Empire and Aftermath Writing the 'Histories' of

Transcript:Empire and Aftermath Writing the 'Histories' of:
Empire and Aftermath Writing the 'Histories' of the Wars of 1948 Aims To learn about the creation of the state of Israel. To trace the history of Israel/Palestine from the end of the British Mandate (1945 -1948), through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War until the signing of the armistices between Israel and the Arab states signed in 1949. To think about the different ways in which this event has been told by the different actors over time and what this may tell us about history writing more generally. Part one The end of the British Mandate, the UN partition plan, civil war and the war between Israel and the Arab states World War Two In 1939 Britain issued a White Paper on Palestine. It agreed to allow 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over the period 1940–44, after which migration would require Arab approval. In March 1940 the British High Commissioner for Palestine issued an edict banning Jews from purchasing land in 95% of Palestine. This act by Britain enraged the Jewish community and was clearly a reversal of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate provisions. When the war finally ended, the Allied forces in Europe were shocked to discover the true horror of the Nazi death camps. Between 1939 and 1945, approximately 6 million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, two-thirds of Europe’s Jews had been barbarically and systematically murdered. Jews in the Middle East were also affected by the war. Most of North Africa came under Nazi control and many Jews were used as slaves. The 1941 pro-Axis coup in Iraq was accompanied by massacres of Jews. Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) Jews in Europe who had been liberated from the concentration camps joined an estimated eight million people who had been displaced by war. Known as Displaced Persons (DPS) they found refuge in camps set up especially for them by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation agency (UNRRA). No country offered to take these desperate refugees and the British White Paper of 1939 continued to prohibit Jewish immigration. The Jewish DPs began to organize themselves and to make demands of their own. They wanted the Jewish people to be recognized as a people, they demanded the establishment of a Jewish State, and their own emigration to it. The British Government refused, and increased its efforts to prevent Jews leaving Europe for Palestine. A struggle now began, in Palestine and in Europe, between