Abstract
With Italian and German forces penetrating the resource-rich and strategically vital Middle East, the Anglo-American Allies wanted to avoid further antagonizing the Arabs over Palestine. After the British interventions in Iraq, the Levant, Iran, and Egypt, the State Department feared that any further alienation might spark opposition in other countries as well, including India, and require the diversion of troops. The war starkly demonstrated the importance of good relations with the peoples of the Middle East for safeguarding vital supply lines and resources (particularly oil) and protecting troops and lines of communication. More provocations might jeopardize FDR’s larger objectives, pitting US forces against the peoples of the region, most merely asserting a “natural desire” for self-rule.4
[The Atlantic Charter’s] second article refers to the protection of peoples in their home and in their not being forcibly moved about at the will of anyone else. That is quite a hurdle to get over if you are going to eject a million people from Palestine.
Myron Taylor to the postwar planners, September 1942.1
I assure Your Majesty that it is the view of the Government of the United States that no decision altering the basic situation of Palestine should be reached without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.
FDR to King Ibn Saud, May 26, 1943.2
We favor the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization, and such a policy as to the result in the establishment there of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth.
FDR to Senator Robert Wagner, October 14, 1944.3
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Notes
Verne W. Newton, ed. FDR and the Holocaust (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996);
Lawrence Davidson, America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perspectives from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), has persuasively argued that American officials turned aside questions of self-determination when it came to Palestine. Earlier accounts,
such as Herbert Parzen, “The Roosevelt Palestine Policy, 1943–1945,” American Jewish Archives 26 (April 1974): 31–65, sharply criticized FDR for his alleged pro-Arab bias on the question.
Francis Robinson, “The British Empire in the Muslim World,” in Judith Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
A lively scholarship explores the administration’s response to the Holocaust. Earlier works such as David Wyman’s The Abandonment of the Jews and Henry Feingold’s The Politics of Rescue have focused much justifiable criticism on Roosevelt and his advisors, particularly Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. For a more sympathetic account of FDR’s role, see Robert N. Rosen, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006)
and Verne W. Newton, ed. FDR and the Holocaust (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
Robert N. Rosen, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006);
Verne W. Newton, ed. FDR and the Holocaust (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
Harold B. Hoskins, “Memorandum for the President,” September 27, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Papers as President, President’s Secretary’s File, box 50, FDRL; “The Distribution of Whites in Africa,” Franklin D. Roosevelt, Papers as President, President’s Secretary’s File 46 Palestine, FDRL; “The Palestine Question,” by George Merriam, October 15, 1943, Central Files, 867N.01/2068, NARA.
For an excellent summary of the refugee issue, see Richard Breitman, “The Failure to Provide a Safe Haven for European Jewry,” in FDR and the Holocaust. Lawrence Davidson, America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perspectives from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), has persuasively argued that American officials completely turned aside questions of self-determination when it came to Palestine.
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© 2012 Christopher D. O’Sullivan
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O’Sullivan, C.D. (2012). Palestine: The paradox of Self-Determination. In: FDR and the End of Empire. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025258_7
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