Table Of ContentAlan R. Taylor
PRELUDE
TO
ISRAEL
AN ANALYSIS OF
ZIONIST DIPLOMACY
1897-1947
THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES
Prelude to Israel
AN ANALYSIS OF ZIONIST DIPLOMACY
1897-1947
ALAN R. TAYLOR
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THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES
The Institute for Palestine Studies is an independent non-profit
Arab research organization not affiliated to any government, political
party, or group, devoted to a better understanding of the Palestine
problem. B00&J in the Institute series are published in the interest of
public information. They represent the free expression of their authors
and do not necessarily indicate the judgement or opinions of the Institute.
Copyright © 1959 by Philosophical Library Inc., New York
This edition first published 1961 by Barton, Longman and Todd, Ltd.,
London
New impression with a revised Introduction and Epilogue, February 1970
Copyright © 1970 by the Institute for Palestine Studies
REPRINT SERIES N° 5
THE INSTITUTE FOR PALESTINE STUDIES
Ashqar Building, Clemenceau St., P.O. Box 7164
Beirut, Lebanon
NOTE TO SECOND IMPRESSION
At the request of the Institute for Palestine Studies
the author has kindly given his permission for Prelude
to Israel to be reprinted.
Dedicated to all who have brought the light
of scholarship to the problem of Palestine
CONTENTS
Preface xi
i. The Creation of Zionist Aims and Policy 1
i. The Balfour Declaration 10
hi. The Mandate 26
iv. The Growth of Political Zionism 40
v. Zionist Strategy in the 1930s 49
vi. The Reorientation of Political Zionism 56
vn. Wartime Zionist Diplomacy in Britain and Palestine 66
vm. The Zionist Search for American Support 78
ix. The Making of Modern Israel 89
Epilogue 108
Bibliography 116
Index 120
PREFACE
For over twenty years the State of Israel has been a fact
of life in the Middle East, an unsettling reality which has
occupied the anxious concern of the world and perplexed both
the knowledgeable and the uninformed. The contestants in
the Arab-Israeli conflict remain mutually hostile and have
become increasingly embittered, with the result that there
remains as much today as two decades ago a Palestine “prob¬
lem.”
But since the June War of 1967, the imperatives of a
settlement have become more apparent. The escalating charac¬
ter of the conflict, the instability of territorial status, and the
involvement of the great powers have raised serious threats
to international peace. This has led to increased concern and
new efforts to achieve a solution.
Of primary importance in the peace-making task is know¬
ledge and understanding, a mature perspective which can show
the way to possible avenues of approach rather than to illusory
panaceas. The starting point of necessity is history. Perhaps
the major cause of current confusion as to the real issues is
ignorance of the problem’s historical roots. The actual dimen¬
sions of the crisis cannot be grasped in terms of the more
recent developments alone, for these reflect only claims and
counter-claims, assaults and retaliations, without reference to
the origins of conflict and the deeper sources of causality.
Reduced to fundamentals, the Palestine problem is a
struggle between the Arab and Zionist movements for control
of the southwestern sector of the Fertile Crescent. The function
of this book is to trace the history of Zionist endeavours to
establish a Jewish state in Palestine from the founding of the
Zionist movement in 1897 to the creation of Israel, with special
emphasis on the diplomatic methodology involved. It deals
xi
Xll PRELUDE TO ISRAEL
specifically with the origins of Zionism as a political movement,
the formulation of particular goals, and the implementation
of policies designed to achieve these goals.
The purpose of such an account is to clarify the nature
and direction of Zionism in its formative phase, which still
remains relatively obscure. A further aim is to dispel certain
misconceptions. One of these is the notion that Zionism is
essentially a religious movement with religious goals. This is
not true. Zionism is actually a secular and political movement.
What it seeks is the reconstitution of Jewish identity in the
context of modern political nationalism. Though religious Jews
have adhered to Zionism, their interests have been accommo¬
dated to the secular orientation of the leadership and the non¬
religious majority. By employing the slogan of “return,”
political Zionism has gained the support of religious Jews
for modernist programmes of “normalization” and “negation
of the Diaspora.” This is why Zionism has been confused as
a facet of Judaism, whereas it is actually more concerned
with essentially populist problems of integration, group affilia¬
tion, and cultural assertiveness.
A second misconception which this volume seeks to
clarify concerns the manner in which Israel came to be. It
is commonly thought that the establishment of the state was
a natural and spontaneous event inspired by the traditional
longing of the Jews to reconstitute their national life in Palestine
and precipitated by recurrent episodes of anti-Semitism cli¬
maxed in Hitler’s programmatic genocide. This also is a dis¬
torted picture of what actually happened.
The founding of the state was neither religious nor spon¬
taneous, but the result of careful planning and organized
activity on behalf of a secular national ideal. Long before
anti-Semitism had reached the proportions it assumed in
Nazi Germany, the Jewish national idea was formulated by
Zionist ideologists as the only effective programme for the
regeneration of the Jews as a modern people. Though many
Jewish thinkers and communities rejected this premise and
even regarded it as contrary to Judaism, the apologists and poli¬
tical leaders of Zionism embarked on an intensive programme
to proselytize the Jewish world and found a Jewish state in
PREFACE Xlll
Palestine. Their efforts over half a century, which arc summa¬
rized in this book, were ultimately successful, but created the
problem of Palestine for the Middle East and raised profound
religious and ethical questions for the Jews.
A final misconception which needs to be clarified is the
belief that Zionism is a completely democratic movement,
stemming from the Jewish masses and sustained by broad
popular support. It would be more accurate to describe the
Zionist phenomenon as directive populism. Its founder, Theo¬
dor Herzl, regarded himself as the self-appointed director of a
latent popular movement, and the leadership patterns which
he founded became indigenous to Zionism. Within the context
of this directive system, the many factions within the movement
developed a party organization which achieved political ex¬
pression through the Zionist Congress. Thus, organized Zionism
combined elitist and democratic institutions, permitting the
assertion of factional positions but retaining a leadership
principle which provided unity of direction and purpose for
an otherwise diverse movement.
One further elaboration concerning the nature of Zionism
should be made to avoid confusion. The basic components of
the movement have been political, cultural, and religious
Zionism. The political Zionists stressed the importance of
statehood and Normalization,55 not even insisting on Palestine
as the site of the new Jewish nation. Their concern was the
development of a statist programme as a means to collective
integration in a nationalist-oriented world. By contrast, cul¬
tural Zionism was preoccupied with the reassertion of Jewish
identity in a modern form. It looked to a cultural centre in
Palestine as a regenerating influence, though its founder —
Achad Ha‘am — was not religious in basic outlook. Religious
Zionism, which has existed in an unorganized form within
a traditionalist framework for centuries, revered the Holy
Land as a place of sanctification. Though many Orthodox Jews
regarded modern political Zionism as a profane movement,
some joined it on the premise that the messianic age could
come about by human agency. This raised the problem
of realizing a spiritual ideal through a secular programme,
which Orthodox adherents of Zionism have yet to solve.
