CHAPTER THREE

The Division of the Middle East and the Roots of War

Shortly after the Balfour Declaration was issued the new Bolshevik government in Russia publicized the Sykes–Picot agreement. This increased alarm among the Arabs, already nervous over the growth of Zionism, which appeared to threaten their interests. From Cairo, Sir Reginald Wingate explained to Hussein that these documents were merely provisional exchanges. On 9 December 1917 General Allenby’s forces took Jerusalem. He issued a proclamation that Britain’s object was to liberate all peoples oppressed by the Turks and to establish national governments ‘deriving authority from the initiative and free will of those people themselves’. In a Foreign Office memorandum dated 19 December, Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier, a Jew born in Galicia, observed that objections to Jews being given exclusive political rights in Palestine – this being considered undemocratic to the local populations – were imaginary: Palestine could be held in trust by Britain and the United States until there was a sufficient population to govern it on European lines.¹ Then, on 8 January 1918, President Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points to Congress. The twelfth stated that the Turkish portions of the Ottoman Empire needed sovereignty, but the other nationalities ‘should be assured an undoubted security of life and an unmolested opportunity of autonomous development’. The same day D. G. Hogarth, in charge of the Arab bureau in Allenby’s headquarters, saw Hussein for the first time. Later Hogarth mentioned a return of the Jews to Palestine and the Sherif observed that he welcomed the Jews to all Arab countries. Hogarth reported that Hussein would not accept an independent Jewish state in Palestine, but he had not been instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Britain.²

In London the War Cabinet’s Middle East Committee, on 19 January, decided to send a Zionist commission to Palestine: it was necessary to put the Balfour Declaration into practice.³ Weizmann headed the commission; he was advised by Sykes and Ormsby-Gore. En route Weizmann assured Sir Reginald Wingate in the Residency in Cairo that there was complete accord between British and Jewish interests in Palestine. On 25 March General Clayton told Weizmann that support for the Arabs was a war measure: the development of Jewish colonization would be a permanent asset to Palestine. In Palestine Weizmann found that the Arab state of mind made useful negotiations impossible at that time. The Military Governor, Ronald Storrs, speaking ‘as a convinced Zionist’, thought the commission ‘lacked a sense of the dramatic activity’: the Balfour Declaration hardly opened for the inhabitants of Palestine ‘the beatific vision of a new Heaven and a new Earth’.⁴ Major Kinahan Cornwallis, the director of the Arab bureau in Cairo, warned that the frank avowal of Zionist aims had produced ‘a considerable revulsion of feelings amongst the Palestinians, who have for the first time come into contact with European Jews of good standing’.⁵ On 18 April Clayton wrote to Sykes that while he was personally in favour of Zionism, caution was necessary to bring that policy to a successful conclusion.⁶ In June Weizmann saw Feisal near Aqaba. Feisal insisted that, as an Arab, he refused to consider Palestine as a British protectorate, or an area for Jewish colonization.⁷ On 7 May, at the time of the Zionism commission, seven Arab leaders in Cairo asked for an assurance that it was the aim of the British government that the Arabs should enjoy complete independence in all the Arab countries, which would be formed into a federation like the United States. Sykes drafted the reply. This was not submitted to Balfour. It was ambiguous, full of reservations and was not well received by the Arabs. Arab territories free from Turkish rule or liberated by Arab armies would have governments ‘based upon the principle of the consent of the governed’. In those areas still under Turkish rule, northern Iraq and most of Syria, Britain desired that the oppressed peoples should obtain their freedom and independence.⁸

At this time another factor influenced British Middle Eastern policy: oil. In 1916, on the recommendations of Admiral Slade, a start was made to form a British National Oil Company to check the dominance of Royal Dutch-Shell and the American Standard Oil. During July 1918, at the instigation of Sir Reginald Hall, the Admiralty Director of Naval Intelligence, Slade circulated a memorandum on the significance of oilfields in the Middle East. On 1 August Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey urged Balfour to read this vitally important paper: oil could take the place of coal in the next war, or would be at least of equal importance. The only potential supply under British control was in Persia and Mesopotamia. Balfour thought that the securing of these oil wells would be imperialistic, but Hankey overcame his resistance,⁹ and on 13 August the Foreign Secretary told a conference of dominion prime ministers that it would be unthinkable to allow Iraq to revert to Turkish or Arab rule as Mesopotamia could supply the British Empire with the one resource it lacked: oil. Mesopotamia would have to be the exception to the policy that there should be no expansion of the British Empire as a result of the war. The same day Lloyd George told the conference that he was prepared to surrender British control of Palestine and a German African colony to the United States to secure approval of British control over Mesopotamia.¹⁰ Two days later Curzon told the War Cabinet that he would accept the trusteeship of Palestine being offered to the United States. G. N. Barnes thought that Palestine and Mesopotamia should be Arab states under British guardianship, while Austen Chamberlain argued that the question was one of the security of the British Empire, particularly India and its allies. Both the Prime Minister of New Zealand, W. F. Massey, and Montagu were worried at the effects upon the Muslim population of the British Empire handing over a mainly Muslim country, Palestine, to the United States, whose ideas on the future of Palestine might be unsympathetic.¹¹ In October 1918 Toynbee, in the Political Intelligence Department, stated in a memorandum that Britain had pledged to Hussein that Palestine should be ‘Arab’ and ‘independent’. He recommended that whatever the administration of Palestine and the facilities granted to non-Arab elements in the population, it should nominally be included in an Arab confederation.¹²

In the Middle East the Allied forces advanced: Damascus fell on 1 October 1918; Beirut on 8 October; and Aleppo on 26 October. On 30 October Turkey capitulated and signed the Mudros armistice. The Ottoman Empire was finished. Wherever possible Allenby allowed Feisal’s troops to take over the administration in the captured cities, but, following objections from France, Feisal’s flag was lowered in Beirut. Iraq became an Anglo-Indian administrative unit. The rest was afterwards divided between France and Britain: France administered Syria and the Lebanon coastal area from Tyre to Cilicia; Britain the territory that later formed the Palestine mandate.¹³

