The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

by Jonathan Schneer

  A still more pertinent question about Areas A and B: Would the Arabian prince who governed them be truly independent? Here as elsewhere the evidence is ambiguous, even contradictory. The great Arabist Gertrude Bell prepared a report on the Sykes-Picot Agreement soon after the three powers approved it. “Regarding areas A and B,”12 she wrote, “the elected Council is still the only solution … its obvious place of meeting is Damascus. Its president can be no other than an elected native of the country … Native representatives of the Red, Blue and Brown areas should also be summoned to it, together with representatives of the Arabian princes, the King of the Hijaz, Ibn Saud etc.” She went on to suggest that English and French observers should attend council meetings, although she does not specify what their role should be. Nevertheless her report seems to indicate that at least one important British authority envisioned some form of Arab self-government and determination in that area. T. E. Lawrence appears to have shared her view. “The Sykes-Picot treaty13 was the Arab sheet-anchor,” he argued some years later, after the agreement had been discarded. “It was absurd in its boundaries, but it did recognize the claims of Syrians to self-government.” And he added: “It was ten thousand times better than the eventual settlement.”

  Let us be clear, however. In a different context Lawrence was quite prepared to argue the other way. “Self determination has been a good deal talked about,” he said shortly after the war. “I think it is a foolish idea in many ways. We might allow the people who have fought with us to determine themselves [by which he probably meant those Arabs who had supported the grand sharif’s rebellion]. People like the Mesopotamian Arabs who have fought against us deserve nothing from us in the way of self-determination.” As for Bell, she once wrote to Lord Cromer, the predecessor of Kitchener as high commissioner in Egypt: “They are an easy people14 to govern, the Arabs … to punish is sometimes necessary, to punish thoroughly is frequently salutary, to … kill half a dozen men and then go away … that’s … generally harmful,” which does not suggest a commitment to Arab self-government on her part after all.

  In any event Bell and Lawrence were merely advisers to the men who set British policy, about whom the evidence is also mixed. At meetings of the Eastern Committee, which was a subcommittee of the War Cabinet chaired by Lord Curzon, the subject of Arab independence recurred often. On April 24, 1918, Curzon instructed his committee to assume that Turkey would be defeated. The Ottomans would depart the Middle East altogether, leaving British troops in control. Then “we should construct a State15 with an ‘Arab Façade,’ ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and as far as possible an Arab staff.” Curzon further pointed out that the titular head of this state need not be Sharif Hussein, despite the “assurances given by Sir H. McMahon … [and] never entirely withdrawn.”

  Seated around the table in Curzon’s room at the Privy Council Office were Sir Percy Cox, mastermind of the British army’s political relations in Mesopotamia; Lord Hardinge, now removed from India and become permanent under secretary of the Foreign Office; several of his advisers; Lord Balfour; and Sir Mark Sykes. Not one person demurred from Curzon’s statement. Clear-eyed as always, Arthur Balfour observed that the policy of the “Arab Façade” had a “more or less specious inconsistency with the principle of ‘self-determination.’” Since the Arabs were incapable of self-government, a “Façade” was all they could expect. Cox directly contradicted Gertrude Bell, pointing out that “nothing in the nature of a plebiscite could be arranged. It was quite unsuited to Arab thought and habits and could only excite the liveliest misgivings.” At another meeting of the Eastern Committee, Lord Robert Cecil, the assistant secretary of state for foreign affairs, offered a classic justification of British imperialism: “From the point of view of16 the inhabitants we should almost certainly [govern the region] better than anybody else and therefore it would be better for us to do it.” No self-determination there; and similar statements may be found scattered throughout the relevant archives.

  Even in these unabashedly imperialist circles, however, ambiguity was not absent. On June 18, 1918, Curzon summarized the views of his committee as follows: “1. That His Majesty’s17 Government is still determined to secure Arab independence and to fulfill the promises made at the beginning of the Hejaz revolt; 2. That His Majesty’s Government will countenance no permanent foreign or European occupation of Palestine, Iraq (except the province of Basrah) or Syria after the war; 3. That these districts will be in the possession of their natives and that foreign interference with Arab countries will be restricted to assistance and protection.” What is a historian to think? We are returned to the original difficulty noted in the early correspondence between Lord Kitchener and Sharif Abdullah in 1914. Perhaps the two sides understood the Arab demand for independence differently.

