On July 12, the president’s new cabinet committee’s representatives flew to London in the president’s official plane. Henry F. Grady, a former assistant secretary of state, served as chair. Joining him were Goldthwaite Dorr, a New York City lawyer temporarily working in the War Department, and Herbert Gaston, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury. None of them had any experience in dealing with the issue of Palestine. Accompanying them were eight expert advisers, who, they hoped, would fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Their mission was to decide how the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee could be implemented.
The New York Times predicted that although Truman had instructed his committee to seek ways to transfer the 100,000 DPs to Palestine, the British would insist that all of the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations be accepted, not just one. Grady, the journalist Herbert Matthews wrote, “is going to have a tough time of it.”1
The mood in London was discouraging. The influential news magazine The Economist greeted the Americans with sarcasm. “Jews and Arabs and Americans call the tune,” the magazine’s editors commented, “while the British pay the piper.”2
The successful resolution of the refugee crisis was a top priority for Truman. This time, he believed, he would finally get the results that had so far eluded him. He assured the Jewish Agency that he had told Grady of the urgency of moving the refugees out of the camps.3 And at the start of the negotiations, Grady tried to press for the immediate admission of the 100,000 DPs.4 But the British had other things in mind. They presented the committee with a plan for provincial autonomy, which looked suspiciously like one that had been submitted to the Anglo-American Committee by Sir Douglas Harris of the British Colonial Office and that the Anglo-American Committee had rejected. The plan divided Palestine into two partially self-governing Arab and Jewish provinces with a British-controlled central government. Jerusalem and the Negev would also be under the direct jurisdiction of the British mandatory power.
Ambassador Harriman recognized it for what it was. Nevertheless, he wrote to Byrnes, it “seems to offer the only means now apparent of moving the 100,000 into Palestine in the near future.” A positive feature, Harriman pointed out, was that the British hadn’t asked for U.S. military aid or participation in a trusteeship.5 Byrnes was wary. He shot questions back to Harriman from Paris: Would the Arabs have to approve of Jewish immigration? Who would control immigration and land sales? Did the plan envision eventual partition? What most concerned Byrnes was that once again “the transfer [of] these Jews will be almost infinitely delayed.” He had hoped the United States and Britain could reach an agreement to start the transfer in the immediate future.6
It took only one week for Grady to embrace the British plan. On July 24, Grady informed Harriman about the results of his group’s negotiations with the British. Bubbling over with enthusiasm, Grady wrote, “I believe it merits most expeditious consideration and acceptance.” Best of all, the British government was anxious to implement it immediately. The agreement, he argued, was the only realistic solution, particularly if Jewish immigration were to be allowed. The agreed-on plan would leave room for a federation if both Arabs and Jews went along. In the interim, both would be segregated into separate areas.7 Further details of the plan quickly emerged. It provided for a Jewish and an Arab province in a federal Palestine, with both groups having only limited local authority to make decisions. The strong federal government would be controlled by the British Mandate and would have complete authority in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Negev. It would also have jurisdiction over defense, foreign affairs, taxation, and immigration. Most important, admission of the 100,000 European Jews was made dependent upon acceptance of the plan.8
