Avi Shlaim
Middle East Quarterly, 3:3, September 1996, 52-55
Efraim Karsh makes a vigorous contribution to the debate about
Israel's early history in his article. This debate began a decade ago,
following the publication of books by Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Ilan
Pappé, and myself, and it clearly is still going strong. Although it
has generated a great deal of heat, especially at the beginning, the
debate itself is a wholly positive development and a reflection of the
maturity of Israeli society. Karsh's contribution is significant
because it is based on extensive reading and because it touches on
issues that are fundamental to the "new" or revisionist school of
writing about Israel's history.
"Not Guilty"
Karsh
makes many sweeping generalizations about the work of the new
historians. I cannot really complain about this as I myself have
similarly written in a shorthand fashion about the work of the "old,"
or Zionist, or traditionalist historians. But it should be stressed at
the outset that there is no club, society, or trade union, let alone a
political party with card-carrying members, of new historians. Nor is
there collective responsibility for the new history; each new historian
is responsible solely and exclusively for what he himself has written.
I am not my brothers' keeper nor are they mine.
For my part, I
wish to enter a plea of "not guilty" to nearly all the charges Karsh
levels collectively against the new historians: I am not a
"self-styled" new historian nor a self-styled guardian of truth and
morality; I do not attempt to prove that the Jewish state was born in
sin nor do I seek to champion the cause of the Palestinians; and I most
emphatically do not fashion my research to suit contemporary political
agendas. Karsh also charges the new historians of making much of their
relatively young age; I have never referred to my age in print before,
but, at the ripe age of fifty, I find it flattering to be described as
young.
Karsh's critique of the new historians is two-fold: he
denies our claim to have provided factual revelations and he challenges
our interpretations. He quotes me as writing in 1995 that "the new
historiography is written with access to the official Israeli and
Western documents, whereas the earlier writers had no access, or only
partial access, to the official documents." This still strikes me as an
eminently fair and accurate summary of the situation. Karsh goes on to
point out that recent "old historians," such as Itamar Rabinovich and
Avraham Sela, went over much of the same documents and came up with
very different conclusions. Why does he expect all readers of official
documents to come up with the same conclusions?
Karsh's
totalitarian conception of history rears its head all the more clearly
when he moves from new facts to new interpretations. "As for new
interpretations," he writes, "some are indeed new, but only because
they are flat wrong." This reminds me of the French chef who refuses to
provide salt and pepper in his restaurant on the grounds that anyone
who thinks that his dishes need more salt and pepper is simply wrong.
Karsh is kind enough to say that my interpretations ring truer than
those of my colleagues -- "but only because they are old and familiar."
He is referring here to the claim of Jordanian-Israeli collusion which
forms the central theme of my 1988 book, Collusion across the Jordan:
King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. In
fact, says Karsh, this conspiracy theory has been quite pervasive both
in the Arab world and in Israel.
Evidently, Karsh wants to have
it both ways. On the one hand he says that my interpretation is old,
familiar, and unoriginal, and that I have hardly broken new ground. On
the other hand, he takes me to task for this interpretation. But surely
what matters is not whether the interpretation I advance is old or new,
original or unoriginal, pervasive or peripheral, but whether it is
sound or not. I shall therefore devote the rest of this reply to a
rebuttal of Karsh's main arguments against the two collusion theses.
Collusion across the Jordan
Karsh
and I clearly differ in our interpretation of what transpired at the
secret meeting between Golda Meir and King `Abdallah of Transjordan on
November 17, 1947. Extensive quotations from the reports of all three
Jewish participants support my account of this meeting. But Karsh gives
a highly selective and tendentious account designed to exonerate the
Jewish side of any responsibility for frustrating the U.N. partition
plan. It is true (as my book explains) that `Abdallah did most of the
talking at this meeting and that no binding decisions were taken, due
to the fact that the United Nations was about to vote on partition.
That said, the two sides went a long way to coordinate their positions.
`Abdallah began by outlining his plan for pre-empting the mufti, Hajj
Amin al-Husayni, and explored the Jewish response to his capturing the
Arab part of Palestine and attaching it to his kingdom. Meir replied
that the Jewish Agency would view such an attempt in a favorable light,
especially if `Abdallah did not interfere with the establishment of a
Jewish state, avoided a military confrontation, and declared that his
sole purpose was to maintain law and order until the United Nations
could establish a government in that area.
Six months later,
Mrs. Meir reported: "For our part we told him then that we could not
promise to help his incursion into the country." This is correct. The
understanding was not that the Jews would actively help `Abdallah
capture the Arab part of Palestine (in defiance of the United Nations)
but that (1) he would take it himself, (2) the Zionists would set up
their own state, and (3) after the dust had settled, the two parties
would make peace. `Abdallah was even prepared to sign a written
agreement setting out the terms of collaboration and asked the Jews to
prepare a draft. He also asked the Jews considerably to raise the level
of their financial aid to him. Karsh makes no mention of the money paid
by the Jewish Agency to `Abdallah; but if the Jews had really accepted
the U.N. plan for an independent Palestinian state, surely they would
have cut off their financial subsidy to `Abdallah after he had made
clear his determination to make himself master of Arab Palestine.
Most
surprising is Karsh's claim that my thesis is predicated on a single
diplomatic encounter's profoundly affecting the course of history. My
account, he says, "reflects a complete lack of understanding about the
nature of foreign policymaking in general and of the Zionist
decision-making process in particular." This remark betrays a
misunderstanding of my collusion thesis, which is based not on a single
diplomatic encounter but on `Abdallah's relations with the Jewish
Agency and the State of Israel over a period of thirty years, from the
creation of Transjordan in 1921 to the king's murder in 1951. A common
hostility to Hajj Amin al-Husayni and a common desire to contain
Palestinian nationalism sustained their relationship, I argue, almost
without interruption for all those years. The November 17, 1947,
meeting should be seen in this context, a meeting held behind a thick
veil of secrecy, involving much underhand scheming and plotting,
directed against a third party, and resulting in an agreement to
partition Palestine at the expense of the Palestinians. If this is not
collusion, I don't know what is.
Collusion with Great Britain
I advance a subsidiary thesis in my book (p. 1) that
By secretly endorsing Abdullah's plan to enlarge his kingdom, Britain became an accomplice in the Hashemite-Zionist collusion to frustrate the United Nations partition resolution of 29 November 1947 and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state.Karsh considers this thesis to be "fundamentally flawed." In fact, his version of my account of the February 1948 meeting between Ernest Bevin and Tawfiq Abul Huda is hopelessly inaccurate and misleading. I maintain that Bevin approved the Transjordanian plan to invade the Arab parts of Palestine but warned Abul Huda off invading the Jewish areas; Karsh denies both claims.