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The Resolution of Conflicts Through Territorial Partition: The Palestine Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Aaron S. Klieman
Aaron S. Klieman
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
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Extract

One finds partition often mentioned but rarely discussed in any detail by authors of texts on world politics. Denned as the act of dividing into two or more units an area previously forming a single administrative entity, partition is firmly anchored in both the theory and practice of international statesmanship. Modern diplomatic history offers a classic illustration in the repeated partitioning of Poland in the late eighteenth century. More recent instances of territorial division are Ireland (1920), Germany and Korea (1945), India (1947) and Indochina (1954). Reinforcement for such political arrangements, moreover, derives from the teachings and insights of bargaining theory, negotiating strategies, crisis management and conflict resolution with their primary emphasis upon compromise. Partition is thus presented as being a traditional and accepted method for terminating disputes outstanding among nations without recourse to war.

Type
The State and the Threat of Violence
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 281 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1980

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References

1 Representative of these approaches toward conflict and compromise are the following: Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Iklé, Fred Charles, How Nations Negotiate (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar and Lall, Arthur, Modern International Negotiation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Bell, Coral, The Conventions of Crisis (London: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Holsti, K. J., International Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967), esp. pp. 132–3, 445 ff.Google Scholar The relevance of partition for peacemaking is discussed in Randle, Robert F., The Origins of Peace (New York: The Free Press, 1973), pp. 89–94.Google Scholar

2 A few exceptions to the general neglect of partition by the social sciences are: an entire issue of the Journal of International Affairs devoted to “The Politics of Partition” 18:2(1964)Google Scholar; Hackey, Thomas E., ed., The Problems of Partition: Peril to World Peace (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972)Google Scholar; and Henderson, Gregory, Lebow, Richard Ned, and Stoessinger, John G., Divided Nations in a Divided World (New York: David McKay, 1974).Google Scholar The tendency of such efforts, however, is to adopt the single-country case study approach rather than to compare or to generalize. One interesting exception is Herz, John H., “Korea and Germany as Divided Nations: The Systemic Impact,” Asian Survey 15:11 (November 1975): 957–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Similarly, an important attempt at constructing a typology of partition is Johnston, Ray Edward, The Politics of Division, Partition and Unification (New York: Praeger, 1976).Google Scholar

3 The interest of moderates on both sides in reassessing the utility of partition can be seen in the remarks of Israel's former foreign minister Eban, Abba, “A New Look at Partition,” Jerusalem Post, 25 June 1976, pp. 7–8.Google Scholar Suggestive of a possible shift in Palestinian thought toward partition is Khalidi, Walid, “Thinking the Unthinkable: A Sovereign Palestinian State,” Foreign Affairs 56:4 (July 1978): 696–713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 “Palestine Royal Commission Report” (Cmd. 5479) (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, July 1937). Also “Palestine: Statement of Policy by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom” (Cmd. 5513), 7 July 1937.

5 The part played by bureaucratic rivalry in frustrating partition is treated in the author's “The Divisiveness of Palestine: Foreign Office versus Colonial Office on the Issue of Partition, 1937,” The HistoricalJoumal, 22:2 (1979), 423–41.Google Scholar

6 Klieman, Aaron S., “In the Public Domain: The Controversy over Partition in Palestine” (Unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar

7 The literature on the Middle East dispute and its various components is vast. A few representative examples are: Hurewitz, J. C., The Struggle for Palestine (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950)Google Scholar; Safran, Nadav, From War to War (New York: Pegasus, 1969)Google Scholar; Cohen, Aharon, Israel and the Arab World (London: W. H. Allen, 1970)Google Scholar; and Kerr, Malcolm H., ed., The Elusive Peace in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York, 1975)Google Scholar. The reader interested in documentary material will find highly useful the three volumes edited by Moore, John Norton, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Readings and Documents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

8 The late Arnold Wolfers wrote that the British have always been “the masters and devotees of compromise,” quoting remarks by Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain to the Assembly of the League of Nations on 10 September 1925: “It is not out of a logical system proceeding from general hypotheses that our freedom, our liberties, our safety have grown. It is from the wise spirit of compromise which has inspired all British parties in critical moments. …” Wolfers, Arnold, Britain and France Between Two Wars (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940), p. 240.Google ScholarSirNicholson, Harold, in his portrait of English diplomatic style, draws the parallel between good business and good statecraft, since each is founded upon notions of credit, confidence, consideration and, of course, compromise. See his Diplomacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 71.Google Scholar

