David Pryce-Jones
Trouble In Palestine
Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945–1948
By David Cesarani
Heinemann 290pp £20 order from our bookshop
A last-minute addition to the British Empire, Palestine was always troublesome. The British presence there brought no very clear political or strategic advantage, only an immense moral dilemma. Nobody had the imagination or the skills to reconcile the local Arabs and Jews, two communities with cultural and national values in complete opposition, as is still in evidence today.
The consequences for Palestine of the rise of Hitler could not have been anticipated. The British were to be locked into inescapable violence. The belief that Nazism spelled the end of the British Empire inspired a widespread Arab revolt. This had to be crushed, but not so severely
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