The Biggest Liar: The UN and Nakba
Every November, the biggest liars from across the globe gather at a quaint nook in Cumbria, England. Their sole purpose is to impress the judges with fanciful tale tales, porky pies and downright lies. The contest dates back to the 19th century, when Will Ritson (1808–1890), a local landlord, claimed his turnips were so big they were carved into sheds to house sheep.
Notably, the event bans politicians and lawyers from entering as they are deemed too adept at spinning tales. It explains why no one from the United Nations has ever been invited to talk about Israel.
For many decades now, Palestinians have gnashed their teeth in agony over the controversy known as the Nakba. According to the United Nation’s website: Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic, and refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The U.N. goes on to point out that “prior to the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. However, the conflict between Arabs and Jews intensified in the 1930s with the increase of Jewish immigration, driven by persecution in Europe, and with the Zionist movement aiming to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.”
It makes it sound like there was harmony in the British Mandate of Palestine, a happy melting pot of Jews, Arab Muslims, Druse, and Christians, until Hitler triggered Jews into mass immigration of refugees.
The explanation misses the main fact, and that is that Arab Palestinians (no one called themselves just Palestinians at the time because it referred to multiple religions) left largely of their own accord after selling the land to Israel, again of their own accord, and through various uprisisings, turned a sympathetic British ear towards Arabs to finding common cause with Jews.
Reality Check:
Until 1948, Palestine was a multiethnic, multi-religious state, also referred to as the Holy Land or the Levant. After WWI began and with it the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine became a British Mandate.
It is worth noting that by 1917, although the Palestinian Arabs (as they saw themselves, as opposed to Palestinian Jews) were still subjects of the Ottoman Empire, they fought on the side of the British (e.g. Lawrence of Arabia) and welcome the conquest of the Ottoman’s.
The Arab Revolt occurred in Mandatory Palestine in 1936. It began as a war of popular resistance against British rule. The second phase, starting late in 1937, was a guerilla war led by locals and inspired by the highest religious authority, Hajj al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jersusalem (a title bestowed by the British). The Palestinian Arabs resorted to violent terroir against British forces which resulted in a powerful response by the British Army and Palestine Police Force. The Arab population was divided against the violence espoused by Al Huseinni. One very important clan, the Nashashibi, aligned with the British against Jihadist Arab units.
The outcome of the Arab Revolt was that ten percent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population was sidelined or eliminated through death, injury, imprisonment, or exile. Palestinian Jewish casualties were up to several hundred (due to reprisals from Arabs). As a result, the revolt influence the outcome of the 1948 Palestine war (i.e. Nakba) in several ways.
It led to the British Mandate’s support for Zionist militias like the Haganah, while the main Palestinian Arab leader, al-Husseini, was forced into exile and from there, he began to wage holy war against Britain, culminating in his befriending Adolf Hitler and provoking the Holocaust.
A gripping, profoundly human, yet even-handed narrative of the origins of the Middle East conflict, with enduring resonance and relevance for our time.
In spring 1936, the Holy Land erupted in a rebellion that targeted both the local Jewish community and the British Mandate authorities that for two decades had midwifed the Zionist project. The Great Arab Revolt would last three years, cost thousands of lives — Jewish, British, and Arab — and cast the trajectory for the Middle East conflict ever since. Yet incredibly, no history of this seminal, formative first “Intifada” has ever been published for a general audience.
The 1936–1939 revolt was the crucible in which Palestinian identity coalesced, uniting rival families, city and country, rich and poor in a single struggle for independence. Yet the rebellion would ultimately turn on itself, shredding the social fabric, sidelining pragmatists in favor of extremists, and propelling waves of refugees from their homes. British forces’ aggressive counterinsurgency took care of the rest, finally quashing the uprising on the eve of World War II. The revolt to end Zionism had instead crushed the Arabs themselves, leaving them crippled in facing the Jews’ own drive for statehood a decade later.
