How the British Left Palestine

Well, George Christian has is here so we can begin

Bernard Wasserstein represents the University of Chicago.

But as you will know from his name, Wasserstein, he is a Scotch.

And we have two Glaswegians who are actually students. And my own course.

There they are right there. This is quite, quite extraordinary.

Berner gave a talk here several years ago about Blasco growing up in

Glasgow. And there was a fellow Scot who was actually from Glasgow and she didn’t

like at all. What about the city? And I was

reminded of all this in a comment just a few days ago in The New York

Times, which describes Glasgow as a desperately grim

place, not unlike parts of America now ravaged.

It was staggered by alcoholism, environmental hazards, high suicide

rates, corruption, gang warfare, loss of industrial jobs,

and a significant rise in drug drug abuse that almost matched Chicago.

So this raises the question of what it was like at the same time

in the land of milk and honey and how Jerusalem would compare to this description.

And this is what Bernard is going to talk about, the end of the British Empire in

Palestine.

Thank you. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it

the death of the thane of Qatar, thus reported by Malcolm

to Duncan in act one. Scene four of Hamlet of Macbeth.

The poor thayne, who never even gets to make an appearance in person in

the play, enters English literary memory solely

via that brief posthumous encomium.

And the British Empire is often eulogized in like manner, no

doubt. Empires after 1945 were pernicious and doomed.

Nevertheless, we are often told nothing became the British like the way they left theirs,

the peaceful handover of sovereignty in colony after colony was a model of imperial

abnegation almost without parallel. True, there were violent exceptions

like Kenya or Cyprus or Aden, but in general,

the process was nonviolent. In sharp contrast with other imperial ending,

such as those of the Dutch and the East Indies or the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola

and so forth. Those of us who grew up in Britain in the postwar decades

recall the newsreel footage as the British flag was lowered in

colony after colony all the way from the Gold Coast in

Those epic scenes you may recall the British mandate in

Palestine was unique in many ways, in particular in the way of its ending on

the 15th of May 1948. This has often been

noted. This was the only the only dependent territory from

which Britain ever withdrew without handing over authority to any successor

government refusing to commit to implement the United

Nations partition resolution for Palestine. Of the twenty ninth of

November 1947.

The British government embraced an apparent policy of Uprate new le deluge.

Indeed, that is the accusation voiced in several accounts of the

end of the mandate. Arthur Cussler, for example, dubbed the British withdrawal

operation Deluge. Xav Sharif, secretary

of the provisional government of Israel at its inception, and the man chiefly responsible for the construction

of the state’s administrative machine in 1948, wrote in

his memoir Chaos was implicit in the British government’s decision.

The British departure plan ruled out any transfer of government institutions and

public services to the trustworthy charge of the successor authority. And

this inimical official attitude could not have could not but have a

provocative effect on the individuals carrying out the plan.

I recall an interview in 1970 with one of the officials involved

in that. End of the mandate. John Sharing,

who had been a senior official in Palestine and even 22 years after

the event, he told me he felt shame at this policy of Scuttle.

So far as he was concerned, nothing less became the British then

nothing less became the British then their manner of leaving Palestine. Was

he right? There can be little argument that

at the level of high policymaking in London, the end of the Palestine mandate

was marked by a despairing anxiousness anxiety on the part of the British government

to wash its hands of Palestine.

Which was in 1947, tying down one hundred

thousand British troops and security forces. And by the

way, that is more than the entire strength of the British armed forces

today. But one hundred thousand men were tied down and this was at a time when Britain was on

its knees economically and dependent really on

the prospect of a an American loan to for its economy to survive.

