The West faced a fundamental problem in the
Middle East: how to ensure the future stability of
the region, and how best to meet the needs and
wishes of its peoples without jeopardising the
West’s vital strategic and economic interests.
In Iraq, at least, British interests appeared
secure in 1945. In the prime minister, Nuri-es-
Said, London believed it had a firm pro-Western
friend. A new Anglo-Iraqi alliance treaty was con-
cluded in January 1948 which established Iraqi
control over British bases in Iraq in peacetime,
but provided for military assistance in war, which
meant, in effect, that Britain could then reactivate
the bases. It was ironic that British socialists
should make a deal with politicians like Nuri, who
represented the interests of the wealthy landown-
ing class opposed to social reform. He had under-
estimated the anti-British feelings in Iraq, which
were whipped up into a frenzy immediately after
the conclusion of the treaty. Britain’s influence
became more precarious though it persisted for
another decade.
Britain favoured agreement between the Arab
states, which was to be further enhanced by a
regional grouping. In March 1945, with Britain’s
blessing, the Arab League was founded. Despite
the yearning for greater unity in the Arab world,
however, the ruling elites were not able to provide
it. Abdullah, the Hashemite ruler of Transjordan,
despised the backward Egyptians. Nor was there
any love lost between the Hashemites and the rival
and victorious dynasty of Ibn Saud in Saudi
Arabia. Other Arab nationalists looked down on
poverty-stricken Transjordan as a client state in
British pay. The Arabs were deeply split. Egypt
and Iraq eyed each other with hostility, both lay-
ing claim to leadership of the Arab world.
The Arabs, including the Egyptians, had been
largely hostile spectators during the Allied strug-
gle against Germany. Although Egypt was nomi-
nally independent, the British troops swarming
throughout Cairo and Alexandria, and guarding
British bases along the Suez Canal during the
war, gave every appearance of moving about in an
occupied country. The end of the war did not
essentially alter the situation. The Suez Canal and
the Suez bases remained under foreign control.
Meanwhile, Britain’s post-war economic plight
required that expenditure be avoided wherever
possible. Bevin was prepared to make extensive
concessions to Egyptian national feelings, but
insisted on ironclad treaty guarantees that the
Suez Canal would never fall into hands hostile to
Britain.
In May 1946 the Attlee government accepted
the principle of a complete military evacuation in
times of peace. Eventually in October of that year
a draft treaty was agreed against a background of
mounting Egyptian violence in the streets. Britain
undertook to withdraw its forces by September
1949, but Egypt had to agree to invite the British
back to their Suez bases and to cooperate with
Britain if any conflict threatened ‘against coun-
tries adjacent to Egypt’. Yet the new treaty was
never concluded; what wrecked the negotiations
was Egypt’s claim to sovereignty over the Sudan,
which Britain was not ready to accept. By then,
Britain’s difficulties there were overshadowed by
the crisis in Palestine.
Both Arab and Jew in 1945 considered that
British rule in Palestine was destined to end soon.
The growth of both Arab and Zionist national-
ism meant that foreign rule could be maintained
only by an increasing use of force. But what form
would a Palestine state take?
The Nazi slaughter of more than 6 million
Jews during the Second World War, while the rest
of the world looked on, entirely changed Jewish
attitudes. Yet many Arabs, in their hostility to
British colonialism, had sympathised with the
Nazi rather than the Allied cause during the war.
Support for Zionism and a Jewish state in
1945 became overwhelming among the Jews
both of Palestine and in the rest of the world.
Never again would mass murder be permitted;
Jews were ready to fight to prevent it, to create
their own nation, to guarantee the future survival
of Jews everywhere. That the creation of Israel
would involve injustice to the Arabs in Palestine
was an inevitable consequence, because the terri-
tory of a viable Jewish state would contain almost
as many Arabs as Jews. What followed between
1945 and 1949 was a bloody struggle between
the Jews, the British and the Arabs.
The British despaired of finding any solution
to which both Arabs and Jews could agree.