The Transfer Agreement (34 page)

Every Arab extremist had a counterpart on the Jewish side who was emotionally antagonistic to the binational idea. These Zionist rejections were overwhelmingly Revisionist, but often came from Mapai and the religious or Mizrachi camp as well.
⁴⁹

In the spring of 1933 Chaim Arlosoroff sought to bridge the gulf between the two peoples. Virtually acting alone, he was pulling together the sudden realities of the day to create a binational moment that would probably never again present itself. Now, for the first time, perhaps the last time, there would be money to make things work: money to compensate Arabs for displacement, money to upgrade Arab villages, money to purchase Arab dunes and swampland at exorbitant rates and one day reclaim them for Jewish use. All this money was in the homes and bank accounts and storerooms of German Jewry—soon to become deposits in the Liquidation Bank. With the potential strength of billions of reich marks behind him, Arlosoroff, working with Weizmann and the German Zionists, was orchestrating the most promising scenario yet for binational cooperation in Palestine.

As early as a week after Hitler came to power, Arlosoroff, as the Zionist foreign-minister-in-waiting, had been fervently seeking out who among the Arab leaders would be receptive to a parley. Victor Jacobson, prewar Zionist envoy to Turkey, still enjoyed extensive Arab contacts. Jacobson was selected by Arlosoroff in mid-February to travel to Egypt and Syria, not to "engage in negotiations, [but] ... to put out feelers wherever he thinks advisable, ... supply information to Arab and Moslem leaders, and find out whether we could do anything with the help of these leaders to reach an understanding with the Arabs of Palestine."
⁵⁰

Feelers turned to fruition on April 8 when Arlosoroff was able to convene the much-publicized luncheon at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem with Weizmann and key Arab dignitaries. Informal communiqués after the gathering spoke in glowing terms of binational cooperation. The antagonistic reaction from both sides was swift.

Arab radicals condemned the Arab moderates who had attended the luncheon and issued the declaration of a cooperative future. Most of the hostility was aimed at Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, who controlled much of the land in Transjordan and who was at the forefront of the conciliation. The Palestinian Arab newspaper
Falastin
reported that efforts were under way in Syria to block the rapprochement, and that in the towns of Transjordan an anti-Abdullah protest movement was fast developing. Another publication,
Al lamia Al Arabia,
editorialized that memoranda, special reports, and stormy meetings were no longer sufficient to counter the Zionist arrivals, and that in the light of the King David Hotel luncheon, some other way must be devised to remove the menace.
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This kind of language was less a veiled threat than a promise. Assassination was the known punishment for moderation.

Jewish radicals were equally irate. Mizrachi—the major religious Zionist party—publicly demanded Arlosoroff's resignation on the grounds he had no authority to convene the extraordinary luncheon.
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The ranks of Revisionism went further and demanded Arlosoroff be relieved of his life. One Revisionist leader in Lodz, Poland, declared at a news conference that if a Jewish court-martial existed, Arlosoroff would be condemned to death; he reportedly added that his own hand would not tremble if asked to carry out the sentence. Another Revisionist leader, this one in Warsaw, allegedly stated that any Jewish youth who fired a shot at Arlosoroff would become a saint.
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Undaunted, Arlosoroff continued his binational efforts, enlisting the active support of the British. The first fruits of these secret initiatives came quickly. By the end of April, Palestine's high commissioner had announced the resettlement of one hundred Arab families evicted when their absentee Arab landowners sold land to Zionists. The high commissioner stressed that Jewish agricultural methods were to be employed. The unnamed architect of the resettlement plans was Chaim Arlosoroff, who had been secretly working on the program for some time.
⁵⁴