So it was desperately anxious to get out at whatever cost

at the level of high policy and unwilling to be seen as aiding and abetting partition

of Palestine and the consequent creation of a Jewish state there for fear of its

collapse, of its influence in the entire Middle East. Britain abstained

in the UN vote on the twenty ninth of November, forbade the UN Palestine

Commission charged with implementing the partition even to set foot

in Palestine, and forbade it to set foot in Palestine until the 1st of May 1948,

advance party in March, the petition commission never actually arrived in Palestine

because it was disbanded for reasons we didn’t enter into. On the 14th

of May. So that was what Britain did at the level of

high policy. But if we turn our attention from London to Jerusalem,

does a different picture emerge now in an article published 30 years ago by

main host William Roger Lewis. Professor

Lewis analyzed the role of the head of the government of Palestine, the high commissioner in Jerusalem,

Sir Alan Cunningham, on the basis of the scrutiny of his contemporary

papers. Lewis, if I may refer to that,

it to some extent salved Cunningham’s reputation, concluding

that whatever his other failings which he enumerated, he

in Palestine presided over a well or I’m quoting now, presided over a well organized and carefully

planned withdrawal that took place entirely according to plan.

Others have been more critical. The Palestinian historian is Hala, for example, complains

that the withdrawal was, I quote, confused and disorderly, having taken place under conditions

of almost complete anarchy. And that’s a view that’s echoed by both Israeli

and Palestinian historians down to the present.

Most of them. Cunningham was primarily concerned with trying

to preserve some semblance of peace in Palestine and to minimize bloodshed.

He saw his job. Lewis writes principally as holding the ring while the civil administration

closed down and British troops evacuated from the Olympian

Heights of Government House in Jerusalem, built on a hill,

the hill of evil counsel allegedly from the New Testament.

He largely delegated the handling of the withdrawal to his officials.

Now let’s descend. This is what I’d like to do today. Let’s descend to those lower

levels and survey what happened in the government offices and in the towns and villages

of Palestine between the two dates that are behind me, between the UN partition

vote and the British

withdrawal from Palestine as the struggle for the succession to the mandate intensified.

And before we performed that exercise, let me just

mention three contextual points. First, the fact that in spite

of its long history and experience of imperial acquisition,

Britain in the spring of 1948 had as yet little experience of imperial

deaccessioning. Among the few notable

instances of that were Iraq in 1932 and the more recent incident

instances in August 1947 of India, and both

of those were followed by terrible bloodshed. Neither offered a promising

model for emulation. And the second contextual point. The withdrawal

was a colossal logistic exercise. It involved the trans shipment of

five thousand military personnel. That’s as of the first of December 1947.

It had gone down from its high point, six thousand British police and officials,

the disposal of massive quantities of government assets of all kinds, and the removal

or destruction of a quarter of a million tons of military stores.

And the third point that withdrawal took place against the background, of course, as we know, of civil

war that was already taking place between Arabs and Jews

and of Jewish attacks against British military targets. The carnage was horrific

and the British were powerless to contain it. By early 1948,

the government of Palestine was clearly, as the American consul in Jerusalem reported on

the 9th of February, in a state of disintegration.

Now, the managing director of Britain’s of the mandatory administration’s withdrawal

was not, in fact, the high commissioner. It was a lower official. A man called Eric

Mills. He had served continuously in Palestine since the start of British

rule in December 1917 with the title Commissioner

on special duty. Mills was charged with advising on and in effect,

supervising, overseeing, supervising the liquidation of the mandatory government.

Zabbaleen, who had met Mills on his first visit to Palestine in 1934,

called him a clever, disillusioned, cynical person, but

like some of Berlin’s snap judgments, this was unfair. I believe Mills,

who had been comptroller of the 1931 Census of Palestine. Incidentally,

the only census of the whole of the area. Of

what is now Israel and the West Bank that ever took place. The only serious

census. And who had also been director of Manpower

during the Second World War was in fact, an able and conscientious administrator. And

whatever degree of success the opposite the withdrawal operation enjoyed must be attributed.

Success or failure must be attributed in large measure to him now

immediately upon the UN partition vote in November. Mills issued

a draft general scheme for withdrawal, and this provided for the transfer

of government fixed assets such as post offices, schools, telephone exchanges

and hospitals, as well as vehicles, machinery, records and stores.

As far as possible to local authorities, pending the emergence

of successor governments, which British did not want to be responsible for handing

over to the public works

department, accordingly prepared voluminous handing over notes on

public utilities and infrastructure such as water and sewage works, roads and bridges,

machinery and surveying instruments.

