The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (38 page)

Even without a long list of notable patrons, the BPC pushed forward.
On January 26, 1917, it published the first issue of
Palestine
, a weekly review and journal of opinion. Sacher edited and wrote the occasional piece for it, as did Sieff and Marks, who also provided much of its funding. Sidebotham composed most of its articles, hammering at a few main themes: notably that “unless Palestine comes
²⁷
under the flag of the Power holding Egypt [namely England] it will, in the hands of a hostile Power, be a perpetual menace to its safety”; and “only the Jewish race and our association with the forces of its nationalism can secure [in Palestine] … a colony capable of development into a self-governing dominion of the British Crown.” Quickly
Palestine
established
²⁸
itself as an important source of information for anyone interested in Zionism.

Mark Sykes read
Palestine
, which did not always please him. He objected first of all to the BPC publicly advocating a British protectorate for Palestine, as it did in the journal’s very first issue. Weizmann conveyed Sykes’s concern to the committee. Sieff responded, “We
²⁹
 … must at whatever cost persistently and unequivocally place our views before the F.O.… We must close our ears to Sykes’ remark re our articles.” Sykes reiterated his concerns at the meeting with Weizmann and Sokolow on February 10, when the three discussed Sokolow’s interviews with Picot: “It was necessary to keep the idea of British suzerainty in the background for the time being, as it was likely to intensify the French opposition.” Again he mentioned the journal: It was “much too emphatic in its exposition of the British interests in Palestine.” Weizmann and Sokolow agreed, but muzzling their Manchester colleagues was not so easy.

On February 15 the BPC published an article envisioning a Palestinian state whose western border was the Mediterranean Sea and that stretched north as far as Damascus, southeast to Basra, southwest to the Gulf of Aqaba, and northwest along the existing Turco-Egyptian border. This was too much for Sykes altogether. Again he complained to Weizmann. He must have been quite angry for “it was most unpleasant,”
³⁰
Weizmann reported afterward to Sokolow. “I wrote to the Manchester people and I hope that they will be careful.”

But they would not be. In fact, Sykes’s sensitivity to Palestine’s borders set them thinking. “There is no doubt
³¹
in my mind,” Sieff wrote again to Weizmann, “that Sir M. has come to an agreement with the Arabs, and his interest in Jewish political aspirations in Palestine is only secondary.” In his letter Weizmann must have warned that the BPC risked harming Britain’s good relations with France. Sieff shot back, “Yes, our articles do enormous harm, but it is harm in the right direction. It may harm the Arab kingdom, but that is no concern of ours.” He then suggested, “You may diplomatically
hint that you are not responsible for the ‘hot-headed youths’ of the British Palestine Committee. If any communication is to be made on our work, let it be made to us.”

At this Weizmann threw down the gauntlet in the form of a telegram: “Letter received.
³²
Disagree completely, your attitude renders further efforts here useless, we therefore decide to resign everything on Thursday.” He meant that he and the other London members would resign from the BPC. Sieff backed down: “‘Palestine’ this week
³³
will contain a Jewish article which will meet the wishes of Sir M.”

But the dispute did not end. On March 1
Palestine
published Sidebotham’s rebuttal of an article in the last week’s
Nation
that had argued against a British protectorate. To this Sidebotham riposted, “We must have a projecting bastion in front of a line of communication so vital as that of the [Suez] Canal … Let us beware of repeating the mistake of the mid-nineteenth century politicians who regarded every fresh extension of territory as an increase of responsibility that ought to be avoided.” Sykes, and Weizmann, must have thrown up their hands.

The refusal of the Manchester contingent to fall into line pointed to a grave danger for Chaim Weizmann. At first glance Manchester and London seemed to be disagreeing merely over whether to advocate a British protectorate in Palestine publicly or to hold back, at Britain’s behest, for political reasons; and whether to push a definition of Palestine’s borders that was expansive or modest, as Britain preferred, at least for the moment. At a more profound level, however, the dispute called the Zionist alliance with Britain into question. This was to strike at the root of Weizmann’s strategy and therefore at Weizmann’s role as principal Zionist leader in Britain. It took the boldest and most perspicacious of the Manchester school to see it and to state it, but Harry Sacher did not draw back. When, a few months after the initial disagreement,
Palestine
again published articles that Sykes, and therefore Weizmann, objected to, Sacher wrote to his friend Leon Simon that Weizmann and Sokolow were “tying Zionism up
³⁴
indissolubly with a ‘British’ policy, even though that should mean partition and condominium.” Therefore they were “guilty of sacrificing Zionist interest to British.” They risked “preferring British Imperialism … to Zionism.” “Where we differ from
³⁵
the London folk,” Sacher explained to Simon in another letter, “is that they are determined to tie Zionism up with the F.O. [Foreign Office] and to take anything the F.O. is graciously pleased to grant. I don’t trust the F.O. and I am convinced that we shall never do anything with them except by convincing them that we are a power. That, Chaim and his tactics will never achieve.”

But Sacher underestimated the skill with which Weizmann and Sokolow had been maneuvering. Weizmann, for his part, privately branded Sacher “an extremist and
³⁶
a ‘Draufgeher’ [fire-eater,] with … a very marked lack of the sense of reality.” But he did not make the mistake of underestimating him: As Weizmann well knew, Sacher remained among the most talented and formidable of his followers. The relationship between the two men stretched, sometimes to bending, but never to the breaking point. The Zionist leader still had good reason for optimism in the spring of 1917.

