The Italian Catholics, the Holy See and Palestine under British Rule. Two Turning Points: Arab Uprising of 1929 and Lord Peel’s Partition Plan (1937)

After the end of the First World War the interest of Catholic observers regarding Zionism increased. Two elements contributed to this result: the Bolshevik Revolution, and the supposed role played within it by Jewish communists, confirming the idea of a Jewish plot to dominate the world, being built during the last two decades of the XIX century. The diffusion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Europe and all over the world was a result of this psychosis that infected many conservative and moderate political circles as well. The second event was more directly connected with the situation of the Holy Land: the Balfour’s Declaration of 1917. The Catholic world, after the end of the war, was watching the Palestinian issue with both optimism and disillusion. For the first time, from the Crusaders period, the Holy Land was under a Christian rule; on the other hand, after the Balfour’s Declaration, the Zionistic movement started to be a real political power and a direct competitor for the influence in Palestine. Conforming this issue, the whole Catholic public opinion observed with preoccupation the establishment of a British mandate over Palestine: the Anglican character of the mandatory power and its connections with Zionism were the principal elements in this evaluation. It is known that during the earlier Twenties the Catholic authorities, and even the pope Benedict XV, often spoke against the Zionistic goals. The targets of this hard polemic weren’t only the political issues of the Zionism, but also the changes that the Jewish colonization and the British influence were introducing in the Arab’s customs. In particular Pierluigi Barlassina, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, stressed this point emphasizing the moral corruption provoked by the Zionistic movement and by the increasing influence of the Freemasonry. In this first period, in particular before the formal establishment of the British mandate (1922), also the Italian Catholic press was quite compact in the effort to prevent the British rule and the Zionistic colonization. It is of interest to note that also the Italian Catholic party, the so called Partito Popolare, was quite critical about this prospective: during the Popular Party’s congress in Torino, in 1923, Rufo Ruffo della Scaletta, the most important Luigi Sturzo’s advisor for the foreign and oriental policies, showed the anti-British and anti-Zionistic background of the Party, underlining the possibility of an autonomous Italian role in Palestine to support the Arab claims. A similar prospective was sustained by the most part of the Italian Catholic public opinion and in particular by the circles most connected to the nationalistic claims. It is important to notice that also the Fascist Regime tried sometimes to play the religious “card” to reinforce the Italian role in the Middle East. To understand the connections between the religious and the nationalistic claims, but also the different evaluation of the Vatican diplomats, two events seem particularly relevant: the reaction toward the Arab uprising in August 1929 and the thought regarding the Lord Peel’s partition plan in summer 1937. In these two occasions, in fact, the Holy See showed a different evaluation of the British rule.