A Peace to End all Peace (35 page)

“General Smuts had expressed very decided views as to the strategical importance of Palestine to the British Empire,” Lloyd George later wrote,
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and became immediately involved with the issue. Perhaps because it had been decided that the political links of the empire were not to be tightened, Smuts and Amery moved at the same time to cement the geographical links of the entities comprising the British system; and both men concentrated on the importance of Palestine. If broadly defined, and in conjunction with Mesopotamia, Palestine gave Britain the land road from Egypt to India and brought together the empires of Africa and Asia. The capture of German East Africa by Botha and Smuts had already created a continuous stretch of British-controlled territories between, on the one hand, Cape Town, the Atlantic Ocean port at the southern tip of Africa, and, on the other, Suez, which bridged the Mediterranean and the Red Sea at the continent’s northeastern tip. With the addition of Palestine and Mesopotamia, the Cape Town to Suez stretch could be linked up with the stretch of territory that ran through British-controlled Persia and the Indian Empire to Burma, Malaya, and the two great Dominions in the Pacific—Australia and New Zealand. As of 1917, Palestine was the key missing link that could join together the parts of the British Empire so that they would form a continuous chain from the Atlantic to the middle of the Pacific.

The Prime Minister, of course, saw it the same way. As he wrote later, “For the British Empire, the fight with Turkey had a special importance of its own…The Turkish Empire lay right across the track by land or water to our great possessions in the East—India, Burma, Malaya, Borneo, Hong Kong, and the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand.”
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Amery, who was about to advise the Cabinet that continued Ottoman (and thus German) control of Palestine was a future danger to the British Empire, believed, with the Prime Minister, that Palestine ought to be invaded immediately—and that Smuts was the general to do it. For Smuts was not only a brilliantly successful general, but also shared their immediate strategic and broader geopolitical goals.

On 15 March 1917, the day that Smuts won his victory at the Imperial Conference, Amery wrote to him that

Lloyd George offered the command to Smuts, who hesitated and asked the advice of the South African Prime Minister, General Louis Botha. Smuts, who was in favor of accepting, reasoned that “Position on the other fronts most difficult and Palestine is only one where perhaps with great push it is possible to achieve considerable success.”
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After consultation, Botha and Smuts decided that the offer should be accepted if the campaign were to be mounted “on a large scale,” “a first class campaign in men and guns.”
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Smuts then conferred with Sir William Robertson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who made clear that he was not going to release the necessary troops and supplies from the western front, and dismissed the Middle East as a private obsession of the Prime Minister’s, and at best “only a sideshow.”
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Lloyd George had been in office only a few months and his position was tenuous; his authority over the military was limited; and his promise of full support, Smuts concluded, was not one that he would be able to keep. Thus Smuts turned down the offer of the Palestine command, feeling that the campaign in the East would be sabotaged by Robertson and his colleagues.

Smuts continued, though, to take a keen interest in Palestine. He and Amery later went out together to the Middle East to study the situation and report; and both of them came back urging a strong Palestine offensive.

As a Boer, steeped in the Bible, Smuts strongly supported the Zionist idea when it was raised in the Cabinet. As he later pointed out, the “people of South Africa and especially the older Dutch population has been brought up almost entirely on Jewish tradition. The Old Testament…has been the very marrow of Dutch culture here in South Africa.”
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Like Lloyd George, he had grown up believing that “the day will come when the words of the prophets will become true, and Israel will return to its own land,”
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and he fully agreed with Lloyd George that the Jewish homeland should be established in Palestine under British auspices. Whether or not he originated the idea, Smuts was responsible for finding the formula—acceptable to Woodrow Wilson—under which countries like Britain would assume responsibility for the administration of territories such as Palestine and Mesopotamia: they would govern pursuant to a “mandate” from the future League of Nations. The territories would be held in trust for their peoples—a formula designed to be compatible with American anti-imperialist notions.

