One Palestine, complete : Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate

by Tom Segev

Other authorsHaim Watzman

Paper Book, 2000

Status

Available

Call number

E96

Publication

New York : H. Holt, 2001, c2000.

Description

Great Britain ruled Palestine from 1917 to 1948. The British presence replaced 500 years of Turkish control and led to the State of Israel, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1998. The British brought Palestine into the twentieth century. When they arrived the country lay in a Levantine nirvana; by the time they left it had become the arena for one of the century's major international conflicts. Among the personalities who shape this narrative are Lawrence of Arabia, Winston Churchill, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, King Feisal, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion. One momentous consequence of these 30 years was that the Jewish population increased by a factor of ten.

User reviews

LibraryThing member FPdC

For more than thirty years the British ruled Palestine. Having entered Jerusalem in November 1917 in the wake of the campaign against the joint Ottoman-German forces, they left it in May 1948 in the mist of the Jewish-Arab war and the Zionist terrorist campaign that resulted in the foundation of

the State of Israel and the destruction of the Palestinian Arab society. In the mean time the British fulfilled the plead made to the Zionism movement in 1917 by Lord Balfour and laid the foundation of the Jewish state the Zionists have dreamed of. The relationship between the local British administration, the British government in London, the Zionist Organization, and the Jewish population in Palestine was not always smooth but London kept its promise and did help the Zionists (their fellow Europeans) against the native Arab majority when they needed more support and protection. As a result the Jewish population of Palestine rose from less than 10% in 1919 to a bit more than 1/3 in 1948, it organized itself politically and militarily under the British umbrella, and prepared itself for the final show-down with the Arab population whose organization and leaders, never too strong or organized anyway, had been mostly destroyed in the suppression of the Arab revolt of 1936-39, and could at no point match the superior administrative organization, military efficiency and international public relations skills of the Zionists. This excelent book describes these events and traces the diplomatic and political discussions between the British and the Zionists during these tumultuous years. The book is not only extremely interesting and well written, but also very entertaining and lively, due to the author very competent use of a score of diaries, letters and other private documents to make the reader feel the mood of the times and the atmosphere surronding the historical events: Count Ballobar's (Spain's consul in Jerusalem in the last days of the Ottoman rule) and Al-Sakakini's diaries are particularly delighful. The only drawback is the somewhat misleading subtitle: the book is essentially about the Yishuv and the Zionist Organization under British rule, not about the Arabs, that, although treated with a commendable degree of fairness and understanding when they enter the narrative, they do so, in most of the cases, only in reaction against the Jews or the Administration. They are mainly part of the landscape and not a subject of the narrative in an equal footing with the other two partners in the struggle for Palestine. Apart from this minor detail, which has probably more to do with the subtitle of the english translation than with the original intention of the author, this is indeed a first rate book.

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LibraryThing member Polaris-

A superb account of the background to and implications of the British rule in Palestine 1917-1948. Completely unbiased in his appraisal, Segev doesn't shy away from either the Zionists own failings, the Arabs' misguided ineptitude, or the British accountability for the mess which still obviously

needs resolving in Israel-Palestine today. Very thorough and briliantly written. If you want a good understanding of how this lengthy conflict really began, this is the book to read.

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LibraryThing member HandelmanLibraryTINR

One Palestine, Complete explores the tumultuous period before the creation of the state of Israel. This was the time of the British Mandate, when Britain's promise to both Jews and Arabs that they would inherit the land, set in motion the conflict that haunts the region to this day.

LibraryThing member SGTCat

Well written and easy to read, almost like a novel. I wish there was a little more explanation of who certain people were, but overall this is an excellent book about the mandate period of Palestine. It covers the period between the British invasion and the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the British

pull-out in 1948.

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