But the Arabs attacked the Jews in 1919, showing how much the British were needed.
The British had no business being here, answer the Arabs. The whole mess really started in 1917 when the British published the Balfour Declaration, promising to establish a Jewish "national home" in Palestine, which belonged, at the time, to the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was dying, say the Jews, and the Zionist movement, which was founded in 1896, had already proclaimed its right to Palestine.
But at the same time the modern Arab national movement was born, which had an indisputable claim to Palestine and all the Arab countries.
God has promised...
Allah has ordained...
And so on.
I HAVE my own theory about when and how the conflict started.
In 1904 Theodor Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement, died. Herzl did not like Palestine very much, and started his ideological quest with the idea of founding a Jewish state in Patagonia, an Argentine territory which had recently been "pacified."
Herzl did not like the Turks or the Arabs, but events convinced him that the Jews would go nowhere but Palestine. In his book "Der Judenstaat," the Bible of Zionism, he declared that the Jews would serve in Palestine as an outpost of Western civilization against the barbarians of Asia -- i.e., the Arabs.
One can argue that it was here that the conflict really started -- right at the beginning of the Zionist idea. But I have in mind an even more precise moment.
A FEW years before World War I, the Ottoman Empire showed signs of breaking up. A modernizing movement, led by army officers, assumed power in 1908. They called themselves "the Young Turks."
Among the restless Arab population, too, revolutionary groups emerged. They dared not yet talk about independence, but instead put forward a plan for the "de-centralization" of the Ottoman Empire, giving its various nations some autonomy.
A group of Arab members of the Turkish parliament, led by Rukhi al-Halidi (member of a Jerusalem family even now prominent in Palestinian affairs) had a brilliant idea: why not approach the Zionists and offer them an alliance against the Turks in the fight for this idea?
The Zionist representative in Jerusalem hastened to submit this offer to Max Nordau, the new president of the Zionist organization. Nordau had inherited Herzl's post after the death of the founder.
This was an historic moment, one of those moments when history holds its breath. A totally new vista opened up: an alliance between Arabs and Jews! a joint liberation movement!
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