Grady argued that the Jews should be pleased, since, in his opinion, it gave them the “best land in Palestine, practically all citrus and industry, most of the coast line and Haifa port.” With the exception of the Negev and Jerusalem, he thought, all that was needed to build a national home had been granted. Grady felt that if it was unfair to anyone, it was the Arabs.9 The plan, which came to be known as the Morrison-Grady Plan after the British head, Herbert Morrison, would, however, not be put into effect until after the British held conferences about it with the Arabs and the Jews. The conference with the Arab League was to take place in mid-September. Grady told the press that he was pleased with the results and found the British to be most cooperative.10 As he cabled to Loy Henderson, he saw “no practical alternatives to our recommendations.” The British would simply not negotiate on any other terms.”11
On July 25, The New York Times reported that in reality the Jews would get only 1,500 square miles under a tight federal rule. The Jewish area, the article pointed out, was less than the British Peel Report had proposed in 1936, when that commission had recommended 2,600 square miles be given the Jews and that was less than the 45,000 square miles allotted to the Jews when they had originally been promised a national home. Moreover, the power in the hands of the British government was greater than that proposed in India, and the British would still have control over Jewish immigration.12
Truman had not yet read the New York Times story when his secretary of commerce, Henry A. Wallace, called to discuss it. He told the president that the Jews thought the British were trying to set up a Jewish ghetto in Palestine. Truman denied it, saying “It doesn’t do anything of the kind—the Jews get the best part of Palestine as their province,…30 miles by 50 miles.” Moreover, he believed it set up autonomous Jewish and Arab provinces that both would approve and that the Times story was inaccurate. Wallace then read portions of it out loud to Truman, who replied that the only thing Britain would control was foreign relations and taxes. “There is poison being brewed in the New York Times story,” Truman added. He saw Morrison-Grady as the only solution for Palestine. Grady had been in touch with him and had followed his instructions exactly.13
Truman’s optimism soon gave way to disappointment. New York Senators Robert Wagner and James Mead came to see him, along with James McDonald. McDonald brought a long memorandum, to which he referred during their meeting. The Morrison-Grady Plan, McDonald argued, was actually a repudiation of the president’s own views as well as being completely at odds with the Anglo-American Committee’s report. He told Truman that the Morrison-Grady Plan “would establish in Palestine a Jewish ghetto wholly inacceptable [sic] to Jews throughout the world and to the conscience of mankind.” It made admission for the 100,000 DPs contingent upon agreement on long-term political issues and upon Arab acceptance of the new plan. The Jews would never agree to it since it was a “whittling down of the territory of the Jewish National Home” and a surrender of everything that Balfour had promised them.14
Despite the president’s good intentions, McDonald bluntly told him, he was “losing everything.” McDonald thought that Truman did not understand the essence of the Morrison-Grady Plan. The Jews were so opposed to it, McDonald said, that they would rather not have 100,000 Jewish refugees go to Palestine than acquiesce to Morrison-Grady. “If we get the 100,000 at the price of this,” he told Truman, you “will go down in history as anathema.” At that point, Truman exploded. He insisted that he was not underwriting anything as a price for getting the 100,000 DPs into Palestine. McDonald did not cave in. If you accept this plan, he told Truman, you “will be responsible for scrapping the Jewish interests in Palestine.” Bristling at McDonald’s accusation, Truman responded, “Hell you can’t satisfy these people…. the Jews aren’t going to write the history of the United States or my history.”15
FDR understood the problem, retorted McDonald. “I am not Roosevelt,” Truman replied. “I am not from New York. I am from the Middle West.” But you can still win Jewish support, McDonald responded. The problem, McDonald continued, was that the president had been badly served and had sent bad men to deal with the British. Grady in particular was completely green on the issue, and had he sent the American members of the Anglo-American Committee instead, they would have refused to go along with any such plan. “You must refuse to be a party to it,” McDonald told him. Wagner and Mead blanched, noting that they had never seen anyone who was not a politician speak so frankly to Truman.