  We have no notes or minutes of the meetings between Sykes and Picot, so we cannot know precisely what the two men meant by the word “independence,” but this has not kept leading scholars from taking sides. Essentially they fall into three camps. One defends the agreement,18 arguing that had Hussein known of the negotiations, he would not have been upset, although later he pretended to be; after all, he knew at least in a general sense what French and British claims to Middle Eastern territory were, and still he cast his lot with them. Arab independence, this camp continues, would have developed under the “protective umbrella” offered by the French and British spheres of influence, and Sykes did genuinely attempt to reconcile French and Arab ambitions while the negotiations were taking place, although (as one historian adds) Sykes failed to appreciate how deeply the Arabs longed to be quit of foreign control. Nevertheless, according to this school, Sykes was negotiating in good faith.

  A second group of historians19 who are sympathetic to the Arab position do not mince words: They regard the Sykes-Picot Agreement as “a shocking document … the product of greed at its worst … a startling piece of double-dealing.” But that was written in 1946. More recently a third camp has emerged that accepts that British and French diplomats acted honorably by their own lights, but within a context we no longer find acceptable. This attitude is summarized best, perhaps, by Margaret MacMillan in her Peacemakers: Six Months That Changed the World (2001). The Sykes-Picot Agreement, she writes, “was reasonable enough,20 if you were a western imperialist.”

  The Sykes-Picot Agreement is important for the light it casts upon British thinking about the Middle East during World War I but not for what it accomplished—for it never was implemented. Shortly after taking power, the Russian Bolsheviks discovered and published what they termed the “secret treaties,” revealing that the Entente countries intended to redraw the map of the world in their own interests once they won the war. In keeping with their ideology, however, Russia’s new rulers declined to participate in this thieves’ banquet. They relinquished previous claims to territory in Asia and the Caucasus, including Constantinople. In powerful and inspiring language, the Bolsheviks called upon colonized peoples not merely to revolt against their foreign overlords but to overthrow their own social elites as well. In words equally stirring, the American president Woodrow Wilson broadcast a competing vision of democratic internationalism: The Western powers must recognize they had no right to dictate to other portions of the globe.

  Spurred by Wilson and Lenin and a thousand other causes stemming from the war, the population of each belligerent country became disillusioned with national and military leaders. In the court of public opinion Sykes-Picot, a “secret treaty” if ever there was one, stood branded as an example of all that Leninist and Wilsonian anti-imperialists loathed. To the firestorm of public protest, old-style diplomats bowed with honeyed words; in private they struggled to redefine the new ideology in more traditional and acceptable forms. Surely, said Lord Balfour at the April 24 meeting of the Eastern Committee, President Wilson “did not seriously mean to apply his formula [regarding the self-determination of peoples] outside Europe.” But man
y thought he did. In Britain a revivified liberal and socialist Left clamored for their leaders to define the country’s war aims, to include no annexation of additional land, anywhere. Thus, in an unforeseen way, the earlier liberal imperialism of Sir Edward Grey and Aubrey Herbert, who had opposed extending Britain’s sway from the outset, was vindicated in the public mind.

  The French and British were willing to let Sykes-Picot lapse anyway. Once Russia gave up her claim to Constantinople and territory east of it, the British no longer needed French troops to occupy territory immediately north of her own lands. They had no need for a buffer against the Russians to the north, for there were none. Few French troops remained in the Middle East at the end of the war either. Soldiers fighting for Britain had done all the heavy lifting. Britain could pretty well write her own ticket there, as Curzon and Cox and Balfour recognized. But (and here was the rub) she must do so without incurring the odium that a large fraction of the British public now attached to old-style imperialism.

