The government of Egypt and the Palestine question, 1936–1939

From its attaining of formal independence in 1922 until 1936, the government of Egypt did not involve itself in the controversy developing in neighboring Palestine. During the Palestinian Arab revolt from 1936 to 1939, however, this stance of non-involvement came to an end. In the later years of the 1930s, successive Egyptian governments became deeply involved in the Palestine issue, until by 1939 the Egyptian government was playing a leading role in diplomatic negotiations concerning Palestine. The purpose of this study is to examine and to assess this growth of official Egyptian involvement in the Palestine question between 1936 and 1939. First, the specifics of the Egyptian government's positions and actions concerning Palestine, from the first confidential representations made to the British in the spring of 1936 to the lengthy negotiations surrounding the British White Paper of 1939, will be discussed. Secondly, an evaluation of the probable reasons behind this new concern with Palestine on the part of Egyptian leaders will be attempted. Finally, the consequences of the Egyptian government's growing involvement in the Palestine issue will be assessed. The bulk of the data in the study, and the conclusions it draws, derive from material in the records of the British Foreign Office; reports of official Egyptian interventions with the British concerning Palestine, British evaluations of Egyptian activities relating to Palestine. This core of material is supplemented by information from the contemporary Egyptian press as well as by data from later memoirs and analyses in secondary sources. The nature of the sources employed in the study imposes some limitations on its content. First, while those Egyptian governmental activities relating to Palestine which were directed towards the British can be relatively accurately described on the basis of the British record of those initiatives, the interaction of the Egyptian government with other parties—other Arab states, the Palestinian Arabs themselves, the Zionist movement and Jewish leaders—is referred to only occasionally, and often obliquely, in these sources. Secondly, any conclusions about the motives behind the involvement of successive Egyptian ministries in the Palestine issue are only provisional pending the fuller documentation which will become available when Egyptian archival materials are tapped. Within these limitations, however, it is hoped that the study can illuminate some aspects of the beginning of official Egyptian involvement in the Palestine question.