British rule and Arab-Jewish coalescence of interest: The 1946 civil servants' strike in Palestine

Historians have long recognized post-war Palestine as a society in a state of destabilization. Increasing tension between the population and the Palestine Mandatory government was reflected in political opposition and violence. This was accompanied by the growing role of the United States in the intensive debate on the future of relations between Arabs and Jews, as reflected in the decision in late 1945 to convene the Anglo-American Committee. The transition from a war economy to a period of reconstruction produced immense economic and social problems that added to increasing British debts, which was partly reflected in difficulties in absorbing former servicemen in to Palestine's economy and increasing unemployment of both Arabs and Jews. Destabilization was also made evident by increasing industrial unrest, focusing significantly on the state sector of the economy - the government bureaucracy, the railways, and the military camps, This post-war militancy was part of the economic and social impact of the war, the associated cycle of wartime labor strikes, and the increasing cooperation between Arab and Jewish workers in labor protest against the government. To explain the association between growing workers' militancy and Arab-Jewish labor cooperation, the Mandatory state and its labor-policy principles must be brought back into the discussion. Resembling policy contradictions in other parts of the British Empire, the Palestine Mandatory government created a discrepancy. On the one hand, its interventionist economic policy sought to deal with effects of the war on the population by getting more involved in determining labor incomes and working conditions. On the other hand, the government was unwilling to adapt its long-standing principles of economic thrift and sound unionism" to the needs that its policy created. The clearest manifestation of this discrepancy was in the relations between the government and its employees. The 1946 strike that transformed these relations therefore serves as a micro-historical lens through which one can view neglected dimensions of the principles that governed British rule and accompanied the approaching dismantling of Britain's presence in Palestine. © 2004 Cambridge University Press."