Churchill, Palestine and Zionism, 1904-1922 - Douglas J. Feith

234 DOUGLAS J. FEITH
large section of Moslem and Christian opinion in Palestine, coherent and
powerful, views Zionist aspirations with deep suspicion. It is useless for
Meinertzhagen or Weizmann to avoid the issue by throwing blame on the
military administration. ,,63 Allenby then fired Meinertzhagen and sent him
back to London.
The Jerusalem riots, presumably not by coincidence, occurred a few
weeks before the Allies' supreme council convened at San Remo, Italy, to
draft the peace treaty (including ancillary mandates) for imposition on the
Ottoman Empire. It was decided there that France would become mandatory
for Syria. Britain would receive two mandates, for Mesopotamia
and Palestine respectively. Though the precise boundary between Syria and
Palestine remained to be delineated, Britain was able to secure for itself
unbroken lines of communication from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean,
for eastern Palestine was made contiguous with Mesopotamia.
The Palestine mandate quoted the Balfour Declaration in its entirety
and mandated that Britain was responsible for putting that declaration
into effect. "[R]ecognition has thereby been given," the mandate stated,
"to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to
the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.,,64 The
mandate acknowledged no Arab national rights in Palestine.
As war secretary, Churchill supervised the military forces running the
Palestine military government. He did not in official channels challenge
their opposition to the government's pro-Zionist policy, but he did at the
time publish a newspaper commentary extolling Zionism as advantageous
for Britain as well as the Jews. Implicitly endorsing both large-scale
Jewish immigration into Palestine and the goal of a Jewish majority there,
he wrote:
If, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks
of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown which
might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the
history of the world which would from every point of view be beneficial, and
would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.
In that article, entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism," Churchill observed:
"Some people like Jews and some do not, but no thoughtful man can
63 Gilbert, Exile and Return, 129-30. Both letters were dated April 19, 1920.
64 Moore, Documents, 74-83. While nowhere referring to Arabs or the Arab people, the
mandate did provide, in Article 22, that Arabic, together with Hebrew and English, was
to be an official language of Palestine.