Friction between Zionists and Arabs grew in the British area with, as Sykes reported, fears that the Zionist objective was an independent Jewish state. Toynbee minuted on 2 December that British policy should be founded on a Palestinian state with Palestinian citizenship for all inhabitants, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. ‘This alone seems consistent with Mr Balfour’s letter. Hebrew might be made an official language, but the Jewish element should not be allowed to form a state within the state, enjoying greater privileges than the rest of the population.’¹⁴ Clayton warned that anti-Jewish action might be initiated by the Arabs to show opposition to Zionism. He found it pertinent to mention that the administrator’s latest reports gave the existing population of Palestine as 512,000 Muslims, 61,000 Christians and 66,000 Jews.¹⁵ Arab notables petitioned Balfour, Wilson and the peace conference at Paris:

The country is ours and has been so of old. We have lived in it longer than they did, and have worked in it more than they did. Our historical and religious relations with it, we Moslems and Christians, far exceed those of the Jews. Therefore, their claims to their ancient historical rights in the country do not give them the right of appropriating it, in as much as in our historical rights we Arabs cannot justify our claims in Spain, our old home, where our rule and glory flourished for eight centuries and thus gave birth to the modern civilization of Europe.¹⁶

Against this background, the newly named Eastern Committee met on 5 December 1918. Curzon said that he doubted whether there was anyone who favoured an international administration of Palestine. Nobody wanted France there. He doubted whether American custodianship was a wise idea. The committee had to consider Britain being invited to take charge. Lord Robert Cecil was not enthusiastic: Britain would not get anything out of it and would just have to keep the peace between Arabs and Jews. In reply to Smuts’s protest that it would affect Jewish national opinion, ‘and nationally they are a great people’, Cecil pointed out that they were likely to quarrel with the protecting power.¹⁷ On 16 December the committee adopted appropriate resolutions for the peace conference: either Britain or the United States should act as the representative of the nations in Palestine.¹⁸

Britain had used 1,400,000 men in the eastern campaign. At the end of the war most of the occupying 1 million troops were British. Britain wanted to revise the Sykes–Picot agreement, but France refused. On 1 December Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, spoke to Lloyd George in London and apparently agreed to Britain attaching Mosul to Iraq and Palestine being under British control. In December the Eastern Committee decided to support Feisal as a leader of an Arab state centred at Damascus, and to follow the principle of self-determination over Syria. The Foreign Office was worried about the spread of French influence throughout the Arab world, and felt that Palestine was desirable for strategic reasons. It also supported the Sherif, while the India Office backed Ibn Saud. The British position was strengthened by the acceptance of Smuts’s mandate scheme at the peace conference: Smuts claimed that areas like Mesopotamia were not ready for self-government, and Palestine with its population problem would have to be administered by an outside power. Syria, however, was almost ready for independence. This meant that France would be restricted, having only limited power in Syria, while Britain would have effective control in Mesopotamia and Palestine.¹⁹

Feisal was chosen by T. E. Lawrence. On his return from Damascus Lawrence told the Eastern Committee that Feisal was pro-British, but that could change if Britain backed French claims in the East. Perhaps influenced by his meetings with Robert Cecil, Lawrence suggested that Feisal wanted British or American Zionists as advisers. Apart from allowing the French Beirut and the Lebanon, Lawrence hoped to ‘bif’ them out everywhere else and scrap the Sykes–Picot agreement.²⁰ In Mesopotamia Lawrence wanted Zeid and Abdullah as British nominees. But this was opposed by the British representative there, Sir Percy Cox, and the India Office worried about the effect on Muslims in India.²¹ Lawrence, however, suggested that Feisal should represent Hussein at the peace conference. France did not like this. Feisal was slighted travelling through Paris en route to London. In London Feisal saw Balfour and gave him the impression that he was vehemently anti-French. Feisal thought Britain had behaved badly over Beirut. Even Smuts conceded to the Eastern Committee that the Arabs had been in Beirut before the British arrived, but agreed that it went naturally with the Lebanon and had to be given to the French. At the instigation of Lawrence, Feisal also saw Weizmann. Lawrence acted as interpreter, and his inadequate knowledge of Arabic could account for subsequent misunderstandings. Early in January 1919 Feisal signed an agreement with Weizmann for Zionist money and financial advice in return for allowing the Zionists the right to enter Palestine and to settle even beyond its borders. But Feisal changed Weizmann’s phrases ‘Jewish state’ and ‘Jewish government’ to ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian government’, and added a codicil to the document in effect making all this conditional on the Arabs attaining their independence. This codicil was abbreviated and misleadingly translated by Lawrence, who omitted ‘independence’.²²

At this time Curzon understood the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to cover Palestine. He told the Eastern Committee on 5 December 1918 that in October 1915 Palestine was included in the areas Britain pledged should be Arab and independent in the future.²³ This interpretation was confirmed by Sir Lewis Mallet, the head of the Turkish section to the British delegation in Paris, in a minute of 30 January 1919: Britain was committed by implication to the independence of all Arab countries excepting those areas mentioned by McMahon ‘from which Palestine was excluded’. Balfour initialled this.²⁴ But Weizmann in his meeting with Feisal was reported to have spoken of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth under British trusteeship. Curzon found the dictionary definition of commonwealth to be ‘a State’, ‘a body-politic’, ‘an independent community’, ‘a republic’. That, he felt, was what the Zionists wanted with British trusteeship as a screen. Balfour, on 20 January 1919, recorded that, so far as he knew, Weizmann had never claimed a Jewish ‘Government’ of Palestine: ‘Such a claim is in my opinion certainly inadmissible and personally I do not think we should go further than the original declaration which I made to Lord Rothschild’. Curzon remained convinced that Weizmann contemplated a Jewish state, a Jewish nation, with a subordinate population of Arabs ruled by Jews and with the Jews in possession of the fat of the land, and directing the administration.²⁵ On 19 February Balfour wrote to Lloyd George about the British position at the peace conference: the weak point in Britain’s position was that it rightly declined to accept the principle of self-determination for Palestine; if the inhabitants were consulted they would give an anti-Jewish verdict. The justification was that Palestine was exceptional: the question was one of world importance, and Britain thought the Jews had a historic claim to a home in their ancient land provided that home could be given to them without either dispossessing or oppressing the present inhabitants.²⁶

