Was the establishment of a specifically Jewish state in Palestine the most favorable way for Britain to protect its post-WWI imperial interests in the Middle East?

Résumé du document

History textbooks that deal with the birth of the Zionism repeatedly take for granted a major component of the movement's early success underlying British support. The beginning of the history of Israel is commonly preoccupied with Theodor Herzl or the Balfour Declaration, but very rarely is the question ever posed, why did the British ever even support Zionism in the first place? Pithy explanations are occasionally given that the British were the only powerful Europeans tolerant enough to accept Jews in the aftermath of dreadful pogroms and from there the Zionist movement was given freedom to flourish. However, such accounts do not fully explain what benefit Zionism would have provided to British policymakers. Conversely, explanations about the British maintaining interests in Egypt and the Suez Canal do not fully address the question of why it supported Zionism, specifically, in order to achieve these goals. Why not simply colonize the Palestinians directly if a buffer state was all that was desired? In light of these historical ambiguities, this paper will attempt to explore what exactly prompted Lloyd George's cabinet to support Jewish restoration to the Holy Land. However, the research focuses on a wide range of historical events and movements, and ironically, virtually no analysis of Lloyd George's cabinet was required to come to the final conclusions. Events of the nineteenth century played the most significant role, as the combination of a waning Ottoman Empire and a growing acceptance of Jewish culture in England coincided to allow the British to merge their ideological principles with the strategic interests of the Empire. The discussion will begin with an analysis of the latter half of this equation.

Extraits

[...] Thus, in effect we have come to a crucial crossroads in our discussion; the emergence of popular support and eventually emancipation of the Jews coincided neatly with British concerns over their strategic interests in the East. The Jewish Question was being discussed in the public forum at exactly the same time that the Ottoman Empire entered into its Tanzimat period of reform. Thus far, I have examined these two components of British interest in Palestine somewhat separately (that is, their strategic incentive to secure the Suez Canal vs. [...]

[...] Whether the Palestinian Arabs' failure to replicate such a voice was due to a lack of politically engaged Arabs residing in England, or because of the constraints placed on Palestinians by the Ottoman government is unclear. Rashid Khalidi suggests that lack of cohesion of Palestinian society repeatedly hindered effective, unified responses to the challenges posed by the formidable foes of Palestinian nationalism” (25). Certainly, the unified nature of the Jewish community in England gave Jews a substantial political edge over the loosely organized Palestinians, or even, at that time, Southern Syrians. [...]

[...] The Jewish State. New York: Scopus Publishing Company Hyamson, Albert. British Projects for the Restoration of the Jews. London: Petty and Sons (Leeds) Ltd Hyamson, Albert. A History of the Jews in England. Second Edition. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd Katz, David S. The Jews in the History of England 1850. Oxford, Clarendon Press Kedourie, Elie. [...]

[...] Memorandum relative to the grant of British Protection to Foreign Jews in Palestine. Jan British Documents on Foreign Affairs. Part Series B The Near and Middle East. Vol The Ottoman Empire in North Africa 1882. Document 1. Author: unsigned. Memorandum of Correspondence respecting the Suez Canal projected by M. Lesseps. Printed: 12/28/1859 Document 208. Report by Major-General Patrick Macdougall on the Defence of Egypt. [...]

[...] Chaim Weizmann and other prominent Zionists vehemently opposed the idea of resettlement in any territory other than Palestine (Weizmann), but the Uganda offer proved that Britain maintained a legitimate interest in nurturing a Jewish homeland. Obviously, this offer lacked any underlying scheme to use the Jews to shield the Suez Canal, and it therefore sheds light on our initial question of why Britain was motivated to support Zionism. Conclusion The invasion of Syria in 1831 drew specific European attention to a weakening empire in the East and gave geographic context to a Jewish movement that had been accelerating in England for decades. [...]