Simultaneously, a model Arab community was being sponsored by the Jewish residents of Netanya, the Jewish colony just north of Tel Aviv established in part by Hanotaiah and Revisionist leaders. Netanya residents included a number of American Zionists, many of whom were devout binationalists. Several of these residents, Hebrew University Chancellor Judah Magnes among them, convinced Hanotaiah to rehabilitate the nearby rundown Arab village of Umm Khaled. Under the plan, Hanotaiah would provide each household with ten dunams
(2½
acres) of land, a house, an area for animals, and additional dunams for vegetable growing and citriculture. In a confidential May
1
report, United States Consul in Jerusalem Alexander Sloan explained that Hanotaiah had agreed to assist "provided it is given complete title to a certain section of sand dunes facing the sea on which it now holds a 99-year lease." Sloan explained that "Hanotaiah Ltd. is interested politically in the betterment of Arab-Jewish relations."
⁵⁵
Naturally, the better Arab-Jewish relations were, the less difficult it would be to conclude land sales.

The binational initiatives of spring 1933 found not only Jewish takers but Arab takers as well. Suddenly, for the first time in Palestine's turbulent history, moderate Arabs were standing up. With the security of German Jewish money forecast by Arlosoroff, many Arabs were finally willing to say
yes
to coexistence. For example, shortly after the King David Hotel luncheon, the Transjordan Opposition scheduled a major anti-Zionist conference for May 18. But the conference was postponed when pro-Zionist Arabs violently disrupted the meeting.
⁵⁶

On May 24, dozens of Arab sheikhs and property owners, representing twenty-three villages and a large town in Transjordan, visited the white, mazelike structure housing the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. The assembled leaders collectively invited Zionists to purchase Arab land in Transjordan for the mass setttlement of Jews.
⁵⁷

That same day, Jewish Agency chairman Emanuel Neumann met with W. J. Johnson, treasurer of the Palestine government. Neumann was always lobbying for the British to allocate as much of Palestine's tax money and other fiscal resources to Jewish projects as to Arab projects. That day, as Johnson explained some of the government's big development plans—housing for British troops and the accretion of a huge monetary reserve—Neumann asked how then would the resettlement of displaced Arabs be financed? Johnson replied that the money wouldn't be provided from the government's normal revenues.
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Where will the money come from? asked Neumann. Johnson at first tried to evade the question. But Neumann pressed until Johnson, stipulating the strictest confidence, admitted that the specifics of a £2-million Palestine development loan had been secretly approved by Sir Cunliffe-Lister when he visited Palestine in April. The fine points, just completed, were being rushed to London in the next airmail pouch for Cunliffe-Lister's signature. Such a development loan had been debated for two years without agreement. Therefore, Neumann was amazed as Johnson itemized the details: first, a water supply system for Jerusalem and Haifa, possibly with a drainage grid. Neumann interrupted and said such a massive endeavor would cost at least £350,000 for Jerusalem alone. Johnson corrected him: £480,000. Second, an oil port at Haifa costing anywhere from £150,000 to £200,000. Third, port improvements at Jaffa, no figure mentioned.
⁵⁹

Johnson then described some of the Arab settlement programs. To start, a program of general assistance, say, £50,000, to help Arab villagers in the hill country; Neumann guessed this money was designed to
buy
political support for the new situation. Additional money would resettle Arabs displaced by absentee landlord property sales to Zionists. Neumann guessed resettlement would cost a few hundred thousand pounds. Johnson said no, it would be "much more than that."
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Central to the plan was an "Agricultural Bank" capitalized with £100,000 from the new fund and an additional £500,000 from the Prudential Insurance Company or its executives, perhaps Barclays Bank, and Anglo-Zionist investors. To avoid any sectarian character, Englishmen would manage the Agricultural Bank; a three-man bank advisory committee would include a Jew, an Arab, and the Palestine director of agriculture. Once in place, the Agricultural Bank would permit both Jew and Arab to purchase and settle land throughout the Palestine plains.
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Johnson mentioned other projects: irrigation plants, hydrographic surveys, Arab municipal improvements, water for remote Arab villages. All this money would be borrowed by the Mandate government from the great new fund. The interest rate would be no more than 3
½
to 5 percent because the British Treasury would guarantee repayment. Neumann remarked, "Very cheap money indeed." Johnson answered that the Treasury was willing to guarantee repayment, thus assuring the low interest rate, because Palestine would generate huge purchases of British exports.
⁶²

Johnson and Cunliffe-Lister were unaware of it at the time, but Britain's special inducement—massively increased exports to Palestine—was to be eliminated in favor of a bitter concession to Nazi Germany. A week later, on June
1,
during the meeting with Arlosoroff, Cunliffe-Lister finally discovered this and realized that all the binational plans, many of which were already under way, were now of primary benefit only to Jews and Germans. Britain would lose—`and not just trade. For Germany's winnings would include breaking the boycott and gaining the economic recovery she needed to rearm.