But, in many ways, the rival Arab and Zionist claims became subsumed in a British policy at the peace conference dominated by the French factor. This position was clearly stated by Sir Arthur Hirtzel, the Assistant Under-Secretary for India, in a memorandum of 14 February on the French claims in Syria. He argued that Britain needed an understanding with France which should not be endangered by supporting Arab claims. The United States could withdraw from world affairs. Britain and France might have to face together a revival of German power or the threat of bolshevism. He referred to ‘the purely parochial importance of the Arab question’ as compared with ‘the ecumenical importance of the maintenance of cordial relations with France’. The Arabs had to pay the price for Britain. In 1915 Hirtzel had recorded that the Arabs were no more capable of administering than Red Indians; in 1919 he thought profession of support for Arab self-determination ‘make believe’. He supported French claims in Syria. Britain should act as an ‘honest broker’ between the French and Arabs, telling Feisal that he should come to terms with the French. In effect this was British policy. Milner told Clemenceau that until a Franco-Arab arrangement had been reached British troops would remain in Syria; but Feisal and Clemenceau failed to come to terms.²⁷

At Paris Feisal, in the words of Sir James Headlam-Morley, was ‘the most dignified figure’.²⁸ He and Lawrence appeared in Arab dress before the Council of Ten on 6 February 1919. Feisal pleaded for the independence of all the Arab countries. In an interview with a Paris newspaper he specifically mentioned Palestine in this regard; in another one, on 1 March, he said oppressed Jews would be welcome in Palestine provided they submitted to an Islamic authority or a Christian one delegated by the League of Nations. This so disturbed the Zionist delegates that a letter was drawn up by Lawrence, Meinertzhagen, Weizmann and Felix Frankfurter – and attributed to Feisal – to the effect that Feisal found the Zionist proposals moderate and looked forward to mutual co-operation.²⁹

Weizmann was the principal Zionist speaker in Paris. When questioned by Robert Lansing, the American Secretary of State, he explained that the Zionists wanted to send 70,000 to 80,000 Jews annually to Palestine. The Zionist Organization did not want an autonomous Jewish government. The hope was that a nationality would gradually be built up to ‘make Palestine as Jewish as America is American or England English’. When the Jews formed the large majority, it would be time to establish such a government as would answer to the state of the development of the country and to Jewish ideals. A conference of Zionist leaders, attended by Weizmann, was more specific: it demanded absolute control of immigration into Palestine; official observance of Jewish holidays; immediate control of water rights carrying with it control of the land; Jewish nationalization of all public land and of the surplus land of all private estates exceeding a certain size; complete control of all public works; Jewish supervision of all educational institutions; and use of Hebrew as the main language in all schools. On 25 March Curzon wrote to Balfour that he shuddered at the prospect of Britain having to adjust these ambitions to the interests of the native population.³⁰

The King-Crane Commission

Lloyd George, following his disagreements with the French, decided that as France was not going to send commissioners to the Middle East to determine the wishes of the inhabitants as to a mandatory power, Britain could not do so either. So two American commissioners, Charles R. Crane and H. C. King, went on their own. They found in Syria opposition to any separation of Syria and Palestine, a preference for an American mandate and failing that a British one, but under no circumstances would Syrians peaceably accept France as the mandatory power. Indeed, even Feisal was no longer prepared to accept a moderate Zionist programme in Palestine as part of a Syrian state under British trusteeship: his people had been frightened by the wider Zionist aspirations.³¹ Crane and King, though they started with a strong disposition in favour of Zionism, concluded that the extreme Zionist programme would have to be greatly modified if the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine were to be protected in the terms of the Balfour Declaration. They felt that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the non-Jewish inhabitants by various forms of purchase.³²

The findings of the commission were ignored. They were known to Britain, but the Americans did not publish them until 1922. Indeed, in the United States, Justice Louis D. Brandeis, the head of the American Zionist movement, told Balfour that Palestine should be the Jewish homeland, not merely that there be a Jewish homeland there. He assumed that was the commitment of the Balfour Declaration. The Jews there needed economic elbow room, and the future Jewish Palestine had to have control of the land and the natural resources. Balfour agreed, but pointed to the difficulties: the British and French agreement of November 1918 to consult the people of the East about their future; and in Palestine ‘we are dealing not with the wishes of an existing community but are consciously seeking to reconstitute a new community and definitely building for a numerical majority in the future’. On 11 August 1919 Balfour wrote to Curzon that the four Great Powers were committed to Zionism: ‘And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, 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.’³³ Feisal perhaps astutely observed that Britain was giving the impression that it had ‘sold the Arabs to suit the exigencies of politics in Europe’.³⁴

The San Remo Conference

Key policy-makers in Britain became increasingly concerned over the deterioration in Anglo-French relations, and the Cabinet decided that Britain should help France while at the same time remembering the commitments to the Arabs. There was the worry that the dispute over Syria could threaten co-operation with France in Europe. With the withdrawal of British troops, Britain allowed France to occupy Cilicia, Armenia and Syria. Feisal felt betrayed by Britain. He had to come to terms with the French, and late in 1919 he returned from Paris with a draft secret agreement providing for a French mandate over Syria and a separate Lebanon. Feisal would govern an Arab state with the help of French advisers. On 21 December 1919 France and Britain signed an agreement on oil rights: France would get a 25 per cent share of the Turkish Petroleum Company which was placed under British control. France agreed to Britain building two pipelines, and also a railway to transport oil from Mesopotamia and Persia through the French area in the Middle East to the Mediterranean.³⁵ In February 1920, at the Conference of London, France accepted the British view of the historic frontiers of Palestine stretching from Dan to Beersheba; Britain agreed to the boundary wanted by France between Syria and Turkey. Then, in March, the Syrians reacted to the proposed agreement with France: an elected assembly in Damascus proclaimed Feisal King of the sovereign independent state of Syria which included Palestine, Lebanon and Transjordan. From Cairo Allenby, fearing that France might drag Britain into war against the Arabs, urged that the powers acknowledge the sovereignty of Feisal over an Arab nation or confederation embracing Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the administration of Syria being ‘secured’ to France, and that of Palestine and Mesopotamia to Britain.³⁶ Feisal refused to go to Europe unless the independence of the Arabs was recognized.

