Cold War Dilemmas, Superpower Influence, and Regional Interests Greece and the Palestinian Question, 1947–1949
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Cold War Dilemmas, Superpower Influence, and Regional Interests Greece and the Palestinian Question, 1947–1949 ✣ Manolis Koumas At the beginning of the Cold War, two regional crises broke out almost simultaneously in the eastern Mediterranean. The outbreak of the Greek Civil War in 1946 made Greece the first battlefield of the Cold War, and its outcome placed the country firmly in the Western camp. Another regional crisis erupted in November 1947 when the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted Resolution 181, which recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, leading to the Arab-Israeli War of 1948–1949. The outcome was the beginning of the Middle East question in a form that still exists today. An immense amount of scholarship has appeared about great-power pol- icy regarding the Palestinian question, as well as the emergence of the state of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war.1 However, the attitude of smaller states toward the Middle East crisis of 1947–1949—especially those of the eastern Mediterranean states—has been neglected. Research on major international issues has often focused on the role of the great powers as major international 1. See for example, Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle between the British, the Jews and the Arabs, 1935–48 (London: Deutsch, 1979); Michael Joseph Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987); Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945–1948 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979); Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and His Critics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000); William Roger Louis, The British Empire and the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford, UK: The Clarendon Press, 1984); Arnold Krammer, The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc, 1947–53 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974); Ritchie Ovendale, Britain, the United States, and the Transfer of Power in the Middle East, 1945–1962 (London: Leicester University Press, 1996); Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Fred´ erique´ Schillo, La France et la cr´eation de l’Etat´ d’Isra¨el, 18 F´evrier 1947–11 Mai 1949 (Paris: Artcom, 1997); Evan M. Wilson, Decision on Palestine: How the U.S. Came to Recognize Israel (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979); and Yaacov Ro’i, Soviet Decision-Making in Practice: The USSR and Israel, 1947–1954 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1980). Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2017, pp. 99–124, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00719 C 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 99 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00719 by guest on 29 September 2021 Koumas actors and initiators of policy. The general perception is that unless small states are directly involved in an international problem, they tend to display limited interest in it. During the Cold War, the positions of most Western and Com- munist states on key international issues were shaped by bloc considerations. Although larger countries such as the United Kingdom and France had some leeway, smaller states were expected to embrace the views of their great-power patrons. This article analyzes Greek policy on the Palestinian question from the time of the UN decision to divide Palestine into two states to the end of the first Arab-Israeli war. From 1947 to 1949, Greek governments adopted a pro-Arab stance on the issue. Greece was the only European country to vote against partition. During the Arab-Israeli War of 1948–1949, Greece ostensibly maintained an official position of strict neutrality but in fact re- peatedly expressed its solidarity with the Arab states. Greek officials realized that neutrality would actually boost Arab interests because the new Israeli state was much more dependent than the Arab countries on foreign military aid.2 Greece banned all transit across its territory to Israel and impounded arms shipments for Israel that were in transit through Greek ports.3 Furthermore, in September 1948, two Spitfire bombers purchased by Israel in Czechoslovakia were confiscated by Themistocles Sophoulis’s government after they landed in Rhodes for refueling.4 After the war, Greece adopted strongly pro-Arab posi- tions in international organizations.5 On 11 May 1949, Greece abstained from the vote on Israel’s admission to the UN even though Alexis Kyrou, Greece’s representative at the UN, believed nothing could come of it.6 On 15 March 2. Pipinelis to Cairo Embassy, No. 36647, 3 April 1948, in Archive of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AGMFA), 100/1/1948; and Records of the Council of Political Affairs, 10 September 1948, in AGMFA, 101/1/1949. 