Notes
THE GAME
The setting is Palestine, 1947, where there is violent unrest between the local Arabs of Palestine and “Zionist” Jews. The British have ruled over the territory with a “Mandate” from the League of Nations since the end of WWI, after the Allied Powers dissolved the Ottoman Empire at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and divided the region into small nation-states based on the (secretly written) Sykes-Picot agreement.
READ: “Ottoman Empire”
READ: “Mandate for Palestine”
Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot
Illustration of the Sykes-Picot Map
Palestine is now stuck in a seemingly unresolvable conflict between the Zionist Jews, who’ve been immigrating (“making aliyah”) to Palestine by the tens of thousands over the last few decades, and the local Arabs of Palestine who’ve lived there for centuries and resent the massive Jewish immigration – viewing it as a colonialist land grab.
Who are the Jews?
Jews are a religio-ethnic group with ancient ties to the modern Middle East that, according to accounts in the Hebrew Bible (HB) and archeological evidence, date to as early as 1500 BCE. According to Jewish tradition, they were given this land by God, who made a “covenant” with Abraham, promising his descendants land and protection in exchange for adherence to sacred law (Torah).
READ: “Judaism”
READ: “Hebrew Bible”
Main archaeological sites of the ancient Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Juda
Eventually, the Israelites were defeated by the Romans in the 1st century CE—and had their central temple destroyed, with the temple’s western wall being the only portion that survived and remains to this day—and sent into “diaspora” where they lived en masse among Gentiles (non-Jews) for roughly 1900 years.
READ: “Jewish History”
READ: “Jewish Diaspora”
Living in diaspora was often difficult for Jews because they were persecuted by both Christians and Muslims, despite often trying to assimilate to local cultures. In the 18th-19th centuries, the persecution became particularly severe in places like Russia where Jews were targeted in widespread, large-scale attacks called “pogroms.”
READ: “Pogrom”
Also during this time, Europe was being transformed by “nationalist” thinking—that ethnic communities should have their own separate nations—and some Jews began to argue that they needed their own nation to be safe from persecution. The movement to create a national Jewish homeland became known as “Zionism.”
READ: “Nationalism”
Theodore Herzl is credited with being a founder of Zionism because he wrote an important book called, The Jewish State (1896), which outlined both a vision and strategy for establishing a Jewish nation. In 1897, he held a conference in Basel, Switzerland that led to the formation of formal Jewish organizations—notably the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel—that would work to establish the new nation. Importantly, after some debate over the location of the new nation, it was decided that it should be established in Palestine because even though most Zionists were secular nationalists, they believed that Palestine was the ideal locations because Jews had ancient ties to the land and because they believed that the land was largely uninhabited.
READ: “Zionism”
READ: The Jewish State
READ: “World Zionist Organization”
The Balfour Declaration
A key strategy set forth by Herzl and other Zionist leaders was to lobby world powers (such as Great Britain) to gain their support for a Jewish homeland. To that end, Zionists were able to convince leaders of Great Britain to support their cause.
In 1917, the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild declaring support for the Zionist cause. This “Balfour Declaration” was a major turning point in the Zionist effort. Zionists saw the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine as the opportunity they needed to secure a homeland – assuming that the British would honor the Balfour Declaration.
Inspired by the Balfour Declaration and the British mandate over Palestine, Jews began migrating to Palestine (“aliyah”) in the early 20th century and establishing communities there, often socialist farming communities (“kibbutz”) on land purchased from absentee Arab landowners (often purchased by the Jewish Agency for Israel using money raised by the Jewish National Fund).
READ: “Aliyah”
READ: “Kibbutz”
READ: “Jewish Land Purchase in Israel”
READ: “Jewish Agency for Israel”
READ: “Jewish National Fund”
The King-Crane Commission
Notably, a separate commission, the “King-Crane Commission,” led by the U.S.A. and with significant Arab input, came to the conclusion that establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine (as the Balfour Declaration suggested) was a bad idea because it would cause major conflict in the region and drag the great powers into an on-going civil war. However, the King-Crane report was not published until 1922, after which both houses of the U.S. congress passed resolutions favoring the creation of a Jewish homeland.
READ: “King-Crane Commission”
Arab Resistance
Not surprisingly, the local Arabs of Palestine, most of whom were Muslims, increasingly grew angry about (1) the fact that they had not been granted their own independent country, as others around them have (e.g., Transjordan, Iraq, Syria), and (2) by the influx of so many Jewish immigrants whom they began to see as colonizing Arab land. While not all, most Arabs of Palestine were Muslims and therefore were unpersuaded by the Jewish religious claim that this was land promised to Jews by God. For many Muslims, if anything, Arabs are the rightful “owners” of the land because Abraham’s first son was Ishmael, not Isaac, as outlined in both the HB and the Qur’an.
