With the backing of Enver, Jamal wrote to Faisal on 13 November 1917, sending him a horse as a token of friendship. The Prince was invited to a conference at Damascus where he, Jamal and Abbas Hilmi would discuss religious unity and explore the possibilities of an alliance between the Arab movement and the Ottoman government. Such an alignment would be in Faisal’s interests since Jamal predicted he would get little from his land-hungry allies. Another letter was sent to Jafar al Askari, who was reminded of his honourable service in the Ottoman army and asked to examine his conscience now ‘the Allied governments have openly and officially declared’ that, after the war, his homeland, Iraq, was to be made a British protectorate, Syria a French, and Palestine an international zone.13
Jamal promised Faisal further letters. His first was revealed to Colonel Joyce on 16 December after Faisal had forwarded a copy to Hussain. Eight days later the Arab Bureau alerted Major Basset at Jiddah: he was told to inform Hussain that the message was a mischievous German device. Moreover, he was commanded to remind Hussain that as an ally he was bound not to make a separate peace. Faisal felt under no such legal obligation and said so to Jamal. Secret exchanges between them continued until July 1918 and, as far as possible, were monitored by British officers, including Lawrence.
The episode was dismissed briefly by Lawrence in Chapter 101 of the Seven Pillars, where he suggested that Faisal’s replies were the means of driving a wedge between the pro-German faction within the Committee of Union and Progress and the Turanian nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Kemal Atatürk). Lawrence added that he showed Faisal a text of the Sykes—Picot agreement but emphasised that his own ‘performance’ on the battlefield would wipe out its provisions. In other words, Lawrence stuck to the formula that the Arabs would somehow rule wherever they conquered. In any case, he believed that it was wise for Faisal to keep open links with Constantinople as an insurance policy against an Allied defeat in France. This uncharacteristic piece of realpolitik made sense, given the uncertain outcome of the Western Front battles during the spring of 1918.
Lawrence did not add that he played a double game during Faisal’s flirtation with the Turks. It was his inescapable duty as a British officer to hamper the exchanges (one messenger was taken by a French patrol) or uncover every detail of what passed between Faisal and his Turkish correspondents by direct questions or subterfuge. At least twice he played the spy. Once, in March, he covertly secured a copy of a letter from Faisal to Muhammad Jamal Pasha, the officer commanding at Maan who acted as a go-between for his namesake after his appointment in December 1917 as Minister of Marine in Constantinople. Early in June Lawrence suborned or bribed one of Faisal’s secretaries, by whom he was given a copy of a secret letter which revealed the extent of his master’s embroilment with the Turks.14
As Faisal’s courtier and confidant, Lawrence was in an ambiguous position, since he was not entirely unsympathetic towards the Prince’s attempts to secure possession of Syria through a bargain with the Turks. He was also under pressure to make clear just what his government’s attitude was towards an Arab Syria. In January 1918 Faisal asked Lawrence to procure an unequivocal, official denial of Jamal’s statement about the Sykes-Picot Treaty and a proclamation that the British ‘would not annex any Arab country themselves or hand any to any aliens [that is, the French]’.15 If, as Lawrence later wrote, he showed a text of the Anglo-French accord to Faisal, then this may have been the occasion, although no mention of such a revelation appears in the official report of the incident.
