Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine

Statecraft by Stealth

Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine

Steven B. Wagner

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca and London

Contents

Preface

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: The Life and Death of Joseph Davidescu

1 Britain’s Wartime Policies: Perceptions of Jewish Power and Arab Conspiracy

2 Intelligence, Policy, and the Emerging Modern Middle East

3 Cause for Peace: The Establishment of a Civil Government

4 Security, Air Control, and the 1929 (Attempted) Revolt

5 British Intelligence, the Mufti, and Nationalist Youth

6 Intelligence, Security, and the Road to Rebellion

7 The Arab Revolt: Intelligence and Politics

8 Military Intelligence and the Arab Revolt

9 Intelligence, Ibn Saʿud, and the White Paper Policy

10 The Consequences of the White Paper

Conclusion: Britain’s Intelligence State and the Failure of the Palestinian Independence Movement

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

This title represents my own work. All errors and omissions are my responsibility alone. Translations, unless otherwise indicated in endnotes, are my own work. I have not used any standard form for transliterations from Hebrew and Arabic, since the source material provides a varied range of methods. I have attempted to avoid confusion through the use of consistent spelling outside of quotations, and by using ʿ for ʿayin and ʾ for hamza. In some instances, I have spelled the same name differently to distinguish between prominent figures, such as Feisal bin Husayn and Faysal bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. Finally, for consistency, British English spelling has been changed to US English, except in quotations.

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I am grateful for the financial support of the Alberta Heritage Fund and the Beit Fund at Oxford, Derek Penslar, chair of Israel studies, and Anne Knowland, senior tutor at University College, which ensured the procurement of key documents. Travel grants from the University College Old Members’ Trust and the History Faculty’s Arnold Fund provided important support for this research. I must thank the staff and services of the National Archives at Kew, the British Library, the Israel State Archives, the Middle East Centre Archive, Givat Haviva and the Yad Yaʿari Archive, the Zichron Yaʿakov Council Archive, and Beit Aaronoshn. I am particularly grateful to the Central Zionist Archive for graciously discounting copies, and for enabling me to retrieve some of the most important material in this book. I am especially indebted to Orly Levy for her interest in and assistance with this project.

I am grateful to the Oxford Intelligence Group, especially Michael Herman and Gwilym Hughes, who have provided me with community and mentorship at Oxford. I am also grateful for the advice and help of Margaret MacMillan, Eugene Rogan, and John Darwin. Robert Johnson has been a zealous supporter of this project, for which I am thankful. I would also like to express my appreciation to Laila Parsons at McGill, whose guidance has been invaluable. I must also acknowledge my new home at Brunel’s Department of Social and Political Sciences, which supported the completion of this book. Thank you to my colleagues for your help and understanding. Thanks especially to Matthew Hughes for your feedback on certain parts of the book.

I must offer my deep thanks to the Steinitz family of Herzliya for accommodating me on several research trips, as well as Ariella Kimmel for hosting me on my final visit to Jerusalem. I also thank the staff and teachers at Givat Haviva, whose support was crucial to my Arabic training. Dawn Berry’s friendship and advice helped me to get this book project on track. I especially thank Dawn for introducing me to my editor, Emily Andrew, to whom I am also grateful for taking me on.

My parents have been my most important source of moral and financial support. Their encouragement, interest, and care helped to see me through to completing this book. My brother, Daniel, looked after me as I wrote. My wife, Kira Blumer, patiently supported my career aspirations and made this book possible. Her faith in me and in this project has sustained me throughout my work. For all this, and for Ari, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

My eternal gratitude belongs to John Ferris, my teacher and mentor, without whom I never would have begun this journey in 2006, when I first went to London to investigate newly released MI5 files. John has been a priceless source of feedback, providing expert advice and tutelage. His care for my success is that of a true friend. For these reasons, this book is dedicated to him.

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Life and Death of Joseph Davidescu

On an August evening in 1945, in the hill town of Zichron Yaʿakov, Palestine, Joseph Davidescu put his son Jack to bed and returned to chat with his neighbor at the kitchen table. A car pulled up to the window. Gunmen opened fire and killed Davidescu—a Zionist pioneer, Arabist, spymaster, and British intelligence officer.

