The history of the West’s behaviour towards Palestinians is one of betrayal of legitimate hopes.
The Husain-McMahon correspondence shows Britain luring the Emir of Mecca, Sharif Husain, into entering WW1 on the Allies side by promising falsely that Husain could rule a state which included Palestine. The Balfour Declaration not only broke this promise, it embodied a double deceit. While promising a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people it also stipulated that nothing would be done to ‘.. prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…..’. Thus it attempted to deceive Palestinians into thinking that their interests would not be prejudiced but also allowed the British Government wriggle room to ditch the Jews simply by saying that inward migration was now found, unfortunately, to be prejudicial to non-Jews in Palestine. In fact British Government ministers were already saying in private that enough Jews would be allowed into Palestine to swamp the Palestinians numerically and become rulers of a sovereign state. Ministers and civil servants seemed to think that the Palestinians would be acquiescent, that the people on the mudflats wouldn’t bother themselves, or even notice, that the tide was rising. Moreover the British Government ensured that its League of Nation mandate to control Palestine continued Britain’s policy of swamping the Palestinians. Britain’s policy was the first betrayal of the Palestinians. It set the stage for the Judeo-Palestinian war, which has continued into the present.
The UN had a chance to do justice to the Palestinians in 1947. Indeed Sub-Committee 2 of the UN Special Committee on Palestine put up a proposal for a unitary state, including an interim constitution and constituent assembly etc. Unfortunately the outcome of the UN’s deliberations was determined by US domestic political considerations. The Democratic Party had lost seats in the 1946 Congressional elections due to withdrawal of Jewish support. Truman, succumbing to pressure from within the Democratic Party and from Zionists, allowed bribes and threats to UN member states to be used to secure the 2/3 majority needed to endorse the Partition Plan. A vote was stalled for 3 days when it looked as if the Plan would be defeated. Then Liberia, Philippines, Haiti and France voted for the Plan under US pressure and Siam, after indicating opposition earlier, found that its credentials had been revoked. Had these 5 voted against the Plan it would have been lost. Perhaps it would have been lost anyway had it not been for Western European guilt over the Holocaust. European sins were expiated by giving Jews a bit of Asia. Nonetheless the responsibility for the second betrayal rests mainly with the US. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the US betrayal has been its subsequent pretence at acting as an honest broker between Jews and Palestinians - the boxer’s manager refereeing the fight.
Up to an abrupt change of policy in 1939 Britain had always encouraged Zionists to believe that Jews would in due course take over the whole of Palestine. Despite this and knowing that the Zionist leader Weizman, and others, regarded a small Israel as a stepping stone towards an Israel encompassing the whole of Palestine, the UN took no steps to make Zionists accept the Partition boundaries in perpetuity, enabling the Jews to expand their area of control and ‘create facts on the ground’ by building settlements.
Will there be a third betrayal? The West’s rather glib response to successive crises in Palestine has been to support a 2-state solution. It seems implausible though that a just 2-state solution, meaning one which among other things embodies the right of return, can be crafted that doesn’t involve a massive upheaval with population shifts. Now despite the presence of an honourable Jewish minority sympathetic to the Palestinians there’s no plausibly likely Israeli government which would accept such a thing under anything less than extreme pressure. So a 2-state solution could not be achieved without the West abandoning its unthinking support for the Jews and becoming reconciled to enforcing its will by sanctions. There is no sign that Western governments will take on this task so the 2-stage solution in the West’s hands is simply a phantom proposal adopted by the West to give false hope to the Palestinians, it is the third betrayal in the making.
So in current circumstances there is no reason why the Palestinians should seek any but the best outcome from their point of view, the one-state solution. This would readily embody the right of return for Palestinians and automatically provide Palestinians, Jews and others with equal access to vital facilities such as the ports of Haifa and Eilat. The West would have to accept those Jews who chose to leave the new state but contrary to the views of Hamas a high proportion of Jews would be entitled to remain: those born there; those who only have Israeli citizenship and no reasonable claim on another country; those driven (wrongly) from other, mainly Arab, countries by reprisals for episodes in the Judeo-Palestinian war; any others who have or should have a right to remain under international law. Perhaps space could be found in a negotiation to establish the rights of the Bedouin, a group whose interests and needs seem to receive zero coverage within the western media and are probably ignored by the warring parties within Palestine.
There are factors which could lead to the West becoming willing to enforce a solution on the Jews: diminishing post-Holocaust guilt as the event becomes more distant and the irrationality and inhumanity of using the Holocaust as a justification for denying sovereignty to the Palestinians becomes ever more evident; an increasing recognition in Britain of the manner in which its Government betrayed the Palestinians; a clear increase in western public sympathy for Palestinians, partly but not wholly due to Muslim minorities finding their voices; crude self-interest, a recognition that support for Israel damages the relationships between Western nations and Islamic & Third-World states, in fact has brought the West nothing but trouble; and perhaps a feeling in the US that the substantial financial support provided to Israel by US taxpayers doesn’t enhance US security and would be better spent at home anyway.
So will the West enact a third betrayal by maintaining the 2-state solution as a phantom proposal while the Jews seize more land and exile more Palestinians? There are no comfortable solutions to the Judeo-Palestinian conflict. However there can be no solution at all unless either the Arab and Islamic states find the unity and the means to enforce a solution or the West finds the moral courage to do so. It’s time then for the West, and particularly the US and Britain, to rethink Palestine. To acknowledge its betrayals of the Palestinians and make clear its recognition that its support for Zionism, as well as being contrary to Western interests, is and always has been immoral.