READ: “Islam”
READ: “Abraham”
READ: “Ishmael”
READ: “Qur’an”
Indeed, Arab Muslims have lived in Palestine for over a thousand years, since the Muslim Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem and the surrounding areas in the 7th century. As such, it seemed quite far-farfetched, according to the Arab view, for Jews to claim that this was “their” land. Palestine was…“Palestinian” land.
READ: “Palestinians”
Muslim lands at the end of the 11th and 12th centuries
McMahon Correspondence
Furthermore, in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence of 1915, the British had already – prior to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration -- promised Arab leaders autonomy over the region in return for helping the Allied Powers overthrow the Ottoman Turks in WWI. Thus, the British had engaged in double-dealing.
READ: “McMahon-Hussein Correspondence”
McMahon-Hussein Correspondence
McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, cont’d:
Peel Commission
Antagonism between Arabs and Zionists continued in the 1930s, and riots broke out. Furthermore, in 1936 the Arabs conducted a 6-month long strike, and in response, the British established the “Palestinian Royal Commission” (informally called the “Peel” Commission because it was led by Lord Peel) to study the situation and suggest solutions.
After months of work, the Peel Commission concluded that the original intent of the British Mandate was no longer tenable and recommended the partition of Palestine into two nations – one for Arabs, and one for Jews – with a patch of territory running West from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean Sea to remain under British control.
Illustration of the Peel Commission Map
Not surprisingly, both sides – Arabs and Jews – rejected the Peel Commission plan. Arabs rejected the plan on the grounds that partition was illegal and colonialist. Zionists (except for a few) rejected the plan because it was their understanding that the Balfour Declaration had promised them all of the land, not just part of it. The Peel Commission plan in turn triggered “The Great Arab Revolt” between 1936 and 1939.
READ: “1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine”
Arab fighters arrested by the British
World War II
With the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s, many Jews fled Europe in search of refuge from anti-Semitism. However, most were turned away by other countries and therefore had nowhere to go. 6 million Jews who could not escape were murdered in the Nazi genocide known as the Holocaust (“shoah”), and hundreds of thousands more were left homeless after the war as “Displaced Persons” (DP). As such, Zionist immigration to Palestine increase dramatically, which further alarmed Arabs and inflamed the situation.
READ: “The Holocaust”
Immigration of Jews into Palestine 1920-1945
The White Paper of 1939
Given the increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine during the 1930s, Arabs organized to fight for immigration reform and restrictions. One important organization that emerged to fight for Arab rights was the Arab Higher Committee (AHC).
READ: “Arab Higher Committee”
In 1939, responding to Arab demands, the British government issued a White Paper that restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine.
READ: “White Paper of 1939”
In response, Jews took to the streets in protest and Zionists worked “underground” to smuggle European Jews into Palestine. Some militant members of the Zionist movement, such as the “Haganah,” even argued for violence against the British – and in July 1946 they bombed the King David hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 and injuring 46.
READ: “Haganah”
READ: “King David Hotel Bombing”
Jewish Protest of the 1939 White Paper, led by Haganah
Despite British restrictions, Jewish immigration to Palestine continued and so by 1947 there were roughly 1.8 million people living in Mandatory Palestine, 1.2 million (2/3) of whom are Arabs, and 600,000 (1/3) of whom are Jews. Violence and conflict continued.
Distribution of Population in Palestine, 1947
Given the intractability of the situation, on May 15, 1947, the British officially handed “the problem of Palestine” over to the United Nations. The U.N. seemed like the ideal international body to handle the situation given that the purpose of the body was to “maintain international peace and security.”
READ: “The United Nations”
READ: “The U.N. Charter”
The U.N. created a special committee, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to study the situation and make recommendation to the General Assembly on what to do about “the problem of Palestine.” Importantly, to be fair and neutral, the U.N. decided that no members of the “Great Powers” (USA, Britain, Russia), which were beginning to engage in a global “Cold War,” would serve on the UNSCOP. Instead, the Committee consisted of representatives from 11 neutral countries: Australia, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, India, Iran, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, and Yugoslavia.
READ: “UNSCOP”
What Will the UNSCOP Decide?
Should the UNSCOP recommend that the British stay and maintain their Mandate, or leave and hand over sovereignty to a new, independent state?
If the UNSCOP recommends the end of the British Mandate, what should the new state be?
Should there be one state, Palestine, ruled by Arabs? This is Option A in the game.
Should there be one state, Israel, ruled Jews? This is Option B in the game.
Should there be one federal country (perhaps with a neutral name) with two provinces/states? This is Option C in the game.
Or, should Palestine be partitioned into two separate autonomous states? This is Option D in the game.
The world is watching to see what the UNSCOP will decide – as their work will impact the region, and by extension the world, for decades to come.