King Abdullah and the Arab Community in Palestine

Two Arab leaders dared to seek a settlement of the Arab-Jewish dispute in a different way from the Mufti’s uncompromising approach. The Mufti regarded the Jews in Palestine as a minority who would have to live without national rights within an independent unitary Arab state. The veteran politician Nuri Said, and King Abdullah of Jordan, saw no prospect of a peaceful agreement between Arabs and Jews on the basis of the Mufti’s concept. Nuri came to the conclusion that Jewish aspirations for a National Home, without a partition of Palestine into two separate states, could be achieved within the wider scope of an Arab entity, Greater Syria. Syria, the Lebanon, Transjordan and Palestine were to be included within it, while Greater Syria and Iraq would become a federation. Within the compass of Greater Syria, as Nuri’s plan suggested, the Jewish community and the Maronites in the Lebanon, if they wished, would gain a certain degree of autonomy. This autonomy, in his view, would not and could not endanger Arab superiority in the region, while the Zionist danger would vanish or at least diminish. Nuri submitted his plan to the British government in December 1942 in a detailed memorandum known as the Green Paper. 1 Nuri, who was Britain’s devout supporter, sought to achieve two aims: first, British support in realizing his plan for Greater Syria; and second, but more important, he wanted Britain to deepen its involvement and commitment in the region. Despite war circumstances, he continued his efforts, explaining that . . . throughout the eastern Arab world today the large majority of the Arabs had realised that their only hope of future welfare lay in close connection with Great Britain. They realised that, failing such close connection and co-operation, the Arab States would inevitably disperse, some falling under Russian influence, and thatwould be an end of Arab hopes... the Arabs were most anxious to knit up with Great Britain, not only by Treaties of limited duration with mutually limiting conditions, but by a permanent connection based on their common interest across the Middle East before the Russian danger. This connection might in time develop into Dominion status but the Arabs were not yet ripe for that. It would require some education and experience before they came to realize the advantages thereof. The difficulties in the way of this close connection between the British and the Arabs lay in the Levant States and Palestine. Unless the French could be got out of the Levant States and Zionist immigration stopped, this Anglo-Arab union could not be achieved. 2