It was against this background of rival interests that the conference at San Remo, in April 1920, decided the future of the Middle East. By then Britain had decided that Mesopotamian oil resources were sufficient to pay for the administration of that country. France and Britain reached an agreement on oil similar to the one of December 1919.³⁷ It was decided that the form of the mandates should be decided first by Britain and France, and then submitted to the League of Nations. The mandates for Syria and the Lebanon were allotted to France, and those for Palestine and Mesopotamia to Britain. The mandatory power in Palestine was to implement the Balfour Declaration. An independent decision of the Supreme Council declared Britain as the mandatory power in Palestine.³⁸

In Syria there were attacks on French positions. France with 90,000 troops, largely North African Arabs and Black Senegalese, responded and took Damascus on 25 July. Feisal went to Italy and then to London. Winston Churchill, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, told the Imperial Conference in 1921 that this spectacle had been painful to British opinion, but Britain’s strong ties with France had had to prevail. France enlarged the Lebanon with its Maronite Catholics and other Christian sects to secure a small Christian majority that could not be maintained because of the high Muslim birth-rate. This enlargement was at the expense of Syria.³⁹

Meanwhile Britain was drafting the terms of its mandate over Palestine. Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, objected to the phrase ‘development of a self-governing Commonwealth’: that was a ‘euphemism for a Jewish State, the very thing they accept and that we disallow’. On 20 March 1920 he minuted:

The Zionists are after a Jewish State with the Arabs as hewers of wood and drawers of water.

So are many British sympathizers with the Zionists.

Whether you use the word Commonwealth or State that is what it will be taken to mean.

This is not my view. I want the Arabs to have a chance and I don’t want a Hebrew State….

Here is a country with 580,000 Arabs and 30,000 or is it 60,000 Jews (by no means all Zionists). Acting upon the noble principles of self-determination and ending with a splendid appeal to the League of Nations, we then proceed to draw up a document which reeks of Judaism in every paragraph and is an avowed constitution for a Jewish State.

Even the poor Arabs are only allowed to look through the keyhole as a non-Jewish community.

It is quite clear that this mandate has been drawn up by someone reeling under the fumes of Zionism. If we are all to submit to that intoxicant, this draft is all right.⁴⁰

In effect the draft of the British mandate was prepared by the Zionists in Paris, and accepted by the British officials, Forbes Adams and Robert Vansittart. After objections, Hubert Young, working with Adams, made minor amendments to the Zionist draft, but the substance remained unaltered. The French Foreign Secretary, Philippe Berthelot, and Prime Minister, Alexandre Millerand, were alarmed by it: they thought it ‘much too judaized and judaizing’.⁴¹ Curzon had told Weizmann that he could not allow the phrase ‘recognizing the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine’, but in Paris Vansittart inserted this. Curzon minuted: ‘It is certain to be made the basis of all sorts of claims in the future. I do not myself recognize that the connection of the Jews with Palestine, which terminated 1,200 years ago, gives them any claim whatsoever.’ In the end Curzon had to accept similar phrasing.⁴²

In Palestine itself, on 4 April 1920, there were calls for the incorporation of Palestine into the kingdom of Syria. Arab rioters rampaged through the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. Over the next four days 9 people died and 244 were wounded, the Jews being the principal casualties. The Committee of Inquiry found that the Zionist Commission had provoked Arab hostility, and usurped functions proper to the government. Weizmann, concerned over the pogroms in the Ukraine and the deaths of 60,000 Jews there, wanted immigration restrictions relaxed to allow more Jews into Palestine and also land for them to settle. The military administration in Palestine was replaced by a civilian one under Herbert Samuel. Lloyd George appointed a man who, though a non-practising Jew, had become an ardent spokesman for the Zionist cause. Although Samuel never joined a Zionist organization, he had collaborated closely with Weizmann during 1918 and 1919, argued the Zionist case with Feisal and Allenby, and lobbied the Zionist cause in Paris at the peace conference. Allenby and senior British officers in Egypt and Palestine objected to the appointment. Samuel chose as his civil secretary Wyndham Deedes, a known sympathizer with Zionism and a close friend of Weizmann. Although Samuel’s administration in Palestine appeared favourable to the Zionists, he did appoint known opponents of Zionism to senior positions.⁴³

The Cairo Conference

At the beginning of 1921 Palestine and Mesopotamia became the concern of the Colonial Office under Winston Churchill.⁴⁴ Churchill had organized a new Middle East Department, and he persuaded T. E. Lawrence to join as adviser on Arab affairs. Together they effectively worked out British policy in the area before the conference at Cairo in March 1921.⁴⁵ The Cabinet confirmed Churchill as overall director of British policy in Arabia, Iraq and Palestine. Curzon accepted this.