In early 1948, instructions were issued for the selective destruction of

government records. Of course, particularly of interest to historians and the guiding

principle was, I quote, to destroy as much as possible. That does not involve

frustration of a successor administration. Among the records

designated to be spared were those concerning births, marriages and deaths, nationality

and citizenship. Most other so-called secret registry files, however,

were to be destroyed. An exception was made for files, I quote, whose

destruction would frustrate a successor government, provided that the publication

would not embarrass HMG Comanches government or injure an

individual in doubtful cases. I am still quoting doubtful cases. The degrees

of frustration or embarrassment must be weighed against each other.

End of quotation now files in the top secret registry were all to be destroyed

or downgraded before z. today, which I’ll translate for you.

Zayday The last day of British rule. Behind me,

all other files were to be stored and then handed over to the UN commission.

Mills suggested, for example, that the plans and field records of the service

department, which alone comprised six tons, might be shipped to England.

The process of destruction and preservation, however, turned out to be more haphazard.

Many papers scheduled for destruction were preserved. None at all appear

to have been transferred to the UN. Some were shipped to Cyprus. Others were sent to England

and opened to researchers at various points after 1966. Some as late

as 2013. Those remaining in Palestine, for the most

part, ended up in archives in Israel. And much of what I report here today is drawn

from those. All documents bearing on security were supposed to be destroyed,

but many in fact survived. Bank vaults in Jerusalem with a capacity of one

hundred and thirty five cubic meters were set aside for secure storage of government

files. But the fighting in Jerusalem was particularly severe around

the Barclays bank building. In fact, I think you can still see on the facade of that building

the the bullet marks and the shell holes

and so forth. Any files stored there?

Sorry. There’s that Barclays bank was the government bank, so that was probably

the bank that they had in mind. Now the fighting there was particularly

severe and it ended up just on the Israeli side of the final demarcation line in Jerusalem,

which you’ll remember was divided at the end of the war in 1948 into the

east, controlled by Jordanian forces and the west controlled by Israelis. So it ended

up just on the Israeli side. Any files stored there were probably among those captured

by a SWAT team of Israeli archivists, specially commissioned

for the task of scouring government buildings for files and scooping them up

while the war was still raging. And overall, a surprising amount of important

documentation survived. Luckily for historians

in his liquidation planning, Milice had proposed that the income tax files, which

he said which are confidential, he wrote, be moved to England for safekeeping

pending their transfer to a successor government. But that seems not to have been done

at the end of March. The tax records were still in place in the government offices and the finance

secretary ordered that, I’m quoting now, in view of their bulk.

Local authorities should be asked to arrange for their safe custody, that this

is the best that we can do, he wrote. Resignedly and in their massive transfer

in Tel Aviv on the 10th of May, just before the end of the mandate,

five days before all tax and other financial and legal records for the city of Tel Aviv,

the largest Jewish city in Palestine, as well as all other Jewish towns and settlements

in the coastal area where deposited with the Tel Aviv municipality, I

quote, intrust pending the constitution of a successor government.

Now, one other British bureaucratic legacy that proved to be of critical importance in this

case, particularly to many Palestinian Arabs, was the accumulation of land records,

particularly registers of land ownership, which the British

mandatory government made considerable efforts to preserve. M. emphasized that

the mills emphasized that the land registers, whereas he wrote of vital importance

to the whole country. And he ordered that microfilm copies should be made. At least

some were photographed. But the volume of such records rendered the task of Mike

microfilming them all unfeasible. The remainder of those in Jerusalem

were stored under Red Cross protection in the YMCA building today a four

star hotel. Fortunately, a large proportion survived intact

and are today in Israeli archives and are much consulted by lawyers dealing with

Palestinian Arab land issues.

But let me move on from records. What was to be done, for example, with

prisoners? In the absence of the short continuity of service by prison guards,

they could hardly be left behind, locked up just to rot

away. Now serious British citizen offenders

could be moved to the UK. But what about Palestinians, Arabs and Jews?

A partial amnesty was granted in less serious cases, reducing the prison

population. It has already been substantially diminished

by the by the time we are dealing with by the escape of 251

prisoners from the Acher prison and a famous breakout in

May 1947. And the further 18 escaped in December.

