Before the bloody Arab riots in 1929, many Jews in then-Mandatory Palestine believe that the two sides could peacefully and productively coexist in a bi-national state, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore told a packed JC event on Thursday night.
Speaking to JC writer and fellow historian Dominic Green about his new book, The Cauldron – The Making of the Modern Middle East, the television host and author said: “Right up until the Arab revolt [in 1929], Jews in what would become the state of Israel had believed they could make some sort of arrangement with the Arabs.”
The most notable Zionist who held this belief, according to Montefiore, was Israel’s founder and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
“It could [have been] a bi-national single state, and [the belief was] the Arabs could have cooperated [because the Jews] would develop the land.”
There had been discussions with Arab rulers who could see a future for the Jews in the territory and favoured some form of statehood for the two peoples, providing it was within their kingdom.
Then in 1929 Arab mobs rampaged through the Jewish quarter of Hebron, murdering dozens of Jewish residents, including women and children, whilst pillaging homes and destroying synagogues.
“This is what changed it all,” Montefiore said, adding: "It read very much like October 7.”
After that, the viewpoint of the Zionist movement “hardened”.
Montefiore’s book explains how 19 Middle Eastern countries were created, whose fates became intertwined, and which have since been embroiled in endless disputes. “The Middle East isn’t an easy place to run,” he added.
The Cauldron begins around 1900 as the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over the Middle East for nearly half a millennium, began its final decline.
The book covers the broken promises made by the UK, among others, at the height of the First World War, and the overall influence of the West.
The idea, Montefiore said, was to “counter the completely mythical, conspiratorial stories that have become so current everywhere”.
He added that large-scale land separation arrangements may be necessary in the future to avert further conflict.
“From the river to the sea is too small to support two totally independent states,” he concluded.
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