In June 1920, following the destruction of the Arab dream of a free Arab confederacy under Feisal with the announcement of the mandate system, a rebellion had broken out in Iraq. British authority there broke down. Quelling the revolt cost £40m and 2,000 casualties. A. T. Wilson, who headed the civil administration, recommended that Feisal should head an Arab administration there. At a dinner in London, Lawrence and Lord Winterton persuaded Feisal to accept the kingdom of Iraq. From the meeting of the principal British administrators and military officers in the Middle East, held at Cairo in March, Churchill reported to Lloyd George a unanimous view in favour of selecting Feisal. On 22 March the Cabinet accepted Churchill’s proposal, and approved arrangements to stage an election. Churchill could not wait for a demand for Feisal from Mesopotamia, wanted by Lloyd George who was worried about French reaction. Instead the Colonial Secretary accepted a procedure devised by Sir Percy Cox, his secretary Gertrude Bell and Lawrence. In a referendum 96 per cent of those who voted favoured Feisal. He became King of Iraq in August 1921.⁴⁶

While the conference was sitting in Cairo, Abdullah, Hussein’s third son, marched into Amman, the main city of Transjordan, with the apparent intention of liberating Syria and restoring Feisal as its ruler. France urged Britain to get rid of Abdullah. Churchill was worried that Transjordan could become a base for anti-Zionist activities. Lawrence, however, suggested that if there were a just policy in Transjordan opposition to Zionism would decrease in four to five years. If Abdullah were appointed ruler he could persuade him to check anti-Zionism. Lawrence envisaged a ruler of Transjordan who would not be too powerful, and hence would have to rely on the British government to stay in office. Churchill endorsed this idea, provided Abdullah prevented anti-French and anti-Zionist propaganda in Transjordan. Abdullah might regard British policy more sympathetically if Britain reached a general understanding with his family: his brother would be appointed to the throne of Iraq, a subsidy would be paid to Hussein and there would have to be a guarantee to restrain Ibn Saud. On 21 March Lawrence met Abdullah at Salt and urged his support for installing Feisal in Iraq and threatened the danger of Ibn Saud reaching Mecca. In Jerusalem Churchill, Samuel and Lawrence persuaded Abdullah to accept their proposals. Samuel assured Abdullah that there was no question of setting up a Jewish government in Palestine. Following this, Article 25 was introduced into the Palestine mandate: this entitled Britain to ‘postpone or withhold’ application of certain unsuitable provisions, and to provide local administration for Transjordan. Zionist leaders were informed of this on 25 April and accepted the distinction between Palestine and Transjordan without comment. The French did not like this creation of a separate dependency. On 7 February 1922 Churchill recorded that it was undesirable, at that time, to move Transjordan towards closer assimilation into Palestine. The Council of the League received a British memorandum on Article 25 on 16 September 1922: the provisions pertaining to Zionism would not be applicable to Transjordan, defined as all territory lying to the east of a line drawn from a point 2 miles (3km) west of Aqaba up the centre of the Wadi Araba, Dead Sea and Jordan River to its junction with the River Yarmuk, and thence up the centre of that river to the Syrian frontier. The council endorsed the memorandum. In December 1922 Britain recognized the independent constitutional government in Transjordan under the Emir Abdullah. A second agreement in 1928 confirmed Britain’s authority by virtue of the mandate in affairs affecting international obligations. For the first time Palestine was defined in the new restricted sense as the area west of the Jordan. This lasted until 1946 when a treaty of alliance recognized Transjordan as a fully independent state with Abdullah as its sovereign ruler.⁴⁷

Having established Abdullah in Transjordan, Britain still had to cope with Ibn Saud and Hussein. For over a year Britain had encouraged Ibn Saud to attack the Shammar, the rulers of northern Nejd. But a projected road and air route between Palestine and Iraq necessitated the friendship of the Shammar, so the Cairo Conference recommended that Ibn Saud be given a subsidy of £100,000 a year. It would be paid by monthly instalments, dependent on the fulfilment of certain conditions. The conference also recommended that Hussein be paid a similar subsidy. But Hussein had first to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, including the mandatory principle and the disposal of the Arab countries. Lawrence and the Middle East Department prepared a treaty for Hussein to sign, and on 8 July 1921 Lawrence sailed for Jedda. For two months Hussein insisted that Britain should withdraw from Palestine and ‘leave the question to the nation’. Curzon then ordered Lawrence to Transjordan to keep Abdullah on the throne there, and the Colonial Office tried other tactics – unsuccessfully. Hussein empowered Abdullah to negotiate for him, and on 9 December Abdullah signed an agreement with Lawrence. Hussein refused to ratify it. In 1924 Ibn Saud and the Wahhabis invaded the Hejaz and captured Mecca. Hussein abdicated in favour of his eldest son Ali and went into exile. But Medina and Jedda surrendered, and in January 1926 Ibn Saud became King of the Hejaz. In the Treaty of Jedda of 1927 Britain acknowledged this. In 1932 Ibn Saud took the title of King of Saudi Arabia.⁴⁸

The 1922 White Paper on Palestine

The Cairo Conference was mainly concerned with Iraq and Transjordan. Discussion on Palestine centred on the creation and financing of a defence force. Afterwards, Churchill travelled to Jerusalem: he heard Arab demands for the abolition of the principle of a national home for the Jews and the creation of a national government elected by those resident in Palestine before the war. But the Colonial Secretary argued that the national home would be good for the Jews, the British Empire and the Arabs who dwelt in Palestine.⁴⁹ Planting a tree on the site of the Hebrew university on Mount Scopus, Churchill said that personally his heart was full of sympathy for Zionism. But he mentioned Britain’s double promise and the assurance that the non-Jewish inhabitants should not suffer as a consequence of the national home.⁵⁰ At a time of agitation over Churchill’s visit the old Mufti of Jerusalem died. The government declared Hajj Amin al-Husseini, an outspoken opponent of the Jewish national home who had been charged with incitement to violence in the April 1920 riots, elected. Later, with Samuel’s approval, Hajj Amin al-Husseini became President of the newly created Supreme Muslim Council and effective head of the Muslim community in Palestine.