At that point, McDonald cited the Anglo-American Committee’s recommendations. “I have an obligation to come and tell you what I feel about” Morrison-Grady, he told the president, reminding him that almost 98 percent of American Jews agreed with him. Truman only kept complaining about “how ungrateful everybody was.” He kept looking at the clock, and McDonald thought it was time for the group to depart. McDonald concluded that Truman was convinced that Morrison-Grady offered a real solution and did not want it questioned. All he concentrated on was that if the plan were accepted by Britain and the United States, he would achieve immigration to Palestine for the 100,000 DPs. McDonald thought that Truman might have been “shaken in his faith” a bit because he had stood his ground and McDonald had been a member of the Anglo-American Committee whose report Truman had publicly endorsed. McDonald raised the issue of Truman’s attitude toward Zionism in his notes, observing that the president “referred only to the Jews generally and not to the Zionists.” The problem was, wrote McDonald, that Truman did not always distinguish between them, since the “battle of voices is too much,” and even AZEC did not “always speak as one voice.” As for himself, he noted that “if a man lives with the Jews and knows their history, he can understand. The Jews are always blamed for the weaknesses of others.” On one level, McDonald thought, Truman had understood his arguments, but the problem was that the president was “not a scholar [and] is not interested in following the thing through.” The Jews would have to make a case for what was acceptable to them. Truman had cooled off by the time he wrote McDonald a note. “I hope I wasn’t too hard on you,” he wrote; “it has been a most difficult problem and I have about come to the conclusion that there is no solution, but we will keep trying.”16
Truman quickly learned just how unpopular the Morrison-Grady Plan was. Senators Wagner and Taft both blasted the plan on the Senate floor. It meant “deep despair for the million and one-half surviving Jews in Europe,” Taft charged. Wagner termed it a “deceitful device.” Nine House members, led by Representative Emanuel Celler, went to the White House to protest the plan. Celler and his House colleagues told Truman that acceptance of the plan “would be approving a ghetto in Palestine” and that Britain knew that neither the Arabs nor the Jews would ever accept it. Truman was not happy. Soon he told them that he did not have time to listen, that he knew everything about the subject, and that he was working on a broader plan to gain admission for DPs to go to South America and to British possessions. Finally, he insulted the congressmen by telling them that he understood the visit was political. He knew, Truman said, that they were all up for reelection in the fall.17
Truman was correct that political issues were involved. The chairman of New York’s Democratic Committee, Paul Fitzpatrick, wired him that if the Morrison-Grady Plan became policy, “it would be useless for the Democrats to nominate a state ticket for the election this fall.” He said this “without reservation,” Fitzpatrick emphasized, and he could easily substantiate the claim.18 Truman heard as much from Ed Flynn, the old-style Democratic political boss from the Bronx. Flynn forwarded Truman a lengthy letter he had received from Judge Bernard A. Rosenblatt, a member of AZEC. In it, Rosenblatt argued that the British proposals were an attack on the “honor of our country and its President.” As far as he was concerned, the British were playing “the old political game of delay and procrastination, so as to postpone the admission of the 100,000 Jewish refugees until they are no longer on this earth.” For the president, he argued, it should be a matter of both “justice and political expediency.” Only heroic measures in defiance of the Morrison-Grady Plan would save the New York State Democrats in the coming fall election. Flynn added that what Rosenblatt said about New York’s reaction to the new plan was absolutely true.19 Truman brushed it off and commented that Rosenblatt’s analysis “follows the usual line.” The problem, Truman explained, was that “the British control Palestine and there is no way of getting One Hundred Thousand Jews in there unless they want them in.”20
David Niles also urged Truman not to accept Morrison-Grady. Agreeing with McDonald, he told Truman that if he accepted it, he would be accused of giving up everything just for the 100,000 DPs. If he rejected it, his opponents would say he had achieved nothing.21 Instead, Niles suggested the president recall the American members from London and work with them to come up with another proposal. Niles also suggested that Truman stay neutral until he could convene a meeting of both the Grady team and the American members of the Anglo-American Committee. Then they could try to reconcile their positions before making a statement.22
In the meantime, on July 29, Byrnes drew up a statement for the president to issue, accepting the Morrison-Grady Plan as the basis for future negotiations. He advised Truman to issue this statement immediately after Attlee gave a similar one to the British government on Wednesday afternoon.23 Truman now had to make a decision. The next day, the entire cabinet meeting was devoted to the Palestine issue. Truman came in with a sheaf of telegrams from various Jewish groups and citizens arguing against it. Dean Acheson and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal wanted Truman to accept the British plan, and Henry Wallace and Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder were opposed. “The whole matter was loaded with political dynamite,” Wallace told the cabinet; “…the Jews expected more than 1500 square miles;…they hoped to be in on a part of the Jordan River Development.” After substantial discussion, Truman told them he would wire Byrnes not to go along with Attlee.
