Colonial rulers in Palestine, compared and contrasted.
The 7 February 2013 issue of The New York Review of Books has a book review essay by Avishai Margalit, a contemporary of the Israeli novelist-cum-memoirist Amos Oz, of the English translation of Hadara Lazar's Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel (originally published in Hebrew in 1990 as The Mandatorians: The Land of Israel 1940-1948; according to Margalit's first endnote, the English edition omits some material that was included in the Hebrew edition); titled "Palestine: How Bad, & Good, Was British Rule?," the essay deviates a bit from a strict review of Lazar's book, but I found these deviations to be the essay's most interesting features.
Margalit writes: "Hadara Lazar has written a remarkable book dedicated not so much to the British Mandate as to some of the people who were strongly involved with it." The historical background, as summed up by Margalit:
"The British rule over Palestine lasted roughly thirty years, from 1917 until 1948. In a country that has three thousand years of recorded history, thirty years is a tiny fraction. If we conceive of three thousand years on a scale of one day, the period of British rule takes barely eight minutes. In comparison, Turkish Ottoman rule over Palestine, which lasted four hundred years, takes an hour and forty minutes. Yet the influence of these thirty years was deep and wide-ranging. Under British rule, Palestine became a political unit, not a marginal province of something else. The British made Jerusalem the capital city of Palestine; they introduced the idea of professional civil service, and they encouraged a lively civil society; they built roads and airfields, and provided sound legal institutions and reliable police.
"The legal frame for British rule was based on a mandate conferred on Britain by the League of Nations. It was meant to be a transitory trusteeship so as to prepare the country to be a 'national home for the Jews,' without 'impairing the civil and religious rights of the indigenous Arab people.' This contradictory task is at the heart of the story of the British Mandate. It is this mandate of the League of Nations that makes us call the political and military rule of the British over Palestine 'The Mandate.' And it’s the Mandate that revived the old term 'Palestine' (already used by Herodotus in his writings) to describe the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Before then the Ottomans divided the region into their own units, including, for example, the 'Sanjak of Jerusalem.'
"The Mandate didn’t provide collective liberty-namely, political independence. It didn’t provide for elections for local administrations that would ultimately be under British control. But it did provide a great deal of personal freedom. Following the Ottoman Empire’s Millet system, the Mandate left a great deal of internal autonomy to the various religious communities to conduct their life."
The penultimate eight paragraphs of Margalit's essay are the most thought-provoking:
"How good were the British as colonialists in Palestine? This is the tacit question of Lazar’s book. The two obvious retorts are: In comparison to what? Good to whom, or good for what? 'Good' may mean in promoting British interests, but the interests of the British in Palestine were always puzzling. There was a view that the Empire needed a buffer zone between the Suez Canal in the south and Russia in the north, and that Palestine was meant to serve as this buffer. This geostrategic talk was quite common at the time, but I don’t believe it carried much conviction.
"Another view, which was strongly held but not stated publicly, saw Palestine as the Holy Land for the Christian world - a precious gem worth stowing in the Empire’s trove, even if it wasn’t the jewel in the crown like India. There was nothing tentative and transitory in the Mandate notwithstanding the promises that the British made to all sides. The British were determined, in my view, to stay in Palestine forever and a day. They didn’t. Does the fact that they left after thirty years mean that they betrayed their interests?
"After World War II, the vague, lingering religious sentiments of Christian Zionism were not strong enough to sustain an increasingly secular British effort. But there’s another way to answer the question about the British as colonialists, and that’s to examine whether they improved the daily life of the people in Palestine. Being colonialists, it is clear that they weren’t good for the collective aspirations of the two clashing communities, but were they good, on the whole, for the lives of the individual members taken together? Those who remember the British Mandate would grudgingly admit that they were.
"It is fair to assume that the British were more benign in Palestine than in many other places they ruled. Since they were in the Holy Land, they were under the scrutiny of world opinion more so than in, say, Nigeria. But perhaps the most important implicit question raised by Lazar’s book, and the one that gives it its political aspect, is how British colonial rule in Palestine fares in comparison to Israeli colonial rule over the Palestinians during the last forty-five years.
"For its first six years, Israel was as good to the Palestinians as Britain was. There was a genuine effort on behalf of the Israelis in charge of the Palestinian territories, especially under Moshe Dayan, to be so-called good colonialists. In his 1970 book, The Cursed Blessing, the writer Shabtai Teveth tells the story of the Israeli effort to be enlightened colonialists. One can be suspicious about the generosity of their attitudes but not about their deeds. In one stroke, Dayan removed all restrictions on the movements of the Palestinians between Gaza in the south to Mount Hermon in the north, and an unprecedented economic boom followed in the Palestinian community.
"No doubt the hardships and humiliations of being under occupation were there all along, as was the exploitation of Arab labor. But for individuals, at least, Dayan’s colonial rule was cunningly benign. It was especially effective in modernizing Palestinian agriculture, and in allowing the opening of Palestinian universities that were prohibited under the Jordanian rule. Dayan had an image of himself as a ruler from the Book of Judges - a local chieftain who addresses local problems without the use of heavy-handed bureaucracy - but he also viewed himself as a sort of high commissioner in the British mold.
"But all that utterly changed after the war of 1973, and a terrible ugliness of Israeli colonial rule was born. There are many reasons for the difference between the relatively benign rule before 1973 and what happened after: the economic oil crisis, the shrinking of the Palestinian labor market, terrorism, the two intifadas. The list goes on. But one of the main reasons behind the change was that Israeli settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza. British colonial rule in Palestine never threatened to displace the indigenous population and to disinherit it (though it did infamously prohibit Europe’s displaced Jews from entering Palestine). But Israeli colonial rule did threaten and disinherit the Palestinians, and continues to do so.
