This last point was true, but its principal consequence was to relieve the Allies of their promise of Constantinople and the straits to Russia. The success of the Arab Revolt had scarcely improved Sharif Hussein’s bargaining position vis-à-vis the Allies. Their mutual and independent interests remained unchanged. With its huge base in Egypt, Allenby’s armies in Palestine and control of Mesopotamia (Baghdad had fallen in March 1917), Britain was much the stronger power in the region. Its priority was the security of the British Empire, both in the present and in the future. But France was Britain’s only major partner in the total war with Germany. It had suffered colossal casualties in Europe – far greater than Britain’s – and in 1917 its determination was wavering. Britain was not going to frustrate the Middle East ambitions of its ally for the sake of the Hashemites, who were heavily dependent on British money, arms and military advice.
Allenby drove on to take Jerusalem on 9 December. Tactfully he walked rather than rode into the Holy City. He was then held up by the severity of the winter and the stiffening of the Turco-German forces under the command of General Liman von Sanders, who were benefiting from Russia’s removal from the war. But in September 1918 Allenby resumed his advance to drive the Turks out of Syria. Damascus fell on 1 October. The first Allied troops to reach the city were a body of Australian cavalry, but Lawrence arranged for Feisal’s Arab forces to make the triumphant entry and install their own governor.
Liman von Sanders was recalled, and it fell to Mustafa Kemal, who had halted the Russian advance in Anatolia in 1916, to extricate the Seventh Army. He brought it back to Aleppo and finally managed an orderly retreat across the Taurus Mountains. Aleppo fell to the Allies on 26 October, and two days later the Ottoman government abandoned the struggle and signed the armistice agreement at Mudros.
The revelation of the Sykes–Picot agreement was not the only reason for Arab doubts about Britain’s intentions for the future of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. On 2 November 1917 – a few days before Jemal Pasha informed Sharif Hussein of the secret Anglo-French accord – a letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to a leading British Zionist Jew, Lord Rothschild, was published:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
This apparently unsensational document, known as ‘the Balfour Declaration’, planted the seeds of a conflict which has lasted almost a century and is unlikely to be resolved before another century has passed. Although few were aware of this at the time, it was the result of a compromise between British and Zionist aims. Its consequences have been greater than those of the Anglo-French agreement, which were eliminated by the demise of British and French imperial power within a few decades.
Since the failure of the last attempt to restore Jewish independence in Palestine in AD 134, the Jews had become scattered throughout the world. Only a few thousand religious Jews remained in Jerusalem, and there were tiny communities elsewhere in the Holy Land. The Jews in the rest of the world experienced varying degrees of persecution and prosperity, discrimination and tolerance, but from the eighteenth century they benefited from the economic expansion of western Europe and the movement towards religious toleration. During the nineteenth century, liberalism and assimilation appeared to be steadily gaining ground in western Europe, particularly in Russia and Russian Poland, where the concentration of Jewish population was greatest. Just as anti-Jewish movements, influenced by the nationalist temper of the nineteenth century, began to emphasize race rather than religion, so the Jews themselves, under the influence of their environment and the pressure of persecution, began to think in terms of a new Jewish nationalism. However, it took nearly two thousand years to develop the idea of a mass return of the 12 million Jews in the world to Palestine to re-create a Jewish state – the Jewish prayer ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ was the expression of a spiritual or Messianic ideal rather than a political slogan.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a steady movement of Jews from eastern Europe to settle in Palestine. Supported by Jewish philanthropy, they went mainly to found colonies to work the land. They were the pioneers of ‘practical Zionism’. They were very much fewer than those who went to western Europe and the United States, but by 1914 there were about 80,000 Jews (including the indigenous communities) in Palestine, compared with about 650,000 Arabs.
‘Political Zionism’, or the concept of turning Palestine into a national Jewish state, was founded by Theodor Herzl, a prominent Austrian political journalist who in 1896 published his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question), in which he declared that the Jewish question was neither social nor religious but national. Although himself an assimilated agnostic Jew, he maintained that assimilation had not worked. Anti-Semitism was growing. He did not believe that all Jews should be forced to go to the new Jewish state; the important thing was that Jews should enjoy sovereignty over a piece of territory to suit their national requirements. If it were in Palestine, the European Jews would help to civilize the surrounding region.
Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress, at Basle in 1897, where the delegates called for the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers and the organization and binding together of the whole of Jewry.
For tactical reasons, the early Zionists spoke of a ‘home’ rather than a ‘state’ in Palestine, although they still had to secure Ottoman consent for this. As we have seen, Herzl’s request was rejected by Sultan Abdul Hamid. Herzl then considered Sinai and Cyprus (inhabited by Greeks and Turks), but these were denied him by Cromer of Egypt and the British Colonial Office. In 1903 the British government made a lukewarm offer of territory in Uganda, which Herzl reluctantly agreed to consider, but this was rejected by the sixth Zionist Congress shortly before his death in 1904.
