The period of the British mandate can be divided into two. Until 1929, there were relatively few clashes between the settlers and the local community and were even areas of joint living based on one’s socio-economic class or interest and not just national identity. However, the Zionist plan of turning Palestine into a Jewish state led to an aggressive policy of taking over the labour market and as much of the land as possible. This led to a Palestinian revolt in the 1930s and double pressure on Britain that decided eventually to leave Palestine in 1947

The most important result of State Department opposition to the Zionist project was the imposition, in November 1947, of an embargo on arms to the Jews in Palestine and to the Arab states. The chapter examines official reasons for the embargo as well as efforts to lift it by American liberals including Senator Robert F. Wagner, Congressman Emanuel Celler, and journalists at PM such as I. F. Stone among others. They argued that the embargo, imposed when the Arabs began their violent attack in Palestine, fell most heavily on the Jews, who did not yet have a state. Secretary of State George Marshall insisted on continuing the embargo. The communist regime in Czechoslovakia became the only government to flout first the US and British, and then what became a UN Security Council embargo.

The debates of the UN Security Council in the weeks of May and June 1948 illustrated the strong support given to the new state of Israel by the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Ukrainian SSR, a support that was more emphatic than that offered by the United States. American and British truce resolutions tended to push back Israeli advances and diminish Arab defeats. The chapter documents this contrast in the UN statements of Andrei Gromyko (USSR), Vasyl Tarasenko (Ukrainian SSR), Warren Austin (USA), Moshe Shertok and Abba Eban (Israel), and representatives of the Arab Higher Committee and Syria. While Florimond Bonté, a leader of the French Communist Party, extolled Israel’s cause in the French National Assembly, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff continued to associate the new state of Israel with Soviet expansion, and damage to American strategic interests in the Middle East.

The issue of legal responsibility for the flight of Palestine’s Arab population could have been posed to the International Court of Justice. Forced expulsion was an act prohibited in international law. The issue was raised in the Security Council. The Arab Higher Committee charged that the military forces backing the incipient Jewish state engaged in forced expulsion of the population. This charge was denied in the Security Council. Such acts as might have been deemed atrocities were explained as reactions to use of force by Arab parties. Factual evidence was available to resolve the issue. United Nations military observers had reported acts of forcible expulsion. Atrocities against the Arab population had been reported by international media. The Arab League reported atrocities against Arab civilians.

The British devised a variety of schemes to try to make their Palestine mandate work before they threw up their hands and gave in. During the lead-up to World War II the British proposed dividing the territory between Jews and Arabs. Then when the Great Revolt threatened to spiral out of control they gave up that plan and offered one that would lead to a single state. During World War II, conditions in Palestine actually improved, and the situation temporarily calmed. But with the end of hostilities and an upsurge in Zionist violence, the British dumped the Palestine issue on the United Nations, which voted to divide the territory. The vote sparked two wars: the first, a civil war between the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine; the second, an invasion of Palestine by surrounding states. The victory of the Zionists in both had two results: the creation of the State of Israel in its internationally accepted borders, and the nakba, the flight of 720,000 Palestinians across ceasefire lines. Many of the refugees and their descendants remain in refugee camps throughout the area supported by the United Nations and various donor states and organizations.

This chapter traces the emergence of Palestinian nationalism from its beginning through the Great Revolt (1936––39), when it becomes a mass movement. Unlike the Zionists, Palestinians under the Ottomans had never been compelled to define themselves, and thus Palestinian nationalism emerged later than Zionism. Nationalism in Palestine went through a number of incarnations. First, the Ottomans attempted to promote their own brand of nationalism, osmanlilik. After the empire was dismantled, a number of nationalists in Palestine embraced a Greater Syrian nationalism. Over time, a Syrian identity for Palestinians became untenable: the mandates system had divided French-controlled Syria from British-controlled Palestine, the two territories evolved in different ways, and Palestinians faced the wholesale settlement of Europeans in their midst. The mobilization of townsmen and farmers during the Great Revolt ensured Palestinian nationalism would remain the dominant nationalist strain in Palestine.