By the middle of March 1948, only two thousand one hundred seventy

seven prisoners remained in custody. And those included 407 political

detainees. Arabs and Jews and 110 criminal lunatics, as they

were called it was decided to release nearly all the political detainees.

Further, releases of ordinary prisoners reduced the total to

twelve hundred. The remaining Jewish and Arab convicts

were redistributed to prisons within the territories of their

respective proposed states. Under the UN resolution

and confidential contacts were established with the Jewish Agency, the embryo government of Israel

and the Arab Power Committee representing Arab nationalists in Palestine, whereby they

agreed to take responsibility for their prisoners. After the 15th

of May.

Then there was the problem of the railways. Even had

the British been ready to hand it over the railway system to the successor states,

that could not be partitioned. It was a unified system for the country as a whole. So what would

be done with the buildings roiling stock and personnel? In a memo on

the 12th of April 1948, general manager of the railways despaired of any easy solution,

noting that the system it already suffered severely from looting and destruction. He feared

that the entire organisation would soon disintegrate. By the end of the mandate, hardly any trains

were, in fact, running. Nevertheless, on the 13th of May, the last chief

accountant of the Palestine Railways transferred to his Jewish successor

in Haifa, the keys to the office, the head office of the of the Palestine Railways.

The keys also to the safes, as well as and I’m quoting now, to spare motors for

the accounting machines. Several sporting trophies, also an automatic

pistol. My own personal property, which he wrote, please hand over to the proper

authorities. You didn’t say what those authorities were, of course.

And you concluded almost as if he was speaking at a retirement party and handing over a gold watch.

I’d take this opportunity of thanking you most sincerely for your long and valuable service with the Palestine Railways

and wishing you a happy and prosperous future. Well, while men

and goods could be withdrawn, the same did not apply so easily to beasts.

What about the two hundred fifty seven horses and twenty seven camels of the Palestine

Police? Mills noted that the animals represent an

asset that should, strictly speaking, be transferred to the United Nations at the end of the mandate,

but apparently didn’t particularly trust international control of such valuable

assets. He expressed concern that there is every reason for supposing that the animals cannot be tended

and fed after the administration ends. The inspector general

of police declared himself most anxious that no horses should be left ownerless at the termination

of the mandate, and he proposed as a humane measure. Therefore, that horses above the age

of 12 years should be destroyed. Many were in fact sent

to the knacker’s yard. The remainder were offered for sale at 30 Palestinian

pounds each. It was a bargain price, but there were a few takers and there were few

takers. And in the end, it was decided to reduce the price to 15 pounds and to divide them,

as it were, to partition them, as it were, by nationality. Those the Jewish horses,

as it were, those in Jewish areas, would be sold to Jewish buyers and those in Arab areas

to Arabs. And as for the camels, they were to be offered to Bedouin sheiks

in Shaikh’s in Beersheba. But then there was

a related issue, particularly dear, of course, to British hearts. Mills proposed

that police dogs were to be offered to other colonial governments unless,

as he put it, a properly constituted successor authority requires them. He added,

And I want you to listen carefully to this, because I’m not quoting precise the precise words he wrote.

He wrote Masters may be transferred with them. The dogs speak Afrikaans.

Dogs and masters work together. The dogs are not domestic. It

may be best to destroy them, since we cannot feed them after departure, unquote.

Well, all that, of course, no doubt testifies to the notorious British concern for the welfare

of dumb animals. In many respects, v withdrawal

did not proceed as smoothly in real life as in Mills’s scheme.

Not all local authorities were able or willing to take responsibility for institutions

that were to be transferred to them. In Nablus, for example, the Arab town of Nablus. The

municipality declared itself unable to afford the expense of maintaining the government hospital

after the 15th of May. The government rejected an appeal. The central government

rejected an appeal for transition funding for the hospital. And the district commissioner advised

the mayor of Nablus to, as he put it, I’m quoting his letter now to take the matter up with whatever

Arab authority or body he thinks fit in order to obtain assistance.