Chaim Arlosoroff was one of the most provocative thinkers of his day in that he tried not to overwhelm, but to transform. In an era of extremes, his efforts to combine the hostile forces around him were almost too theoretical to succeed. Rumors of a deal with Hitler only accelerated the controversies swirling around him. By early June
1933,
Arlosoroff was in fact a threat to so many groups that people measured themselves by how vehemently they opposed him.

His Jewish friends began to fear and hate him. Arlosoroff was a top Mapai leader, but Labor-aligned moderates could hardly contain their fury that the prodigy of the Zionist movement was abandoning all Zionist discipline. Unilaterally he was formulating and executing policy—binational breakthroughs with the Arabs and controversial trade-offs with the Nazis. Arlosoroff was by himself engineering the fate of societies and nations, not in theoretical, discreet ways leaving plenty of doors open for retreat, but by one stunning
fait accompli
after another. Arlosoroff was dangerous to Mapai and to the others of moderate mainstream Zionism. He was giving away the Promised Land to the Arabs, and in so doing giving away the Eighteenth Zionist Congress elections to the Revisionists. Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.

His enemies among the Jews were convinced there was no greater nemesis. Arlosoroff was a special foe of Revisionism.
It
was Arlosoroff who in late
I93I
conceived the decree against membership in Jabotinsky's Revisionist Union. The calls for his assassination were so commonplace during early
1933
that it was rumored Revisionist circles were merely debating whether to kill him before or after the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. According to one such rumor, Vladimir Jabotinsky himself was said to have quashed a far-gone Palestinian conspiracy by cabling the ringleaders a one-word instruction:
"NO."
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More than rumor was an odious Revisionist pamphlet published by Abba Achimier, the editor of the Revisionist newspaper
Hazit Haam.
Achimier's pamphlet, entitled "Manifesto of the Sicarii," explained a new secret society based on an ancient sect of Jewish assassins from the Masada era. The Sicarii carried short Roman daggers and assassinated Jewish leaders found guilty of consorting with the Roman enemy.
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Arlosoroff was consorting with' all of Revisionism's greatest enemies: the British, who occupied the land; the Arabs, who refused to make room for Jewish destiny; and the Germans, who were dedicated to annihilating the Jews. Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.

His enemies among the Arabs saw him as the one Zionist willing to push past the historic barriers. Arlosoroff was too willing to use the new powers and wealth arising out of the German crisis to create a new binational community that would make the battle cries of Arab rejection obsolete. To Arab extremists, Arlosoroff was the most dangerous Zionist in Palestine. Not because he sought to conquer. But because he sought to combine. Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.

His enemies in Britain were created unexpectedly. Suddenly the British government realized that Chaim Arlosoroff carried the key to economic turmoil or triumph in Palestine for either Britain or Germany. The transfer as London had originally envisioned
it
would be a boon for the British economy that would blossom into an extended economic sphere of influence over the entire Mideast. That prize was now going to Germany. Arlosoroff's dreams would play right into Hitler's plans. Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.

And his newest enemy was the one enemy people knew the least about. His name was Mr. Sam Cohen. Cohen had masterminded an international economic and political coup.
If
successful, he alone would control millions of dollars, thousands of people, and large tracts of land. One man working alone could, if allowed, deliver the Jewish nation to the Jewish homeland. Cohen could be this private messiah. But now Arlosoroff was obliterating it all. Cohen was being robbed of both his promise and his profit. Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.