During the First World War, Davidescu acted as an undercover scout behind enemy lines, providing intelligence to Britain on the human and physical landscape ahead of the British Army between the British and Ottoman front lines. He continued work for British and Zionist intelligence after the war, monitoring Arab villages and politics in the region. He joined the Haifa police, but resigned in late 1921 after a perjury conviction during an arms smuggling trial: he lied to protect the Zionist smuggling ring that his own department had dismantled. The incident nearly cost him his Medal of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), awarded for gallantry for his intelligence gathering behind enemy lines during 1917–18, but Winston Churchill intervened on his behalf.¹ Convicted by French authorities in Lebanon for smuggling arms in 1929, Davidescu joined British intelligence upon his return to Palestine the following year. His work for the British and his cooperation with the Zionists illustrate a pattern central to the arguments of this book—namely, simultaneous Anglo-Zionist cooperation and competition in intelligence. And it is this pattern that explains many things: how Britain ruled Palestine during 1917–40, the growth of Zionist intelligence capabilities, and the Palestinians’ relative disadvantage in that field.

Davidescu also represents key British and Israeli approaches to intelligence gathering. He was one of the original Mistaravim, agents who disguised themselves as Arabs. It is possible that he was known to Arab nationalists as an Arab Jew, rather than the son of Romanian immigrants of the First Aliyah (or first wave of immigration to the land). In fact, he even adopted the Arab moniker, or kunya, Abu-Djaj, or father of chickens, for his livestock business, which served as a cover for his clandestine work. In 1938, during the Palestinian revolt, Davidescu managed a network of informers based in Damascus that supplied British intelligence with crucial information on rebels and their political leadership.

Davidescu’s life story, from the First World War until his death, speaks to the peculiarities of British rule in Palestine and the regime’s deep reliance on intelligence. Davidescu often was a key actor in the intelligence mechanisms that shaped policy. Britain depended on the support of Zionist intelligence, and Davidescu was, from the beginning, an important liaison in that process. Anglo-Zionist intelligence cooperation is central to the story of British rule in Palestine. It underpinned British rule as part of a quid pro quo wherein Britain, in return, supported Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine.

Like Davidescu, the Anglo-Zionist intelligence partnership did not survive the Second World War. From 1939, British policy severely limited Jewish immigration during Hitler’s genocide. This deeply divided the Jewish community of Palestine, or Yishuv, and transformed the nature of Anglo-Zionist intelligence cooperation. That partnership ended shortly after Davidescu’s death—symbolic, perhaps, of the changing relationship. His assassination was an act of revenge by Jewish terrorists from the Stern Gang whose comrade had been captured by British police thanks to Davidescu’s work as a British security officer.² Controversy over Davidescu’s assassination persists; it is widely believed among veteran residents of Zichron Yaʿakov that former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir was among the gunmen.³

This book focuses on other controversies. It examines the influence of intelligence on British policy, and its role in the evolution of the triangular conflict between Britain, the Palestinians, and the Yishuv. It covers the period beginning with the inception of Britain’s occupation during the First World War and ending with the fall of France in 1940, which forced Britain and the Yishuv into a life-or-death struggle against Nazi Germany. These were the years of Britain’s Zionist policy, first articulated in the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 and then reinterpreted and included in Palestine’s legal constitution under the League of Nations.

Throughout this period, intelligence was fundamental to British power and policy in Palestine. It shaped British policy in Palestine on fundamental issues: governance, security, Zionist immigration and settlement, and Arab self-government. Intelligence records shed new light on the story of British rule and misrule, but also on the development of the Arab-Zionist conflict after the First World War. Guided by intelligence, British policy strangled Palestinian aspirations and strengthened those of the Zionists.

On Intelligence

In this book, intelligence refers to information relevant to security, communal relations, and administration, obtained from open or secret sources, and normally kept secret from other competitors. Intelligence served as a currency for exchange between collaborators. Zionists in particular sought to trade intelligence for British political support, while Palestinians tended to emphasize secrecy. Intelligence also refers to institutions: those bodies responsible for stealing secrets, keeping them, and deploying them as an arm of policy, through anything from covert action to propaganda, disinformation and deception, and clandestine diplomacy.