An illegal May Day procession by Jewish communists in Tel Aviv led to clashes with Jewish socialists and Arab riots in Jaffa: 27 Jews and 3 Arabs were killed that day. The Haganah, the Jewish army, intervened with administration support, but Arab attacks continued and martial law was proclaimed. By 7 May 47 Jews and 48 Arabs had died. Samuel tried conciliation: he suspended Jewish immigration. The Va’ad Leumi, the National Council of the Jews of Palestine, threatened to resign. General William Congreve, the commander of British forces in the Middle East, criticized Samuel for trying to enforce the policy of the Jewish national home on a majority who hated it and intended to fight. Churchill immediately invited the Air Ministry to assume responsibility for the defence of Palestine. An Arab delegation went to London, but was told by Churchill on 22 August 1921 that Britain meant to carry out the Balfour Declaration. Negotiations between the delegation and the Colonial Office made no progress. In May 1922 Samuel visited England and drew up a statement of policy, accepted by Churchill and the Cabinet. It was then published in a White Paper in June and approved by the House of Commons.⁵¹

This document formed the basis of British policy in Palestine for almost a decade. On the one hand it attempted to reassure the Arabs: Britain had never contemplated the disappearance or the subordination of the Arab population, language or culture in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration did not envisage that Palestine as a whole would be converted into a Jewish national home. It said that such a home should be founded in Palestine. The Zionist Commission in Palestine did not have any share in the general administration of the country. The development of the Jewish national home in Palestine did not mean the imposition of Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole, but the further development of the existing Jewish community, with the assistance of Jews in other parts of the world, so that it could become a centre in which Jewish people as a whole could take an interest. To enable the Jewish community in Palestine to develop it was essential that it should be known that it was in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance. The White Paper said that was the interpretation the British government placed on the Balfour Declaration.⁵² The Zionists formally accepted this document. The Arab delegation rejected it and returned to Palestine.

At the time of the publication of the White Paper, Parliament discussed Zionism in relation to the Rutenberg scheme which would give Zionists control over the development of resources for the production of electricity in Palestine. It would also dispossess Arabs of land. On 21 June Lord Islington moved a motion in the House of Lords that the Palestine mandate was unacceptable as it was opposed to the sentiments and wishes of the great majority of the people of Palestine. Though challenged by Balfour, Islington carried the House by 60 votes to 29. Churchill, however, defended the Rutenberg concession in the House of Commons. That House endorsed the Colonial Secretary’s policy by 292 votes to 35.⁵³

On 22 July the League of Nations approved the Palestine mandate.⁵⁴ Britain assumed a responsibility it had deliberately sought, partly to curtail French interests in the Middle East, partly to satisfy the Zionist aspirations of a section of the Establishment. Effectively, however, the decision had already been taken at the San Remo Conference that Palestine would constitute a distinct exception to the Wilsonian principle of self-determination. It could be seen as a move by the Great Powers to impose a settlement on an area of significance for their strategic interests. If this endangered the rights of the local inhabitants that was a price to be paid. Alternatively, it is possible to view the League of Nations’ decision as making possible Herzl’s dream of a Zionist state and a refuge for persecuted Jews. The British White Paper of 1922 was a shrewd compromise: while suggesting continued support for Zionism, it sought to reassure the Arabs and stated that Palestine would not constitute the national home, but merely a national home for the Jews with no subordination of the Arab population.

The 1922 Declaration on Egypt

The year 1922, as well as being notable for an evolution of a British policy that attempted to balance the conflicting interests in Palestine, also saw formal independence being conceded to Egypt and the abandonment of Kitchener’s 1914 paternalistic experiment of a protectorate. By the end of 1917 Sir Reginald Wingate, the High Commissioner, had detected a mood of truculence among the Egyptian ministers which developed a year later into demands for complete autonomy. Nationalist feelings focused around Sa’d Zaghlul, a former judge who had held ministerial office with Cromer’s approval. He led a group of notables which later emerged into the Wafd or ‘Delegation’ Party.⁵⁵ Wingate urged a liberal programme, and at the beginning of 1919 Balfour agreed to receive Egyptian ministers in March. Curzon questioned the need for concessions to the Egyptians, and when Sir Milne Cheetham, Wingate’s deputy, suggested Zaghlul and his friends be deported, Curzon agreed. Disturbances ensued throughout Egypt in March, and Allenby replaced Wingate. Allenby secured the release of Zaghlul and his party, and Lloyd George suggested a commission under Milner to inquire into the future of the protectorate. In December 1919 the Milner mission arrived in Egypt. The proconsul concluded that Egyptian policy had to be subordinated to the wider British interests in the Middle East and India, and this analysis formed the background of the treaty of alliance that maintained British strategic control of, and influence in, Egypt. In the middle of 1920 the Milner mission and Zaghlul conferred in London, and by the middle of August reached agreement. Though Egypt would become an independent constitutional monarchy, it would be bound by a treaty of alliance with Britain. Britain would be allowed to station troops in Egypt, and the British High Commissioner would remain pre-eminent in Cairo. Milner felt this would give Britain a strong foothold in Egypt, a vital link in the chain of empire. Churchill did not like the agreement, nor did Montagu. Indeed, the creation of the Middle Eastern Department under Churchill probably led Curzon, fearing Churchill’s programme of stability and retrenchment, to open negotiation with the Egyptian nationalists. These could not really progress because they took place against the background of debates on the Irish question. Zaghlul organized a political crisis in Egypt, and on 8 January 1922 the Residency in Cairo accepted a deal whereby an Egyptian ministry would be formed provided Britain recognized Egyptian independence. Curzon risked Churchill’s wrath, and supported Allenby in Cabinet, initially unsuccessfully. Allenby threatened resignation. Lloyd George forced the matter through Cabinet, and by the 1922 Declaration Britain pledged itself only to intervene in the affairs of Egypt if the imperial interest or that of foreign communities necessitated it. Egypt could conduct its own foreign policy provided it did not clash with Britain’s international interests.⁵⁶

The Sultan in Egypt became King Fuad I. A parliamentary constitution was introduced, but the King retained considerable powers. The Wafd came to power, but it tended to be dominated by landowners, and its leading politicians battled with the other main political forces in Egypt – the King and the ultimate authority of Britain.⁵⁷