  The British had another factor to consider. When Sykes and Picot were busy with their maps and crayons, they may or may not have been endeavoring to satisfy Arab nationalism in addition to British and French imperialism. Now an additional force, a newly powerful Jewish nationalism, had emerged in the Middle East. The Zionist movement had been gathering strength in fits and starts since the late nineteenth century, when it was founded by the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl, and ever more quickly since the Ottomans had decided to join World War I. But before we can consider the remarkable story of Zionism’s far-from-inevitable rise, and its impact upon British policy and policy makers, we must finish tracing the last steps of Sharif Hussein and his sons, and the movement they led up to June 1916, which culminated in yet another declaration of war.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Arab Revolt Begins

  EARLY IN 1916 Grand Sharif Hussein began laying the groundwork for rebellion in earnest. He knew little if anything of Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, and absolutely nothing of the agreement the two men had reached regarding Arabia and that the three Entente powers had subsequently ratified. He had no inkling either that the British government soon would be considering the future role of Jews in Palestine. Had he known of such matters, Middle Eastern history might have unwound very differently. Instead, with the careful but encouraging letters of Sir Henry McMahon fresh in his mind, the emir pushed his chess pieces into position.

  To Damascus—headquarters of the dangerous Djemal Pasha and base of the Turkish Fourth Army, of which Djemal was commander in chief—he dispatched his third son, Feisal. Feisal would secretly reestablish links with the nationalist Arab army officers who had framed the Damascus Protocol and with whom he had met the previous spring. Hussein anticipated that they, with the loyal Arabian soldiers under their command and with Feisal at their head, would lead the Syrian wing of his rebellion.

  To Medina, which also housed a substantial Ottoman garrison, he sent his eldest son, Ali, and fifteen hundred troops. Ostensibly their mission was to take part in the second invasion of Egypt, planned by the Ottomans; in reality they would undertake the siege of Medina when Feisal threw down the gauntlet in Damascus. In the meantime Ali must win over the regional tribal chiefs, all retainers of the grand sharif.

  To the British in Cairo, he sent a series of letters, requesting arms and ammunition for his desert fighters, gold with which to pay them, and British troops to reinforce them.

  Finally in Mecca, he kept by his side for the time being his second son, Abdullah, and his youngest son, Zeid. The latter lacked experience and influence, but Hussein depended on the former. He could send Abdullah to parley with local sheikhs. Moreover, aided by Abdullah—and perhaps with young Zeid looking on respectfully and very occasionally making a suggestion—he could ponder the chessboard and discuss future moves. Together father and son would direct their knights in Damascus and Medina to jump at the proper hour onto the proper squares.

  For the moment, however, the two knights must rely upon their own good judgment, at a time when any false move might prove literally fatal. We have scant record of Ali’s movements and activities in Medina, but he appears to have skirted very near the edge of the precipice. Ali did not much resemble his more active younger brothers, being short while Feisal was tall, slim while Abdullah was stocky, and with a face already weary-looking (although he was only thirty-seven years old); but he had his father’s large deep brown eyes and thin nose. A zealous protector of Hussein’s prerogatives as the emir of Hejaz, he quickly came into conflict with the Ottoman governor in Medina.1 Perhaps there was a religious component to his attitude: He was, like the grand sharif, a devout Muslim, “less ready to sink2 religious prejudices than his brothers.” During this period in Medina, Ali was “assuming powers on the3 pretext that they were part of his authority as Imam,” wrote an Ottoman who watched him carefully. This official warned Ali to mend his ways. Ali, perhaps emboldened by the fifteen hundred Hejazi troops at his back, did nothing of the sort. Rather, he became “simply intolerable,” the same official remembered. The official was Djemal Pasha, not a man one would wish to antagonize, but the Turks needed Ali because they needed his father. They still wanted the grand sharif to endorse the jihad publicly. They wanted him to raise additional Arab troops for the second invasion of Egypt and to fight the British in Mesopotamia too. So Djemal, whose first instinct when confronted with a troublemaker was to flatten him, stayed his hand. Only in retrospect did he recognize Ali’s conduct for what it most probably had been: a harbinger of a total break.