To the Jews, the insurgency would leave a very different legacy. It was then that Zionist leaders began to abandon illusions over Arab acquiescence, to face the unnerving prospect that fulfilling their dream of sovereignty might mean forever clinging to the sword. The revolt saw thousands of Jews trained and armed by Britain — the world’s supreme military power — turning their ramshackle guard units into the seed of a formidable Jewish army. And it was then, amid carnage in Palestine and the Hitler menace in Europe, that portentous words like “partition” and “Jewish state” first appeared on the international diplomatic agenda.
This is the story of two national movements and the first sustained confrontation between them. The rebellion was Arab, but the Zionist counter-rebellion — the Jews’ military, economic, and psychological transformation — is a vital, overlooked element in the chronicle of how Palestine became Israel.
Today, eight decades on, the revolt’s legacy endures. Hamas’s armed wing and rockets carry the name of the fighter-preacher whose death sparked the 1936 rebellion. When Israel builds security barriers, sets up checkpoints, or razes homes, it is evoking laws and methods inherited from its British predecessor. And when Washington promotes a “two-state solution,” it is invoking a plan with roots in this same pivotal period.
Based on extensive archival research on three continents and in three languages, Palestine 1936 is the origin story of the world’s most intractable conflict, but it is also more than that. In Oren Kessler’s engaging, journalistic voice, it reveals world-changing events through extraordinary individuals on all sides: their loves and their hatreds, their deepest fears and profoundest hopes.
At the commencement of hostilities during World War I, Britain made conflicting promises to Arabs and Jews. To the Hashemite governors of Arabia with the help of Lawrence of Arabia, Britain promised independence for a united Arab country in Syria in return for Arab support against the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, Britain negotiated the Sykes–Picot Agreement to partition the Middle East with Britain acquiring control over Transjordan (modern Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan) while France was granted control over Syria and Lebanon.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration by Britain promised to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, motivated by strategic factors including securing Jewish support in Eastern Europe. This promise was broadly supported at the San Remo Conference. The League of Nations approved the Palestine Mandate in June 1922, effective September 1923, outlining Britain’s administration responsibilities in Palestine, including establishing a Jewish national home and safeguarding the rights of all inhabitants. The Trans-Jordan memorandum, presented in September 1922, excluded the Emirate of Transjordan from Jewish settlement provisions.
The rise of Adolf Hitler and the ensuing persecution of Jews increased Jewish migration to Palestine. Despite Nazi restrictions, the Jewish Agency negotiated an agreement allowing German Jews to buy goods for export to Palestine, facilitating their immigration.
The influx of Jews into Palestine led to the Arab revolt from 1936–1939. The Peel Commission, established by Britain, recommended partitioning Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, in 1937. The Arabs rejected this proposal, while the Zionist response was ambivalent. The Woodhead Commission in 1938 deemed partition impractical due to the required forced transfer of Arabs and proposed a smaller Jewish state along the coastal plain.
In February 1939, the British held the London Conference to negotiate between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, which ended in failure. Post-World War II, British policies were influenced by the geopolitical need to maintain good relations with independent Arab allies.
The 1940 White Paper limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to 75,000 over five years, with future immigration dependent on Arab consent. It also stated that the establishment of a Jewish state was against British policy and proposed an independent Palestine state within ten years, with shared Arab and Jewish governance.
2) In November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem under a UN administration. The Arab world rejected the plan, arguing that it was unfair and violated the UN Charter.
The Reality:
Jewish militias launched attacks against Palestinian villages, forcing thousands to flee. The situation escalated into a full-blown war in 1948, with the end of the British Mandate and the departure of British forces, the declaration of independence of the State of Israel and the entry of neighboring Arab armies. The newly established Israeli forces launched a major offensive. The result of the war was the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population.
According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) more than 5 million Palestine refugees are scattered throughout the Middle East. Today, Palestinians continue to be dispossessed and displaced by Israeli settlements, evictions, land confiscation and home demolitions.
The Nakba anniversary is a reminder not only of those tragic events of 1948, but of the ongoing injustice suffered by the Palestinians. In 2022, the UN General Assembly requested that this anniversary be commemorated on 15 May 2023, for the first time in the history of the UN.
