THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR ---Episode 14

Mid--East Oil and the Sagas of Postwar Palestine and Germany

   In early 1947, Great Britain announced that with its retrenchment in Greece and Turkey, it would terminate its mandate over Palestine and refer the problem to the United Nations without recommending a solution.  In May, the Soviets surprised U.S. officials when Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko unfurled the Soviet position before the UN General Assembly. Citing the horrors of the Holocaust, the fact that both Jews and Arabs had historical claims to the land, and the ways in which British malfeasance had exacerbated tensions between them, Gromyko said, the Soviets preferred a binational or federal state. However, if that weren't possible, they would support a two-state solution, which the Jewish militants greatly preferred and the Arabs adamantly opposed. In late 1947, the United Nations, despite fierce Arab opposition, endorsed the partition of Palestine into two independent states. The Soviets supported this solution ; the British and the Arabs opposed it; and the United States equivocated but finally came on board. Arab violence flared in Palestine as soon as the partition vote was announced. 

ON MAY 14, 1948, THE STATE OF ISRAEL PROCLAIMED ITS EXISTENCE. Eleven minutes later, the United States offered diplomatic recognition. Hours later, the Arab nations launched a full-scale war, hoping to eliminate the new nation before it got off the ground. Relying heavily on Soviet and Czech weapons, the badly outnumbered Israelis defeated the Arabs in the initial six-month war. In recognizing Israel, Truman defied the advice of Marshall, Forrestal, and corporate executive Robert Lovett, who feared a break with U.S. oil-producing friends in the region. They also feared losing U.S. and British access to Middle Eastern bases from which to attack the Soviet Union if war broke out. During a meeting in the Oval Office on May 12, Clark Clifford had laid out the moral and strategic case for recognition. He envisioned Israel as an invaluable U.S. ally in a volatile region. General George Marshall vehemently countered Clifford's arguments and insisted that they were based on domestic political considerations : Truman's hope of winning the Jewish vote. MARSHALL BLUNTLY TOLD TRUMAN THAT IF HE RECOGNIZED ISRAEL, HE WOULD NOT VOTE FOR HIM IN THE 1948 ELECTION. 

There was some truth to Marshall's contention. Truman was certainly aware of the domestic political implications of his actions. "In all of my political experience," he told a friend, "I don't ever recall the Arab vote swinging a close election." And Truman was in a very close election in 1948, one in which every vote counted. But Truman, despite his frequent anti-Semitic comments and contempt for Jewish activists, was also motivated by a sincere concern for Jews' suffering in the Holocaust.

Marshall had advocated a trusteeship over Palestine under UN auspices that would keep the Jews and Arabs in the same country. He and others also worried about the close ties between Israel and the Soviet Union, whose legal recognition of Israel had followed closely behind that of the United States on May 15. U.S. intelligence reported Soviet influence with the Irgun and the Stern Gang and took note of the influx of Jewish Communists into the region. The United States and Great Britain, trying not to antagonize the Arabs completely, placed an embargo on arms shipments to both sides and the United States maneuvered to preempt UN resolutions condemning Arab aggression. U.S. policy makers, fearing Soviet military intervention either unilaterally or as part of an international peacekeeping force, pushed for a quick resolution. 

Despite Ibn Saud's threats to cancel the concession to Aramco, which Texaco and Standard Oil of California had established in Saudi Arabia, the United States was not overly concerned about Arab retaliation. An early-July State Department report found that, excluding Iran, the Middle East supplied only 6 percent of Western oil supplies and that the loss could be absorbed "without substantial hardship to any group of consumers." 

Although Israel signed armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria in 1949, the Arabs' bitterness over the creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East persists to this day and the issues that caused the 1948 war remain unresolved. The situation was exacerbated by a massive refugee problem, as many Arabs fled from what would become Israel ---some following the advice of Arab leaders and some driven out by the Israelis. The refugee problem, after more than sixty years, remains a constant source of tension in the region. 

MORE TO COME. STAY TUNED.