There followed a decade of frustration for political Zionism. The World Zionist Organization, based in Vienna, was established on a sound footing, and it was possible to step up the process of practical Zionism as the Young Turks allowed some relaxation of Jewish immigration into Palestine. A Jewish National Fund to buy land in Palestine was founded in 1901. But the objective of turning Palestine into a national home for all the Jews seemed as far away as ever. World Jewry had still to be won over to Zionism. Many of the most prominent and wealthy Jews in central and western Europe were opposed to what they saw as a disruptive movement. American Jews still showed little interest. Religious leaders were divided, with the chief rabbi of Vienna declaring that Zionism was incompatible with Judaism.
The weight of support for Zionism came from the mass of east-European Jews. However, in the years leading up to the First World War the Zionist organization moved the focus of its attentions to Britain, where it could act most freely and where, according to Herzl, there was least anti-Semitism. Two of Herzl’s leading east-European lieutenants – Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolov – were now living in England. By 1914 Weizmann, as president of the English Zionist Federation, was familiar with half the British cabinet. Such Zionists fully understood the importance of securing the support of the most powerful Gentiles as well as world Jewry. In some important cases they had little or no need to persuade.
Many different individuals contributed to the genesis of the Balfour Declaration. The British Gentiles among them were guided by a remarkable mixture of imperial Realpolitik and romantic/historical feelings. It was a Jewish member of the British government, Herbert Samuel, who in January 1915 first proposed to the cabinet the idea of a Jewish Palestine which would be annexed to the British Empire. But it was not until after David Lloyd George took over the conduct of the w
ar at the end of 1916, as the leader of a National Coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, that the Zionist cause made real headway. The prime minister, a close friend of the Gentile Zionist editor of the Manchester Guardian – C. P. Scott – was an easy convert, as were other members of his cabinet – Balfour, the foreign secretary; Lord Milner, the former imperial consul in Africa; and a large group of Foreign Office officials and government advisers which included Sir Mark Sykes. These were non-Jews who saw huge advantages in a Jewish Palestine as part of the empire. But underpinning their imperial convictions was the romantic appeal of the return of the Jews to Zion, which, founded on Old Testament Christianity, was part of their Victorian upbringing. (Zionism also had this twin attraction for Churchill, who was not in the cabinet in 1917 but would return to it.) The British cabinet had already veered away from the commitment in the Sykes–Picot agreement to international control for Palestine. ‘Britain could take care of the Holy Places better than anyone else,’ the prime minister told C. P. Scott, and a French Palestine was ‘not to be thought of’.
It was ironical, but in the circumstances not surprising, that the only Jew in the cabinet, Mr Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India, should also be the most outspoken opponent of the Balfour Declaration. Montagu was a member of the highly assimilated Anglo-Jewish aristocracy, many of whom feared the effect of Jewish nationalism on their own position. Montagu had his counterparts in other countries – Henry Morgenthau Sr, a former US ambassador to Turkey, was a pronounced anti-Zionist, for example. Nevertheless the British cabinet was convinced that world Jewry was overwhelmingly in favour of Zionism and gave credit to Britain for supporting the cause. It believed that this had helped to bring the United States into the war in April 1917 and to maintain its enthusiasm thereafter. The British may have had an exaggerated view of the wealth and influence on Washington of American Jews at that period, but it was their belief in these that mattered. Moreover, the Germans were aware of the possibilities to be gained by winning Jewish sympathy, especially among the many American Jews of east-European origin who hated the Russian government. Germany was trying to persuade the Turks to lift their objections to Zionist settlement in Palestine, although so far without success. Finally, it was hoped that Britain’s adoption of Zionism would win over the Russian Jewish socialists who were trying to influence the Kerensky government to take Russia out of the war.
All these strands of practicality and idealism came together in making the Balfour Declaration. The British cabinet believed it was a finely balanced document. When Balfour asked Rothschild and Weizmann to submit a draft, it said that ‘Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home for the Jewish people.’ This was too strong and the final draft, as we have seen, said only that the British government favoured ‘the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people’. It also added the provisos concerning ‘the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’ and ‘the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country’.
Even this cautious wording greatly increased Sharif Hussein’s alarm about the Allies’ intentions. This time Commander D. G. Hogarth, the head of the Arab Bureau, was dispatched to see him in Jedda. Hogarth pressed the case for the return of the Jews to Palestine, but Sharif Hussein – now King of the Hejaz – was already showing perceptive anxiety that the Balfour Declaration might foreshadow a Jewish state in Palestine. Hogarth reported, ‘The King would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated.’ Hussein accepted the assurances and ended by showing enthusiasm for the advantages that Jewish immigration would bring to the Arab countries.
