Job Well Done
A History of the Palestine Police Force 1920-1948
By Edward Horne
November 2003
Book Guild
ISBN: 1-85776-758-6
6 1/4" x 8 ¾"
$31.95 Hardcover
OUT OF PRINT
In 1917 Palestine was still only half conquered from the Turks, yet the country was already the subject of conflicting political and religious ambitions. On the one hand were Jews of the Diaspora who felt that at long last they could achieve the dream of centuries and return to Eretz Israel, encouraged by a promise from the British Government in a letter known as the Balfour Declaration that it viewed with favor the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine. On the other hand, Arabs regarded the terms of the Balfour Declaration as outrageous and were quickly awakened to the danger that their land was to be given away by a great power to hordes of alien immigrants without even asking for permission to dispose of it to someone else. In the ensuing years there developed a bitter conflict between two irreconcilable forces which ended with the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948, from which time a state of war has existed between Israel and her Arab neighbors which may not be settled for a very long time.
This is the story of a comparatively small number of British, Arab and Jewish policemen who kept the two sides apart for 28 years, although sometimes assisted by the army. Both Arabs and Jews came to recognize and respect the dedication and valor of the Palestine Police Force, which sometimes made mistakes but often had moments of greatness and always upheld the single minded task of preserving law and order, often in appalling circumstances and amid horrors not yet reached in any other British territory with the possible exception of the Indian Mutiny. It was a force in which Arabs and Jews were proud to serve and many can still proudly proclaim with their British comrades: "I was a Palestine Policeman."
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