By the time Britain conquered Palestine, its intelligence services were still relatively underdeveloped by today’s standards, and the profession was immature. Founded in Britain just before the First World War, the Security Service, or MI5, and the foreign intelligence-gathering Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) grew into global centralized intelligence agencies to meet wartime demands. That growth was rolled back beginning in 1920, as budget cuts limited the agencies’ global reach. British ministries, which used to gather intelligence on an ad hoc basis, received a regular stream of reports from MI5, SIS, and, from late 1919, the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS, today’s GCHQ). GC&CS continued Britain’s wartime practice of reading the world’s cable and wireless communications. Access to these communications, deciphered and translated into English, was invaluable to British diplomacy and to this book. These agencies affected policy at high levels, and chapter 9 in particular shows how GC&CS shaped Britain’s Palestine policy.

In the colonies, things worked differently. In India, for example, Britain had maintained a permanent intelligence service since the mid-nineteenth century.⁴ India was the main example of security intelligence for other British colonies. Since colonial governments often ruled against the wishes of at least part of the local population, most had political police to gather security intelligence. Colonial police forces often wielded responsibility for gathering internal security intelligence. Various special branches, or Criminal Investigation Departments (CIDs), combined intelligence gathering with law enforcement, aiming to prevent local resistance from dragging troops into another small war. Finally, although not exhaustively, security services received intelligence through liaison with local colonial auxiliaries and other European powers.

Throughout the empire, intelligence agencies engaged in more than just information gathering. They also served in an enforcement role. Colonial states depended on security services to censor local populations, and to catch foreign and local agitators. In some instances, especially during wartime, they performed foreign espionage roles in addition to their normal colonial security functions. While communications or signals intelligence was normally Britain’s best source, human intelligence, or humint, played no small part in colonial security. Human agents feature throughout this book. Davidescu, for example, played various roles on behalf of British security, including undercover operative, analyst, and liaison officer, and he later handled other agents as a case officer, in today’s terms.

However, today’s standards do not apply to the interwar years in Palestine. Intelligence was a burgeoning profession. British officers and their associates brought with them the normal prejudices that affected other aspects of colonial rule. Orientalism, antisemitism, and racism prominently feature in the colonial worldview. Such prejudices created calamity. As will be seen in chapter 1, racial prejudice underpinned British policy, whether it favored Arabs or Jews. British policy discriminated between Jew and Arab, usually favoring the Yishuv’s political and economic interests over those of the Palestinians. However, racism and prejudice do not explain the whole story. British observers were capable of seeing nuance. In part, the rise of professional analytic qualities correlated with the maturity of the intelligence organization. During the First World War, most British intelligence offices were new, and struggled to separate myth from their assessments. During the 1930s, British assessments often demonstrated a surprisingly rich understanding of Palestinian and Zionist politics, and the various conflicts that swirled within and between those communities. Officers could become emotionally attached to either community. Often, different agencies produced competing assessments of the same problem. The cognitive biases of policymakers and intelligence analysts each affected decisions.

While authorities in Palestine adopted other colonial examples, and communicated closely with London’s intelligence agencies and ministries, the story of British intelligence in Palestine is unique. Examining Britain’s security policy, governance, and relationships with Jewish and Arab communities, this book argues that secret intelligence—in both informational and institutional forms—was central to the story of British rule in Palestine: to the machinery of the colonial state in Palestine, and to the policy that governed it. This story has not been told until now because the evidence has only recently become available. Using newly declassified intelligence records from the United Kingdom and Israel, alongside other government records and Hebrew and Arabic sources, it is now possible to piece together a new and detailed picture of statecraft in Mandatory Palestine. Once a missing dimension of history, intelligence evidence illuminates the story of the Palestine Mandate’s birth, life, and first symptoms of death.⁵ Britain’s support for the Zionist policy is central to that story: its intelligence partnership with Zionism was an important component of British power in Palestine. When Britain abandoned the Zionist policy in 1939, it sacrificed its long-term ability to govern.