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10 On the relevance of partitioning for balance of power systems, see Organski, A. F. K., World Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958)Google Scholar, ch. 11; also Beloff, Max, The Balance of Power (Canada: McGill University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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12 It was employed, for example, in justifying the Hoare-Laval plan in 1935 during the Abyssinian crisis, and again, in 1938, to justify the Munich agreement as a recognition of legitimate German claims in Czechoslovakia through Czechoslovakia's partition.13 After having consistently opposed Russian suggestions for the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire for half a century, the British Government gave their consent to its application for the first time in 1907 (in the case of Persia). Then, in the years 1915–1920, abandoning her earlier hesitancy, Britain participated in the division of Turkey-in-Asia. A third instance involved Britain's tacit acquiescence to the partitioning of Syria into various Syrian states and “Greater Lebanon” by France following her occupation of that country in 1920. Most instructive by far, however, was Transjordan's separation from Palestine, a process begun in 1921, leaving Transjordan well on the way to independence by 1937 under the Amir Abdullah. Consequently, when partition came to be discussed in Great Britain, Transjordan was cited as an example of its successful use. Indeed, a number of commentators, in 1937, having Transjordan in mind, correctly insisted upon referring to the Peel plan as the “second Partition of Palestine.”

14 One of the earliest is a memorandum by DrJacobson, Victor, head of the Zionist office in Geneva, written in 1929, in which he raised the possibility of the Division (“Einteiling”) of Palestine into separate self-contained Arab and Jewish districts. But nothing of practical significance resulted from his memorandum C.Z.A. Z4/281/7, Jerusalem.Google Scholar

15 Cust, Archer, “A New Plan for Palestine,” The Spectator, 21 February 1936, pp. 294–5.Google Scholar See also his article “The Problem of Palestine,” Great Britain and the East, 23 July 1936, pp. 117–8.Google Scholar

16 Cust was soon joined by other proponents of cantonization or similar forms of segregation. These had in common the belief that Arab-Jewish cooperation along with integration in Palestine, although official British policy, were becoming increasingly impossible goals. In a book entitled Palestine of the Arabs, 1936, Mrs. Stewart Erskine endorsed the notion of two cantons that might eventually become states and also members of the League of Nations. Sir Stafford Cripps, writing in the Manchester Guardian on 8 September 1936, openly proposed Palestine's division into two independent states but recommended that these would remain linked in a Palestine Federal Government. Still another advocate was G. J. Garratt, whose article appeared at the end of the year in The Political Quarterly. Recalling the British experience in Ulster and also the Greco-Turkish exchange of populations in 1923, he thought it best if Arabs and Jews each had certain areas in which they could predominate, although other parts would have to be held in common, since Palestine was, after all, a small country. Nevertheless, “some segregation would help.” More moderate in the details of the plan than Cripps, Garratt did offer a closely reasoned exposition of the merits of some type of partial segregation.Google Scholar

17 “Palestine Royal Commission Report,” op. cit., p. 379.Google Scholar

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20 Undated, but relayed to London from Jerusalem on 1 April 1937; C. O. 733/346, file 75550/43.

21 Annexure IV of a Cabinet paper on “ The Palestine Situation” submitted by the Colonial Secretary on 1 January 1937; CAB 24/267, C.P.1(37).

22 Abramovitz, Zev, “The Socio-Economic Structure of Arab Palestine,” in Sereni, Enzo and Ashery, R. E. eds., Jews and Arabs in Palestine (New York: Hechalutz Press, 1936), p. 89.Google Scholar

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26 Parliamentary Debates, op. cit., col. 615.Google Scholar

27 Quoted in Rose, Norman, “The Debate on Partition, 1937–38: The Anglo-Zionist Aspect,” Middle Eastern Studies 6:3 (October 1970): 315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29 C. O. 733/346, file 755501/41.

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34 See, for example, Dowty, Alan, The Role of Great Power Guarantees in International Peace Agreements, Jerusalem Papers on Peace Problems, no. 3 (February 1974).Google Scholar

35 In Machover, J. M., Jewish State or Ghetto: Dangers of Palestine Partition. (London: Robert Anscombe, 1937), p. 123.Google Scholar Britain as an obstacle to settlement was the view taken by Sams ad-Din Bey Sami, a Transjordanian official, in 1933 when, likening Arab-Jewish cooperation to a tunnel, he feared that ” in the middle of the mountain we shall run into a steel partition that will prevent our meeting. This partition is the British Government.“ Quoted in Cohen, Aharon, Israel and the Arab World (London: W. H. Allen, 1970), p. 254.Google Scholar

36 Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., 326 (21 July 1937): col. 2260.Google Scholar

37 Monroe, Elizabeth, op. cit., p. 56.Google Scholar

38 During testimony by Weizmann on 23 December 1936. W.A.

39 ”Palestine Royal Commission Report,“ op. cit., p. 394.Google Scholar

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41 On the possible ways group decision-making might malfunction, see George, Alexander L., “The Case for Multiple Advocacy in Making Foreign Policy,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. LXVI, No. 3 (September 1972), pp. 751–785.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 C.O. 733/351, file 57518; also, CAB 23/88, C.P. 166(37).

43 CAB 23/88, Cab. 27(37).