Amery put together the pieces of this new imperial vision at the end of 1918, when he wrote to Smuts that Britain’s hold on the Middle East should be permanent, and not terminate when the mandates did. Without spelling out the details, he wrote that even when Palestine, Mesopotamia, and an Arabian state became independent of British trusteeship, they should remain within the British imperial system. The British Empire of the future, as he saw it, would be like a smaller League of Nations; and other such mini leagues would emerge elsewhere in the world. Woodrow Wilson’s overall League of Nations would therefore have relatively few members: there would be one representative from the British system, and one from each of the several other sub-systems.
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Thus Amery saw no incompatibility between a British Palestine and a Jewish Palestine. He also saw no reason why either British or Jewish aspirations should not be in harmony with Arab aspirations. Decades later, he wrote of the proponents of the Zionist dream in 1917–18 that “Most of us younger men who shared this hope were, like Mark Sykes, pro-Arab as well as pro-Zionist, and saw no essential incompatibility between the two ideals.”
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I

As the eventful year 1917 ran its course, Britain’s Palestine policy continued to be shaped by many hands: Cabinet ministers at one level; bureaucrats, little known beyond official circles and little known today, at another.

Within the powerful secretariat of the War Cabinet, the Middle East fell within the domain of Kitchener’s protégé Sir Mark Sykes, as it had done since shortly after the outset of the war. Maurice Hankey, his superior, held no strong views about the Middle East, and since the deaths of Kitchener and FitzGerald, Sykes had been acting without any real direction from above. He did not know that the new Prime Minister held decided views about a Middle Eastern settlement which were considerably different from his own; nor was he involved in the secret negotiations through Zaharoff in which the Prime Minister’s terms for peace in the Middle East were revealed.

On his own, then, and unguided, Sykes continued to circle uncertainly around the question of Palestine. His instructions from Kitchener and FitzGerald had been to regard it as of no strategic importance to Britain, and those instructions had never been cancelled. Yet he had been made aware in the course of his negotiations with France and Russia in 1916 that the Holy Land held a passionate interest for many Jews whose support, Sykes felt, might be vital to the Allies. Yet Jewish opinion might be alienated by some of the arrangements for the postwar Middle East that he was negotiating with Britain’s allies and potential supporters. As he held discussions with Frenchmen and Russians, Armenians and Arabs, he was haunted by a fear—groundless, but real to him nonetheless—that each of his transactions risked running afoul of Jewish opposition.

At the beginning of 1917 Sykes was engaged in a dialogue with James Malcolm, an Armenian businessman, about establishing an independent Armenian national state. They considered inviting Russia into the postwar Middle East as the protecting power for a united Armenia; but, as Sykes believed Jewish opinion to be violently anti-Russian, he suggested that something ought to be done in advance to disarm potential Jewish opposition to a scheme that allowed imperial Russia to expand. Sykes asked Malcolm to find out for him who the leaders of Zionism were so that he could approach them about this.

Malcolm had met Leopold Greenberg, editor and co-owner of the
Jewish Chronicle
who, as it happened, had also served as Theodore Herzl’s British representative. Malcolm wrote to ask him who were the leaders of the Zionist organization, and passed on the information he received in reply to Sykes. Two names appeared to be of especial importance: Nahum Sokolow, an official of the international Zionist movement; and Dr Chaim Weizmann, an official of the British Zionist Federation, who was opposed to the decision of the Zionist movement to remain neutral in the world war.
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Malcolm introduced himself to Weizmann and shortly afterward, on 28 January 1917, introduced Weizmann to Sykes.

Weizmann—although he did not know that the Allies were already making plans for the postwar Middle East—wanted to secure a commitment from Britain about Palestine while the war was still in progress. As a chemist, he made a significant contribution to the war effort by donating to the government his discovery of a process to extract acetone from maize—acetone being a vital ingredient in the manufacture of explosives.
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But, despite his war work and his increasing acquaintance with the circle of high-ranking officials who were directing the war effort, he did not know that Britain had an official whose brief was to negotiate the design of the postwar Middle East. Another British Zionist leader, Rabbi Gaster, knew Sykes—and knew that Sykes held that job—but, seeing Weizmann as a rival, jealously kept the information to himself. Thus Weizmann learned of Sykes only by accident—in early 1917 when Sykes mentioned his job to James de Rothschild in the course of a chance conversation about their respective horse-breeding stables. Rothschild passed on the information to Weizmann, and Weizmann was about to arrange to meet Sykes when James Malcolm arranged for Sykes to meet Weizmann.