Drawings of buildings in Jaffa, Haifa and Nazareth districts were

stolen in transit from the public works department to the local authorities.

They probably ended up in in the hands of their Israeli

successors. Until we reach a critical point

in this this discussion, because the government superficially nonpolitical

approach of handing over to local authorities obscured what I would

argue is an underlying reality of acquiescence in the partition of Palestine.

And that is because, in fact, nearly all local authorities in Palestine were

controlled either by Jews or by Arabs. There were only four

that weren’t, in fact, in the case of municipalities. Almost all were wholly

or largely mono ethnic to Tel Aviv. And

Netanya, for example, were Jewish. Nablus and Hebron were Arab. The two most important exceptions

were Jerusalem, the capital and Haifa. Let me say a word about each

of those owing to the inability of Arabs and Jews to agree on the choice of a mayor,

the Jerusalem and this apparently had been under the control since 1945 of an unelected

commission which replaced the town council was headed in the final months of the mandate by

a retired Palestine government official, Richard Graves. Incidentally, the

brother of the poet Robert Graves, a bomb attack in

December 1947 led all the Jewish officials to leave the municipality

building and moved to a separate office in a Jewish district. Graves tried

without success to persuade them to return on the 25th of April.

He recorded in his diary, Government have instructed me to recognize unofficially,

so to speak, the new Jewish Municipal Committee appointed to look after the Jewish area.

Unquote. In the very last days of the mandate remaining, Jerusalem

municipal funds were split, a check for £30000 was issued to the head of

the Jewish Municipal Committee and one for twenty seven thousand five hundred. I’m

not sure why it was a slightly lower amount was handed to a representative of the

Arab section of the city. Now, as for Haifa,

uniquely in Palestine, it was designated as a reserved enclave

where British military occupation would persist for several weeks after

the withdrawal date. After Z Day after the 15th of May, while the

Army completed its withdrawal through what was Palestine’s most important port.

But by the 21st of April, the Hogan-Howe, the Jewish underground army

in the civil war that was already raging, as I mentioned, had won control

over Haifa, except for the British controlled port area and the main road

and the airport of the city, a small airport. Over the next few days, most of

Haifa’s Arab population fled in British army and Navy

convoys. Here, the British not

didn’t just acquiesce in partition. They colluded at least this

is one way of looking at it. I think a reasonable way of looking at it. They colluded in what

we would now call ethnic cleansing because it was the British who shipped out

the Arabs from Haifa.

The government and the Haifa municipality agreed that as of the 15th of May, the municipality would

take over. I’m quoting now from the handover documents, control and management of the Port

Authority with the proviso that it would provide full facilities

for the completion of the withdrawal of British forces and that a meeting on the 12th of May.

Most of the Port Authority files and accounts were handed over to representatives

of the municipality, I’m quoting, in the capacity of a trustee pending

the establishment of a settled form of government in Palestine.

Well, we’re already seeing that the notion that the British just burnt all the files and skipped

out doesn’t conform with reality. Now, in some cases,

the government machine was not so much bequeathed successors as disemboweled

from within. By the end of March, the 30000 Palestinian,

Arab and Jewish civil servants were being supervised by just 200

remaining British officials. In these circumstances,

Jewish and Arab officials of the government, who, of course, had nothing now to look forward

to except maybe their pensions from the British scrambled to seize

control of what remained of the administrative apparatus. And

I’ll just mention one example, very interesting example of that. And that’s the fate of the

Palestine Broadcasting Service. The the government controlled

monopoly broadcaster in Palestine. The PBS had been

founded in 1936 and it broadcast in English, Arabic and Hebrew from its transmitter

in Ramallah, ten miles north of Jerusalem, in his withdrawal scheme.

Melissa had proposed that the PBS should continue to transmit a new service up to the last.

