The Haj - Leon Uris [42]
At the zenith of the Arab revolt, a high British commission concluded that Britain’s ability to rule the mandate had been exhausted.
War was on the horizon in Europe and any British pretense of remaining evenhanded in Palestine was exposed. In issuing the commission’s White Paper, the British completely renounced their obligation to the Jewish Homeland. The British policy was now to win favor in the Arab world at any cost in order to protect British interests in the region.
On the eve of the Second World War, millions of Jews were desperately trapped in Europe. The White Paper cut off their final avenues of escape by calling for a phasing out of all Jewish immigration to Palestine and an end to all land sales. Although the Mufti’s revolt had been crushed, the British White Paper granted him a victory in absentia.
When war was declared against Germany, almost the entire Arab world spiritually allied with the Nazis. The betrayed Jews of Palestine declared, ‘We shall fight the war as if there were no White Paper and we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war.’ Within days, a hundred and thirty thousand men and women of Jewish Palestine volunteered for military service with the British.
Haj Ibrahim was markedly glum. Gideon had left Shemesh Kibbutz on many occasions, to go to the desert or on training missions and surely to smuggle arms and illegal immigrants. Sometimes he would be gone for months. Each time Gideon left, Haj Ibrahim felt very uneasy. Of course, he never said so.
Tabah had been brutalized by the Arab revolt. Two dozen of his people had been killed or disappeared. Haj Ibrahim knew, within himself, that without the Haganah and the Special Night Squads the result for him might have been a disaster. He could never bring himself to think in terms of gratitude. On the contrary. Arab fighting Arabs was an established way of life, hundreds and hundreds of years old. To be saved by the Jews and the British was a new humiliation.
‘You are too old to go to war,’ Haj Ibrahim said to Gideon as he poured them coffee.
‘Not this war,’ Gideon answered.
‘If you have a hundred friends, throw out ninety-nine and be suspicious of the other,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Sometimes I know you are my only real friend. Relatives and members of the tribe are different. They cannot be real friends because they are rivals. Sons can often be your enemy. But the religion does not permit us to make friends with strangers. So, who is there? I am lonely. I cannot meet a man and have different thoughts without his being my enemy. At least we can ... we can speak.
Gideon changed the subject, for Ibrahim was becoming maudlin. ‘Simcha is the new secretary of the kibbutz. You’ll be dealing with him.’
‘He’s all right. He’s all right. We will get along. Surely the British are going to make a general out of you.’
‘No, nothing like that.’
‘A colonel?’
‘Just an ordinary adviser on Arab affairs.’
‘You’ll be very good at that,’ Ibrahim said. ‘I know why you must go and fight the Germans,’ he continued. ‘But to me, it doesn’t matter who wins or who loses. I have no quarrel with the Germans. I am not angry with them. I don’t know if I have ever really spoken to one, except perhaps a pilgrim.’ He sighed and grunted.
‘Now the Germans make us the same kind of promises the British made to win our support in the first war. I hear the shortwave broadcasts from Berlin. They say that the Nazis and Arabs are brothers. But everyone lies to us when a war comes. They will use our help, then leave us to rot, as the British did.’
‘If the Germans reach Palestine, at least you won’t have to worry about the Jews anymore,’ Gideon said.