West Africa Review (2001) ISSN: 1525-4488 WHY CAN'T THE JEWS AND THE ARABS LIVE TOGETHER?

Nwabufo Uwechia

What is wrong with Palestine, and why can’t the Jews and Arabs live together in peace? This question must have been asked time and again by people all over the world who do not know about the great game of power politics going on at present between Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia, each for an exclusive sphere of interest in the Near and Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean.

RUSSIAN INTEREST

Russian interest in the Mediterranean is due to the fact that the Soviet Union is a first class power covering an area one-sixth of the land surface of the earth. Such a country needs wide defence belt around her coast in the form of naval bases. Unfortunately, Russia has only five navel ports, three of which are icebound for three quarters of the year; ‘of the other two, one (Vladivostok) is only 600 miles from Japan—less than three hours flight from a hostile bombing plane. The only other free naval base is in the Crimea, and Russian warships can only move out of it by kind permission of Turkey which control the Straits of Dardanelles.

SEARCH FOR DEFENCE

The Soviet Union has insisted that the control of the Strait should be entrusted to her and Turkey jointly, but this can only happen if all the signatory powers to the treaty which gave Turkey the right, agree. America and Britain are signatories and it is extremely unlikely they will agree. The Soviet search for defence belt is a factor imposed by geography and has nothing to do with ideological difference. Whoever is a t the head of affairs in Moscow must continue to reach his hands towards the warm waters of the Mediterranean, be he Peter the Great, Czar Nicholas II, or Joseph Stalin.

BRITAIN’S NEED

An alternative plan is to achieve the same goal through any of the friendly Balkan countries, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania. I don’t, however, intend now to discuss Balkan politics or the relations between Russia and Turkey. As for Britain, it is an article of faith believed in more passionately than the thirty-nine articles of Christian creed, that control of the Eastern Mediterranean is necessary for the defence of the Empire, especially India and Australia, and Britain would promptly go to war against any power that challenged her supremacy in the Mediterranean. The Crimean War meant nothing if it as not fought for that reason. When Benito Mussolini cried, “For the world, the Mediterranean is a via, for Italy it is a vita,” Britain’s answer was to keep the Royal Navy on the alert. This British Policy of keeping her Mediterranean lifeline open is also an obligation imposed by geography.

POOR AND SMALL

Britain is a tiny island barely one-third the size of Nigeria, blessed with nothing but coal and iron and, if the winter is not severe, some potatoes. To feed the forty seven million inhabitants which is regarded by some experts as an over-population (ten million more than what Britain had at the height of the industrial revolution) is an obligation which any government will not fail to discharge. It is not an ideological question and no party in England can talk of liquidating the Empire without provisos and reservations if it reflects on the fate of the population, without an Empire and surrounded by a not-too-friendly continent.

MEDITERRANEAN LOSS

Hence every Englishman is an imperialist to the marrow. There are some strategic points from which the Eastern Mediterranean could be guarded. Since 1882, Britain and used the port of Alexandria until Egypt, in 1936, gave her notice to quit. Hurriedly, she packed to Palestine to find that the Jewish terrorist, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, regarded every Englishman in Palestine as a hostile invader. The defence fulcrum now pivots at Kenya.

AMERICA’S CASE

America’s case is simple. Uncle Sam expects any nation with oil deposits to invite him for concessions. If not invited, he will promptly invite himself. Palestine has oil. Besides, the impending clash between Russia and America (American spokesmen make of secret of it) makes the Americans seek vantage grounds, naval and military, from which to carry the war right into Soviet territory. Palestine then is beset with two misfortunes: firstly, she is a strategic centre coveted by each of the three great powers. Secondly, she has oil, which is a most dangerous gift that nature can bestow on a weak and small nation.

THE REAL PROBLEM

The Palestine problem can only be understood by those who bear the above analysis in mind as it is entirely different from the question of finding homes for the Jews. It happens that the two races that inhabit Palestine cannot agree with each other as each claims the land as its own. The Jews argue that the land was their for centuries and had in fact been given to them by Britain during the first world war by the Balfour Declaration. To add to that there was the moral obligation imposed on the civilised world to find a home for the Jews whom Hitler persecuted and who are scattered all over the world. Since every Jew regards Palestine as the promised land, the Jews say they should have it. I will now examine the Jewish claim to Palestine.

JEWISH CLAIMS

The first argument of the Zionists is that Palestine was Jewish in ancient times; it was for long ages the national home of the Jews. Moreover, they did not leave it of their own accord but were forcibly dispossessed. Hence they say that they still have the right to re-enter and make it again their national home. To counter this argument one should ask what are the grounds of right by which any nation can claim the country which it occupies.

RIGHTS TO RETURN

The answer is merely long and continued possession. What right have the Americans to live in, occupy and control the United States? No right except that they have lived there 300 years. True enough there were cases of alleged purchases from the Indians, but nobody would suggest that Americans’ right to occupy America is founded on such purchases. Some of the land were seized and the Indian owners dispossessed. Americans therefore can only base their claim of right on prescription. Such is the case with many other people including the British.

ARAB RIGHT

Judged by this principle the Arabs have far greater right to Palestine than the Americans have to the United States for they have occupied the country for two thousand years. There may have been always a small Jewish minority, never greater than ten percent of the population, just a there has been in America, a small Indian minority from the time of its white occupation until now. This would give the Jews in Palestine a right to vote and to proper treatment, as it gives the same right to Indians in America. It does not give more than that. This makes it clear that the fact that Palestine was a Jewish land in ancient time cannot give them the right of mass entry now.

