This book provides an important shift in the analysis of Britain's policy towards the illegal postwar Jewish immigration into Palestine. It charts the development of Britain's response to Zionist immigration, from the initial sympathy, as embodied in the Balfour Declaration, through attempts at blockade, refoulement and finally disengagement. The book exposes differences in policy pursued by the great departments of state like the Foreign, Colonial and War Offices and their legal advisors, and those implemented by the Admiralty. The book argues that the eventual failure of Britain's immigration policy was inevitable in view of the hostility shown by many European nations, and America, towards Britain's ambition to retain her position in the Middle East.

This book provides an important shift in the analysis of Britain's policy towards the illegal postwar Jewish immigration into Palestine. It charts the development of Britain's response to Zionist immigration, from the initial sympathy, as embodied in the Balfour Declaration, through attempts at blockade, refoulement and finally disengagement. The book exposes differences in policy pursued by the great departments of state like the Foreign, Colonial and War Offices and their legal advisors, and those implemented by the Admiralty. The book argues that the eventual failure of Britain's immigration policy was inevitable in view of the hostility shown by many European nations, and America, towards Britain's ambition to retain her position in the Middle East.

This collection of essays focuses Britain's role in global affairs since the Second World War. The essays cover a broad field, from relations with Japan and China, through European and African developments, to defence planning in Whitehall.

This book explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration in Palestine during the British Mandate (1922-1948). It considers the perspectives of the British authorities, the Palestinian Jewish community, and the Palestinian Arabs in their permanent opposition to Jewish immigration, expressed through strikes, demonstrations, and revolt towards the Jewish community in Palestine, as well as the British authorities. It serves to contribute to a debate in the history of Palestine, whilst seeping into other disciplines such as economics, sociology, law, and maritime history.

Israel's Moment is a major new account of how a Jewish state came to be forged in the shadow of World War Two and the Holocaust and the onset of the Cold War. Drawing on new research in government, public and private archives, Jeffrey Herf exposes the political realities that underpinned support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine. In an unprecedented international account, he explores the role of the United States, the Arab States, the Palestine Arabs, the Zionists, and key European governments from Britain and France to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Poland. His findings reveal a spectrum of support and opposition that stood in sharp contrast to the political coordinates that emerged during the Cold War, shedding new light on how and why the state of Israel was established in 1948 and challenging conventional associations of left and right, imperialism and anti-imperialism, and racism and anti-racism.

In 1917, the British issued the Balfour Declaration for military and strategic reasons. This book analyses why and how the British took on the Palestine Mandate. It explores how their interests and policies changed during its course and why they evacuated the country in 1948. During the first decade of the Mandate the British enjoyed an influx of Jewish capital mobilized by the Zionists which enabled them not only to fund the administration of Palestine, but also her own regional imperial projects. But in the mid-1930s, as the clouds of World War Two gathered, Britain’s commitment to Zionism was superseded by the need to secure her strategic assets in the Middle East. In consequence she switched to a policy of appeasing the Arabs. In 1947, Britain abandoned her attempts to impose a settlement in Palestine that would be acceptable to the Arab States and referred Palestine to the United Nations, without recommendations, leaving the antagonists to settle their conflict on the battlefield. Based on archival sources, and the most up-to-date scholarly research, this comprehensive history offers new insights into Arab, British and Zionist policies. It is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Palestine, Israel, British Colonialism and the Middle East in general.

This book presents a multidimensional case study of international human rights in the immediate post-Second World War period, and the way in which complex refugee problems created by the war were often in direct competition with strategic interests and national sovereignty. The case study is the clandestine immigration of Jewish refugees from Italy to Palestine in 1945–1948, which was part of a British–Zionist conflict over Palestine, involving strategic and humanitarian attitudes. The result was a clear subjection of human rights considerations to strategic and political interests.