Abstract
On one of the coldest days ever recorded in British history, 25 February 1947, in a month which saw minus degree temperatures, just 17 hours of sunlight and the freezing over of the River Thames, the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin told parliament, ‘The course of events has led His Majesty’s Government to decide that the problem of Palestine must be referred to the United Nations… The Mandatory Power cannot go on for ever.’1
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Notes
Alan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951 (London: Heineman, 1983), p. 164.
Palestine Post, 14 December 1944; Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs, 1931–1945 (London: Frederick Muller, 1957), pp. 425–7.
Richard Crossman, A Nation Reborn: The Israel of Weizmann, Bevin and BenGurion (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960), p. 69.
Ibid., pp. 181–2; Crossman, A Nation Reborn, p. 69; Walter Laqueur, The History of Zionism (New York: Tauris Parke, 2003), p. 565.
See for example, Martin Jones, Failure in Palestine: British and the United States Policy after the Second World War (London: Mansell, 1986);
Youssef Chaitani, Dissension among Allies: Ernest Bevin’s Palestine Policy between Whitehall and the White House, 1945–1947 (London: Saqi, 2002);
Miriam Joyce Haron, Anglo-American Relations and the Question of Palestine, 1945–47 (New York: Fordham University, 1979);
Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, The United States, and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1942–1948 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1989);
Amikam Nachmani, Great Power Discord in Palestine: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problem of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945–46 (London: Frank Cass, 1987).
There have been several studies written on President Truman’s Palestine policy and his support for Jewish displaced persons to enter the country. See for example, Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkely: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 109–22;
Donald Neff, Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel since 1945 (Washington, DC: Institute For Palestine Studies, 2002), pp. 25–54;
Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (New York: Harper, 2009);
Evan M. Wilson, Decision on Palestine: How the U.S. Came to Recognize Israel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 57–68.
Michael J. Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945–54 (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 70–4; Also see
John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War 1944–49 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), p. 79.
W.M. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), p. 106.
David R. Devereux, The Formulation of British Defence Policy Towards the Middle East, 1948–56 (London: MacMillan, 1990), p. 57.
For literature on the Grand Mufti’s pro-Nazi activities see, Klaus Gensicke, The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis: The Berlin Years (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011);
Moshe Pearlman, Mufti of Jerusalem: The Story of Haj Amin el Husseini (London: Victor Gollancz, 1947);
Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement (London: Frank Cass, 1993);
Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
For example, Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 84;
Roger Lewis, The British Empire in the Middle East, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), p. 467;
Howard M. Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936–1954 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), pp. 486–7.
Michael J. Cohen, Palestine to Israel: From Mandate to Independence (London: Frank Cass, 1988), pp. 231–2.
Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle between the British, the Jews and the Arabs, 1935–48 (London: Futura, 1980), pp. 288–9.
For an analysis of the history, ideology and anti-British activities of the Zionist underground see, Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940–1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1994);
John Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929–1949 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977).
Bruce Robellet Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 406; Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, p. 158.
Cohen, Fighting World War Three from the Middle East, p. 2; Dean Acheson, Present at Creation: My Years in the State Department (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969), p. 195.
X, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 24. No. 4 (July 1947); in later years, Kennan has maintained that in writing the X telegram his vision of containment was a limited one and specifically concerned Greece; Turkey was not facing an internal communist threat, see George Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), pp. 316–7.
Report, ‘American Relations With The Soviet Union’ by Clark Clifford [‘Clifford-Elsey Report’], 24 September 1946. Conway Files, Truman Papers, TPLA; Gaddis, The Long Peace, p. 33; Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), pp. 241–5;
Campbell Craig and Fredrik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 77.
Barry Rubin, The Great Powers in the Middle East 1941–1947: The Road to the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 1980), p. 6.
Ronald E. Powaski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 70.
Walter Lafeber, America, Russia and the Cold War (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967), pp. 36–7;
Richard Crockatt, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 73.
Robert Frazier, Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The Coming of the Cold War (Baskingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 715–6.
Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938 (New York: Penguin, 1997), p. 79.
Earl G. Harrison, The Plight of the Displaced Jews in Europe: A Report to President Truman (New York: Reprinted by United Jewish Appeal for Refugees, 1945).
Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel 1945–1948 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), p. 39;
Miriam Joyce Haron, Palestine and the Anglo-American Connection, 1945–1950 (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), p. 28.
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Report to the United States Government and His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, Lausanne, Switzerland, 20 April 1946, The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/angtoc.asp (Last visited 17 July 2012); For first-hand accounts by members of the committee see Richard Crossman, Palestine Mission: A Personal Account (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1947);
Bartley C. Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain: A Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947).
Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America’s Middle East Policy from Truman to Reagan (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 24.
Peter L. Hahn, Caught in the Middle East (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 33.
Quoted in Michael J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 167.
Colin Shindler, Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization (New York: Continuum, 2012), pp. 140–1;
Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir P. Naumov (eds), Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005);
Joel Cang, The Silent Millions: A History of Jews in the Soviet Union (London: Rapp & Whiting, 1969), pp. 225–8.
Arnold A. Offner, Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 284–5.
Arnold Kramer, ‘Soviet Motives in the Partition of Palestine, 1947–48’, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1972), p. 111.
Ibid., p. 112; Shindler, Israel and the European Left, p. 132; Joseph Schechtman, ‘The USSR, Zionism and Israel’, in Lionel Kochan (ed.) The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 115. A secondary but noteworthy factor is the possibility that Moscow was trying to win support from the Marxist branch of the Zionist movement which in turn attempted to gain a foothold in the government of Israel, see
Martin Ebon, ‘Communist Tactics in Palestine’, The Middle East Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (July 1948), p. 263.
Michael J. Cohen, ‘Truman and Palestine, 1945–1948: Revisionism, Politics and Diplomacy’, Modern Judaism, Vol. 2, No. 1 (February 1982), pp. 10–1;
Even though Truman denied lobbying other states to vote in favour of partition, American Zionists rallied groups of influential Americans, some of whom were Congressmen, to persuade countries such as Haiti, China, Liberia, the Philippines, Ethiopia and Greece to vote in favour. See Roosevelt, Kermit, ‘The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1948), pp. 14–15.
Paul C. Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891–1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 163–6;
Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 500–2.
Robert D. Kaplan. The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1993), pp. 94–105.
Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 2: Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 162–4.
Michael Ottolenghi, ‘Harry Truman’s Recognition of Israel’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2004), p. 967.
Bruce J. Evensen, ‘Truman, Palestine and the Cold War’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1992), p. 135.
For a comprehensive analysis of the role of the press in shaping Truman’s Palestine policy see, Bruce J. Evensen, Truman, Palestine and the Press: Shaping Conventional Wisdom at the Beginning of the Cold War (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992).
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Waldman, S.A. (2015). The Palestine Factor in Anglo-American Post-War Middle Eastern Policy, 1945–48. In: Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1948–51. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431523_2
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