Chapter 184
The next day
Jerusalem
The city was all but on fire. It had not taken long for the news of the bombing of the Wailing Wall to race through the Jewis Quarters of the city, and now a drastic reversal of the 1929 riots took place. The Bomber's associates had stirred up hatred and discontent all over the city for weeks and months, and now they were reaping in what they had sown, and armed groups of both faiths were clashing in the streets of Jerusalem, with the British troops of the 123rd Indian Infantry Brigade helplessly in the middle trying to keep the peace. Any observer would have instantly noticed that the riots were not coordinated, this was not like the Quebec uprising, but both sides were armed to the teeth, and it wasn't an hour before the first firefights between Jewish and Arab groups broke out. Roving bands targetted the neighbourhoods of the other side, and unlike in 1929 most of the Jewish Quarters returned fire, and when night fell, gunfire, screams and fighting could be heard all over the city. Unlike it had been during the 1929 riots this time rumours about deaths and killings proved to be well funded, and by the time the Prime Minister was informed in London, the fire of hatred had spread throughout most of central Palestine, and the violence promised to spread further. In the Old City of Jerusalem meanwhile the Muslim and Jewish Quarters of the district were under siege by militias of the other side, with the Jews taking up arms en masse, unlike the last time.
The British Authorities found themselves out of their depth and proved to be unable to really handle the situation. The British Army was spread thin in the Mediterranean Sea, most units were fighting in Italy, the British Police Force in the Mandate Area was busy holding the fort and trying not to be ground to dust between the two sides. The 123rd Brigade meanwhile tried to get the situation in Jerusalem back under control, but one Brigade with orders to avoid civilian casualties was simply not up to the task. More men were needed, and yet none were to be had, and when General Brooke as GOC Middle East asked for the some of the third echelon units for the front in Italy to be temporarily transferred to his command to deal with the flames in Palestine. Meanwhile word of what had happened, or rather what everyone thought had happened spread to the rest of the mandate area, even though Transjordan remained calm and the French had a tight grip on their own mandate area. In Palestine itself though, communities of every form hunkered down and tried to weather the storm as well as possible and even though violence never spread far past the major population centres and the area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it rumours about Jewish or respectively Arab armed bands that roamed the countryside led many to fire blindly into the night, to shoot at people that were perfectly innocent. When the next day dawned, the streets were in the hand of the mob, save for the area in the southern part of Jerusalem where the British-Indian Brigade had it's headquarters and where they could easily police the streets, but the rest of the city was a lawless zone, with only the local British police stations being islands of relative calm and security.
This was the situation when the Prime Minister had assembled the war cabinet in the bunker as early as possible. The faces that stared back at Churchill over the long meeting table were as tired and weary as his own, and yet he was the one who had the clearest picture of what was going on, the ministers of the War Cabinet only being informed just now. The briefing was conducted by a man from the Foreign Office who had reportedly the best Middle East Department. Anthony Eden was not present at the moment, he was still rushing back from the Palace where he had attended a dinner with the French Ambassador in Churchill's stead who had claimed to be ill, but was in reality simply fed up with the stubborn French. Eden's second in Command was a leftover from the previous administration and had so far been proven to be a good and solid civil servant. But now he was beginning to fall out of favour with the Prime Minister when he said: “Sir, we must consult the League of Nations representative.....” “We must NOTHING! The League of Nations is dead, Sir!” Churchill bellowed, and slammed his fist down on the table. “This is our responsibility now.”
“But...but.. the League..” Churchill sighed and said in a voice that told those that knew him that he was going to explode if pressed any further in this direction.
“The League is dead, as dead as a bloody doornail! What good was the bloody League before the war? Did it stop the Germans after the Rhineland or Austria? Did it stop the Germans from bullying the Czechs or the Poles? No, Sir! The League never was anything but a debating club for well-meaning but naïve Gentlemen like yourself, and never ammounted to anything! The League is dead and will not be resurrected[1]. Not by this administration. The mess in Palestine is at least partially our fault, and by god we will at least TRY to fix it for good this time!”