Intelligence records must be approached as though seen in a magnifying mirror. They clearly reflect British policy, enabling one to trace how intelligence influenced policymakers (or was ignored by them), which issues mattered to them, and how they perceived events. But these records also offer a new and expanded view on the subjects of intelligence reportage: the Arab nationalist and Zionist communities. Simultaneously, this book offers a new reading of political developments in these communities, as well as of the colonial state, and revises our understanding not only of the foundation and growth of the mandate as a special form of British colonial state, but also of developments in the power and challenge of the Arab nationalist and Zionist communities.

Intelligence evidence illuminates more than just the machinery of British rule. It also sheds light on the Zionist and Palestinian national stories. In the early days of British rule, Palestinians hoped for self-government and legislative control over immigration to Palestine. They hoped that the liberal aims of the League of Nations mandate would check Britain’s support for Jewish immigration, which, they feared, would displace them in their homeland. However, Britain’s improvisational approach to Palestinian demands entertained discussion but never gave them what they wanted. Since diplomacy had delivered little success, the Palestinians escalated their demands and their pressure tactics. Palestinian political life progressed rapidly during 1921–36, as leaders mobilized the public to resist British policy and Zionist immigration. By the mid-1930s, most Palestinian parties were demanding independence. Palestinian resistance to British policy culminated in revolt from 1936 to 1941. That resistance faced the might of the empire and was crushed. Intelligence evidence reveals the many disadvantages facing the Palestinians in both diplomatic and military terms, and sharpens our understanding of their failure to achieve independence. The laws of the mandate were structured against their interests, and Britain preferred to negotiate with Zionists rather than any Arab party. Anglo-Zionist intelligence cooperation was at the heart of those disadvantages. To defeat the revolt, British military intelligence created a security state and devastated Palestinian society.

Anglo-Zionist intelligence relationships also contribute to our understanding of key issues in the Yishuv, such as the domination of Labor Zionism in Palestine’s political and economic life. Partnership with British intelligence also highlights the growth of the Yishuv’s stately capabilities during the interwar years, which ultimately equipped the Yishuv for independent statehood. The Zionists learned from the best intelligence professionals, while the British enjoyed the benefits of augmenting their resources with other expertise and alternate perspectives. Anglo-Zionist intelligence cooperation was tied—by both parties—to British support for Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. The end of Britain’s Zionist policy in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, was itself driven by intelligence and secret diplomacy. That moment transformed the Anglo-Zionist intelligence partnership and created a new conflict between the sides. The Anglo-Zionist conflict was set aside by the fall of France, when the Nazi German onslaught threatened the survival of both Britain and world Jewry.

Despite the calamity after 1939, the Yishuv enjoyed many triumphs under the cozy protection of British policy during the interwar years: it gained military might and freedom of decision, and achieved its policy aims. Of course, Zionism did not achieve statehood during this period, but it did make enormous strides toward that end. The British occupation introduced the possibility for mass immigration of Jews to Palestine—a core Zionist objective. Before Britain, the Yishuv had little ability to defend itself, and lacked a central autonomous governing body to develop stately institutions. After twenty-two years of British rule, the Yishuv’s population had approximately quintupled, and Jewish land ownership had more than doubled.⁶ The Yishuv’s defensive militia, the Haganah, and its intelligence agencies became competent forces. They worked closely with British authorities, who trained and equipped them to secure the Yishuv. The growth of these capabilities paved the way toward Zionism’s ultimate objective—independent statehood. While this book is not about the founding of Israel in May 1948, or the Palestinian catastrophe (the Nakba), it does explain the path to that destination. British intelligence shaped a security state and offered incredible advantages to its junior Zionist partners in their conflict with the Palestinians. This is the story of how Britain used intelligence to rule Palestine. In Palestine, as in other colonies, it ruled through local actors. Yet nowhere else in the empire did Britain depend so heavily on intelligence. Nowhere else were its policy options so limited.

Intelligence about environment and enemies shaped British policy and actions. One cannot understand how Britain ruled and lost Palestine without assessing these factors. Five themes come into focus throughout this exploration of intelligence and policy: the intelligence state; Britain’s governance of Palestine; the Palestinian revolt of 1936–41; the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini; and the 1939 White Paper policy.