3. Amikam Nachmani, “So Near and Yet So Far: Graeco-Israeli Relations,” Mediterranean Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (December 1987), p. 224. 4. Tsaldaris to Air Ministry, No. 61170, 17 December 1948, in AGMFA, 89/10/1950; and Pipinelis to Air Ministry, No. 17150, 21 January 1949, in AGMFA, 89/10/1950. The Greek government denied allegations that Prodromos Bodosakis-Athanasiadis, a prominent businessman and industrialist, was delivering arms to the Israelis. See Kyrou to Foreign Ministry, No. 3465, 5 May 1948, in AGMFA, 107/5/1948; and Pipinelis to Kyrou, No. 32488, 9 May 1948, in AGMFA, 107/5/1948. According to the British, Bodosakis-Athanasiadis was selling arms to the Arabs. See Mogens Pelt, Tying Greece to the West: US–West German–Greek Relations, 1949–74 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), p. 399. 5. Pipinelis to Foreign Ministry, No. 1875, 6 December 1948, in AGMFA, 9/3/1948; and Mallah to Foreign Ministry, No. 605/III.1, 9 December 1949, in AGMFA, 94/3/1949. 6. Kyrou to Foreign Ministry, No. 1644, 25 March 1949, in AGMFA, 110/4/1949; and Kyrou to Foreign Ministry, No. 2790, 12 May 1949, in AGMFA, 110/4/1949. 100 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00719 by guest on 29 September 2021 Greece and the Palestinian Question, 1947–1949 1949, Greece finally granted recognition to the state of Israel—but only in de facto form.7 From 1947 to 1949, Greece was faced with a choice in the Middle East between the Arab option and the Israeli option. The fact that a small Mediter- ranean state embroiled in a civil war adopted an anti-Israeli policy—despite extensive dependence on the United States, which was backing Israel—calls for an explanation. Among the elements that need to be explored are the U.S.- Greek relationship, Greece’s definition of its interests in the region, the Greek government’s perception of developments in the eastern Mediterranean, and the nature of U.S. policy in leaving a wide range of options for the policy of its smaller ally. Britain and the Palestinian Question: The Balfour Declaration to the End of the British Mandate British involvement in Palestine stretched back to World War I. Before 1918, the Arab lands extending eastward to Egypt were dominated by the declin- ing Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers during World War I, Britain promised the Arabs independence in return for their support against the Ottomans. In the meantime, however, the British also concluded the Sykes-Picot Agreement with France that divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into areas of postwar French and British influence. The situation was further complicated in November 1917 when British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour promised the Jews support for a national homeland in Palestine.8 After the end of the Great War, Palestine was granted to Britain as a mandate, and large numbers of Jews began to immigrate to the area. Over the next two decades, far-reaching and often violent demographic shifts took place between the Arabs and the Jews in Palestine. After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933—concurrent with the emergence of anti-Semitic regimes elsewhere in Europe—Jewish immigration to Palestine increased significantly. In the late 1930s, the Arabs revolted against both the British and the Zionists in order to halt the Jewish state-building project. The mass annihilation of Jews in 7. On the distinction between de facto and de jure recognition, see Amikam Nachmani, Israel, Turkey and Greece: Uneasy Relations in the East Mediterranean (London: Frank Cass, 1987), p. 126. 8. David Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 124–131, 176–180. See also Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Random House, 2010). 101 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/JCWS_a_00719 by guest on 29 September 2021 Koumas the Holocaust made the situation in Palestine much worse.9 By 1946, the Jewish population in Palestine had increased to 600,000 (compared to 60,000 in 1917), whereas the Arabs numbered approximately 1,340,000 (compared with 600,000 in 1917).10 In the late 1930s, the British government under Neville Chamberlain had envisaged the establishment of an independent state of Palestine within ten years, setting a limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants for the period from 1939 to 1944. Nevertheless, after Winston Churchill ascended to the premiership, he gradually abandoned Chamberlain’s policy. In 1943, British officials began planning the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, thus seeking to play both sides during the war.11 However, after the end of the war, the new British government of Clement Attlee wanted to focus on domestic reconstruction and economic recovery and did not want to have to cope with the ongoing fighting in Palestine.