Lawrence, departing from his government’s policy, encouraged Faisal to trail his coat for the Turks, even to the point of urging him to look favourably on the idea of joining the Turanian nationalists in an anti-German front. He imagined that such a realignment would not injure Britain, since a weak Arab Syria would have to rely on British support against its stronger, northern neighbour. This was a recipe for chaos and the Foreign Office strongly disapproved. On 24 April Lawrence was ordered by Wingate to stick to official policy and warn Faisal that Jamal would ensnare him in a net of German intrigue. As for the Turanian nationalists, they were the architects of the Armenian massacres and Lawrence was to remind Faisal that their secular creed placed nationality before faith.16
Again Lawrence was allowing his passion for an independent Arab Syria to cloud his judgement. Far from creating divisions within the Committee of Union and Progress, Faisal was unwittingly assisting its policies. The armistice with Russia in December 1917 had opened the way for a mass Turkish offensive the following spring, directed at the recovery ot territory lost between 1914 and 1916, and an invasion of the Russian Caucasus. By July 1918, the Turkish ‘Army of Islam’, its sights set on Turkestan, had reached the Caspian Sea and occupied the Baku oilfields. Enver intended to create a new Ottoman empire, united by Turanian national sentiment and Islam, which would extend across former Russian provinces in Central Asia. His dream had made him transfer forces from Syria to the Caucasus during the winter and spring of 1917—18 which, in effect, left the province with a reduced and heavily outnumbered garrison. In strategic terms, Syria took second place to the new Central Asian front and, politically, it was all but abandoned. A deal with Faisal would keep the province within the Ottoman orbit as well as cause much mischief for Britain, who would lose her politically valuable patronage of Arab nationalism. Moreover, a rapprochement with Faisal and the Arabs would add weight to Turkish Pan-Islamic propaganda in Central Asia.
Lawrence’s tolerance of Faisal’s dalliance with the Turkish government was ill considered and potentially dangerous, at least to British interests. Yet British policy, as revealed through the now well-known Sykes–Picot agreement, made it hard for him to reassure Faisal that a kingdom awaited him in Syria. Faisal was aware of this, and he knew too that his freedom of action was restricted by his dependence on Britain. Negotiation with Turkey offered him a means of escape and even possible strategic advantages, as this conversation of February between Faisal and a Turkish envoy suggests.17 Asked whether he was willing to mediate between the Ottoman government and his father, Faisal was defiant.
Envoy: Suppose they [the Turks] would evacuate the country and give it to its owner [Hussain]?
Faisal: They are liars, they will never evacuate, but we will make them by the sword and if they leave our country they may avert the danger we would inflict on them, and if they say the truth let them show their good faith and evacuate Medina and withdraw from the railway to Amman.
Envoy: The present military situation of Turkey compels them to make friendship with your father ... had it not been for the advance of British forces with you, you could not clear the Turks from Syria and you know whether the capture of the country by the British will be beneficial or harmful.
Securing Syria or any other military advantage without British help was tempting bait for Faisal. He rose to it. On 10 June, Lawrence got hold of a letter to Muhammad Jamal Pasha in which Faisal sought to discover the terms under which the Ottoman government would accept him as ruler of Syria. He asked for what he called the ‘form and type of independence of Syria in conformity with the Prussian–Austrian–Hungary type’. What this meant is far from clear. Either Syria would sever political links with the Ottoman empire in the way that Austria had been removed from the German states in 1867 but keep a military alliance, or else, and this is more likely, Syria would enjoy the same independence within the Ottoman empire as Hungary did within the Austrian.
There was no ambiguity about Faisal’s military terms. He demanded the transfer of all Arabs within the Turkish army to his service where they would be under Arab operational command. All Turkish (and presumably German) military supplies in Syria were to be delivered to his forces.18 Lawrence was convinced that these provisions had been dictated by Faisal’s Syrian officers and that he was flying a kite to keep Turkish dissidents hopeful. Others in Cairo and London were less sanguine: on 9 August Hogarth assured the Foreign Office that ‘our officers are all ready to assume contr
ol’ in an emergency. Like its Anglo-Turkish equivalent of a year before, the Turco-Arab rapprochement came to nothing. It was overtaken by the events of August and September 1918, in particular the simultaneous reverses suffered by the German army in France and the Turkish in Syria.
In fact, Faisal was grasping at straws. Anxious about the outcome of the war in Europe, which he was following closely, and disheartened by his own lack of progress in southern Jordan, he found the idea of conquest through negotiation plausible. In spite of Lawrence’s assurances, he felt by no means certain that his allies would accept him as ruler of Syria. One further factor impelled him towards a form of compromise with the Turks — the prospect that a British-controlled Palestine would be detached from Syria and be peopled by Jewish immigrants from Europe. On 4 June 1918, six days before he delivered his terms to Muhammad Jamal Pasha, Faisal had had his first discussions with the Zionist leader and visionary Dr Chaim Weizmann.