No matter how a people came originally in possession of any land, whether by war, aggression, or in any other way, we have after a sufficiently long time to admit their exclusive right of possession; that means that all prior claims are extinguished. That is the only basis on which any people can claim the land which it inhabits. What is a “sufficiently long period?” Certainly two thousand years is. Hence the first Zionist argument is without force.

The second Zionist argument is that Palestine has for the Jews a peculiarly sacred religious significance. Can we admit religious feelings as giving to a people the right to possess any land and to migrate thereto? Thailanders could not assert a right to India because they are Buddhists and India is where Buddha was and born and lived, has a special religious significance for them. Britishers and Americans who are Christians could not claim a right of mass settlement in Palestine on the round that it has for them, just as much for the Jews, a deep religious significance.

THIRD ARGUMENT

The third argument which the Zionists advance for a claim to Palestine was that British Government promised Palestine to the Jews in 1917, under the well-known Balfour Declaration. By 1917, Palestine was not a British territory as it was then under the Ottoman Empire. Could the Jews then receive a valid promise which was made without the consent of the majority of the inhabitants? Besides; a year before the Balfour Declaration the British Government had already in the Hussein-McMahon Agreement promised to recognise an independent and united Arab State east of Mediterranean and Red Seas. When also the news of the Balfour Declaration reached the Sheriff Hussien, who was Emir of Mecca, and later King of the Jejaz, he was disturbed and asked for a definition of the meaning and scope of the declaration.

ANOTHER PROMISE

His request was met. The British Government dispatched Commander Hogarth who gave an explicit assurance (according to Parliamentary Papers, 1939, Cmd. 6964.) that “Jewish settlements in Palestine would only be consistent with the political and economic freedom of the Arab population.” This then guarantees the sovereignty and independence of an Arab Palestine. It is therefore clear that Britain, both according to her promises and according to the principles of self-determination and democracy, had not the right to promise Palestine to the Jews. Their action in doing so was an act of aggression. The Balfour Declaration was invalid, from all angles, more so if examined in the light of Article twenty-two of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The suffering of the Jews is a challenge to the conscience of the world especially to the European races that has always throughout history persecuted them. Hitler was not the first man to persecute them, through his was the most beastly, most inhuman.

NOT ARABS ALONE

The Jews in Eastern Europe had never been well treated. To stop persecuting the Jews and give them all civil and religious freedom is a matter for all the States of the world. It is not a higher duty imposed on the Arabs alone. Britain, France and the United States of America can each absorb fifty thousand Jews in their homeland, and the Jewish problem, the problem of displaced persons, would vanish overnight. The truth is that no white nation in the world wants to open its doors to Jews, anymore than for the Africans and Asiatics. At the root of it lies the racial policy of the white states. The obligation to solve the Jewish problem is not more on the Arab world than it is to the whole mankind: that is why the Arabs are defending, and will continue to defend their independence against a foreign race that is being dumped on them. The Arab cause is a just one and they will receive the moral support of all those people who know the facts.

BRITAIN’S SOLUTION?

What is Britain’s part in the solution of the Palestinian problem? Britain’s part has always been beset with difficulties. When the Conservatives were in power in Britain their policy was to be friendly with the Arabs, the ruling class of which was rapidly anti-Soviet and strongly pro-British. The spread of communism to the Middle and Near East was thought to be best stopped by this policy, the pipelines were secured and the Mediterranean route was kept open. Meanwhile the Labour Party which was then in opposition almost annually passed resolutions in their annual conferences supporting the Jewish claim to Palestine. They did this out of moral principle of sympathising with the Jews, as well as out of political expediency of courting the Jewish vote.

After the 1945 election, which resulted in Tory landslide, the Government discovered that the reasons which caused the Tory Government to flirt with Arab Sheiks and Emirs were too strong to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. The security of the oil pipes and that of Eastern Mediterranean depended on the Arab Government being friendly to Britain. On the other hand, Britain does not want to give the impression that she has abandoned her promises to the Jews. To reconcile two irreconcilables then is Britain’s dilemma and though it needs more than the wisdom of Solomon, Ernest Bevin hopes still to succeed.

AMERICA’S ROLE

America’s policy is dictated by the pressure of New York Jews and that of the Navy Department, two claims which oppose each other. American elections are always conducted in an atmosphere of hysteria, and the Government, with an eye to the Jewish vote in the important New York City always appears pro-Jewish on the eve of elections, while the Navy Department is very cautious in approving any policy that will antagonise the Arabs, alienate their sympathy, endanger the oil wells, and menace the security of the Middle East. No better gift to Stalin, they argue, could be offered than to do so.

BIG POWER INTRIGUE

Palestine then is a centre of big power clash and intrigue. Nigerians will gain nothing from supporting any of the powers, but rather give support to the Arabs who are the victims. With reference to the whole Middle and Near East, the members of the Politburo can find no better song than “confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks…” so far as Anglo American policy is concerned. Out of the chaos that would result, a nursery for communism shall have been founded, and a bridgehead for Soviet entry into the Mediterranean firmly established.

First published, West African Pilot, December 2, 1948

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

Uwechia, Nwabufo (2001). WHY CAN'T THE JEWS AND THE ARABS LIVE TOGETHER?. West Africa Review: 3, 1.