Current Openings

Fellow for US Government Affairs

Arab Center Washington DC is hiring a Fellow for US Government Affairs, based in Washington, DC, on a full-time basis.

The Fellow for US Government Affairs will monitor activities in the three branches of the US government (Congress, the White House and Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch) and prepare a weekly report (Washington Policy Weekly) of all activities pertaining to the Middle East. The fellow will provide Arab Center executives and researchers with daily analyses of legislative and policy issues related to US policy in the Middle East. S/he will initiate and maintain regular contact and professional relationships with relevant congressional staff serving on the foreign affairs committees and other committees or subcommittees dealing with Arab world and Middle East issues as well as with federal government employees at relevant agencies and departments.

Deadline: August 31, 2021.
Salary commensurate with experience.

In Brief: World War I set Palestine on the path toward the Nakba because Britain’s wartime deals, broken promises, violent conquest, and later Mandate policies enabled Zionist settlement, denied Palestinian self-determination, and created the political conditions that led to mass displacement in 1948.

In More Detail: Britain sealed Palestine’s fate before it had conquered the territory, setting its people on a course of death and destruction that would reach a peak in the 1948 Nakba. In the midst of World War I (1914-1918), Britain and France planned for the removal of the Ottoman Empire from its Arab provinces. In a secret agreement known as Sykes-Picot (1916), Britain and France divided the territories between themselves, creating, in broad outline, the map of the modern Middle East that we know today.

Meanwhile, Britain made two, mutually exclusive promises to two groups, each conflicting with British and French plans to control the region following the war’s end. First, in a series of communications known as the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915-1916), Britain promised a prominent Arab leader in the Arabian Peninsula, Sharif Hussein of Mecca, an Arab state, which was understood by the leader to include Palestine, in exchange for his support in rallying an Arab rebellion against the Ottoman leadership. Second, Britain promised a “Jewish national homeland” in Palestine to Zionist leaders in Britain through a communication known as the Balfour Declaration (1917).

If avenues for self-determination were precluded prior to Britain’s military takeover in Palestine, the physical arrival of the British in the territory made matters even worse for Palestinians. Britain’s campaign to conquer Palestine and Jerusalem began in March 1917, first in Rafah, then Khan Younis, then Gaza City. Ottoman defenses were fierce; the British anticipated a swift victory and path to Jerusalem, but resistance in Gaza City was so strong that it evaded surrender until November 1917, and eventually Jerusalem was occupied in December 1917.

Gaza City was utterly decimated by the British campaign. In addition to artillery bombardment, new military technology enabled the British military to launch air raids on Gaza City, terrorizing the local population, with many fleeing their homes until the campaign ended, and many returning to find their homes, and much of Gaza City, in total ruin. On December 11, 1917, General Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem and declared martial law. Palestine was placed under the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), a system of joint British-French military rule over recently conquered Ottoman territories in the Levant.

After the war, Allied powers set up mandates over former Ottoman territories. Effectively, this system formalized the secret Sykes-Picot agreement, but with a caveat: Amid the US emphasis on self-determination following US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points address (1918), delivered in the final months of the war, Britain and France presented their control over the region as temporary tutelage, rather than formal colonialism. By declaring these territories “mandates,” Britain and France declared that they were preparing the peoples living under this system for eventual self-determination and independence.

The British Mandate for Palestine was established in 1920, but it was clear from the outset that Britain had no intention of relinquishing control or ceding room for Palestinians to transition to independence and statehood. Further, the language of the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the Palestine Mandate submitted by Britain to the League of Nations. The result was formal British recognition of and cooperation with the Jewish Agency—the governing body of the Jewish community in Palestine prior to Israel’s establishment, headed by Zionist leaders—and this was enshrined in the British Mandate for Palestine, affirming its commitment to facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine, which British authorities understood to be linked to the Zionist project. Overall, Britain’s violent entry to Palestine, callous destruction of Palestinian homes and lives, and suppression of Palestinian independence would be the rule, not the exception, which eventually created the conditions for the Nakba.