  Thus spared, Ali managed a successful passage. His primary mission in Medina was to win over the region’s tribal leaders. “The Jehani Kadi has4 arrived,” he wrote to his father, “and I did the necessary with him.” In fact he had “compelled” the latter to come to terms with a rival sheikh,5 then brought them and three more sheikhs into the rebel camp, a considerable achievement. Their tribal armies, when added to the fifteen hundred soldiers already encamped on the outskirts of Medina at Hezret Hamza, constituted a significant if unconventional and undisciplined force. Now they waited on tenterhooks for word from Hussein to advance against the Ottomans.

  Feisal’s mission in Damascus was more important to Hussein than Ali’s in Medina, because that Syrian city had been the main base of the Arab officers in the Ottoman army who drew up the Damascus Protocol and who, he now hoped, would provide the nucleus of a rebel general staff. Damascus was also more dangerous for Feisal than Medina was for Ali, because it was headquarters of the redoubtable Djemal. Feisal would have to plan his part of the rebellion right under the Turkish commander’s watchful, unforgiving eye.

  Forty picked men accompanied Feisal into this lion’s den. They were, Feisal said, soldiers for the invasion of Egypt, but in fact they constituted his bodyguard. With them he approached the familiar city. He may have intended to stay once again with the al-Bakri family and, as before, to meet with the conspirators at the al-Bakri house in the small hours of the morning. As they rode the train into Damascus, Feisal must have thought he would be engaging in work that was perilous but not impossible. After all, he had done it before, unaccompanied.

  In fact, by January 1916, when Feisal arrived in Damascus, everything had changed. Almost all the officers with whom he had met the previous year were gone. Djemal had sent6 the 35th Division, in which most of them were based, to fight the British in Gallipoli. Not only the officers but the Arab soldiers, upon whom the conspirators had counted to act as the revolution’s shock troops, were gone as well. This was a major setback for which Hussein and his sons were entirely unprepared.

  Moreover, the disruption of trade caused by the war had taken a toll on Damascus. The British had blockaded most of the east coast of the Mediterranean. To cope with scarcities and to feed his armies, Djemal Pasha had levied new taxes and had confiscated much Syrian property. To make fuel for his trains, he had directed the felling of trees, including cherished orchards and olive groves. Hardship for th
e residents of Damascus led to hunger and eventually to starvation. People weak from lack of food succumb easily to disease, in this case typhus. Historians estimate7 that during the war between 150,000 and 300,000 Syrians died from famine and sickness. Hussein and Feisal had hoped that when the rebel Arab army challenged the Ottomans, the population of Damascus would rise. But with so much of the city ill and famished, there was little chance of that.

  Perhaps worst of all from the Arab nationalist point of view, the political atmosphere in Damascus had grown darker and more ominous than before. Djemal Pasha, who had known from the outset about Arab nationalist activities because Picot had left those incriminating documents in the French embassy safe, had finally turned upon the conspirators. Moreover he had additional evidence of traitorous activities from spies and informers who carried news to him in a constant stream. Some of it was accurate. “I decided to take8 ruthless action against the traitors,” Djemal records.

  The results were horrific. The Turks rounded up suspects and brought them for trial and imprisonment to Aleyh, a town southeast of Beirut. There they were beaten bloody; pierced with needles; and pressed by a vise that squeezed their heads until they thought their brains would burst from their eye sockets. They received bread9 and water only, and that every other day; their jailers kept them awake seventy-two hours at a stretch. How could they defend themselves when finally they were brought into the courtroom? They could not. They would say anything to stop the torture. Eleven men paid with their lives. An English newspaper reported: “The bodies of the hanged10 remained exposed in Liberty Square [in Beirut] for six hours, after which they were carried to the sands on the western outskirts of the town and there buried ignominiously.” That was only the beginning. “Eight more11 have been hanged and fifteen others [are] expected to meet the same fate,” the newspaper reported a little later. Djemal ordered that hundreds of suspected nationalists be deported to the far reaches of Anatolia. Thousands more left of their own accord, fearful that he would turn upon them next.