From the earliest stages of the revolt there had been undercurrents of Arab hostility towards the Zionist movement in Europe and the United States. Since the turn of the century, the Ottoman government had permitted small numbers of Jewish immigrants to acquire land in Palestine and set up their own communities. Lawrence had encountered one in 1909 and described it approvingly, although later he expressed hostility towards German Zionist settlers. His revised opinions were a reflection of a wider Arab fear that more and more colonists would arrive from Europe, buy land and edge out the Palestinian Arabs.
The seeds of future disagreements were apparent in November 1916 when al Qibla published an article condemning Zionism. It was brought to the attention of Sykes and Macdonogh in London by agent ‘Maurice’ who had influence with the Sharif, but not it seems with al Faruqi, who was behind the piece. Macdonogh instructed Wingate to reprove al Faruqi and explain to him the ‘extreme danger of such ill-advised attacks on a community of such great influence throughout the world’. According to Sykes it was ‘a dangerous topic’ which Hussain would be wise to leave alone.19
The question of a Zionist involvement in the future of the Middle East could not be shelved. Inside the British government there was an influential group of Zionist converts which included the Foreign Secretary, Balfour, and Sykes, who for complex political reasons wanted an official partnership with Zionism. As far as the Middle East was concerned an Arab–Zionist–Armenian front offered a bulwark against Turco-German efforts to regain political leadership in the region. The price was the separation of Palestine from Syria, with its future administration in British hands and open to Jewish immigration. This emerged after the Balfour Declaration, which was in essence a statement of British friendship towards the world’s Jews and an acknowledgement of their aspirations for a homeland in Palestine.
Among Lawrence’s colleagues there was widespread sympathy for the Zionists, thanks to the missionary efforts of Aaron Aaronsohn, a former Jewish settler and now an officer with British intelligence. Aaronsohn had won over William Ormsby-Gore of the Arab Bureau, Wyndham Deedes and Meinertzhagen who, having once witnessed an anti-Jewish pogrom in Odessa, knew better than many the brutal malevolence of Eastern European anti-Semitism.
Lawrence, aware of the increase in Zionist pressure on the British government, approached Aaronsohn to discuss the effects which the proposed Jewish homeland might have in Palestine. They met on 12 August 1917 in Cairo, and Aaronsohn, detecting hints of anti-Semitism, found Lawrence hostile and inflexible. ‘If the Jews will favour the Arabs they shall be spared, otherwise they will have their throats cut’ was his response to the question of how the immigrants would fare in an Arab state.20 He was speaking with the voice of Faisal, as he revealed in a letter to Clayton of 9 September:
You know of course the differences between the Palestine Jew and the Colonist Jew: to Faisal the important point is that the former speak Arabic, and the latter, German Yiddish. He is in touch with the Arab Jews (their HQ at Safid is in his sphere) and they are ready to help him, on conditions. They show a strong antipathy to the colonist Jews, and have even suggested repressive measures against them. Faisal has ignored this point hitherto and will continue to do so. His attempts to get in touch with the colonist Jews have not been very fortunate. They say they have made their arrangements with the great powers, and wish no contact with the Arab Party. They will not help the Turks or the Arabs.21
This final point was unfair since Lawrence knew that many Jews controlled by Aaronsohn were risking their lives gathering intelligence in Turkish-occupied Syria. What Faisal and Lawrence (‘I like to make my mind up before he does’) wanted to know from Clayton was the nature of the agreements which had been made with the Zionist settlers. Lawrence had been disturbed by Aaronsohn’s hopes that, in time, the Jews would secure all land rights from Gaza to Haifa as a preliminary to getting ‘practical autonomy’ within this coastal area. He predicted future conflict, since the Palestinian tenant farmers, who ‘may be ground down but have fixity of tenure’, would be evicted by the colonists and end up as landless labourers. Past experience, Lawrence rightly claimed, revealed that the Jewish communities were unwilling to employ Arab labour. Knowing something of the harshness of land wars from what he must have heard of his father’s Irish memories, Lawrence foretold that ‘the expelled peasantry of Philistria are going to get their own back on the colonists if the Turkish Government breaks down before the British get in.’ In conclusion he warned Clayton, ‘I see a situation arising in which the Jewish influence in European finance might not be sufficient to deter the Arabs from refusing to quit — or worse!’