Each wanted to do what the other wanted done. Sykes wanted to find someone with whom he could negotiate an alliance between British and Zionist interests; and Weizmann wanted to be that person.

Their first meetings were on an unofficial basis. From the start, Sykes, as he always did, tried to fit all Middle Eastern projects within the existing—but still secret—Sykes-Picot-Sazanov Agreement, of which Weizmann knew nothing. In the agreement, the Holy Places were to be placed under an international administration; so Sykes began by proposing that a Jewish entity in Palestine should be under joint Anglo-French rule (“condominium”)—though he could not reveal to Weizmann why he was making the proposal. Though Sykes did not realize it, he was out of step not only with the Zionist leaders but also with the Prime Minister. Lloyd George—like Weizmann and his colleagues—wanted Palestine to be British. C. P. Scott, editor of the
Manchester Guardian
and Lloyd George’s confidant, advised Weizmann to take the matter up with the Prime Minister; but Weizmann decided to concentrate on changing Sykes’s mind rather than going over his head.
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In London, on 7 February 1917, Sykes met with Weizmann and other British Zionists who told him that they were opposed to the condominium idea and wanted Palestine to be ruled by Britain. Sykes replied that all the other difficulties could be resolved (“the Arabs could be managed,” he said) but that rejection of the condominium approach brought them up against a problem for which he had no sure solution: France, he said, was “the serious difficulty.”
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France, he explained, refused to recognize that concessions to Zionism might help win the war; and he confessed to the Zionist leaders that he could not understand French policy in this respect. “What was their motive?” he asked.
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The next day, at his London residence at 9 Buckingham Gate, Sykes introduced the worldly Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow to François Georges Picot, who told Sokolow that, having seen the results of Jewish colonization in Palestine, he believed the program of Jewish settlement was feasible. Sokolow told Picot that Jews greatly admired France but “had long in mind the suzerainty of the British government.”
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Picot replied that the question of suzerainty was one for the Allies to decide among themselves. He said that he would do his best to make the Zionists’ aims known to his government, but that in his view there was no possibility of his government deciding to renounce its claim to Palestine. Indeed, he said, 95 percent of the French people wanted France to annex Palestine.
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All concerned agreed to wait upon events, which were not slow in coming. Within two months the Czar was overthrown and the United States had entered the war. Sykes quickly saw the implications of both events for his arrangements with Picot. Millions of Jews lived within the Czarist Empire; their support, Sykes argued after the Russian Revolution in March, could help induce the new Russian government to remain in the war.
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At the same time, the American entry into the war strengthened his conviction that the European Allies would have to validate their claims to a position in the postwar Middle East by sponsorship of oppressed peoples, such as Jews, Arabs, and Armenians. On both counts he felt he had new arguments with which to persuade the French government to adopt a more sympathetic attitude toward Zionism.