"Israel’s colonial rule is today geared exclusively toward supporting the settlement movement. This shift in Israeli policy after 1973 makes it not only inexcusably repressive. In today’s postcolonial world, it also makes it an incomprehensible anachronism."
Margalit writes: "Hadara Lazar has written a remarkable book dedicated not so much to the British Mandate as to some of the people who were strongly involved with it." The historical background, as summed up by Margalit:
"The British rule over Palestine lasted roughly thirty years, from 1917 until 1948. In a country that has three thousand years of recorded history, thirty years is a tiny fraction. If we conceive of three thousand years on a scale of one day, the period of British rule takes barely eight minutes. In comparison, Turkish Ottoman rule over Palestine, which lasted four hundred years, takes an hour and forty minutes. Yet the influence of these thirty years was deep and wide-ranging. Under British rule, Palestine became a political unit, not a marginal province of something else. The British made Jerusalem the capital city of Palestine; they introduced the idea of professional civil service, and they encouraged a lively civil society; they built roads and airfields, and provided sound legal institutions and reliable police.
"The legal frame for British rule was based on a mandate conferred on Britain by the League of Nations. It was meant to be a transitory trusteeship so as to prepare the country to be a 'national home for the Jews,' without 'impairing the civil and religious rights of the indigenous Arab people.' This contradictory task is at the heart of the story of the British Mandate. It is this mandate of the League of Nations that makes us call the political and military rule of the British over Palestine 'The Mandate.' And it’s the Mandate that revived the old term 'Palestine' (already used by Herodotus in his writings) to describe the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Before then the Ottomans divided the region into their own units, including, for example, the 'Sanjak of Jerusalem.'
"The Mandate didn’t provide collective liberty-namely, political independence. It didn’t provide for elections for local administrations that would ultimately be under British control. But it did provide a great deal of personal freedom. Following the Ottoman Empire’s Millet system, the Mandate left a great deal of internal autonomy to the various religious communities to conduct their life."
The penultimate eight paragraphs of Margalit's essay are the most thought-provoking:
"How good were the British as colonialists in Palestine? This is the tacit question of Lazar’s book. The two obvious retorts are: In comparison to what? Good to whom, or good for what? 'Good' may mean in promoting British interests, but the interests of the British in Palestine were always puzzling. There was a view that the Empire needed a buffer zone between the Suez Canal in the south and Russia in the north, and that Palestine was meant to serve as this buffer. This geostrategic talk was quite common at the time, but I don’t believe it carried much conviction.
"Another view, which was strongly held but not stated publicly, saw Palestine as the Holy Land for the Christian world - a precious gem worth stowing in the Empire’s trove, even if it wasn’t the jewel in the crown like India. There was nothing tentative and transitory in the Mandate notwithstanding the promises that the British made to all sides. The British were determined, in my view, to stay in Palestine forever and a day. They didn’t. Does the fact that they left after thirty years mean that they betrayed their interests?
"After World War II, the vague, lingering religious sentiments of Christian Zionism were not strong enough to sustain an increasingly secular British effort. But there’s another way to answer the question about the British as colonialists, and that’s to examine whether they improved the daily life of the people in Palestine. Being colonialists, it is clear that they weren’t good for the collective aspirations of the two clashing communities, but were they good, on the whole, for the lives of the individual members taken together? Those who remember the British Mandate would grudgingly admit that they were.
"It is fair to assume that the British were more benign in Palestine than in many other places they ruled. Since they were in the Holy Land, they were under the scrutiny of world opinion more so than in, say, Nigeria. But perhaps the most important implicit question raised by Lazar’s book, and the one that gives it its political aspect, is how British colonial rule in Palestine fares in comparison to Israeli colonial rule over the Palestinians during the last forty-five years.
"For its first six years, Israel was as good to the Palestinians as Britain was. There was a genuine effort on behalf of the Israelis in charge of the Palestinian territories, especially under Moshe Dayan, to be so-called good colonialists. In his 1970 book, The Cursed Blessing, the writer Shabtai Teveth tells the story of the Israeli effort to be enlightened colonialists. One can be suspicious about the generosity of their attitudes but not about their deeds. In one stroke, Dayan removed all restrictions on the movements of the Palestinians between Gaza in the south to Mount Hermon in the north, and an unprecedented economic boom followed in the Palestinian community.
"No doubt the hardships and humiliations of being under occupation were there all along, as was the exploitation of Arab labor. But for individuals, at least, Dayan’s colonial rule was cunningly benign. It was especially effective in modernizing Palestinian agriculture, and in allowing the opening of Palestinian universities that were prohibited under the Jordanian rule. Dayan had an image of himself as a ruler from the Book of Judges - a local chieftain who addresses local problems without the use of heavy-handed bureaucracy - but he also viewed himself as a sort of high commissioner in the British mold.
"But all that utterly changed after the war of 1973, and a terrible ugliness of Israeli colonial rule was born. There are many reasons for the difference between the relatively benign rule before 1973 and what happened after: the economic oil crisis, the shrinking of the Palestinian labor market, terrorism, the two intifadas. The list goes on. But one of the main reasons behind the change was that Israeli settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza. British colonial rule in Palestine never threatened to displace the indigenous population and to disinherit it (though it did infamously prohibit Europe’s displaced Jews from entering Palestine). But Israeli colonial rule did threaten and disinherit the Palestinians, and continues to do so.
"Israel’s colonial rule is today geared exclusively toward supporting the settlement movement. This shift in Israeli policy after 1973 makes it not only inexcusably repressive. In today’s postcolonial world, it also makes it an incomprehensible anachronism."