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

Palestine and Zionism, 1904-1922 245
Declaration because the local Arabs would never acquiesce in the policy.
Now, having failed to get the renunciation, these intrepid officials inconsistently
asserted that the Arab community could be appeased after all, if
Britain would limit Zionist activity-for example, restrict immigration
and withhold approvals for development projects-and institutionalize
Arab political power.
Samuel and Churchill approved such measures because they believed
in appeasement. They were convinced that, if Zionism progressed slowly
enough to keep Arab resentments in check, Arab attitudes toward the
Jews would soften. Inclined to seek economic explanations of Arab actions
and attitudes toward Zionism, Samuel and Churchill both tended to depreciate
the religious and cultural sources of anti-Zionism, which considered
the Jewish national movement an aggression against Arab land and the
Arab people and, as such, unacceptable in principle. Arabs who held that
conviction would not be satisfied with slower rates of Jewish immigration
or higher rates of economic growth. Such persons, furthermore, dominated
the religious and political leadership of the Arab community of Palestine.
And they did so, somewhat ironically and somewhat on purpose, because
the British administration in Palestine gave them authority.
Following the death in March 1921 of the mufti of Jerusalem, whom
the British administration treated as the head of the Muslim community,
Muslim leaders convened, in line with Ottoman law and tradition, to
elect the three candidates from among whom the high commissioner could
appoint the new mufti. Ernest Richmond, a member of Samuel's secretariat
and a "declared enemy of the Zionist policy,"93 favored the selection
of Haj Amin el-Husseini, who had led the anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem
in April 1920, for which he had received a ten-year prison sentence and
then, from Samuel, a pardon. Haj Amin placed fourth in the voting, which
disqualified him, but Samuel appointed him anyway.94 Meinertzhagen
promptly recorded in his diary that Haj Amin "hates both Jews and British"
and his appointment "is sheer madness":
I am particularly annoyed about this as ... I left a memorandum with Samuel
warning him of appointing the man ... and also warning him that [Ronald]
93 Ernest T. Richmond, assistant secretary (political) in Samuel's administration, was
so described by Gerard Clauson, a colonial office official. Elie Kedourie, The Chatham
House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970),
65.
94 See Norman and Helen Bentwich, Mandate Memories: 1918-1948 (London: The Hogarth
Press, 1965), 191-2. Norman Bentwich was attorney general for Palestine throughout
the 1920s.