The Intelligence State

This book borrows the notion of an intelligence state from Martin Thomas, who discusses it in his characterization of British and French colonies in the Middle East during the interwar years, when they depended on intelligence for their security. Intelligence mattered both to the day-to-day workings of the administration and as an arm of policing.⁷ Thomas also emphasizes a colonial-client relationship: Colonies, he notes, may have exhibited both the defined territoriality of a state and a single, central authority, but they lacked any voluntary associational basis between rulers and ruled to help underpin the state.⁸

Consent of the governed is significant to the story of Mandatory Palestine, and relates directly to the book’s next major theme—governance. Intelligence tried to facilitate British governance since it could not reconcile the mandate’s liberal-democratic aims while enforcing Jewish immigration against the will of the majority. Intelligence supported normal colonial governance: European powers ruled colonies through the cooperation of local elites and the recruitment of junior auxiliaries. British colonial authorities and local elites needed each other to survive. The various rival parties, interests, governments, elites, and others each sought influence in the colonial state. Intelligence was a medium for these competing interests, and simultaneously, these interests were the chief subject of colonial intelligence. In Palestine, Britain had unusually few options in how it approached local elites and junior auxiliaries. Thus, intelligence—whether overt or covert—was all the more important as a tool to negotiate those relationships.⁹

This is complicated by the conflicting roles of intelligence officers, since in the Middle East, British intelligence officers conflated their roles as intelligence providers and agents of state violence.¹⁰ In Palestine especially, the line between these activities was blurry. Intelligence officers collected information and spread disinformation. They monitored security threats and countered them. Between 1918 and 1947, their roles varied according to leadership, administration, and conditions. Complicating matters, local elites and junior auxiliaries were not passive. Arab and Jewish factions competed among themselves and with the British for their own interests. The two communities’ interest in governance and policy shaped their competitions with intelligence agencies and officers. So, whether subjects of surveillance or enthusiastic informers to the British, both Arabs and Jews participated in British rule and its hidden hand.

Thomas’s model of an intelligence state applies unevenly in Palestine. The British intelligence officers who created the mandate saw some version of an intelligence state as vital, even if they never articulated the concept as such. Yet the intelligence state did not always dominate British governance, which had to comply with League of Nations obligations, the general principles of responsible government, and a prevalent liberal internationalist ideology.

The intelligence state underwent three major transformations during the period under examination. In 1920, the intelligence state embodied by the military government was remodeled into a civil government. The appearance of a civil government was deceiving, as many key government posts were filled by former army intelligence officers, who continued to handle intelligence as they had during the military administration and the war. They filled important roles as civil secretaries, district governors, and other officials. It was a civil intelligence state in name only. It lacked the structure and organizational benefits of the army’s centralized intelligence, but comprised bright and talented ex-officers with wartime experience. By 1927–28, most seasoned intelligence-hands-cum-administrators had left the country, taking their habits and a ghost intelligence state with them.

The second transformation occurred in the wake of the 1929 disturbances, when two parallel intelligence states were rebuilt. The government expected the first of them, revolving around the police CID, to dominate political intelligence, and to conform to the high commissioner’s policy. Operating in parallel, the Royal Air Force (RAF) reintroduced Staff Intelligence—a wartime innovation. Military intelligence was responsible for defense and military security and, as such, also examined Palestinian and Zionist political affairs. Military intelligence assessments of local politics differed from those of the CID and civil state. These services competed for attention and validation from the high commissioner and the civil secretary. Although military intelligence provided more nuance in its assessments of Arab and Zionist politics, they were ignored because the military had a weaker relationship with the government.

That competition was exacerbated during the Palestinian rebellion in the late 1930s. The military intelligence state was enlarged with reinforcements from Britain and the empire, while the CID and police began to crack. Arab policemen and civil servants faced incredible pressure not to go to work, or to assist the rebels. Families of officers who refused were threatened. This compounded the problem that CID assessments about the revolt had proven optimistic, even naive. By 1938, the police service had collapsed and had been rebuilt by the army under emergency laws. This was the third transformation of the intelligence state. Its civil manifestation was extinguished and replaced by a security state.

