Bitter Lemons offers the original summary of the Peel Commission Report from 1937, along with commentary from two Israelis and two Palestinians.
Everything that needs to be said about this conflict has already been said many times, during the last 100 years (including the preceding sentence, of course). Note the authors’ struggle to balance morality with the demands of maintaining a modicum of peace. At the time, the Arab Revolt has been in full swing for a few years. Some of the tactics the Brits used to suppress it were far more violent than anything the Israelis do now, but they essentially schooled Ben-Gurion and his generals on how to respond to guerilla cells. I’ll pull out a telling quote, and then it will be repeated in the full text:
“In these circumstances peace can only be maintained in Palestine under the Mandate by repression. This means the maintenance of security services at so high a cost that the services directed to “the well-being and development” of the population cannot be expanded and may even have to be curtailed. The moral objections to repression are self-evident. Nor need the undesirable reactions of it on opinion outside Palestine be emphasized. Moreover, repression will not solve the problem. It will exacerbate the quarrel. It will not help towards the establishment of a single self-governing Palestine. It is not easy to pursue the dark path of repression without seeing daylight at the end of it.”
With a few terse phrases, the Brits showed that they wanted to free themselves from moral quandaries as well as to address, somehow, the fight between two irreconcilable nationalist movements. In contrast, the mainstream American Jewish establishment ducks the M-word, morality, when discussing the conflict, as do most Israeli politicians. The two-state solution is generally justified by the center and center-left in Israel and among American Jews as a way to preserve the Zionist dream, a majority-Jewish democracy. It is justified by the “demographic” argument. “Israeli security,” of course, is invoked constantly.
But perhaps a lesson can be learned from this brief, laconic, honest British summary of the ethical price of ruling over another people. Just substitute a few words, as in:
Peace can only be maintained in an occupation by repression. This means the maintenance of security services at so high a cost that the services directed to “the well-being and development” of the population cannot be expanded and may even have to be curtailed.The moral objections to the occupation are self-evident….Moreover, repression will not solve the problem. It will exacerbate the quarrel. Nor need the undesirable reactions of it on opinion outside of Israel be emphasized. It is not easy to maintain checkpoints and a security barrier and raids into Gaza without seeing some political daylight at the end of it.
The concluding paragraph is also worth remembering:
“The idea of Partition has doubtless been thought of before as a solution of the problem, but it has probably been discarded as being impracticable. The difficulties are certainly very great, but when they are closely examined they do not seem so insuperable as the difficulties inherent in the continuance of the Mandate or in any other alternative arrangement. Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace. No other plan does.”
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Here is the excerpt:
Chapter XX. – The Force of Circumstances
[Taken from Report of the Palestine Royal Commission: Summary of Report, courtesy of United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine]The problem of Palestine is briefly restated.
Under the stress of the World War the British Government made promises to Arabs and Jews in order to obtain their support. On the strength of those promises both parties formed certain expectations.
The application to Palestine of the Mandate System in general and of the specific Mandate in particular implies the belief that the obligations thus undertaken towards the Arabs and the Jews respectively would prove in course of time to be mutually compatible owing to the conciliatory effect on the Palestinian Arabs of the material prosperity which Jewish immigration would bring in Palestine as a whole. That belief has not been justified, and there seems to be no hope of its being justified in the future.
But the British people cannot on that account repudiate their obligations, and, apart from obligations, the existing circumstances in Palestine would still require the most strenuous efforts on the part of the Government which is responsible for the welfare of the country. The existing circumstances are summarized as follows.
An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country. There is no common ground between them. Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State.
The conflict has grown steadily more bitter since 1920 and the process will continue. Conditions inside Palestine especially the systems of education, are strengthening the national sentiment of the two peoples. The bigger and more prosperous they grow the greater will be their political ambitions, and the conflict is aggravated by the uncertainty of the future. Who in the end will govern Palestine?” it is asked. Meanwhile, the external factors will continue to operate with increasing force. On the one hand in less than three years’ time Syria and the Lebanon will attain their national sovereignty, and the claim of the Palestinian Arabs to share in the freedom of all Asiatic Arabia will thus be fortified. On the other hand the hardships and anxieties of the Jews in Europe are not likely to grow less and the appeal to the good faith and humanity of the British people will lose none of its force.
Meanwhile, the Government of Palestine, which is at present an unsuitable form for governing educated Arabs and democratic Jews, cannot develop into a system of self-government as it has elsewhere, because there is no such system which could ensure justice both to the Arabs and to the Jews. Government therefore remains unrepresentative and unable to dispel the conflicting grievances of the two dissatisfied and irresponsible communities it governs.
In these circumstances peace can only be maintained in Palestine under the Mandate by repression. This means the maintenance of security services at so high a cost that the services directed to “the well-being and development” of the population cannot be expanded and may even have to be curtailed. The moral objections to repression are self-evident. Nor need the undesirable reactions of it on opinion outside Palestine be emphasized. Moreover, repression will not solve the problem. It will exacerbate the quarrel. It will not help towards the establishment of a single self-governing Palestine. It is not easy to pursue the dark path of repression without seeing daylight at the end of it.
The British people will not flinch from the task of continuing to govern Palestine under the Mandate if they are in honour bound to do so, but they would be justified in asking if there is no other way in which their duty can be done.
Nor would Britain wish to repudiate her obligations. The trouble is that they have proved irreconcilable, and this conflict is the more unfortunate because each of the obligations taken separately accords with British sentiment and British interest. The development of self-government in the Arab world on the one hand is in accordance with British principles, and British public opinion is wholly sympathetic with Arab aspirations towards a new age of unity and prosperity in the Arab world. British interest similarly has always been bound up with the peace of the Middle East and British statesmanship can show an almost unbroken record of friendship with the Arabs. There is a strong British tradition, on the other hand, of friendship with the Jewish people, and it is in the British interest to retain as far as may be the confidence of the Jewish people.
The continuance of the present system means the gradual alienation of two peoples who are traditionally the friends of Britain.
The problem cannot be solved by giving either the Arabs or the Jews all they want. The answer to the question which of them in the end will govern Palestine must be Neither. No fair-minded statesman can think it right either that 400,000 Jews, whose entry into Palestine has been facilitated by he British Government and approved by the League of Nations, should be handed over to Arab rule, or that, if the Jews should become a majority, a million Arabs should be handed over to their rule. But while neither race can fairly rule all Palestine, each race might justly rule part of it.
The idea of Partition has doubtless been thought of before as a solution of the problem, but it has probably been discarded as being impracticable. The difficulties are certainly very great, but when they are closely examined they do not seem so insuperable as the difficulties inherent in the continuance of the Mandate or in any other alternative arrangement. Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace. No other plan does.
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