Orde Wingate, Glubb Pasha and the origins of Israel
by
Ian Oakley
Major General Orde Charles Wingate and Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb, also known as Glubb Pasha. (Image created in Shutterstock)
After the horrors of the Hamas terrorist attack on Southern Israel, the world is once more focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the 75 years since the birth of the State of Israel, attention has often turned to the Middle East, especially at the times of the sporadic Israeli-Arab wars, which have encompassed Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and so on. What is remarkable in our era of decolonisation and the denigration of the British Empire is that behind the two sides in this current conflict stand the shades of two servants of that Empire, the British Army officers Orde Wingate, on the Israeli side, and Sir John Glubb, aka Glubb Pasha, on the Palestinian side. One of these is celebrated, the other is not, but both played foundational roles in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Major General Orde Wingate is best remembered in Britain for his role in the Second World War in Burma. Wingate led the Chindit guerilla force, attacking behind Japanese lines and charged with taking the fight to Japanese, after so many British defeats and retreats. His life was cut cruelly short in a plane crash in 1944, at the age of only 41.
In Israel Wingate is remembered for very different reasons. In 1936 he became a staff officer in British Mandate Palestine. As a Christian Zionist he was supportive of the concept of a Jewish state, a position very different to most of his fellow British officers, who were not. He convinced his superiors and the Jewish community to form Special Night Squad units, made up of British and Jewish volunteers, to take the fight to Arab insurgents. The success of these units and the men he trained, such as Christian Zionist has led Wingate to be referred to as the father of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Crucially, Wingate’s concept of aggressive warfare has influenced the IDF ever since.
Critics would also say his tactic of collective punishment against Arab communities has also been continued by Israeli leaders. Despite his military effectiveness, his open Zionism was seen as a problem by the British authorities, and he was recalled from Palestine. Israel has never forgotten Wingate. He was referred to in Hebrew as ha-yedid, “The Friend”. There are various roads in Israel named after him and even the Orde Wingate Institute for Physical Education and Sport, located south of the Israeli town of Netanya.
Unlike Wingate, Lt General Sir John Glubb will be unknown to most Palestinians and the few Palestinian intellectuals who are aware of him will almost certainly dismiss him as a colonialist. Yet if it was not for Glubb Pasha and the Arab Legion he commanded, there would be no West Bank, no East Jerusalem, and no Palestinian identity to speak of.
Glubb Pasha, as he was known in Jordan, served in the First World War and then began a long career in the Middle East. He became an officer of the Arab Legion, which began as a police force in Trans-Jordan and morphed into the proto-Jordan Army. Glubb became the commander of the Arab Legion in 1939. He re-organised the Legion and turned it into an effective military force. This was crucial in 1948, when the first Arab-Israeli war broke out with the end of the British mandate on the 14th May 1948. With desperate Arab residents of Jerusalem begging King Abdullah of Jordan for aid, he sent Glubb and the Arab Legion across the Allenby Bridge and into the war. Their first notable achievement was to seize the Old City of Jerusalem and the Holy Places. As the Israelis fought and defeated one Arab army after another, only the Arab Legion held their own.
When the war ended in a truce in March 1949, the new Israeli state was larger than envisioned by the UN plan, but crucially it did not contain the Gaza strip (thanks to Egypt), the West Bank and East Jerusalem, thanks to Glubb and his Jordanian troops. Israel would go on to seize the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the Six Day War of 1967, but by that time a Palestinian identity had formed.
King Abdullah annexed the West Bank after the war and was assassinated by a Palestinian in Jerusalem in 1951 for his pains. General Glubb’s fate was not as brutal, but he was dismissed from command of the Arab Legion when King Hussein (Abdullah’s grandson) removed all British officers from his armed forces. Glubb, unlike Wingate, enjoyed a long retirement and died in 1986 at the age of 88.
What if Wingate had survived the Second World War? There seems no doubt that Wingate, being Wingate, would have attempted to fight on the Israeli side. It is not impossible he might have been given overall command of Israeli forces. If so, he would certainly have fought against his fellow British officer, Sir John Glubb. Who would have emerged victorious — the maverick Wingate or the more conventional Glubb? Due to a plane crash in India, we will never know.
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