Some aspects of British identity underwent a major transformation in the early years of the 20th century, especially when it became clear that their new Palestinian mandate was eventually won from the Ottomans after the First World War ended. However, it began to become much clearer almost a year before the armistice that this would be the case. On November 9th, 1917, five days after it was written, the British press released what would become known as the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed, quote, a national home for the Jewish people, unquote, as well as the promise that the government would, quote, use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. This pledge from the Declaration marks what is often considered to be the official beginning of the British-Zionist relationship, but in truth, the relationship predated the Declaration by many years. Many members of the British government were already in support of the idea of a Jewish national home, with Winston Churchill proclaiming in 1908 that, quote, I am in full sympathy with the historical traditional aspirations of the Jews. The restoration to them of a center of true racial and political integrity would be a tremendous event in the history of the world, unquote. Lord Balfour himself had also developed a Zionist identity in the years leading up to 1917 when he made his declaration. Similar to Churchill, he had actually become friends with one of the most prolific Zionist advocates, Chaim Weitzman, first meeting the future Israeli president in 1906, despite his sponsorship of a 1905 law that restricted immigration primarily of Jews from Eastern Europe. Weitzman was a dinner guest of Lord Balfour's in 1916, and after considering a lengthy conversation in which Weitzman, quote, laid out his much-repeated argument that Zionist and British interests were identical, unquote, Balfour attended a cabinet meeting in which he declared, I am a Zionist, as described by the celebrated, and for good reason, celebrated historian Tom Segev in his book One Palestine Complete. The table had been set for the British Zionist alliance. This was also part of a growing trend within the British government that was more religious in nature than it was political, and one connected to the very nature of British identity at that point in history. As Tom Segev notes, quote, Lord Balfour also considered Zionism as an inherent part of his Christian faith, unquote. This dual identity of being both a Christian and a proponent of a Jewish national home was both symbolic and representative of many British statesmen and officials of the time, both coming from a problematic, quote, belief in the mystical power of the Jews, unquote, and, quote, biblical romanticism, unquote, also according to Tom Segev. Another example of this was Wynton Deeds, the chief secretary to the British High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine, who believed that it was his Christian duty to, quote, assist in the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, unquote, in order to, quote, hasten the second coming of the Lord, unquote, believing that the, quote, unwritten compact between the British Empire and world Jewry would be part of a common effort to bring about world peace, unquote. Again, to use the words of Tom Segev. In order to achieve this view that was so common in the British government, tool would be needed. That tool was one of empire. In addition to their Christian romanticism, that probably sounds pretty familiar to a lot of you listening, at least those of you who are familiar with Christian Zionism, or as we call it here in the United States, dispensationalism. The idea that if the Jews are not in Israel at the second coming of Christ, then Christ and therefore God would be displeased, to say the least. The Jews need to be in Israel, in other words, in order for the faithful to ascend to heaven at the time of the apocalypse. But in addition to that romanticism, to that way of looking at things, the British saw and justified their backing of what became very aggressive Jewish immigration into the Holy Land in imperial terms. High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, would write a memorandum in 1915 advocating for a British imperial conquest of Palestine, claiming that it, quote, would allow Britain once again to fulfill its historic calling of bringing civilization to primitive lands, unquote. To Samuel and others in the British government who had the same mindset, Zionism was the goal, and imperialism was the tool to achieve that goal. It is also clear that this attitude was not exclusive to the Zionist project. It was, in fact, the norm of the time. As Tom Segev explains, quote, The proposal to seize Palestine accorded with the way people in London were thinking at the time. When they spoke about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, there was a tendency to think of it as a large cake. This country would get one slice, that country another. The territory the Ottomans were about to lose was considered booty to be shared out among the victors of the First World War. Unquote. While circumstances would change over the coming decades following the First World War, culminating in the events created by the Arab Revolt of 1936-39, this imperialist perspective would continue to inform British decision-making, especially regarding their intentions with the Mandate's Arab population that was already living there. In many ways, the development of the British relationship with the Arabs of the Holy Land ran