A Durable Peace by Benjamin Netanyahu

foreshadows the argumentation of generations of Arabists:
    I must point out that, by pushing [for] them [i.e., the Zionists] as hard as we appear to be doing, we are risking the possibility
of Arab unity becoming something like an accomplished fact and being ranged against us. 4
    In this Clayton was backed by the high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Reginald Wingate, who warned Allenby that “Mark Sykes is
a bit carried away with ‘the exuberance of his own verbosity’ in regard to Zionism and unless he goes a bit slower he may
quite unintentionally upset the applecart.” 5
    The new military governor of Jerusalem, Ronald Storrs, alsoworked to cool British enthusiasm for Zionist plans and declarations. He urged sympathy for the point of view of the local
Arabs and demanded that any changes come about only “gradually,” so as not to leave “an abiding rancour.” 6
    For his part, General Allenby refused even to allow the publication of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. Instead, the
military government issued a declaration of its intentions of “encouraging and assisting the establishment of indigenous government
and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia,” which the local Arab notables assumed to apply to them since they understood
Palestine to be part of Syria (and since the British went to the trouble of sending them copies). Jabotinsky summed up the
approach of the administration as being “to apologize to the Arabs for a slip of the tongue by Mr. Balfour.” 7
    Soon, reports of this resistance to official policy began to alarm the Foreign Office in London, which was still under Lord
Balfour. On August 4, 1918, the British administration in Palestine received a cable explicitly ordering it to consider the
Balfour Declaration to be British policy. 8
    But to no effect. The British administration’s contempt for the Jewish National Home policy and for the Jews themselves only
grew more open. General Arthur Money, Allenby’s successor as head of the military administration who complained about Lloyd
George’s “hook-nosed friends,” 9 ordered that government forms should be printed in English and Arabic only 10 and refused to stand for the playing of “Hatikva,” the Jewish national anthem. 11 The military governor of Jaffa, Lieutenant-Colonel J. E. Hubbard, organized and funded the first political organizations
among the Arabs with the intention of relying on the opinions of these “representatives” to undermine Zionism. 12 Hubbard was reputed to have announced that if the Arabs wished to riot against the Jews, he would not stop them. 13 As for allowing Jews to actually come and live in the land, British Intelligence feared the effects of this bold step as
well, and it urged the Foreign Office to deny immigration applications to Jews until the military situation could beresolved. 14 Jabotinsky, who had been an ardent advocate of cooperation with the British, was now forced to conclude ruefully that the
British administration had been swept up in “an unprecedented epidemic of anti-Semitism.” He wrote: “Not in Russia, nor in
Poland had there been such an intense and widespread atmosphere of hatred as prevailed in the British army in Palestine in
1919 and 1920.” 15
    But the British establishment continued to boast a handful of genuine Zionists, who waged a tireless (and ultimately futile)
battle to implement the policies of Lloyd George and Balfour. These few believed the exact opposite of what the proponents
of Arab appeasement were advocating. They thought that Britain ultimately could not rely on the Arabs, and that even those
Arabs who were in league with Britain were weak and unstable. They believed that it was in the interest of Britain to help
the Jews build a solid Western base in the heart of the Middle East—which paradoxically would help stabilize the Arab domains
around it.
    No one argued this more forcefully than Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, the British chief of