The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (14 page)

“We know well the real military situation of the two contending forces,” Faruki continued, “and we know that our siding with the Allies will diminish greatly the two forces of their enemies and will cause them immense trouble.” But he knew much more than that. “Moreover the English have declared publicly that they will help the Arabs against the Turks.” In addition: “We also found out that the Sherif of Mecca was in communication with the High Commissioner in Egypt, and the English are willing to give the Sherif the necessary arms and ammunition for the attainment of his object. That the English have given their consent to the Sherif establishing an Arab Empire but the limits of his Empire were not defined.” Faruki added that the secret societies had renounced allegiance to the sultan of Turkey and sworn instead to support Hussein. The grand sharif would lead their rebellion.

Faruki knew the terms outlined in the Damascus Protocol and, it would seem, even McMahon’s response to it. He had deserted in part in order to argue for the boundaries advocated in the protocol, and although he was not authorized to speak for the secret societies, he acted as though he were, and the British came to treat him as though he were. “A guarantee of the independence of the Arabian Peninsula would not satisfy,” Clayton reported glumly after talking with him, “but this together with the institution of an increasing measure of autonomous Government … in Palestine and Mesopotamia would probably secure their [secret societies’] friendship. Syria is of course included in their programme.” Faruki conceded that France possessed legitimate interests in Syria, but he insisted that French influence there be strictly limited. If it was not, then his societies would resist by force of arms. “Our scheme embraces all the Arab countries including Syria and Mesopotamia, but if we cannot have all [then] we want as much as we can get,” he declared imprecisely. More specifically, he said, the plotters insisted on keeping “in Arabia purely Arab districts of Aleppo, Damascus, Hama and Homs.” Here is the first mention of a geographical caveat that would prove a stumbling block to all future understanding and goodwill. The formulation appears
²⁹
for the first time in a cable reporting on discussions with Faruki that McMahon sent to London on October 19, 1915.

As for the nature of the Arab state to be established, Faruki explained: “The Arab countries [are] to be governed by the principles of decentralization; each country to have the sort of Government which best suits it, but to be ruled by the Central government, i.e. the seat of the Khalifate. Sherif Hussein of Mecca to be the Khalifa and Sultan of the new empire.” Christians, Druze, and Neiria would have the same rights as Muslims in the new
state, he promised, “but the Jews will be governed by a special law.” This did not augur well, but apparently the British saw no reason to query it.

Essentially Faruki was reiterating the sharif’s program as set forth in his most recent letter to Cairo. He added flesh to the bare bones of British knowledge about the secret societies, exaggerating their strength, the extent of their organization, and their influence; also his own importance. Nevertheless the British believed him. They believed too a further embroidery, one of breathtaking audacity—a threat, or rather a bluff, or to put it baldly, a falsehood. Clayton reported that Faruki had “stated that Turkey and Germany are fully alive to the situation and have already approached the leaders of the Young Arab Committee, and indeed have gone so far as to promise them the granting of their demands in full … The Committee, however, are strongly inclined towards England.”

Historians find no archival evidence that the Turks and Germans were prepared to grant the Arab demands. But really they have no need to search for such documents. Events soon would put the lie to Faruki’s assertion. By now, far from wanting to woo Arab nationalists, the Turks wanted only to destroy them, as a series of brutal trials, imprisonments, and hangings in Damascus would disclose within a matter of months.

In October 1915, however, Clayton believed that the Arab plotters were powerful and that Germany and Turkey were near to winning them over. He warned London: “To reject the Arab proposals entirely
or even to seek to evade the issues
[emphasis added] will be to throw the Young Arab party definitely into the arms of the enemy. Their machinery will at once be employed against us throughout the Arab countries … the religious element will come into play and the Jihad, so far a failure, may become a very grim reality the effects of which would certainly be far-reaching and at the present crisis might well be disastrous.” Note the italicized words: They must refer to McMahon’s attempt, in the letter of August 29, to postpone discussion of future boundaries. Now Clayton was repudiating McMahon’s strategy. He was pushing for defining the boundaries immediately and in a way that would satisfy Arab aspirations. He thought it was necessary if Britain hoped to outbid the Germans.

Why was Clayton so willing to accept Faruki’s embellishments? The young deserter’s arrival in Cairo was but one element of a remarkable and, for the British, not particularly happy conjuncture. He appeared before Clayton almost simultaneously with Hussein’s chilly letter of September 9. Faruki confirmed the sharif’s claims: He
was
speaking not merely for himself but for a larger movement; his ambitions
were
not merely personal; it really
was
the larger movement that had established the boundaries of the
future Arabian federation adumbrated in his last letter. This confirmation was worrying enough, but, perhaps more important, Faruki’s arrival coincided with a torrent of bad news about the war: Bulgaria had entered it on the side of the Central Powers, affording them not only an increment of strength but a direct overland route from Germany to Constantinople. At Gallipoli, British losses mounted daily; morale there had plummeted; the British beachhead remained insecure, so that withdrawal seemed increasingly likely; but
withdrawal
was another word for
retreat
, and
retreat
was another word for
defeat
. Meanwhile in Mesopotamia, British forces were overextended, and soon would arrive devastating reports of disasters at Ctesiphon and Kut.

