The Palestine Deception 1915-1923:: The McMahon-Hussein

The Palestine Deception 1915-1923:: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home

J. M. N. Jeffries, formerly a war correspondent in Europe and the Middle East, working for Britainâ€™s largest-selling newspaper, the Daily Mail, was sent to Palestine in 1922 by its owner, Lord Northcliffe, to report on its developing political and economic affairsâ€”just five years on from the Balfour Declaration and its promise of British support for the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. A Zionist Commission had arrived there in April 1918 and working, often tensely, alongside British military and civilian authorities, had succeeded in setting up a nascent Jewish polityâ€”the nature and implications of which Jeffries sets out to appraise.

Jeffriesâ€™ articles, reproduced in full here for the first time, highlight Britainâ€™s duplicity in its dealings with the Arab population of Palestineâ€”arguing that clear, written pledges of Arab political independence, offered in 1915â€“16 as a means of gaining Arab military support in the war against Germany and her Ottoman ally, had been decisively contradicted by the terms of the Balfour Declaration in 1917: thus â€œThe Palestine Deception.â€ Providing, for the first time, a public translation from the Arabic of pertinent extracts from the diplomatic correspondenceâ€”something that the British government itself would not allow until 1939â€”Jeffries caused a considerable stir in political circles in London, prompting senior members of the House of Lords to ask that the government revise the terms of its commitment to the Zionist project in advance of the forthcoming final settlement by the League of Nations of the Mandate for the territory.

Writing with lively wit and telling irony, Jeffries offers a vivid contemporary snapshot of Palestine in the early 1920s. The circumstances of Jewish life there, both indigenous and immigrant, are set out in fine detail, although it seemed to him highly improbable that Britain could contrive any long-term alliance with the Zionist movement that would advance its own imperial interests in the Middle East and beyond.
Country USA
Manufacturer Institute for Palestine Studies (USA), Inc.
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-02-09
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Institute for Palestine Studies (USA), Inc.
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-02-09
Format	Kindle eBook

The Palestine Deception 1915-1923:: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home

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