Truman then surprised his cabinet, according to Wallace’s diary notes, by taking out his anger at the Jews for the sinking of the plan. “Jesus Christ couldn’t please them when he was here on earth,” Truman explained, “so how could anyone expect that I would have any luck?” Truman then said “he had no use for them and didn’t care what happened to them.” Wallace responded by arguing that American Jews all had relatives in Europe and knew that most of them had been killed by Hitler’s extermination machine. “No other people have suffered that way,” he added. Forrestal disagreed, the “Poles had suffered more than the Jews” and again noted the need for Saudi oil should another war break out. Truman had heard enough and answered that he didn’t want to handle this from the standpoint of oil “but from the standpoint of what is right.” Looking at the map and the territory that would go to the Jews in Palestine if Morrison-Grady were accepted, Wallace could see why Taft had called it a “splintered area.” Truman, however, thought the Morrison-Grady Plan was “really fair” and was disappointed that he had to abandon it.24
A slightly different version of what happened at that cabinet meeting came from Dean Acheson. Years later, soon after the founding of Israel, a BBC journalist asked Acheson when he thought the last possibility had existed of a common British-American position on Palestine. “The fatal step,” Acheson replied, “had been taken…at the time of the Morrison-Grady proposals.” A cabinet subcommittee consisting of himself, Secretary of War Robert Patterson, and Secretary of the Treasury John Snyder came to the conclusion that the Grady-Morrison Plan was sensible and was a “viable solution of the problem.” Acheson acknowledged that American Zionists would have protested but argued that two years remained before the 1948 elections and hence “the outcry could be ignored.”
According to Acheson, Truman had approved the subcommittee’s recommendation. Just at that moment, Truman received a telegram from James Byrnes, who, in a last-minute change of heart, informed him that to accept the plan would lead to “serious domestic repercussions” and asked Truman to ignore any messages he had received bearing Byrnes’s signature that argued a contrary position. He did not explain what had changed his mind or what those “repercussions” might be, but one could surmise they were political.
After the subcommittee’s meeting broke up, Truman immediately went to a cabinet meeting. Acheson thought that after he spoke, Truman was ready to follow his arguments and accept the Morrison-Grady Plan. But when the president read Byrnes’s telegram out loud to the cabinet members, they all got “cold feet.” A voice vote was taken, leaving Acheson alone as the sole advocate. Truman then told Acheson it was up to the State Department to think up something else. Had Byrnes’s telegram arrived a few hours later, Acheson later said, the cabinet would have approved Morrison-Grady, and the “history of the Palestine problem during the last two years would have been far different and much happier.”25
Now it was Acheson’s unhappy job to tell the British of Truman’s decision. He went to see Ambassador Inverchapel and told him that Truman had concluded that he could not make the statement supporting the recommendations because he did not have support for it at home. Elaborating, Acheson explained that “in view of the extreme intensity of feeling in centers of Jewish population in this country neither political party would support” Morrison-Grady and any statement by the president would be purely personal and misleading. This development, Inverchapel said, would cause an embarrassing situation for Attlee, who had expected an agreement.26 Reporting back to London, Inverchapel called the U.S. decision a “deplorable display of weakness,” which he attributed solely to “reasons of domestic politics.” He had spoken to Loy Henderson that evening, who told him, “But for the attitude of the Zionists, [Henderson] declared, there was nothing in the joint committee recommendations which would not have been acceptable to the United States Government.”27
American observers agreed that politics had played a part. James Reston, Washington’s insider columnist at The New York Times, reported that Washington political leaders were advising Truman not to accept federation as a basis for negotiation, because they were thinking of the congressional elections of 1946 as well as the 1948 presidential campaign. Reston acknowledged that there were serious humanitarian, strategic, and international questions that had to be considered, but he thought they might be less decisive than domestic political issues. Publicly, only the broad issues were being raised, he wrote; privately, within the White House and Congress, the administration talked about the effect of its decision on the electorate in the key states of New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. And within those states, the concern was about “the votes of the Jews.”28
At the end of the month, with a stalemate and no path forward having been decided, Truman recalled the cabinet committee from London. He asked that its members discuss the issues with him in Washington in greater detail, in order to reach decisions that would contribute to a solution.29 Inverchapel wired London that Truman’s decision was seen by Americans as a victory for opponents of British proposals. It was a reprieve from Byrnes’s earlier approval of the British plan, which Truman had now repudiated, and the Zionists were taking the political credit for Truman’s move.30
In any case, the Arabs vehemently rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan. Speaking for the Arab League, Azzam Bey of Egypt declared its “unalterable opposition” to what it called a federal solution and partition of Palestine. If accepted, Azzam claimed, it would be nothing less than the foreshadowing of a Jewish state. And as far as negotiating in London, they would not do so if Jews were present at any conference.31
Truman felt defeated over the failure of the Anglo-American Committee and Morrison-Grady. His best efforts to find a solution had gone nowhere. The Jewish Agency leader, Nahum Goldmann, was in Paris attending a meeting of its executive committee when he received an urgent phone call from David Niles. Truman, Niles told him, was fed up with both the British and the American Zionists and was “threatening to wash his hands of the whole matter.” The only thing that would stop him was if the Jewish Agency came up with an alternative, realistic plan to substitute for Morrison-Grady.
