The bill-of-sale for Palestine

[yankeedoodle]

One Palestine, yes, complete
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/06/one-palestine-yes-complete/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-email-mailpoet

HERBERT SAMUEL'S SIGNATURE ON RECEIPT FOR "ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE," JUNE 30, 1920.

Exactly 100 years ago today, June 30, 1920, the last day of British Military rule of Palestine and the beginning of the British Mandate, Major General Sir Louis Bols handed custodianship of the territory to a civilian administration under Palestine's first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, who had arrived in Palestine ten days earlier.

As Chief Administrator under military rule, Bols's charge had been to govern Palestine according to the laws of Occupied Enemy Territory (OETA), which state that the status quo of the land must not be altered. But he complained of being frustrated in this responsibility by Zionist aspirations. "It is no use," he said, to tell the Christian and Moslem natives of the land that this has been observed, because "facts witness otherwise." Despite their denials, the Zionists "will be satisfied with nothing less than a Jewish State and all that it politically implies."

  VISITING JEWISH COLONIES IN PALESTINE. SIR HERBERT SAMUEL PRECEDED BY ZIONIST BANNER [RICHON LE ZION] 1920 JULY 27.   

And so Bols's imminent departure was a relief for the Zionist leadership, in particular Chaim Weizmann. Indeed, Weizmann bragged of his own role in the appointment of Herbert Samuel as Bols's civilian replacement. For Zionism's messianic world view, Samuel was more than just a proven advocate for the cause — he was, as the Jewish Virtual Library put it, "the first Jew to govern in the Land of Israel in 2,000 years."

As he left, Bols engaged in a colonial prank: before handing Palestine over to Samuel, he issued a receipt for the goods.

"Received from Major General Sir Louis Bols, one Palestine, complete," he wrote on official stationery embossed with the seal of Great Britain.

The receipt is "one of the most quoted documents in Zionist history," as Tom Segev notes in his book "One Palestine, Complete."

What inspired Bols to add the word "complete"? A reasonable guess, given that Bols had warned of the troubles awaiting Palestine if Weizmann in particular had his way, is that "complete" meant Samuel could not cherry-pick the merchandise. He had to take the whole thing, which was 90% passionately anti-Zionist.

Samuel signed it — but only, it appears, after adding a disclaimer used in business transactions to limit liability: E. & O.E., "errors and omissions excepted."

   LOUIS BOLS' AND HERBERT SAMUEL'S "RECEIPT" FOR PALESTINE, JUNE 30, 1920. "HEADQUARTERS, OCCUPIED ENEMY TERRITORY ADMINISTRATION (SOUTH), JERUSALEM 30. 6. 20 / RECEIVED FROM MAJOR GENERAL SIR LOUIS BOLS, ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE. / E. & O.E. HERBERT SAMUEL."   

One may notice three oddities about the way "complete" is written (see illustration). It is in the black ink used by Samuel; it is oddly spaced with respect to the punctuation; and the word is not on the same plane as the preceding two words.

My interpretation is that there was more ritual to their prank than first appears. As I see it, Bols writes the date and the first nine words, stops at "Palestine," adds a comma, long space, and a period. Then he takes Samuel's pen and with mock deliberateness writes "complete" in the space he left blank.

He hands the pen and receipt to Samuel, who plays along with the gag by adding E. & O.E., and signs it.

Whatever actually transpired, the British Mandate effectively began that midnight (though not legally until 1922). The day after that, July 2, Samuel was received in Jaffa with a thirty-one gun salute, and soon took up residence on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives in a palace built by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

In 1960, Bols's "bill-of-sale" for Palestine was purchased at auction for $5,500 and went to Hebrew Union College's Klau Library in Cincinnati. Learning of the extraordinary price, Samuel, then 97, expressed outrage. The receipt was "a joke," he told reporters, and one which, according to the New York Times, he signed "after protest." (The document sold that day and illustrated here is not the one commonly quoted. The one normally cited online and by Tom Segev in his book is slightly different, as it has the title K.C.B. and a dash after Bols's name. There exists, it seems, another copy. But where is it?)

As today, June 30, 2020, marks one hundred years since Samuel's signature symbolically transferred stewardship of Palestine from one non-owner to another, the document's odd word "complete" is ever more prescient: Tomorrow, July 1, 2020, Israel threatens to formally annex more of Palestine toward its ever-constant end-game: One Israel, complete.

Yet this newest altering of the status quo of occupied land can only expedite the ultimate and inevitable irony of Bols's century-old prank: the day when Palestine is again "one" — and complete.