298. Gaza: The British Occupation of Palestine (Part 8)

This episode of Empire contains detailed descriptions of violence which some listeners may find upsetting. General Allenby entered Gaza on the 9th of November 1917, emptied of all its inhabitants. after the bombardment of the city, it served as Allenby's gateway into Palestine, a role it had played for past conquerors since the time of Tutmosses III in 1400 BC. Like his illustrious predecessors, Allenby marched on to Jerusalem. This time there were no trumpets or drums, no ringing of bells or flying of flags, when the general entered Jerusalem on the eleventh of december, nineteen seventeen, the first Christian to capture the holy city since the Crusades,

He did so on foot in a show of humility, intending to assure its people that he came as a liberator. It was a carefully choreographed moment, and coming amidst the darkest days of World War I, Allenby's triumph was what the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George had so badly wanted, a much needed Christmas present for the British people. But the city's assembled dignitaries could scarcely have imagined what was to come for them as they stood in line to watch Allenbury's arrival and hear him guarantee freedom of religion and sanctity of the city's holy places and announce the imposition of martial law. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durymple.

And that is just a taste of the story that we're going to tell in the next three episodes, a story that can be viewed from three very different perspectives as a painful episode in the decline of the British Empire, as the triumph of the dream of a Jewish state after the horrors of the Holocaust, as the tragedy of the people of Palestine. who paid the price for British failure. Many, of course, found themselves expelled from their ancestral homes and villages in the Nakba, as we will be discussing in a future episode, ending up on the sand dunes of Gaza, many of them in 1948, and the story is still unfolding on news episodes every day. Now, needless to say, this is obviously a highly contested history. It's tricky terrain, but here to guide us through it over the next two episodes on the British mandate, I am delighted to say, welcome back to Pulitzer prize-winning historian Caroline Elkins.

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