason, cognizance of the Balfour Declaration and Britain's Palestinian politics after the First World War is crucial to understand the region's later history. From this point of view, this article attempts to examine the regional policies of Britain through the declaration and to provide a causality for the emergence of the declaration. What is the key motivation behind the Balfour Declaration? How can one explain the emergence of the declaration only in 1917, although it came to the agenda in Britain as early as 1915? This study claims that a particular set of internal and external factors associated with British politics gave rise to the declaration. The present article dissects these factors from the perspective of neoclassical realist theory and evaluate the systemic modifiers and unit-level variables in order to explain the Balfour Declaration. Specifically, it examines decision-making process behind the declaration from a systematic and holistic perspective.

‘Universal Freedom’ and the Balfour declaration: watershed moments for radical Jewish politics

ABSTRACTThe end of the First World War brought both a nationalist transformation of political space and discourse in East-Central Europe, as well as a revolutionary wave, originating in Russia, that radically challenged the existing order. The article analysis how Jewish-national activists saw these developments as opportunities and challenges and aimed to become part in the shaping of a new world. Concentrating primarily on the discussions and political practices of the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion movement, it intends to expand the discussion over the supposed triumph of nationalism in the context of the ‘Wilsonian moment’ at the end of the First World War, asking in what form the communist promise of universal freedom represented a viable alternative. As the British Balfour Declaration lead to a supposed awakening of Palestine-oriented feelings of national belonging, the revolution represented a counter-proposal for emancipation in Central and Eastern Europe in the experience of many activists. The article follows a number of Jewish revolutionary activists looking at how their framework of political practices determined how they perceived the dual promises of national and social liberation and what consequences they drew from this. Where circumstances allowed a close cooperation between them and the wider labour movement – both in respect to revolutionary policies and defence against anti-Jewish violence – activists tended to progressively reject concepts of national unity and perceived the fate of the Jewish working class to be bound to that of the communist movement; a number of them subsequently began rejecting concepts of national belonging and national politics. The article analyzes at how this process was understood and discussed by both the radicals and their opponents, who often interpreted this revolutionary activism as a rejection of the nation as such.

ПАЛЕСТИНСЬКА ПРОБЛЕМА ЯК ОДИН ІЗ НАЙВІДОМІШИХ ТА НАЙГОСТРІШИХ МІЖНАРОДНИХ КОНФЛІКТІВ

У сучасних міжнародних відносинах одним із найгостріших і найтриваліших конфліктів є Палестинська проблема, витоки якої вбачаємо глибоко в історії. Отже, після посилення сіоністського руху в першій половині ХХ ст. почалась активна імміграція євреїв, що викликало невдоволення в арабів. Декларація Бальфура, яка фактично проголосила підтримку Англії, створення єврейського національного осередку в Палестині ще більше загострили мусульман і підштовхнули їх до військових дій. Результатом такої політики були криваві бунти 1920-х рр., події 1930-х. Після проголошення незалежності Ізраїлю (14 травня 1948 р.) конфронтація отримала нові, більш політизовані ознаки. Незважаючи на численні мирні угоди, укладені за участю впливових міжнародних суб’єктів, до кінця ХХ ст. палестинське питання залишалося невирішеним. Отже, на початку XXI ст. палестинсько-ізраїльська опозиція, що має давнє історичне походження, і досі залишається ефективною. Незважаючи на територіальну обмеженість ведення дій, палестинське питання привертає увагу всієї світової спільноти, зокрема, тим, що має також глибоке етнічнорелігійне коріння. Ураховуючи гостроту етнічних і релігійних протистоянь у сучасному світі, їх наслідки не лише для ворогуючих сторін, а й для інших міжнародних акторів, вивчення питання формування та розвитку Палестинської проблеми є надзвичайно актуальним. У статті описано процеси та події, які зумовили формування Палестинської проблеми, цілі учасників конфлікту, основні події. Здійснено комплексний аналіз процесу формування й розвитку палестинської проблеми в середині – другій половині ХХ ст. Визначено суть міжнародних відносин і міжнародних конфліктів у трактуванні сучасною наукою.