In all, the intelligence state was more of a security state in Palestine, since intelligence rarely affected the core of policy. There were two notable exceptions. The first, during 1919–20, took place when it secured a mandate over Palestine for Britain and cemented the Jewish national home into the bedrock of British policy. The second and final time that intelligence affected high policy occurred in 1938–39, when signals intelligence (sigint) led Britain to abandon its Zionist policy. During the interwar years, intelligence mainly served to augment British force: it was fundamental to the defeat of the rebellion, and occasionally mitigated violent disturbances, but not their political underpinnings. Intelligence could not solve the basic contradictions that underlay British rule in Palestine, but it could manage them for two decades.

Governance

Palestine was mandated to Britain by the League of Nations. Britain committed itself to providing self-government to its people, and to fostering a Jewish national home, while protecting the civil and religious rights of Arab residents. The contradictions derived from Britain’s notorious conflicting wartime commitments to Arabs, Jews, and France. Britain could not reconcile these claims with its own interests, or with its commitment to allow Jewish immigration against the wishes of the Arab population, which created an additional challenge for colonial government in Palestine. These issues are elaborated in chapter 1. The inherent contradiction between self-government and the Zionist policy was not acknowledged until late. It compounded the contradiction between Britain’s liberal self-image and its colonialism in other parts of the empire. Intelligence shaped these contradictions and helped to manage them.

British colonial administrators preferred to rule through prestige, manipulation, and the minimum use of force. When those aims failed, they turned to the exemplary use of force, relying on reserves from elsewhere and the guidance of intelligence services.¹¹ According to Robert Johnson, the tactic of divide and rule was a common outcome of this strategy, especially where societies were already divided, but it was not Britain’s only, or even its preferred, option. After the First World War, British policymakers sought to expand local autonomy throughout the empire, especially in India. Autonomy also was a league aim for mandates, but it proved impossible to implement in Palestine because it conflicted with the competing constitutional commitment to support Jewish immigration against the will of the Arab majority. In Palestine, as elsewhere, when Britain could not grant autonomy, it strived for responsible or good government. Britain did not trust local elites to govern themselves.¹²

Ideological, financial, and military limitations also were at play. Liberals and legalists—powerful forces in British ideas—desperately sought constitutional solutions to the Palestine problem. Financial limitations made rule through force impossible and hindered effective intelligence work, which required staff and cash for agents. In order to balance all of these commitments and conflicts, Britain relied more heavily in Palestine than elsewhere in its empire on intelligence, improvisation, and political relationships with local elites. These approaches sought to boost Britain’s prestige, enable its policies, and supplement the military force that it could not afford to maintain and could not use easily. Secret intelligence and diplomacy were essential for Britain to manage relations between Arabs and Jews, and to preserve its interests and rule in Palestine.

When facing riot and revolt, intelligence guided the use of hard power and served as a force multiplier. Exemplary force hit hard, devastating Palestinian military and political organization by 1940. To these ends, administrators required political and security intelligence, and collaboration with local forces and elites. In this way, Britain’s junior Zionist partners played a vital role in the maintenance of security, and were rewarded with immigration and settlement, as well as unusual freedom to develop a sophisticated internal security apparatus. Britain’s dependence developed because of its inability to follow normal colonial practices in Palestine, and led to the creation of an imperium in imperio, or a state within a state. This process prepared the Yishuv’s self-governing institutions for statehood.

The Revolt

The Palestinian revolt of 1936–41 was the greatest challenge to British power in Palestine during the interwar years, and one that transformed the balance of power between the three sides. Although conventionally the revolt is dated 1936–39, this book marks its end with the reoccupation of Iraq and Syria during April–June 1941. The revolt’s leadership relocated to Syria in 1937, and continued to organize resistance from over the border until they were captured or fled to Axis territory in 1941. Although these latter events are beyond the scope of the book, the revised dating supports a new understanding of both Palestinian resistance and Britain’s drastic responses to it.