Goldmann and other members of the Jewish Agency executive had been considering distancing themselves from the Zionists’ Biltmore Declaration of 1942, which called for a Jewish state in the entire area of Palestine, and adopting the more realistic goal of partition. Unless they accepted partition, they reasoned, Jews were destined to be a minority in an Arab state. Wouldn’t it be better to have a smaller state, where they would be in control of their destiny? If Truman actually washed his hands of the Palestine issue, it would be, in Goldmann’s eyes, “a worse catastrophe than an open state of war with England.”32
After a few days of discussion, the Jewish Agency executive adopted a resolution stating that it was “prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine.” That area would have to have full autonomy, including control over immigration.33 The executive charged Goldmann with presenting their proposal. The first step was for him to get support for it from the various representatives of the American Jewish community, both Zionist and non-Zionist, and from the government. First he met with Rabbi Silver and laid out the executive’s plan. Silver, who resented Goldmann’s interference in American Zionist affairs and was a supporter of the Biltmore Program, nonetheless agreed to go along with the majority resolution and not to interfere with his negotiations.
It took Goldmann three meetings with Dean Acheson before he convinced him that partition was feasible and perhaps the only way out. Acheson thought he could support such a plan and advised him on how to proceed. He must convince David Niles, Secretary of the Treasury Snyder, and Secretary of War Patterson to support the partition plan. Goldmann knew that David Niles was very important to Truman and had been one of the moderate Zionists’ “best and most loyal friends in Washington.” However, he also believed that Niles “is not very much in favor of a Jewish State…. He helps us very much, but he never was ideologically a Zionist.” It was difficult to sit down and talk to Niles during the day, so Goldmann went to see him at the hotel where he kept a room. According to Goldmann, after a two-hour talk, Niles left convinced that the Agency’s new resolution was the only way out of the impasse.34 Goldmann also convinced Snyder and Patterson as well as Judge Joseph Proskauer, the anti-Zionist head of the American Jewish Committee, to support the partition plan.35
Now that Goldmann had gotten the necessary parties to agree, it was decided that Niles and Acheson would present the partition plan to Truman with their endorsement. On August 9, 1946, Goldmann once again went to see Niles in his hotel room. Niles had “tears in his eyes,” when he told him “that the President had accepted the plan without reservation and had instructed Dean Acheson to inform the British government.”36 Even though the British rejected it, this proposal marked a major turning point in the evolution of Truman’s view of the Palestine crisis. For the first time, Truman adopted the idea of partition, a view now shared by a consensus of the important Jewish leaders in Palestine and America.
