One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate

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Tom Segev

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Pages: 618 (Paperback)

ISBN: 034911286X

Pub: Abacus

Pub date: 2001-10-04

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 49460

Editorial Review:

Topicality is never an issue where Israel and the Palestinians are concerned. The arguments--not to mention bloodshed--over Jewish and Muslim nationhood and land rights have been going on for centuries and, whatever the best intentions of the current peace process, will probably go on for centuries to come. Both parties fanatically believe they have an inalienable historical right to statehood on the land in question and both regard Jerusalem as a holy City. As befits the disenfranchised, the Palestinians are slightly more open to a negotiated settlement, but the Israelis remain intransigent about handing over any but the most inhospitable of scrubland and the impasse remains. In the battle between the bullets and the ballot box, the bullets are winning hands down. Tom Segev is one of Israel's most notable historians and journalists--one of the few to strive for any sense of objectivity in his writings--so a new book by him is always worth waiting for. One Palestine, Complete is a detailed account of Palestine under British rule from 1917-48, the critical period in the modern history of the region that lead up to the creation of the state of Israel. Segev begins by carefully detailing Britain's well-known inconsistencies in dealing with both the Jews and the Arabs, both of whom it had appeared to promise if not the world, at least the country after independence was granted and goes on to make a convincing case that because Palestine fell into the category of an emotional rather than self-interested colonial possession, the Brits hoped the situation would unwind to everyone's mutual advantage. Where Segev departs from the historical norm is in his assertions that whatever the British may have said to the Palestinians their actions were uncompromisingly pro-Zionist from the off. This, he claims, was done out of the mistaken, anti-Semitic belief that the Jews controlled business and turned the wheels of history--in other words they were one of us--rather than a recognition of the rightness of their cause. Be this as it may, it is at best a partial explanation. Prior to the Second World War, Britain was on the verge of handing over Palestine to the Arabs and Segev completely downplays the impact of Western war guilt over the Holocaust that led to a huge growth in support for an independent Israeli state at the expense of Palestinian rights. Even so, One Palestine, Complete offers a thoughtful and dramatic account of the evolution of two nationalist movements that seem destined never to be reconciled. With a past like this, what hope is there for the future? --John Crace

Reader Reviews:

utterly brilliant (0/1 people found this helpful)

I thoroughly enjoyed this vivid journey through the lives and events of peoples lives in the Holy land prior to 1948. It looks in depth at Britains attempts to retain some form of order within a nation rotten to the core. Britains attempt to retain a facade of stability was relatively successful until Arab & Jewish terrorism took root after the 1936-39 Arab revolt and the arms race it began. A much needed book giving a good look at how the people lived in the political hot-potato of Palestine. I fervently recommend this welll written book.

A first rate book! (16/19 people found this helpful)

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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