parallel with that of their relationship with the Zionists. British interests in the region as a whole long predated the First World War, thanks largely to their battles with Napoleon in the early 19th century, and their later alliance with the Ottoman Empire and their occupation of Egypt in 1882. It was in this interest that an attitude of what we would now call Orientalism began to develop and would later inform, at least in part, their interactions with the Arabs of the Holy Land. Historian Zachary Lockman notes that this attitude can be seen most prominently in the writings of the Earl of Cromer, Evelyn Baring, who was, quote, widely regarded as a leading authority on Egypt and the Orient in general, and his views can be fairly taken as representative of much of British elite and popular opinion, unquote, and who, quote, established what he saw as the unbridgeable gap between the logical West and the illogical and picturesque East, between the European mind and the Oriental mind, unquote. This attitude pervaded both British imperial policy in the Middle East and in part explains why British pledges toward their Arab allies in 1915, in a series of documents that have colloquially come to be known as the McMahon Correspondents, quote, became an outstanding bone of contention, unquote, which the Lebanese author and diplomat George Antonius also called, quote, the main piece of evidence on which the Arabs accuse Great Britain of having broken These letters, which were between British Indian Army officer Henry McMahon and the King of Hejaz, Hussein bin Ali, contain promises of territory to be given to the Arabs in exchange for their support of the British against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Because at that point they were enemies, it is important to remember. this territory, discussed in the McMahon-Hussain correspondence, eventually went to the Jews thanks to the later promise made by the Balfour Declaration. This inconsistency, and that's what it was, was informed by British Orientalism, but it was also imperialist hubris. In what Tom Segev calls the British, quote, imperialistic arrogance and a powerful sense of cultural superiority, unquote, it is actually understandable that one might believe that they took the concerns of the Zionists more seriously than those of the Arabs. Thing is, this is only partly true. As Segev also points out, quote, the British pretended, and perhaps some of them even believed, that the establishment of a national home for the Jews could be carried out without hurting the Arabs, unquote. It was this hubris, fueled in part by their Orientalist interpretations of the Arab, quote-unquote as being one of irrationality and in need of tempering that informed British counterinsurgency policy when the Arab revolt of 1936 to 39 actually kicked off in earnest. The British response to the outbreak of violence during the Arab revolt, which began with, quote, an attack on April 15th, 1936 on a convoy of taxis on the Nablus to Tulcarm Road, in which the assailant murdered two Jewish passengers, unquote, was swift and would quickly become defined by its brutality. To quote from the work of Matthew Hughes in his paper, The Banality of Brutality, British Armed Forces and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine. In practice, and indeed in implicit principle, British counterinsurgency was defined by policies of treating all Arabs as equally complicit in the violence that broke out across the Holy Land during this period. often came in the form of collective punishment techniques, policies that often resulted in the mass destruction of property and many deaths. We've discussed this before in History Impossible, some of you listening might remember. These were policies very similar to the ones that the Nazis made use of in Yugoslavia. As the aforementioned Matthew Hughes also explains, quote, during army searches, soldiers would surround a village, the men and women then divided off, held apart from the houses, often in wired cages, while soldiers searched and often destroyed everything, burnt grain and poured olive oil over household food and effects, unquote, with the largest destruction occurring during an operation on June 16th, 1936, in which up to 240 buildings were destroyed. These brutal policies also resulted in violence against the villagers themselves, like I was hinting at a moment ago, And this included sexual violence, as well as forms of torture against captured combatants. All of this was done to break the spirit of the rebels in the revolt who were fighting against the British. However, the cost of doing this was ultimately too high for the British Empire. And by 1939, the possibility of negotiating a settlement with the rebels entered the picture. Because the central issue was Jewish immigration into the mandate, the Peel Commission of 1937 and later the McDonald White Paper of 1939, both centered on this topic. The Peel Commission contained the first official suggestion of what we would now call a two-state solution, making it clear that, quote, the problem cannot be solved by giving either the Arabs or the Jews all they want, unquote, in the words of the commission themselves. The commission therefore concluded, quote, two sovereign independent states would be established. The one, an Arab state consisting of Transjordan, united with that part of Palestine, which lies to the east and south of a frontier, and the other, a Jewish state consisting of that part of Palestine, which lies to the north and west of that frontier.