On August 12, Truman informed Clement Attlee that he had “reluctantly” concluded that he could not support Morrison-Grady in its current form as an acceptable Anglo-American plan. There was so much domestic opposition to the plan, he told Attlee, that it would be impossible to rally sufficient public opinion behind it “to enable this Government to give it effective support.” Because of the crisis facing the homeless European Jews, however, Truman assured the prime minister, he wanted to continue a search for a solution. Ambassador Harriman had given Ernest Bevin the details of Goldmann’s partition proposal, and Truman hoped the conferences that the British were planning to hold with the Arabs and the Jews could be broadened to include these suggestions. The president also hoped that the British could decide on some course of action that would enable Truman to get the necessary support in America and in Congress so that “we can give effective financial help and moral support.”37
Meanwhile, in London, Goldmann tried to work his magic on Bevin. Meeting with him on August 14, the Zionist leader once again laid out the Jewish Agency’s partition plan along with his arguments in support of it. Bevin brought up the issue of terrorism in Palestine carried out by Zionist factions, the worst of them being the July 22 bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun, which killed forty-one people and injured forty-three. Given such provocations, Bevin thought that “Her Majesty’s Government had acted with great clarity and coolness.” Bevin went on to warn Goldmann that the Jews were “creating a situation in which they were likely to lose the one great friend they always had in the world.” When Goldmann responded that the British had not been communicating with the Jewish Agency, Bevin reprimanded him. It was very difficult “to cooperate with people who were riding two horses; i.e., having talks with us on the one hand and arming their people on the other.” Goldmann asked whether they could at least let in 10,000 extra immigrants. Bevin refused, explaining that “we were committed to the White Paper” and that the British had already inflamed the Arabs by agreeing to let more refugees in. “Not a word of appreciation,” Bevin complained, “had ever been received from the Jews for this.” Goldmann ended by pleading with Bevin that Britain not “drive the Jews again into desperation.”38
According to Goldmann, after many such meetings, producing hope, then despair and back again, in the end Bevin told him that although he personally wasn’t opposed to partition, he could never accept it without the assent of the Arabs. The Jewish Agency sent the chief of its Arab Department to Cairo to talk with “responsible” Arab leaders, who, they reported, favored secret preliminary meetings with all sides to consider Morrison-Grady and other proposals, including partition. These meetings would have to be closed, Goldmann told Acheson, since “fanatical extremists [in] Arab countries would render it difficult for them to begin to openly make compromises.”39
Attlee informed Truman that the British would be going ahead with the planned London conference, which would include both Arab and Jewish representatives. The basis of the talks, however, would have to be the Morrison-Grady Report, which Truman and the Jewish Agency had already rejected. The plan would be used, Attlee promised, only as an initial basis for discussion, and the British would not hold an “immovable” position in advance of the conference.40
The London conference on Palestine started without Zionist participation in September. The Jewish Agency said it had to decline the invitation but would not make its decision public, so as not to embarrass the British government. Its chief reason was the insistence of the British to use the Morrison-Grady Plan as the basis of discussion. Attlee opened the meeting with a speech to the Arab delegates. Speaking candidly, he told them that they would have to agree to a separation of the two communities. Moreover, they could not dismiss any further Jewish immigration into Palestine, which was essential to the situation of the DPs in Europe and the general plight of the Jews. Any solution, he told them, would have to consider the political rights of the 600,000 Palestinian Jews, agreement to Jewish immigration into Palestine, and the establishment of institutions that would enable both Arabs and Jews to govern themselves.41
The Arabs would have none of it. They handed Bevin a list of counterproposals. They demanded that the Mandate be ended; that a unitary Arab state in Palestine governed by an elected constituent assembly be established in which the Jews would be limited to one third of the total membership; that the Jews would have all rights consistent with those usually granted to minorities; that Jewish immigration end; that the new Arab governments institute a treaty of alliance with Britain; and that guarantees be given for the sanctity of all holy places.42 A week after making the initial demands, Azzam Pasha, speaking on behalf of the Arab League at a London press conference, made these demands public. Its plan made clear that an independent Palestine, as they saw it, would prevent any future Jewish immigration into Palestine as well as the sale of land to Jews, except by consent of the majority of the Arab population. As expected, Zionist spokesmen condemned it as a veiled plan to continue the White Paper as well as a refusal to acknowledge the existence of two actual nations existing in Palestine. The Haganah, still underground, issued its own manifesto declaring that “we will not allow Arab effendis to decide the number of Jewish immigrants for Palestine; we will continue to fight to bring our brothers here.”43
Though it dragged on, for all practical purposes the British attempt to convene a conference on Palestine had come to a dead end. The Zionists refused to participate, the Arabs made impossible demands, and the U.S. government’s various attempts to develop a working plan in conjunction with Britain had failed. Harry Truman would now have to decide on an appropriate response and continue to wrestle with the problem.