Up to Z day. He advised that when that was no longer possible, consideration

should be given to removing, I’m quoting from his scheme, vital parts to it

to immobilize the transmitter to prevent mischief makers misusing it

unquote. By late 1947. Indeed. The broadcasting

studios in Jerusalem had perforce been split up the the Hebrew service

employees, fearful of attacks, had moved with their files, record and records and equipment

to recover a Jewish district while the Arabic service remained in broadcasting

house in most rah-rah, an Arab district. In January 1948, the

PBS program Planning was decentralized so that the Arabic and Hebrew services

were completely separate, except that all broadcasts still went out through the Ramallah transmitter

and each service operated now with its separate bank accounts. By

late April, Jerusalem was in a state of siege. The

division of the service was almost complete, although broadcasting continued until the

last day of the mandate. When the Ramallah transmitter was damaged in the fighting,

transmissions were divided to the Arabic ones went out from reserve equipment in Ramallah,

the Hebrew ones on low-power on a low powered emergency transmitter in the general post office

building in Jerusalem. The war left the Ramalla

transmitter station in Jordanian hands and the Jerusalem headquarters building under Israeli

control. But the broadcasting service had already been partitioned before

the 15th of May. As the assistant director of the service, Rex Keating later recalled,

the PBS examples was quickly followed by other departments. Despite all the efforts of

government to stop them, the split tape became total in effect, he wrote.

The incipient Israeli government was being realized, and his emphasis on

the Israeli success in this is important because the Zionists, with

their preexisting institutional apparatus, a state in the making since the

officials and civil servants of the new state. Even before the end of May.

Meanwhile, the Arab hire committee headed from exile by the ex mufti of Jerusalem

had to I mean Hussein. He proved itself toothless and internally divided.

It had no significant institutional foundations. In Palestine, Palestinian

Arab society, unlike Jewish, dependent heavily on government services in such matters

as education, health and social welfare by early May. In

any case, all but one of the members of the Arab PA committee had fled the country.

The committee requested of Arab officials that they should take charge of

government departments and where they could, some did so. But the arrival

in the eastern part of the mandate area of Arab Legion

forces from Trans-Jordan, loyal to King Abdullah of Jordan, led

them to see that these officials to see him and not the Arab higher committee of the Palestinian

body as they are likely future employer. Quite apart from

Abdullah’s military power, which rested on the British officer, the Arab Legion, Abdullah had other

advantages. He ruled, after all, and existing state that had close links with sections of

the Palestinian notable elite. And he enjoyed continuing British military,

diplomatic and economic support. An attempt by the Mufti later

in 1948 to set up a so-called All Palestine government in Egyptian

occupied Gaza soon collapsed. Abdullah swept aside

any pretensions of the Palestinian Arabs to a separate nationalism and united

the two banks of the Jordan under his autocratic rule. In

other words, Transjordan and what we now call the West Bank. That’s why it’s called the West Bank, because

it’s a western part of what what became until 1967

the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Now, Mills’s scheme

did not, of course, make provision for the armed forces, which operated under a separate

withdrawal plan. He was responsible only for the civil government and both Jews and

Arabs complained bitterly at the time and ever since that British military actions in 1948

favored the other side. The military withdrawal plan required the army

to abstain from involvement in fighting between Jews and Arabs. It was to concentrate on holding

lines of communication for withdrawal. But as

Benny Morris has written and his history of the 1948 war and quoting

from him his book now The Guideline of Impartiality,

translated into a policy of quietly assisting each side in the takeover

of areas in which that side was dominant. At the same time,

there was large scale finished quotation, at the same time, there was large scale looting

of arms and military stores and the flourishing black market in military equipment.

And the fascinating picture of the underside of the military withdraw

is provided in a source that has been little noticed by historians, although it’s freely available

on the Internet. It’s not not been published a book. I wish it were. And that is the

diary and memoir. It’s a memoir which can includes

large quotations from a contemporary diary of Ivan Wilkes,

Ivor Wilkes in 1948, a twenty year old second lieutenant

in the British Army and Palestine as a satire on army life. Wilkes

is now a narrative bears comparison with I think with England. War

Emblem was sort of a trilogy, but Welles was not only a gifted writer,

he was also a socialist and an intellectual who later became a professional historian.

He ended his career as a neighbor of mine. Alas, I never met him. He died a few years ago.