MARK SYKES HAD GIVEN
Britain’s Zionists a key to the Foreign Office door and perhaps much else besides; now they would turn it. Their aim was to familiarize important officials with the Zionist program and to press for the British protectorate in Palestine that they firmly believed would allow that program to flourish. They aimed as well to extract from the British government a statement of support that would constitute a binding form of official recognition. Shrewdly, delicately, implacably, they pressed forward, unaware that Palestine already was spoken for in the Sykes-Picot Agreement and perhaps in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence. As always for the past thirty months, slaughter along the main fronts of war provided a backdrop to all their efforts.

Weizmann saw Lloyd George and Balfour at a dinner hosted by the Astors on March 13. General Murray’s forces had recently taken El Arish; they stood poised on the Palestinian border, about to cross over. On the Mesopotamian side, General Sir Frederick Maude’s army had taken Baghdad that very day. The news from everywhere else (with the possible exception of America, which seemed to be on the verge of joining the war against Germany) was grim if not appalling, but Lloyd George chose to emphasize the positive. No sooner had he entered the Astors’ drawing room than he made for Weizmann, asking how he liked the developing situation
in the Middle East. But serious discussion could not take place during a social occasion, so Weizmann carefully broached the possibility of a more formal meeting. He would have requested one, he said, except that he fully understood how heavy was the prime minister’s schedule. “You must take me
¹
by storm,” Lloyd George replied, “and if Davies [one of his private secretaries] says I’m engaged don’t be put off but insist on seeing me.” They went on in to dine, but the prime minister had to leave the table early.

Weizmann turned to Balfour. Still, it being a dinner party, they could discuss Zionism only “academically,” in terms of first principles. The foreign secretary must have agreed to a more formal meeting, for nine days later he received Weizmann at the Foreign Office. Zionism had come a long way from the days when the private secretary of an under secretary would only grudgingly deign to grant Nahum Sokolow ninety minutes of his valuable time.

When they did meet, Weizmann and the foreign secretary got down to brass tacks. “I have seen Balfour
²
and for the first time I had a real business talk with him,” Weizmann wrote exultantly to Ahad Ha’am afterward. “I am delighted with the result.” As he had been unable to do at the Astor dinner, he hammered at the need for a British protectorate. “I think I succeeded in explaining that to him,” Weizmann wrote to C. P. Scott, “and he agreed with the view, but he suggested that there may be difficulties with France and Italy.” Balfour’s hesitation would have been due to the Sykes-Picot Agreement (now amended into the Tripartite Agreement) and to recent Italian demands to be included in it. Weizmann, ignorant of all this, thought Balfour essentially accepted his position. Better still, he thought the prime minister accepted it too: “Mr. Lloyd George took a view which was identical with” Weizmann’s own, Balfour told him, “namely that it is of great importance to Great Britain to protect Palestine.” The foreign secretary thought Weizmann and Lloyd George should discuss matters further. “‘You may tell the Prime
³
Minister that I wanted you to see him,’” he advised Weizmann. The Zionist did so, indirectly, by quoting this remark in his letter to Scott, who could repeat it to Lloyd George and make the meeting possible.

To Joseph Cowen, Weizmann wrote, “Things are moving very satisfactorily,” as indeed they were. Scott prevailed upon the prime minister, and only a few days later Weizmann had his meeting with Lloyd George. It was a breakfast at 10 Downing Street.
⁴
Weizmann was not the only guest, but the others said little when Lloyd George, perhaps leaning over eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, informed his company that the question of Palestine “was to him the one really interesting part of the war.” Music to the Zionist’s ears,
the prime minister went on to reject the possibility of Anglo-French control once the war was won. He speculated about alternatives. What was Weizmann’s view of international control (the outcome foreseen in Sykes-Picot)? he asked. That “would be a shade worse [than Anglo-French] as it would mean not control but mere confusion and intrigue,” the Zionist warned. What about an Anglo-American condominium? asked Lloyd George. That would be acceptable, Weizmann replied, and the prime minister agreed that such an arrangement might work. “We are both thoroughly materialist peoples,” he said. Interestingly this idea of a British-American condominium gained some traction in Britain but not much in America; it will not figure prominently in our story again.

Meanwhile Sykes and Sokolow continued to confer. The English Catholic and the Russian Jew got along. Sokolow thought they did so in part because of Sykes’s religion: “Often he remarked
⁵
to me that it was his Catholicism that enabled him to understand the tragedy of the Jewish question, since not so long since Catholics had to suffer much in England.” But Sykes must also have realized that in Sokolow he had found the instrument he had been seeking: an effective Zionist diplomat who would help him to revise the Tripartite Agreement and pry Palestine loose from France. This task had been manifestly beyond the powers of Moses Gaster. Sokolow, for his part, clearly understood that Sykes was Zionism’s enabler. Having found so valuable an ally, he would not let him go.

At the end of December 1916 the British War Cabinet had agreed to allow a detachment of French Muslim troops to accompany British forces when they finally entered into Palestine. The French government designated François Georges-Picot to serve as French high commissioner for the soon-to-be occupied territories of Syria and Palestine. Inevitably the British chose Mark Sykes to act on their behalf as Picot’s counterpart. Now, early in April 1917, with General Murray about to attack Gaza for the second time, the moment for the two diplomats to make the journey eastward approached. But first Picot suggested that Sokolow come to Paris. It would be useful for him, and for the French government he would be representing, to know more about Zionism. Sykes conveyed and endorsed Picot’s invitation; he may indeed have suggested it, believing it would be in Britain’s interest for France to become better acquainted with Zionist principles. Sokolow accepted Picot’s invitation, although Weizmann and others in the Zionist leadership, and even C. P. Scott, thought he would be better employed in England. Perhaps Sokolow understood more clearly than they
that the connection with Sykes had paid another dividend, an open sesame to the Quai d’Orsay. Of course Picot would try to convince him that Jewish nationalists should look to France, not to Britain, for protection in Palestine. Sokolow could deal with that.