For all these reasons the Cairo contingent was disposed not merely to believe Faruki but to act upon the belief. Britain must enlist the sharif and his movement, or else Germany would. In memos and cables they stressed Britain’s dire predicament in the Middle East and the grim consequences of inaction. So did Wingate from Khartoum and Sykes at the War Committee meeting. McMahon prepared to write the most important letter of his career, one that would induce Hussein finally to throw down the gauntlet to Turkey. But if he thought he was resolving a difficult situation, he was profoundly mistaken. “Aleppo, Damascus, Hama and Homs”: These place-names signified enormous complexities and ramifications; they would haunt his future, and everyone else’s.

THIS BRINGS US
to the crux of the matter, the rock on which British-Arab relations subsequently foundered, the misunderstanding, or perhaps the duplicity, that eventually colored everything else.

The most important letter in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence was McMahon’s reply to the grand sharif, written while Faruki’s farrago of truths, half-truths, exaggerations, and downright lies were fresh and unquestioned in British minds, and while the alarming reports about Bulgaria and Gallipoli and Mesopotamia were likewise fresh. McMahon dated the message October 24, 1915, and immediately took up the question of the boundaries of the future Arab state:

Subject to the modifications referred to above, McMahon wrote, Britain would recognize and support the independence of the proposed Arab federation with borders previously defined by Sharif Hussein—that is to say, with the borders first traced in the Damascus Protocol. She would guarantee the Muslim holy places against external aggression. She would advise and assist the Arabs in establishing suitable forms of government in the various states that would comprise the federation. In return, the Arabs must agree to look only to Britain for advice and support and must accept that Britain could assert special measures of administrative control in the
vilayets
of Baghdad and Basra.

McMahon wrote in English—he could neither speak nor write in Arabic—so his letter to Hussein had to be translated. Storrs wrote of the translation process in his memoirs: “Our Arabic correspondence
²
with Mecca was prepared by Ruhi, a fair though not a profound Arabist (and a better agent than scholar); and checked often under high pressure by myself. I had no Deputy, Staff or office, so that during my absence on mission the work was carried on (better perhaps) by others, but the continuity was lost.” What Storrs did not record
³
was that his own knowledge of written Arabic likewise was limited. Conceivably the imbroglio that resulted from this most infamous letter can be traced to nothing more than an imprecise rendering of English into Arabic caused perhaps by ignorance or even by haste.

At any rate, once it had been translated, McMahon gave the missive to Hussein’s “trusted and excellent messenger, Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Arif Arayfan,” who set out once again upon the long and difficult journey from Cairo to Mecca. Hussein would have received and read it with some satisfaction. But in certain respects he would have found it vague and perhaps even troubling.

Parts of the crucial paragraph require explanation, but regardless of the language in which they are read, they are not ambiguous. McMahon’s first qualification to Hussein’s suggested boundaries was the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta: These he wished to exclude from the proposed Arab kingdom because he suspected that France would claim them after the war, or even possibly because Britain might wish to claim Alexandretta before the French did. As for the second qualification regarding “our existing treaties with Arab chiefs,” this referred primarily to the line of principalities along the east coast of Arabia on the Indian Ocean with which the British government in India had established relations. With regard to the
“portions of territories … in which Great Britain is free to act without detriment to the interests of her Ally, France,” McMahon simply was recognizing that Britain’s most important partner in the war might make additional territorial claims in Syria that Britain would likely be obliged to support, although she did not know precisely what the claims might be and actually rather begrudged them. And finally, as for Baghdad and Basra, McMahon mentioned them to satisfy the territorial ambitions of the British government in India, which still wanted to annex portions of Mesopotamia.

At the time, however, the phrase that may have caused the grand sharif to raise his eyebrows highest, and that created untold trouble afterward, is the one about excluding from the Arab kingdom “the districts of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo.” The key word is “districts,” simple enough in the English language but ambiguous when translated, as it was by Ruhi or Storrs or conceivably someone else in Cairo, into the Arabic
wilāyāt
. This is the plural form of the Arabic word
wilāyah
, which means
vilayet
, a political jurisdiction in Turkish, but “vicinity” or “environs,” a geographical expression in English. To boil down what became an exceedingly acrimonious, even tortuous argument (one that I have no intention of entering, let alone attempting to settle), Arabs claimed that Hussein understood the word to mean “vicinity” or “environs” and therefore
not
to refer to Palestine, which is south of the line connecting Damascus, Hama, Homs, and Aleppo, not west of it as any glance at a map will quickly show and clearly not within the vicinity or environs of any of those towns. The British and Zionists have argued
⁴
to the contrary, however, that since
wilāyāt
can mean
vilayets
and since the
vilayet
or “province” of Damascus extended all the way south to Ma’an and beyond down to Aqaba, therefore McMahon did indeed mean to exclude Palestine from the Arab kingdom because Palestine is indubitably west (not south) of Ma’an.

Perhaps it will be helpful for American readers to think of the problem in the following terms: Presume a line extending from the
districts
of New York, New Haven, New London, and Boston, excluding territory to the west from an imaginary coastal kingdom. If by
districts
one means “vicinity” or “environs,” that is one thing with regard to the land excluded, but if one means
“vilayets”
or “provinces,” or in the American instance “states,” it is another altogether. There are no states of Boston, New London, or New Haven, just as there were no provinces of Hama and Homs, but there is a state of New York, just as there was a
vilayet
of Damascus, and territory to the west of New York State is different from territory to the west of the district of New York, presumably New York City and environs, just as territory to the west of the
vilayet
of Damascus is different from territory to the
west of the district of Damascus, presumably the city of Damascus and its environs.