He ended his career as a distinguished professor of African history at Northwestern University in Chicago,

and his four naïf memoir is an extraordinary

historical, literary and human document. And allow me to take a few minutes to

to show how fascinating it is from the 23rd

of December, 1947. Wilkes was stationed at an army base

near Haifa where petroleum was stored for the army. The base was situated

between two villages, one Jewish, the other at Jewish Nasha,

Arab Balad. I’ll share. One of Wilkes as responsibilities

was to measure each night. It had to be done at night for technical reasons.

The amount of petrol in storage tanks on the base after

a time he noticed discrepancies in the reported and actual amounts of petrol

in the tanks. He discovered that a diversionary pipe had been opened

and large amounts of petrol were being siphoned off for use by a small contingent

of Syrian forces who had infiltrated into the Arab village of ballah. They’ll check.

He also learned that his commanding officer, Captain Webster, was illicitly permitting

a Hagana Jewish underground army unit in Nasher

to obstruct empty jerry cans of fought

for for oil. Now, Webster. A marvelous

character. Which war could not have invented war of Webster? A

closet homosexual with a bath man who was as flamboyant in his sexual

orientation as his master, was secretive in his. Webster

had one passionate desire that he shared with nearly all his fellow

soldiers in Palestine. And that was, of course, to get home as soon as possible. One

day, Wilkes learned that Webster was supplying the hunger. Now, not only

with old. Jerry cans, but with arms from

the camp that were. Surplus to requirements. I hate doing

this, but surplus to requirements and Wilks protested and

I now quote from Wilkes as memoir, which as I say, is based on his contemporary diary.

He protested to Webster. To supply the Jews with old and better

jerry cans was one thing. Firearms and ammunition were quite another.

I Wilkes but certainly not ill disposed towards the Palestinian Arabs. I had

come to like working with them. Many of them worked in the camp. You see, I pointed

this out to Webster. I take these things very seriously, he said,

but you must remember that it’s not your workers who are leading the Liberation Army. It is men who collaborated

with the Nazis and came to believe that the Jews should be exterminated.

At this point in the conversation, I had decided to press him on the nature of his relationship sorry, nature

of his arrangement with Nisha’s Hugger Now unit. His answer took me

completely by surprise. Prof. Prof. Was Websters

hugging noncontact contact inertia? Prof. He said.

And I talked the matter over and perhaps suggested that the handgun should be valued at 15

Palestinian pounds and ammunition at around £1 for 10000 rounds.

I Wilks was taken aback. I’d be brought up to think of arms trading

as reprehensible. I said something to that effect to Webster. His reply took

me by surprise and I can only recollect the gist of it. I am, he said.

Or well, it’s effect. I am a businessman by profession and I was doing business with pref.

I was giving him a good deal because they would rather get a bargain from a businessman than

receive a free gift from a do gooder. Works concludes

his section of his memoir by saying I I was more than a little impressed by this gem of capitalistic

wisdom. Now, Webster was undoubtedly an outlier

in his political outlook, as in his sexuality.

There is ample evidence that British troops, prompted by a mixture of anti-Semitism

stoked by Jewish terrorism and profiteering, transferred large amounts

of military equipment to the Arabs. Wilkes himself,

although drawn to socialist Zionism, as he

freely describes in his memoir, nevertheless participated almost without realizing

what was going on in a large delivery of British arms from Haifa

to the Egyptian army at the border just south of Gaza.

Wilkes was attracted to Zionism by more than ideology, sexual,

innocent. He was suborned by

valid Tina, a young Jewish woman in Haifa who introduced him to

so-called friends who turned out to be Haganah agents. And Wilks

relates how, at the request of one of Valentinos friends, a man called Dan

Lanner, later an Israeli major general Wilkes relates how he helped Spirit,

a consignment of Czechoslovak arms through the high for port for the pal Mark, the

elite striking force of the Haganah.

In the last days of the mandate, Wilkes found himself caught up in negotiations between

the Muqataa, a village head of ballah Dale Schiff and The Hunger Now unit

in Nasha, who demanded the surrender of arms that had been left

behind by the Syrian infiltrators. I mentioned a little earlier. Now

the Arabs in Balad, L-shape, produce very little by way of arms. Perhaps very little

had been left, and the Haganah announced that they would conduct a search of bilateral ships.