In the aftermath of the Balfour Declaration, Arab feeling became more embittered. Lawrence shared their resentment which he explained to William Yale in two interviews in February and March 1918. There was, he had observed, a marked upsurge in anti-Semitism across southern Palestine in both Christian and Muslim communities once the Balfour Declaration had become known. Further concessions to Zionism worsened matters and Lawrence sensed that the waves of ill-feeling would shortly agitate the rest of Syria. At the heart of the problem was the Jewish leadership. ‘If, as in the past, the Zionists in Palestine have as leaders that disagreeable arrogant type of their race’ as well as ‘dishonest and ignorant adventurers’ (all presumably Polish, Russian and German Jews), the situation would deteriorate further. The ‘broad-minded, liberal type of Jew’ with a Western European or American background was needed to win Arab confidence. He foresaw turmoil: it was ironic, he observed, that the prospect of Jewish immigration was now acting as a catalyst for Arab nationalism that was unfriendly to Britain, the author of the Balfour Declaration. This sentiment was being exploited for all it was worth by Turco-German propagandists.
Feelings had reached such a pitch that Lawrence felt certain that ‘if it were announced that a Jewish state and Government were to be established in Palestine the Arab movement would come to an end.’ Lawrence also warned Yale that the combination of a German victory in France (the expected spring offensive was three weeks off) and continued Allied attachment to the Zionists would dissolve the entire Arab movement. Britain’s ‘unwise and foolhardy’ patronage of Zionism had jeopardised her alliance with the Arabs. His government’s motives were beyond Lawrence’s understanding, for he could not find any emotional sympathy with the Jewish movement. ‘I suppose that we are supporting the Zionists for the help it was thought they could be to us in Russia and because they brought America into the war,’ a comment which was not entirely mistaken.22
Lawrence’s views were expressed in the hope that Yale might persuade his government to temper its enthusiasm for Zionism and offer some comfort to the Arabs. While they contain unmistakable undercurrents of that brand of anti-Semitism which permeated his class at that time, his objections to the Jews were based on his anxieties about the future of the Middle East. What he feared was the incursion of immigrants from the ghettos of Central and Eastern Europe whom he saw as overbearing intruders bent on uprooting the native Palestinian Arabs. Romantically atta
ched to the concept of a Middle East which was hierarchical and rural, Lawrence was instinctively hostile towards a race that represented the cosmopolitan and capitalist and which, if allowed to settle in large numbers, would introduce the sort of modernisation which he detested. The Balfour Declaration was for Lawrence an unwelcome and unsettling factor that threatened to overturn the Anglo-Arab alliance which he had helped to preserve and promote.
The Jewish question was also dividing Lawrence’s colleagues. As Meinertzhagen observed, there was a clear-cut preference for the Arabs among British officers then and after the war. Working alongside Hubert Young and Lawrence in the Colonial Office during 1921, he noticed that they ‘do their utmost to conceal their dislike and mistrust of the Jews’, even though they faithfully worked to implement policies based upon the Balfour Declaration.23
Matters arising from the Balfour Declaration were a distraction for Lawrence during 1918: his main concern was the Arab war effort. He and others realised that the British government’s new alignment with Zionism could weaken its ties with the Arabs, and diplomatic efforts were made to bring Arabs and Jews together. Speaking at Manchester in December 1917, Sykes felt obliged to ‘warn Jews to look through Arab glasses’. United, the two races could exploit the ‘man-power, virgin soil, petroleum and brains’ which were the untapped assets of the Middle East, a possibility which Lawrence would have abhorred.
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