The members of the War Cabinet knew the PM well enough not to speak up now, and simply said nothing. Right at this moment Eden stepped into the room, still dressed in the dinner jacket he had worn to the Palace, but his bow tie was undone and he was already smoking one of his last pre-war Cuban Cigars. He took the place of the Civil Servant who had a suitably ashamed look on his face and turned to the PM. “Sir, my people have brought me up to speed on the way here, and I have his Majestie's complements and he asks if he can be of any help.” Churchill just nodded and turned back to the rest of the table. “Gentlemen, we have to act fast. If we don't, we might have a civil war on our hands that makes Canada look like a pub brawl, and we cannot afford it even during peacetime, let alone when we are fighting in Italy. I am not going to ask you for any policy right now, but I must ask you to go to your respective ministries right now and get me your recommendations within the next four hours. Speed is of the essence, and therefore we must act fast. Commander,” he said, addressing his aide de camp, “have the Imperial General Staff wake up Marshal Gort if they haven't already and tell him to send what units he can send to the area without asking for approval, just fast. Have him advise our local commanders to avoid casualties if possible, but our troops may defend themselves.” “Yes, Sir.” The RNR Commander left and Churchill said: “Well then, I won't keep you any further. I will be here for the day, so call on me as soon as you have prepared your recommendations.”
The War Cabinet shuffled out of the room and Churchill decided that he better have something to eat brought in, and while he waited for the dreary war-time food, his mind wandered back to the time when he had been in Palestine himself to flesh out an agreement and to the days when the Shaw report had been issued in 1929, and most importantly to the 1939 White Paper on Palestine that in retrospect wasn't the best of ideas considering what was going on in occupied Europe. Now neglect, rash decisions and ignorance were coming back with a vengeance and forced his hand, something he had wanted to avoid until after the war. Forcing the hand, forcing him and by extension HM Government to act was something that had happened all too often over the last few years, especially in the Middle East, and this always had repercussions later. The Middle East was a running sore ever since the First World War had ended, and Churchill had to admit that the whole situation had been mishandled from the beginning. This was not all though, because before the War Cabinet had assembled he had had another meeting with the head of the SIS and Commodore Mountbatten of the Special Operations Executive, and the two men had given their opinion too, such as it was with the information at hand. Neither had any inkling about this being an Intelligence Operation by the enemy, but Mountbatten had observed that if it was it was a long-term project, probably using sleeper agents that had been in place for a long time, and those were almost impossible to detect by definition. The idea of more time bombs like these going off in the various parts of the Empire that were still less than fully stable was too nightmarish to contemplate, so the Prime Minister did not do so. The whole mess was something that he would have loved to delegate, but Palestine was a matter old and delicate enough to warrant the attention of the highest authority, and since Palestine was a British Mandate, this duty fell to the British Empire. He reached for several file folders that lay on the desk. One was from the Foreign Office, several from the Colo..Empire Office and one had curiously found it's way from the Administration of the mandate in question onto the Prime Minister's desk via a subsection of the War Office. He had read them all, and none were close to what he wanted. None gave a satisfying solution to the problems that plagued the holy land, all had been discussed at length in the various Ministries and in the Cabinets over the years, and all had been discarded on various grounds. Churchill had been amongst those who had argued against a Jewish state after the Balfour declaration of 1917, in fact the PM himself had written a White Paper to that effect in 1922, and he still felt that a unified Palestine state was in the best interest of all, but what if it was not meant to be? What if history was doomed to repeat itself and that area of the world was in turn doomed to tear itself apart in wars, civil strife and violence until the end of time? Both sides had legitimate grievances, and both sides claimed the land as their own.
The Jews wanted a state, the Arabs wanted a state, and neither side seemed to be much willing to live in peace with the other, and that was something that gave anyone who was tasked with solving that problem and who had half a brain bloody nightmares. One thing was certain, another commission was the very least that had to be done, and it was one that had to give a thorough and true picture of the situation and he felt it in his bones already that his personal attention would probably be required if both sides could be made to actually talk with each other instead of bashing each other's heads in. Whatever happened, it would influence the area for the foreseeable future.
[Notes: In case you have forgotten, this is not a national Government, not after the last election.]
[1] Unlike OTL, the League did not transfer emergency powers to the Secretary General, and therefore no one really knows if it still exists or not. Some like the Civil Servant think it does, some like the PM think it doesn't, and that has just become the official position of the British Empire on the matter.