TORRID ZONES •
SIR,-1 fear this correspondence is plunging so deep into detail that readers who do not have every back issue to hand must find it hard to follow the argu- ment. It also seems to be getting personal. I should like, therefore, to try to answer in fundamentals, as well as detail, some of the lengthy letters in recent issues of the Spectator. •
Alan Webber of the Zionist Society reworked (April 8) my analogue of an Israel imposed on Wales, so that it was the 'return' of original 'Britons' who had been exiled for many centuries after a 'Germanic' invasion. He then asked, 'who would deny their right to return in such circumstances? And
does normality [of a State in its origins] per se matter?' I think Arthur Koestler put the answer : In the famous Balfour Declaration, one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third. No second thoughts can diminish the originality of this procedure. The Arabs had been living there for centuries, and the country was no doubt 'theirs' in the generally accepted sense of the word. It is true . . . that the Jews claimed to have received that country only three thousand years earlier from God him- self, who had only temporarily withdrawn it from them. But. arguments of this nature had never before in history induced an act of State of a comparable kind. (From Promise and Fulfil- ment.) • That is why 'normality' matters : because we ask Arabs to accept an act of State that no other people has been asked to accept and that, I plead, we would not have accepted ourselves. Nor have I ever, any- where, suggested that the two million Jews brought to Palestine since 1917 should all be sent elsewhere. Nor do I minimise for a second the impact upon them of Arab threats and border raids. But what provoked, and still provokes, them? It does seem to me that the price of this utterly unprecedented act of State—the price manifestly needed to get peace for those Jews as for Arabs—can only be unpre- cedented gestures of reassurance and conciliation by Jews. And this I do not see in Israeli policies. What I do see, what cannot fail to be seen, is a series of claims, actions, and propaganda initiatives in the out- side world that can only inflame Arab fear and grievances. Nor can these be explained as response to Arab threats but as basic provocation.
Mr. Pinner, accusing you (April 1) of disseminat- ing 'Fascist' propaganda, wrote that Mr. Ben-Gurion is ready to meet any Arab leader any time and any- where for 'peace talks without prior conditions.' But Israel's peace terms are rigid with conditions. And to cite but one example, Mr. Ben-Gurion pro- claimed such readiness for talks on November 2, 1955; the statement went out to the world. That same night he sent troops crashing into Egyptian territory (Sabha) in one of the bloodiest attacks since 1949. Ii the name of sanity, I do not see how that amounts to a peace offer.
Now as to details, Robert Kee (April 15) warns your readers to beware my insincerity in writing that 'in 1949, having added 35 per cent, more territory to the UN partition award, Israel signed armistices.' He writes :
Mr. Childers doesn't say that Israel in fact accepted the UN partition award, but that the Arab States rejected it because they thought they could get more territory by force of arms. They then attempted to do so and were defeated. The extra territory Israel acquired was acquired in the course of inflicting this defeat.
I really do have a clear conscience about not saying all this. No one studying Arab attitudes over years before 1947 can dismiss their rejection of partition of Palestine as being because they thought they could 'get' more of it by force. They didn't recognise that they should have to campaign for any of it by any means; they held it was Arab. Secondly, when the Arab States sent in their armies, on May 15, 1948, a so happens that it was nascent Israel that had already taken more territory than its UN award. I quote Mr. Ben-Gurion himself :
until a day or two before the Arab invasion
not a [Jewish] settlement was lost . . . and nothing . . . stopped us from reaching our goal on May. 14, 1948, in a State made larger and Jewish by the Haganah. (My italics, c.f. The Re- birth and Destiny of Israel.) Equally, Mr. Kee may hold that a State victorious in war is entitled to retain whatever territory it has hold of at time of armistices. He must then, of course, be ready to approve any Arab military seizure of Israeli territory following an Israeli attack. I happen to decline this doctrine, which we regard as re- pugnant everywhere else save in Palestine. I do not see why that makes me dishonest.
Finally, Mr. Kee grossly misquotes what he calls my 'naive' explanation of the Arab exodus. If he will kindly re-read my letter he will see that I wrote (April 1): 'the Arabs fled in panic and at Zionist bayonet-point.'
I want to make clear : I do not doubt that many supporters of Zionism are convinced in all conscience that Zionist leaders sincerely want peace for Israel as now constituted. The point is, do their statements and actions suggest this to Israel's neighbours? It will not matter if Israel convinces the entire outside world that she wants peace : it is with her neighbours that she has to live. Similarly, it will not matter if she convinces the whole world that the Arabs fled only because ordered to by their leaders : she has those one million, even more inflamed by this story, sitting on her borders. The same point can be repeated through the whole catalogue of Israeli claims to the outside world, with the same relentless conclusion.
If, to raise such questions, one has to court charge and smear, so be it. One's consolation is that very many non-Zionist Jews—and not a few in Israel itself—are just as deeply worried about Zionist policy.—Yours faithfully,
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