Much of the book is dedicated to a series of questions relating to the origins, development, and defeat of the revolt and its consequences. An examination of intelligence records on the Palestinian national movement reveals important issues about both intelligence and the Palestinian national story. Although Palestinians were frustrated by Britain’s commitments to Zionism, the story of the Palestinian national movement’s development until 1936 was one of extraordinary and surprising success, far more so than is conventionally realized. Within fifteen years, Palestinian society overcame its divisions of class, ideology, religion, and other allegiances, and united against a common foreign threat. British observers did not understand this process as it took place, and only began to try during the revolt. Debates between intelligence officers and policymakers about Palestinian national organization illuminate how policymakers used or ignored intelligence. On the other hand, the Palestinian national story after 1936 is one of successive disasters.

The mandate was irreversibly altered by the revolt and its suppression. Britain defeated the revolt as it slid steadily toward a dirty war in which intelligence officers mobilized support from Jewish and Arab paramilitaries, and coordinated a vicious campaign to retake the country. The consequences were far reaching. These events tipped the balance between the two main political and demographic developments in Palestine between 1917 and 1936: the increase in the Jewish population and the expansion of the Yishuv’s political organs, and the corresponding rise in Palestinian and pan-Arab nationalist organization and activity under the mufti, the British-appointed Palestinian leader. The power of Jewish military and intelligence agencies surged. Palestinian society was left shattered, divided, and leaderless. Any hope for a civil government, as guaranteed by Britain and the League of Nations, imploded under the strains of civil disobedience, the threat and use of violence, armed rebellion, and unprecedented Arab-Jewish tensions. A militarized form of rule remained in place until 1948.

The Mufti

If there is one key player in this account, it is the Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1937. The mufti was the key subject whom British intelligence and policymakers needed to understand in order to appreciate the security and governance problems they faced. This book assesses British intelligence in part by examining its assessments of the mufti. Comparing their views with other evidence helps to evaluate British intelligence services and their influence, or lack thereof, over policymakers. Of all Arab leaders, al-Husseini posed the greatest challenge to British policy in Palestine. This was complicated by his tendency to act indirectly, and by his official policymaking role from 1921 to 1937. While Britain gave him the powerful position of mufti, it nevertheless maintained a watchful eye on the Palestinian leader and his connections with the nationalist, pan-Arab, and pan-Islamic communities until 1927–28, when it lost intelligence resources and expertise. During the 1930s, British intelligence services and policymakers underrated the mufti’s influence and ability to mobilize the population to demand a halt to Jewish immigration.

Recently declassified intelligence records offer a new understanding of how the mufti exercised his power, disputing historians who have argued that he did not direct armed resistance, and those who accuse him of genocidal ambitions (at least before 1941). With his multiple interests and frequent clashes with his compatriots, al-Husseini’s role in armed resistance during the interwar years was hard for British observers to identify. On the one hand, he was a loyal government officer, a reliable and collaborative local elite, and a stabilizing force in Palestinian society. On the other, working through intermediaries, he mobilized nationalists in Palestine to assert their political rights and try to end the Zionist policy. Beginning in 1929, his opponents faced increasing risk of murder. His pan-Islamist activity brought him close to leading anti-imperialist voices. British administrators could reasonably see him as an ally until 1937; likewise, intelligence officers reasonably interpreted evidence to see him as hostile. This disagreement was at the core of British policy’s approach to Palestinian demands during the 1930s. It explains why policymakers were slow to treat him as hostile and why they pursued constitutional negotiations and high diplomacy instead of succumbing immediately to the military’s demand for martial law in 1936.

