Jinnah, Palestine and Israel
Discussions on the Palestinian question are perpetual in
Pakistan, given the ongoing Ramadan bombing and settler violence by Israelis,
Human Rights Watch declares Israel's policies to be crimes of apartheid and
flirtation on the part of the Pakistani press with the idea that the country
recognize Israel. Pakistanis frequently appeal to the role model of the
country's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, for future decisions. History, however,
tends to get lost in this, being replaced by half-truths and confusion. It is
Jinnah's conduct towards the question of Palestine that we will refer to.
The All-India Muslim League had become
very interested in world Muslim affairs in the second decade of the 20th
century and in its 1918 session in Delhi passed a resolution calling for the
protection of the institution of the Caliphate and protesting the occupation of
the holy sites. Muslims. like Jerusalem. When the resolution on the
Caliphate was put to a vote, Jinnah declared that, according to the Muslim
league's constitution, he had no right to foray into the foreign policy of the
British government. Upon encountering the members who opposed it, he left the
premises. Some Pakistanis believe this is the end of their ties to
pan-Islamism. But, he seemed to have changed his mind afterwards, because in
the summer of 1919, after the war, Jinnah led a delegation in London seeking a
private interview with the prime minister on the subject of the Caliphate. When
he refused, he put his signature on a memorial sent to the same office on
August 27.
On May 11, 1920, the terms of peace
were announced and the Caliphate was divided and occupied. At the special
session of the Muslim League in Calcutta in September 1920, Jinnah presided. In
his speech he said: “First came the Rowlatt bill, accompanied by the atrocities
in the Punjab, and then came the destruction [sic] of the Ottoman Empire and
the Khilafat. One attacks our freedom, the other our faith ”. He continued:
"Scandalous and less than chivalrous terms have been imposed on Turkey and
the Ottoman Empire has served for plunder and has been divided by the Allies
under the guise of Mandates." Then he said: "And what about the
sacred land of the Crescent and the Star and the blue and gold Bosphorus - its
capital taken and the Khalifa virtually a prisoner, its territories invaded by
allied troops - groaning under a imposition of impossible conditions. It is a
death sentence, not a treaty. ” As many Pakistanis know well, Jinnah opposed
Gandhi's non-cooperation which was supported by the Khilafat Conference because
of his dislike of mass politics. (at that time) in favor of constitutional
methods.
It is from this beginning
that we understand his later stance on Palestine and Israel. In the wake of the
Arab revolt (1936-1939), the Muslim League, which had been passing resolutions
regarding Palestine continuously, increased in intensity. At the Patna session
of December 1938, Jinnah, in his presidential address, described the murdered
Arabs as martyrs and condemned "British imperialism" for
"placating international Jews" and Resolution V condemned the Balfour
Declaration as an instrument. to promote British imperialism. In October
1939, the Working Committee of the Muslim League authorized Jinnah to pressure
the viceroy to comply with Arab demands on Palestine. World War II had just
broken out and with the support of the largest party, the National Congress of
India, which was not yet to come, the British gave more and more importance to
the League in exchange for their support in the war. At the 1939 Round Table
Conference on Palestine, Jinnah sent Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman and Abdur Rehman
Siddiqui to help the Palestinians and Grand Mufti Amin Al-Husseini. Jinnah
in July 1939 criticized the British White Paper and its one-state solution and
limited Jewish immigration, wanting them to comply with Arab demands instead. He pledged support to the Arab Supreme Council and opened the
Palestinian Fund, reiterating his demands at the historic Lahore session
in March 1940.
During the rest of the war, Jinnah
continued to support the Arabs in Palestine. In 1946, he repeatedly protested
against the change in British policy towards Jewish immigration and calls by
the Anglo-American Joint Commission of Inquiry on Palestine to establish a
Jewish homeland. In February 1946, Jinnah told a New York Times
correspondent that he would do everything possible to help the Palestinians.
When asked to define "any extension", he said: "It means all we
can do, violence, if necessary". Having won an overwhelming majority
of Muslim seats in the elections, the British have taken this threat very
seriously with regard to the internal unrest in India and the future of
Pakistan as a belligerent pan-Islamic country in the face of the creation of
Israel. This may have caused them to create obstacles to the acceptance of
Pakistan itself (see, for example, Viceroy Wavell's letter to Henderson, April
25, 1946). Jinnah reported on January 17, 1946 in a speech that a Jewish agency
had offered King Ibn-i-Saud £ 25 million to keep quiet on the Pakistani
question. The king rejected it. Jinnah even demanded the expulsion of the
existing Jews to Australia, Canada, etc. Two months after the
creation of Pakistan in October 1947, Jinnah told Duncan Hooper in an interview
that the partition of Palestine would be the "gravest disaster" and
that Pakistan would give its "full support to the Arabs".
By this time, Jinnah's health had begun
to deteriorate as his energy was consumed by the incipient problem of Pakistan
and Kashmir. However, when the United Nations approved the partition plan in
November 1947, he wrote to President Truman in December to refrain from
dividing Palestine. Jinnah told Robert Simson the same month that the
partition was "unjust and cruel" and promised to "help the cause
of the Arabs in Palestine in any way possible". Israel declared its
independence on May 14, 1948. Pakistan never recognized it.
We must also briefly consider the claim
that Jinnah was inspired by Zionism to create Pakistan (Devji, p. 20). The alleged
presence of certain books on Zionism and European Judaism in Jinnah's library
does not prove that he was inspired by them, especially when one studies past
life's struggles against it. The same library is said to contain anti-Zionist
material as well. In addition, Jinnah read on a variety of subjects from
Armstrong's biography of Ataturk to Ameer Ali's spirit of Islam.
Contrary to Devji's contention, the Muslim League set the example of the Jews
by showing British hypocrisy over its denial of Muslims' right to
self-determination in India. In this context, the League gave examples of a
variety of entities such as the United States of America and Europe divided
into small states. Therefore, the question of Zionist inspiration is
wrong.
Pakistan is unlikely to
recognize Israel given this historic precedent. The country would erupt in
protests and any government that considered taking this step would not return
to power. Jinnah's long effort on the caliphate, Palestine and Arab rights, spanning
three decades, is likely to maintain Pakistan's current position on Israel in
the future.
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