The British government lost no time in implementing the terms of the Balfour Declaration. Soon after Jerusalem’s capture from the Turks, Weizmann arrived at the head of a Zionist Commission and established its headquarters there. The Commission found that the Arabs of Palestine were already thoroughly alarmed – they took it for granted that Palestine should remain a purely Arab country. Before the war they had begun to resent the activities of the Zionist colonists and their establishment of exclusive Jewish communities, but these had not presented a serious threat as the Ottoman authorities had kept their expansion to a minimum. Now, in 1918, the Arabs believed the Zionists aimed to take over the country and place them in subjection. After all, although the Arabs formed about 90 per cent of the people of Palestine, the Balfour Declaration referred to them as the ‘existing non-Jewish communities’ whose civil and religious rights – but not political rights – were not to be prejudiced.
Weizmann and the Commission felt that the British military authorities were not doing enough to bring home to the Palestinian Arabs Britain’s determination to implement the terms of the Balfour Declaration. British officials in Palestine, for their part, thought the Zionists should do much more to reassure the Arab majority of their real intentions. The question is, what were these real intentions?
Although the Zionists were prepared to make tactical compromises of the kind which produced the Balfour Declaration, there can be no doubt that their true aim was to turn Palestine into the national home for the Jews to which most of the Jews in the world would want to emigrate. They might have differed over its precise borders, but in their view Palestine was to become a Jewish national state with a substantial Jewish majority. However, they had come to realize how difficult it might be to achieve this. Weizmann was surprised by how ‘non-Jewish’ Jerusalem and Palestine had become. He left after a few months, believing that it might be impossible to prevent Palestine from becoming an Arab state.
The attitudes of British ministers were more complex. Although they had more than an inkling of the true Zionist objectives, most of them were quite ignorant of the real situation in Palestine and the sentiments of its people, although few regarded these as of great importance compared with the interests of the British Empire. They certainly could not foresee that they were helping to create one of the least soluble political problems of the twentieth century. Some were disturbed when the incompatibility between Zionist aspirations and the overwhelming feelings of the indigenous Arabs became apparent from the reports of British officials on the spot. The author of the Balfour Declaration had no such doubts. A year after the war he wrote, ‘The four great powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’
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The doubts that had been raised about the intentions of the Allies did not prevent the wild Arab rejoicing which greeted the liberation of Syria. The civil population had suffered fearfully from the war, because a plague of locusts, combined with the normal disruption of war and the corruption of Turkish officials and Syrian merchants, had caused widespread famine. Between 300,000 and 500,000 people died, out of a total population of 4 million.
Although it was Allenby’s policy wherever possible to allow Emir Feisal’s troops to enter the captured cities in triumph and to take over the administration, the entente with France was clearly Britain’s first consideration, and when France objected to the display of Feisal’s flag in Beirut Allenby ordered its removal. The French hastened to land troops in Beirut at the end of the war, and the whole coastal area from Tyre to Cilicia in Asia Minor came under French military administration. The British Occupied Enemy Territory Administration South (OETA South) covered Palestine, while the main towns in the Syrian interior were under Feisal’s authority but with an attachment of British officers (OETA E East) on whom the Arabs, with their limited experience in administration, were heavily dependent. Mesopotamia was maintained as a single unit under an Anglo-Indian administration. The Sykes–Picot agreement, modified to reflect the realities of the situation, was already being applied.
Allenby and his military administrators faced a prospect of immense di
fficulty, which was not helped by the frequently conflicting instructions they received from Whitehall. Apart from France and the Zionists, with their demands, the new American ally had entered the scene. The fact that the United States had no imperial ambitions towards the Middle East greatly added to the moral force of President Wilson’s sermon-like speeches about the post-war settlement. He chose to take Britain at its word. When a group of seven prominent Arabs living in Cairo presented a memorandum asking for a clear definition of British policy, Britain’s reply – known as the Declaration to the Seven, and given wide publicity – was that the future government of Arab territories liberated by the action of Arab armies would be based on the principle of the ‘consent of the governed’. Wilson included this phrase among his Four Ends of Peace which, under his influence, were later incorporated in the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was later given even greater force by an Anglo-French declaration of 7 November 1918 – that is, in the week between the signing of the armistice agreements with Turkey and Germany – which said that the goal of the British and French governments was the complete and final liberation of peoples oppressed by the Turks and the setting up of national governments and administrations which should derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous population.
Even allowing for American pressure, it is difficult to see why Britain and France should have felt that such barefaced hypocrisy was necessary. Turkey had already been defeated, and there was no need to sustain the Arab Revolt. There was no intention in London or Paris of allowing the indigenous population in the former Ottoman territories the free choice of their rulers. Even ‘the consent of the governed’ was an empty phrase.
A History of the Middle East Page 21