On Vertical Alliances, ‘Perfidious Albion’ and the Security Paradigm

Revisiting the Balfour Declaration, this article offers a threefold argument: first, challenging those who read the Declaration as symbolizing a new dawn of Jewish political history, the article proposes an alternative reading that considers it as a continuation of familiar patterns of Jewish political behaviour based on the forging of ‘vertical alliances’. Second, it argues that this perspective led many Jews to treat the Declaration as an unsigned ‘contract’, and it was not until the 1940s, with the rise in popularity of a discourse concerning Britain’s ‘betrayal’, that this view began to be challenged. Third, explaining how and why the vertical alliance perspective was pushed to the margins of Israeli collective memory, the article looks at the rise of the ‘security paradigm’ in Hebrew literature and examines the ways in which the creation of a Jewish army was imagined as marking the end of old forms of Jewish politics.

British Colonial Policy “Divide and Rule”: Fanning Arab Rivalry in Palestine

The 2nd November 2017 is the centenary of the Balfour Declaration which is Britain’s public acknowledgement and support of the Zionist movement and the commitment to a Jewish National Home. The Declaration is identified by the Palestinian narrative as the source of their tragedy whilst the British side its motive was the consideration of who would be most useful to the British interest under the given circumstances. The main characteristics of the Palestinian politics and society after the Balfour Declaration and during the Mandate period was the pervasiveness of factionalism. These divisions were based on family, kinship, and clan. As for their politics, they were mainly shaped by the notable families who helped to intensify this fragmentation in the Palestinian society. The notable families pervaded local politics during the Ottoman period and continued to do so in the early part of the British administration. The mandate administration, although denied the effective Palestinian self-government, it toughened the notability stratification by giving it recognition and legitimacy in social and religious affairs. The British administration refused to accept or recognize the Palestinian Arabs as a national entity, because of the lack of a central authority, Palestinians did not have the social resources to organize and unite themselves. Although the British did not recognize the Palestinians as a national entity they accepted its notables as the leaders and representatives of the Palestinians. The British policy of alliance with the notables helped those notable families achieve decisive pre-eminence in the Palestinian politics. The notability was at the forefront of the nationalist sentiment. They suppressed the existence of independent nationalist parties and groups. The same traditional elite helped intensify fragmentation in the society, especially as the external challenges became more severe. They became an impediment to the wider national integration. Following the historical background of the area until the establishment of the Mandate, this paper will focus on the analysis of the British policies feeding the inter-Arab rivalries and animosity between the notable families and conclude with the study of the valuation of the Palestinian Arab leadership until 1936-1939 Arab revolt.

Arab Public Debate on the “Deal of the Century” in the “Versailles” Framework

The Trump administration has reportedly planned to publish its self-drafted Middle East peace initiative some time during the year 2019, exactly 100 years after the Treaty of Versailles (1919) was signed. Although previous and subsequent agreements, declarations and treaties, such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), the Balfour Declaration (1917), the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) had much more to do with the fate of the Middle East than the Treaty of Versailles itself, the coincidence of the announcement of the “deal of the century” with the anniversary of “Versailles” provides great significance to the latter in current Arab public debate. While the above mentioned events and decisions did not meaningfully hinder the long-term Israeli–Palestinian peace process, the “deal of the century” might have harmful effects for it. Arab leaders as well as opinionmakers of all kinds agree on the existence of a strong parallel between the aims and design of the Versailles-related treaties and those of the “deal of the century.” They agree that both of them deny the right of self-determination to Arab nations and that they are both designed to foreshadow decades of bloody conflicts between the nations of the Middle East. The “deal of the century” might also sanctify the “acquisition of land by force” which has clear implications for state-to-state relations. In my analysis, I will provide a snapshot of the Arab public debate on the “deal of the century” and how it is related to the anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles and related agreements.