The White Paper

Finally, this book offers new explanations for Britain’s decision in 1939 to abandon its Zionist policy in its White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration and land purchases for the first time since the beginning of the mandate. The intelligence record offers a new and more complete explanation for the end of Britain’s twenty-two-year Zionist policy, and its abandonment of a junior partner on the eve of the Second World War. Intelligence had long monitored the communications of the founding king of Saudi Arabia, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Ibn Saʿud. He was a hero in the pan-Arab theater, and since 1915 had been a key player in Britain’s Middle Eastern empire. Saudi Arabia was independent but in need of protection by a great power. Ibn Saʿud’s relations with Britain improved steadily, especially during the 1930s. The Foreign and Colonial Offices, along with the prime minister, chose in 1939 to use the Palestine question as a means to bolster the Arab leader and buy his support and widespread influence. They let the Saudis lead the other Arab delegations to London in offering new proposals for a future Palestine policy, and take the credit for this victory over Arab nationalism’s Zionist enemy. Britain’s relationship with Zionism was sacrificed on the altar of Anglo-Saudi diplomacy and Britain’s hopes that Ibn Saʿud would influence the region in a pro-British light—as he did. This faith in Ibn Saʿud was based mainly on records of his intercepted communications—over the span of a decade, he proved himself to be dependable, and to share Britain’s interests and enemies.

Source and Methods

Important intelligence sources on Palestine and the Middle East began to be released in 2006. Since then, the UK National Archives and the archive of the Palestine Police CID in Tel Aviv have released much material. These records contain everything from tactical intelligence against terrorists and rebels, to political intelligence on Zionism and Arab nationalism, to the structure of British security in Palestine, augmented by personal papers of soldiers, administrators, and intelligence personnel who served in Palestine or led the counterinsurgency. The Yad Yaʿari Archive at Givat Haviva, Israel, possesses personal papers of Zionist intelligence officers, including correspondence with Arabs, Zionist leaders, and British officers, while the Aaronsohn House archive in Zichron Yaʿakov holds the papers of Alex Aaronsohn and Joseph Davidescu, who intermittently served British intelligence throughout the period.

The great problem is the paucity of records on Arab politics. Publicly held Arabic sources are few, located mostly at the Israel State Archives in its Abandoned Documents collection, or in memoirs. The lack of Arabic state records is partly relieved by the availability at the National Archives at Kew of signals intelligence intercepts of Saudi, Egyptian, and Iraqi diplomatic cables, translated into English. This material often addresses the interaction between events in Palestine and pan-Arab and pan-Islamic politics. These are rare and unique Arab accounts of important events. The sparse Palestinian sources can be augmented by coordinating the record of British and Zionist intelligence liaison with and surveillance of Arabs. Comparing what each says about Arab contacts illuminates their secret diplomacy, albeit filtered through the viewpoint of British and Zionist observers, who were not omniscient.

Further intelligence records are available at the Haganah Archives in Tel Aviv, the Israel State Archives, and the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. They contain British documents, varyingly stolen, shared, or left behind. Along with other Hebrew materials, they highlight Zionist secret diplomacy, and liaison with British and Arab contacts. These records shape the overall picture of the relationship between intelligence and policy. Hebrew and Arabic materials serve as a check on British reportage, revealing the accuracy of intelligence and the competency of its assessors. Sometimes these checks show that intelligence accurately presented issues or events but could still misconstrue their meaning. Within these gray areas we find some of the most important insights about intelligence and policy in Palestine. These issues are elucidated throughout this book’s ten chapters.

Chapter Summary

Chapter 1 examines the origins of British rule and its conflicting commitments to Arabs, Jews, France, and the League of Nations. Most British officers never realized that they were creating conflicts and contradictions through these commitments. Partly this derived from the way they expected the war to end, and how that expectation was shattered by the collapse of the central powers. The misalignment of expectations also derived from British prejudices about Jewish power and Arab conspiracy. In the end, the intelligence officers who created these problems became responsible for managing them.

Chapter 2 explains how those officers sought to manage conflicting issues during military government in Palestine between 1918 and 1920. They had to convince the League of Nations to grant Britain a mandate over Palestine, and that this was best for the local population and the league’s liberal-internationalist aims. Only after the league recommended a British mandate in August 1919 did British intelligence realize that they would have to use military force to uphold their commitment to Jewish immigration and settlement against the will of the Arab population. Zionist intelligence made important contributions to Britain’s hold over the mandate, and was rewarded in turn. The intelligence state took shape in this discordant environment, but it had not discovered a way to reconcile Britain’s conflicting commitments.

Chapter 3 covers the transition from military to civil government, and the relative peace that prevailed from 1922 to 1928, and describes the intelligence response