The precise reasons for the UK helping to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine are nebulous, but amongst the strongest motivations was the desire to deflect Jewish immigration away from Britain at a time when millions of Jewish refugees were fleeing Russia to escape persecution. The following is an account of the British efforts in helping to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine and the events that ultimately led to the creation of Israel.
For all intents and purposes, Israel and Zionism has its roots in 19th century Eastern Europe, or rather Russia to be more specific. In 1880, around 75% of the world's Jews lived in a place called the Pale of Settlement, an area that encompassed large swathes of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia. It was created by Catherine the Great in 1791 as a sort of ethnic enclave (perhaps most analogous, ironically, to the Palestinian West Bank), where Russia's Jews were to be confined to one region.
Under the Russian Tsars, life for Jews of the Pale was extremely harsh and poverty-stricken. Besides curtailing their freedom of movement, a quota system was put in place that either restricted or completely abolished their participation in education, professional occupations and voting, amongst numerous other disabilities.
Tensions between the Jews and the Russian authorities were often strained, but things abruptly came to a head following the assassination in 1881 of Tsar Alexander II, after a false rumour spread that Jews were behind the plot. The resulting pogroms throughout much of Eastern Europe precipitated the largest mass migration of Jews since Rome routed Judea. From then until the outbreak of WWII, a monumental demographic shift of Jewry from the Eastern Hemisphere to the West ensued.
The majority of Jewish emigrants (about 4.5 million between 1881 and 1930) settled in America, with many others moving to Austria, Germany, France and Holland. Britain, which had previously had only a small Jewish population of around thirty thousand, absorbed some 150,000 refugees between 1881 and 1920, which led to an enormous public backlash against this "alien invasion". The trade unions in particular were extremely opposed to immigration, as these mostly impoverished Russian Jews were undercutting British workers with their cheap labour. The Trades Union Congress passed a number of resolutions between 1892 and 1895 calling for strict anti-alien legislation. As a result, the Conservative party made immigration control a central plank of its political platform during the 1900 general election.
After they were duly elected that year, in 1903 the Conservative government made their first proposal to create a "Home for the Jews" in a region of Uganda, Africa, which the recently formed Jewish Zionist movement in Austria rejected. In 1905, a British act of Parliament known as the Aliens Act 1905 was created which sought to restrict Jewish immigration into Britain. The man responsible for this legislation was none other than Arthur Balfour, who would later give his name to the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was an offer by the British to allow Jews to settle in Palestine, parts of which had recently been captured from the Ottomans during WWI. This time the Zionists gladly accepted. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of the war, the British administered the region for next 30 years under a League of Nations mandate known as Mandatory Palestine.
In 1939, after the breakdown of talks between Jewish and Arab delegates at the London Conference regarding the future governance of Palestine, the British imposed the White Paper of 1939, which effectively rescinded the Balfour declaration and the terms of the League of Nations Mandate. The White Paper rejected the concept of partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, as set out by the League of Nations, and announced that the country would instead be turned into a binational state with an Arab majority. It also severely curtailed Jewish immigration, allowing for only 75,000 Jews to migrate to Palestine from 1940 to 1944. Afterwards, further Jewish immigration would depend on consent of the Arab majority, and sales of Arab land to Jews was restricted.
Zionist groups in Palestine immediately rejected the White Paper and began a campaign of attacks on government property and Arab civilians which lasted for several months. When in December 1942 the mass murder of European Jewry became known to the Allies, the British continued to refuse to change their policy of limited immigration, or to admit Jews from Nazi controlled Europe in numbers outside the quota imposed by the White paper. To enforce this, the Royal Navy actively blockaded ships with Jewish refugees, preventing them from reaching Palestine.
Post war from 1945 to 1948, more than 80,000 illegal Jewish immigrants attempted to enter Palestine. Some 49 immigrant ships were seized and 66,000 people were detained, with 1,600 others drowned at sea. Having known for some time that they would be unable to contain Jewish immigration, the British established internment camps on the island of Cyprus to detain all illegal immigrants. More than 50,000 Jews, mostly Holocaust survivors, passed though these camps.
In 1945, Lehi, Haganah and other independence groups formed the "Jewish Resistance Movement", an underground anti-British network, and set about a campaign of bombings and terrorist activities against the British occupation. The insurgency was coupled with a local and international propaganda campaign to gain sympathy abroad. Yishuv publicised the plight of Holocaust survivors and British attempts to stop them from migrating to Palestine, hoping to generate negative publicity against Britain around the world.
David Ben-Gurion, the future Israeli Prime Minister, publicly stated that the Jewish insurgency was "nourished by despair", that Britain had "proclaimed war against Zionism", and that British policy was "to liquidate the Jews as a people". Of particular significance was the British interceptions of ships carrying Jewish immigrants. After the SS Exodus incident, which became a major media event, propaganda against the British over their treatment of the refugee passengers was disseminated around the world, including claims that the Exodus was a "floating Auschwitz". In one incident, after a baby died at sea aboard an Aliyah Bet ship, the body was publicly displayed to the press after the ship docked in Haifa for transfer of the passengers to Cyprus, and journalists were told that "the dirty Nazi-British assassins suffocated this innocent victim with gas."
In 1946, Irgun carried out the King David Hotel bombing, an attack on the building where the central branches of the civil and military administration of Palestine were based, killing 91 people. The British response was swift and severe, instituting nationwide curfews on Jews, public floggings and executing convicted insurgents.
The commander of the British forces in Palestine, General Sir Evelyn Barker, who was having an affair with the wife of the late George Antonius (a leading Arab Nationalist), responded to the bombing by ordering British personnel to "Boycott all Jewish establishments, restaurants, shops, and private dwellings. No British soldier is to have social intercourse with any Jew.... I appreciate that these measures will inflict some hardship on the troops, yet I am certain that if my reasons are fully explained to them they will understand their propriety and will be punishing the Jews in a way their race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them "
In 1947, all non-essential British civilians were evacuated from Palestine. In February, Bevin informed the House of Commons that the Palestine question would be referred to the United Nations. Meanwhile, a low-level guerrilla war and campaigns of terrorism continued through 1947 and 1948. Eventually, Jewish insurgency against the British was overshadowed by the Jewish-Arab fighting of the 1947–48 Civil War, which started following the UN vote in favour of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine.
In 1948, after almost 30 years or British occupation, the UK formally withdrew from Palestine and handed responsibility to the UN. Although the insurgency played a major role in persuading the British to quit Palestine, other factors also influenced British policy. Britain, facing a deep economic crisis and heavily dependent on the United States, was facing a massive financial burden over its many colonies, military bases, and commitments abroad. At the same time, Britain had also lost the centrepiece of the rationale of its Middle East policy after the end of the British Raj in Colonial India. Britain's Middle East policy had been centred around protecting the flanks of its sea lines of communication to India. After the British Raj ended, Britain no longer needed Palestine.
In the resulting power vacuum left by the British withdrawal, the Jews and Arabs were left to punch it out over the fate of Palestine. After a brief war lasting 10 months, the Jews emerged as victors and they declared Israel a free state shortly after.
Sources:
Bell, J. Bowyer: Terror out of Zion: the fight for Israeli independence
Marrus, Michael Robert; The Unwanted: European Refugees from the First World War Through the Cold War
Huneidi, Sahar: A Broken Trust; Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians
Kamel, Lorenzo; Imperial Perceptions of Palestine: British Influence and Power in Late Ottoman Times