Meanwhile his conversations with Picot were about to reopen: Lloyd George succeeded in ordering the British army in Egypt to attempt an invasion of Palestine in 1917, leading the French government to insist on sending Picot to Egypt to accompany the British invasion forces—to which the British government responded by ordering Sykes to go there, too, to interpose between Picot and the British commanding general. Picot viewed the proposed British invasion as an attack on French interests. He reported that “London now considers our agreements a dead letter. English troops will enter Syria from the south”—from Egypt and Palestine—“and disperse our supporters.”
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Lloyd George, impatient with France’s pretensions in the Middle East, told Weizmann that the future of Palestine was a question that would be resolved between Britons and Jews.
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He professed to be unable to understand why Sykes was so concerned about French objections and told Weizmann that Palestine “was to him the one really interesting part of the war.”
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On the afternoon of 3 April 1917 Sykes, newly appointed as head of the political mission to the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, went to 10 Downing Street to receive his parting instructions. There he met with the Prime Minister, Lord Curzon, and Maurice Hankey. Sykes proposed to try to raise an Arab tribal rebellion behind enemy lines, but Lloyd George and Curzon impressed upon him the importance of not committing Britain to an agreement with the tribes that would be prejudicial to British interests. Specifically they told him not to do anything that would worsen the problem with France, and to bear in mind the “importance of not prejudicing the Zionist movement and the possibility of its development under British auspices.”
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According to notes of the conference, “The Prime Minister laid stress on the importance, if possible, of securing the addition of Palestine to the British area in the postwar Middle East.”
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The Prime Minister warned Sykes not to make pledges to the Arabs “and particularly none in regard to Palestine.”
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Sykes stopped first in Paris, where he stayed at the Hôtel Lotti on the Rue Castiglione, only a few steps away from the Place Vendôme, with its monumental reminder of Napoleon Bonaparte and his conquests. While there, Sykes told Picot that France would have to change her way of thinking and come around to a nonannexationist approach, and that this might involve American or British sponsorship of a reborn Judaea, and French sponsorship of a reborn Armenia. He was surprised that Picot appeared disconcerted by what he said.
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From the Hôtel Lotti, Sykes wrote on 8 April 1917 to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, that the French were hostile to the notion of bringing the United States into Palestine as a patron of Zionism; they feared that, if introduced into the Middle East, the United States might become France’s commercial rival there. “As regards Zionism itself,” he continued, “the French are beginning to realize they are up against a big thing, and that they cannot close their eyes to it.”
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The French Foreign Ministry, like Sykes, now believed that Russia’s Jews might help to keep Russia in the war at a time when military disasters on the western front made the eastern front especially crucial. Nahum Sokolow, whom Sykes introduced to the Quai d’Orsay, seemed willing to help in this respect. His discussions with the French officials went well. On 9 April Sykes wrote to Balfour that “The situation now is therefore that Zionist aspirations are recognized as legitimate by the French.”
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France remained adamant, however, in maintaining her own claims in the Middle East. Sykes met with the leader of the French colonialist bloc, Senator Pierre-Etienne Flandin; and on 15 April wrote to the Foreign Office that Flandin continued to insist that France must have the whole sea-coast of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine down to El Arish in the Egyptian Sinai. Flandin claimed that “Picot was a fool who had betrayed France” by compromising with Britain in the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
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From Paris, Sykes went on to Rome, where he arranged for Nahum Sokolow to plead the Zionist case with the Pope and other Vatican officials. Whatever inspiration he may have derived from these meetings was counterbalanced by the emergence of a new problem: Italy’s Foreign Minister, Baron Sidney Sonnino, strongly asserted Italian claims to a share in the postwar Middle East.

Once in Cairo, Sykes brought together his diverse allies to persuade them to work together. He introduced Picot to Arab leaders in Cairo, and later arranged for Picot to come with him on a journey to Arabia to meet with Sherif Hussein to outline for him, at least in a general way, the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot-Sazanov Agreement. Sykes optimistically believed that he had got Hussein to admit that the French could prove helpful to the Arabs in Syria; that he had persuaded Arab leaders to see that the Arabs were too weak to assume responsibility for an area of such complex interests as Palestine; and that he had reached an understanding that Palestinian Arabs would agree to a national status
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for the Jewish community in Palestine if the Arab community received the same designation.
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In Cairo, Sykes was warned by Clayton and his friends at the Arab Bureau that a French presence in the Middle East would cause trouble.
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But Sykes, faithful and good-hearted as ever, continued to maintain that his friends had fallen victim to “Fashodism”—a desire to best the French, as Kitchener had done at Fashoda—and that they ought to show more loyalty to their ally. He continued to attempt to convert Picot into a genuine partner, and suggested that the French representative work out a common policy with Hussein’s sons so that Britain and France could pursue parallel, constructive, cooperative relationships with the new Arab rulers of the postwar Middle East. On 12 May he cabled London that “Picot has come to terms with the Arab representatives.”
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A few weeks later he wrote to a colleague: “I think French will be ready to co-operate with us in a common policy towards the Arab speaking people…”
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