The period from the time of Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem in December 1917 to his stand over the 1922 Declaration on Egypt saw the division of the Middle East among the European powers. It resembled the scramble for Africa in the 1890s. The powers pursued their own interests at the expense of any ideas of self-determination. Even Woodrow Wilson, in many ways the initiator and proponent of this philosophy, found exceptions to it, as was evidenced in the American disregard for the report of the King–Crane Commission. Domestic factors and the emerging Zionist lobby, headed by respected personalities, played an increasingly important role in the politics of the United States. Many Western officials still thought the Arabs incapable of administration or self-government. Some evidenced a racial superiority and scorn, others the sort of benevolence towards the lesser breeds beneath the law shown by Rudyard Kipling in his poem ‘White Man’s Burden’, written in the late 1890s to urge the United States to undertake imperial responsibilities and annex Cuba. The defeat of Germany and Turkey and the collapse of the Tsar suddenly made Britain, with its 1 million occupying troops, the dominant power in an area stretching from India to Constantinople, from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. The acquisition of this vast new empire had not been planned. It was rather unexpected. Initially there had been strategic considerations influenced by the opening of the Suez Canal and the need to safeguard the route to India, and this was followed by the significance of oil when the British navy moved over to oil-fired ships in the early years of the twentieth century. But the results of the military campaigns in the Middle East of the First World War could not have been foreseen. Britain organized its vast new empire with the confidence of a nineteenth-century imperialistic power. There were limitations. Some British officials distrusted France. But a future had to be considered where the United States might withdraw from world responsibilities, and Britain and France alone would have to face either Germany or Russia. France had to be accommodated, but preferably not in a way that would endanger the British imperial interest. Even if Britain’s imperial strength was only a façade, it at least had to appear a reality.

British policy in the Middle East was decided not just by the Cabinet, but by military officers and permanent officials. It was a handful of men, and a few women, who decided boundaries and laid the foundations of new states. Many came from upper-class backgrounds, and had been through a public school system designed to enable both the exercising of authority and an understanding of the suffering that being under that authority might entail. Others, like Mark Sykes, had had a more Bohemian education. Many, like Lawrence, Curzon and Milner, had lived in the Middle East. This was a time of proconsuls and personal rule. Men were chosen, not elected. Individual friendships, hatreds and rivalries determined the destiny of the Arabs and the Zionists.

Individuals with power could be influenced. The Zionists knew this, and chose their men carefully. But, from 1919, Zionist influence in London, and particularly in the Foreign Office, lessened. Many of their converts became disillusioned as they realized that what was being pursued was a Zionist state in Palestine. In February 1919 Robert Cecil recorded his misgivings over the British Pro-Zionist policy. Ronald Graham found that he was no longer a ‘hot partisan’: Weizmann had sold Britain a ‘pup’. Ormsby-Gore, in February 1919, found political Zionism an ‘embarrassment’. Even Sykes had doubts. In Curzon’s Foreign Office many of the officials dealing with Palestine opposed Zionism, as did the Foreign Secretary.⁵⁸ But the Zionists still managed to influence the right people at the right time, as was shown by Vansittart’s activities in Paris. Effectively, they drafted the British mandate for Palestine. Curzon only secured minor modifications. When control of Palestine shifted to the Colonial Office, Churchill, though sympathetic to the Zionist cause, came under the influence of Lawrence of Arabia and showed an awareness of Arab fears. This was reflected in the White Paper of 1922, which stressed that the Balfour Declaration merely envisaged a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and no subordination of the Arabs to Zionism.

The seeds of the Arab–Israeli conflict, however, were sown at the San Remo Conference. French and British mandates were imposed unceremoniously on reluctant Arab populations, and Palestine was specifically excluded from the principle of self-determination. The Western powers carved up an area in their own imperial and domestic interests. The Arabs had little say. Lawrence was often seen as their spokesman. He had personal difficulties. After establishing Feisal in Iraq, Abdullah in Transjordan and attempting to settle with Hussein, he seems to have felt that his debt to the Arabs had been paid. Lawrence left the Arabs behind, and embarked upon his own personal resistentialist odyssey.

References

1FO 371, 3054, Memorandum by Toynbee and Namier, 19 Dec. 1917.

2FO 882, 7, ff. 236–50; 13, ff. 35–40.

3Cab 27, 23, 19 Jan. 1918.

4FO 371, 3398, Weizmann to Ormsby-Gore, 16 April 1918; Storrs to Foreign Office, 22 April 1918.

5Ibid., 3394, Memorandum by Cornwallis, 20 April 1918.

6Clayton Papers (University of Durham), Clayton to Sykes, 18 April 1918. Quoted by Jon Kimche, Palestine or Israel (London 1973), p. 45.

7FO 882, 14, Memorandum by P. C. Joyce, 5 June 1918; Memorandum by Walrond, July 1918.

8FO 371, 3380, ff. 557–72.

9Stephen Roskill, Hankey, Man of Secrets, Vol. I, 1877–1918 (London 1970), pp. 586–587.

10Cab 23, 43, Imperial War Cabinet Minutes, 13 Aug. 1918; W. H. Rothwell, ‘Mesopotamia in British war aims, 1914–1918’, Historical Journal, XIII (1970), pp. 273–94 at p. 290.

11Cab 23, 7, War Cabinet Minutes, 15 Aug. 1918.

12FO 800, 221, Memorandum by Toynbee, Oct. 1918.

13Peter Mansfield, The Ottoman Empire and its Successors (London 1973), pp. 45–6; M. E. Yapp, The Making of the Modern Near East 1792–1923 (London 1987), pp. 322–31.

14FO 371, 3398, Sykes to Ormsby-Gore, Nov. 1918, Minute by Toynbee, 2 Dec. 1918.

15Ibid., 3386, Clayton to Foreign Office, 6 Dec. 1918.

16Ibid., 4153, Arab Petitions.

17Cab 27, 24, Minutes of Eastern Committee, 5 Dec. 1918.

