Monty and the Mandate in Palestine
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With a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as far away as ever, James Barker looks back to Britain’s occupation of the region and the efforts made by the future Viscount Montgomery to impose peace on its warring peoples.
Israel’s recent attempt to bludgeon Hamas into submission recalls events 70 years ago when the British, who ruled Palestine under the terms of a League of Nations Mandate, committed over 20,000 professional soldiers to destroy another Palestinian Arab guerrilla army. Ever since the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 committed Britain to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the majority of its population regarded the creation of an alien state as an outrage to be resisted. After spasmodic outbursts of violence directed against established Jewish communities in Palestine, in April 1936 the Arabs rose up against the British, who until then had escaped their wrath.
In late October 1938, with the rebellion at its height, a small, pointy-featured British army officer recently promoted to the rank of major-general arrived in Palestine. For the 51-year-old Bernard Law Montgomery, still mourning the death of his wife, the responsibility of commanding a division of 10,000 men for the first time was both a welcome distraction and a big step up. His presence in Palestine was proof that Whitehall, preoccupied by the crisis over Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1938, was at last serious about crushing the Arab Revolt.
Montgomery was a dedicated professional soldier with few interests outside of his calling. His only previous experience of dealing with an armed rebellion had been in Ireland in 1920-21 where the army was, technically speaking, assisting the civil power in re-imposing the authority of the Crown. Posted to 17th Infantry Brigade to serve as its senior staff officer in Cork, Major Montgomery was effectively in charge of running the army’s pacification campaign against Sinn Fein in a part of Ireland where British rule had virtually collapsed. The war became a byword for viciousness on both sides, especially for atrocities committed by the ‘Black and Tans’, a force of ex-British soldiers recruited by the War Office to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). In his 1957 memoirs, Montgomery had few good words to say about his Irish experience: