Britain and the Palestine Problem • 279soon became embroiled in a struggle between Jewish settlers, who were
entering Palestine in large numbers and hastening to form their state, and
the Arab inhabitants, who were resisting their efforts. Zionist writers often
accuse British officers and officials of having stirred up Arab resentment.
This is unfair if they mean the period from 1918 to 1922, although later
Britain did favor the Arabs in Palestine. True, some British troops came
from Egypt or the Sudan and knew better how to treat Arabs, who were
usually polite, than to deal with East European Jewish immigrants, who
could be intransigent because of their past suffering under czars and sul¬
tans. Some British officials assumed that, because of the communist take¬
over in Russia, Jews from that country favored the Bolsheviks. In fact, only
a few did. There were ample grounds for suspicion between British impe¬
rialists and Zionist colonists.
But Arabs could draw their own conclusions about Jewish immigration,
the Balfour Declaration, the cover-up of the King-Crane Commission's
anti-Zionist report, and Britain's suppression of revolutions in Egypt and
Iraq. As early as April 1920, the Palestinian Arabs revolted, venting their
frustrations and fears in attacks on the Jewish community. It was the open¬
ing chapter in the Arab nationalist revolution in Palestine, a struggle still
going on today. The Zionists complained, not unreasonably, that Britain
encouraged it by punishing the rebels too lightly and protecting the Jewish
settlers too little. This was also the time when the Allies met at San Remo to
assign the mandates in the Arab world, putting Palestine under British con¬
trol. Once the Colonial Office took over the administration of Palestine
from the army, Britain should have devised a clearer and fairer policy to¬
ward both Jews and Arabs. But this was not to be.
The Palestine Mandate
In the ensuing years, Britain's Palestine policy seemed to go in two oppo¬
site directions. In the international arena, on the one hand, it tended to
back Zionist aims because of Jewish political pressure on London and, in¬
deed, on the League of Nations, based in Geneva. In Palestine, on the other
hand, British officials favored the Arabs, often influenced by concern for
Muslim opinion in neighboring countries and in India. Remember that
these were general tendencies, not hard-and-fast rules. When the League
of Nations (confirming what Britain and France had already decided at
San Remo) awarded the Palestine mandate in 1922, it specifically charged
Britain with carrying out the Balfour Declaration. In other words, Britain
had to encourage Jews to migrate to Palestine and to settle there, help cre¬
ate the Jewish "national home," and even set up a "Jewish agency" to assist