18Ibid., Minutes of Eastern Committee, 5 Dec. 1918.

19Michael L. Dockrill and J. Douglas Goold, Peace without Promise. Britain and the Peace Conference, 1919–23 (London 1981), pp. 143–50.

20Cab 27, 24, 29 Oct. 1918; 36, Report by Lawrence to War Office, 4 Nov. 1918.

21Ibid., 37, Baghdad to India Office, 20 Nov. 1918.

22For an account based on Weizmann’s record see Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (London 1971), pp. 139–41; for an account based on Feisal’s correspondence see A. L. Tibawi, Anglo-Arab Relations and the Question of Palestine 1914–1921 (London 1977), pp. 330–4; FO 608, 98.

23Cab 27, 24, Minutes of Eastern Committee, 5 Dec. 1918.

24FO 608, 98, f. 247, Minute by Mallet, 30 Jan. 1919.

25FO 371, 4153, Minute by Graham, 25 Jan. 1919; Curzon to Graham, 26 Jan. 1919; FO 800, 215, Balfour to Curzon, 20 Jan. 1919; Curzon to Balfour, 26 Jan. 1919.

26FO 371, 4179, Balfour to Lloyd George (extract), 19 Feb. 1919.

27Milner Collection (Public Record Office, London), PRO 30, 30/10, Memorandum by Hirtzel on France’s claim to Syria, 14 Feb. 1919.

28James Headlam-Morley, Agnes Headlam-Morley et al. (Eds), A Memoir of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (London 1972), p. 30.

29Desmond Stewart, T. E. Lawrence (London 1979), pp. 222–3; Tibawi, op. cit., pp. 343–9; Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary 1917–1956 (London 1959), pp. 14–15; Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances (Oxford 1967), pp. 182–3; FO 608, 92; Zeine N. Zeine, The Struggle for Arab Independence. Western Diplomacy and the Rise and Fall of Feisal’s Kingdom in Syria (Beirut 1960), pp. 65–83.

30Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return. The Emergence of Jewish Statehood (London 1978), pp. 117–21; Dockrill and Goold, op. cit., pp. 158–62.

31Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939 (hereafter cited as DBFP), 1st series, Vol. IV, pp. 311–13, French to Curzon, Telegram, 10 July 1919.

32For Report see Foreign Relations of the United States, Peace Conference 1919, Vol. 12, pp. 751–863; see also H. N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission (Beirut 1963), passim.

33FO 800, 217, Interview between Balfour and Brandeis; FO 371, 4183, Balfour to Curzon, 11 Aug. 1919.

34DBFP, 1st series, Vol. IV, pp. 290–2, Appendix B, Clayton to Curzon, 23 July 1919. In August Balfour minuted: ‘I am an ardent Zionist.’ (Ibid., pp. 329–30, Curzon to Balfour, 5 Aug. 1919; Minute by Balfour.)

35Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 114–16, Memorandum of Agreement between Greenwood and Berenger, 21 Dec. 1919.

36Ibid., Vol. XIII, p. 231, Allenby to Curzon, Telegram, 18 March 1920.

37Ibid., Vol. VIII, pp. 9–19, Notes of Meeting of British, French and Italian Delegations at San Remo on 18 April 1920, 24 April 1920.

38Ibid., pp. 251–2, Curzon to Hardinge, Telegram, 26 April 1920.

39Mansfield, Ottoman Empire and its Successors, pp. 54–5.

40FO 371, 5199, f. 6 ff. Minute by Curzon, March 1920; Minutes by Curzon, 20 March 1920.

41Ibid., 5244, Vansittart to Young, 21 June 1920.

42Ibid., 5245, Minute by Curzon, 6 Aug. 1920; Minute by J. A. C. Tilley, 10 Sept. 1920; 5248, Memorandum by Curzon for Cabinet, 30 Nov. 1920.

43Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine. The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917–1929, 2nd edn (Oxford 1991), pp. 34–88.

44DBFP, 1st series, Vol. XIII, p. 428, Curzon to Samuel, 7 Jan. 1921.

45Aaron S. Klieman, Foundations of British Policy in the Arab World: The Cairo Conference of 1921 (Baltimore 1970), p. 248.

46FO 686, 85; AIR 8 (Public Record Office, London), 37; Knightley and Simpson, op. cit., pp. 165–8; John Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East. Imperial Policy in the Aftermath of War 1918–1922 (London 1981), pp. 191–207, 215–23.

47Knightley and Simpson, op. cit., pp. 168–71; Klieman, op. cit., pp. 205–35; Ma’an Abu Nowar, The History of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Vol. I, The Creation and Development of Transjordan: 1920–1929 (Oxford 1989), p. 45.

48FO 686, 93; AIR 8, 37; Knightley and Simpson, op. cit., pp. 171–7; Mansfield, Ottoman Empire and its Successors, pp. 58–9; Leslie McLoughlin, Ibn Saud: Founder of a Kingdom (London 1993), pp. 79–84.

49Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill, Vol. IV (London 1975), pp. 564–9.

50Ibid., pp. 570–1, 574, 597.

51Wasserstein, op. cit., pp. 89–118.

52British Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 1700, Correspondence with the Palestine Arab Delegation and the Zionist Organization.

53United Kingdom Parliamentary Debates House of Lords, 50, cols 994–1019, 21 June 1922, House of Commons, 156, cols 332–5, 4 July 1922.

54Copy of text in Doreen Ingrams, Palestine Papers 1917–1922 (London 1972), pp. 177–83.

55See Elie Kedourie. ‘Sa’d Zaghlul and the British’, The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies (London 1970), pp. 82–159.

56Darwin, op. cit., pp. 49–137; Peter Mansfield, The British in Egypt (London 1971), p. 220.

57Elie Kedourie, ‘The genesis of the Egyptian Constitution of 1923’, The Chatham House Version, pp. 160–76; Mansfield, Ottoman Empire and its Successors, pp. 62–3.

58Wasserstein, op. cit., p. 55.