They announced this in advance. The villagers without the end of April,

no doubt mindful of the massacre of Arab civilians by

Jewish terrorists at the village of Dary are seen near Jerusalem two weeks earlier, did not

wait to see how such a shirt search would be would but turnout at midnight

on the 24th of April, Wilkes recorded the aftermath in his diary. The

Arabs have gone carrying what they could with them. The rest has been

looted. The few belongings they had to leave and the horses, goats and fowl.

I don’t know what would have happened had the Arabs allowed an immediate search of the town.

I believe that even the hugging now commander would have left them in the town once, sure that it was neutralized

by the handing over of the arms. But the Arabs, by and large believed that their lives were

in danger and fled. It’s the end of the quotation. Now, Wilkes

was troubled about his own role in that miserable affair and his mind was not eased

when at their final meeting, a final meeting he had with

Dan Lanner, the Hagana agent. Lanner and I’m quoting again from.

From the diary, Lannert produced a watch from his

case and passed it to me. It was Swiss. It seemed to be gold

and it had a multiplicity of small dials. I was unsure what I was

supposed to do. Should I admire it and pass it back?

lonell saw that I was embarrassed. It’s a present. He said.

He said simply, you were a great help to us in avoiding a heavy loss of life in bilat culture.

I have never been sure, wrote Wilkes in his memoir. Whether I should have accepted

that watch. But I did, and I have it to this day.

In his tedious, lonely life on the Army base, Wilkes fantasized about taking

Valentino back to England as his bride only at the end

in the bitter disclosure scene. Did you find out that she herself was an Haggada agent

who had bedded him as well as other British soldiers? As a matter, more of duty

than of love. On the 14th of May,

the high commissioner departed. The state of Israel was declared, and the Palestinian

Nakba or catastrophe took shape. Although the mandate terminated at midnight,

some British forces remained in the Haifa enclave, which was gradually reduced

in size until the 30th of June, and Wilkes was among those who left on that very

last day. So what emerges from all this?

The proposition that the bridges simply washed their hands of Palestine cannot be sustained

at any rate, as regards the men on the spot. John and David kimche, for example,

and others like them, including, I must say myself in early

writings were far from accurate in their claim. I’m quitting cheese now

that there had been no attempt to transfer government and administrative matters to the Jews and

the Arabs. The British officials there wrote the kimche brothers burnt

their files, destroyed their records, and departed. I dont think that can be sustained

on the basis of what we now know. Notwithstanding the British government’s public stance of

noninvolvement, the mandatory administration did not pursue a scorched earth

policy, nor did the British permit limit themselves to seeking an even balance

between the warring parties. It would be more correct to say that in the final weeks of the mandate,

they participated directly in the implementation of partition,

and in doing so they helped pave the way for the establishment of Israel

and for King Abdullah’s takeover of the West Bank.

And the last words go fittingly to Eric Mills in something

that he wrote with some foresight, I think, in as early as 1936.

It was he penned this epitaph that he wrote in a letter to the head

of the Palestine, to the man who became head of the Palestine Broadcasting Service. Edwin Samuel. But to

appreciate it, I have to just explain one thing. And that is these two

Hebrew letters here. Olaf Ude. They stand for. They

stand for edits. Israel. The first two letters of which means

the land of Israel in Hebrew in the early days of the mandate. There was much controversy

arising from the Zionist demand that the Hebrew name of the country should appear

on all official documents that were written in one of the three official languages of Palestine,

namely Hebrew. But there was some resistance to this, and in

the end the compromise was adopted in the short form. I love your. But not

the full name. And it’s Israel is printed on postage stamps, coins

and so forth. Together with the English Palestine, the Arabic

philistine and the Hebrew transliteration Palestina. So it was

I love you, Palestina. Edit Sister. So just to you understand now why

I say this, because here is Mills’s epitaph. Here lies

Palestine. Olaf Yot have mercy on her soul. Lord

God, unwanted child of Arab and Jew. She needs

no love. So let your tears be few.