The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (17 page)

Together Sykes and Picot redrew the Middle Eastern map. We may picture them in a grand conference room at the Foreign Office, crayons in hand. They colored blue the portions on the map that they agreed to allocate to France, and they colored red the portions they would allocate to Britain. Within those areas they proposed that the two countries “should be allowed to establish
⁷
such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire.” Since both parties coveted Palestine, with its sites holy to Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike, they compromised and colored the region brown, agreeing that this portion of the Middle East should be administered by an international condominium. East and south of the blue portion of the map they outlined an Area A also in blue; east and north of the red portion they outlined in that color an Area B. These two contiguous regions, A and B, represented part of the future Arab state or confederation of states. Conceivably its ruler would be Sharif Hussein. But France in Area A and Britain in Area B “should have priority of right of enterprise and local loans [and] … should alone supply advisers or foreign functionaries at the request of the Arab confederation.” In short, the two areas would become French and British spheres of influence. Finally, within the Brown
Area, Palestine, Britain reserved for herself the ports of Haifa and Acre and the right to construct a railway connecting them with the red-outlined Area B. The two men negotiated less important measures as well. Finally they agreed that if the sharif failed to rebel, or if his rebellion failed, then all the arrangements would be canceled.

This, then, was the famous, or infamous, Sykes-Picot Agreement. Within weeks higher authorities in both London and Paris studied and accepted it. In the British cabinet only Asquith seems to have had doubts. He “thought the Arabs would not be
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content with the A and B areas,” the cabinet meeting minutes record, but “Sir E. Grey pointed out that the four cities Homs, Damascus, Hamma and Aleppo have been assigned to them which would satisfy them.” The prime minister’s hesitations vanished.

The two governments dispatched Sykes and Picot to Russia to acquaint their partner, the third divider of the anticipated Ottoman carcass, with the agreement’s provisions. Sykes, who already had traveled around the Middle East and to India and back again, announced that he would make this further trip under a pseudonym. If he should be captured, the Germans would not know who he was and would not learn of the treaty with France. Unfortunately an English newspaper wrote that he would be journeying to Russia on official business and published his photograph. The disappointed diplomat
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had to make the passage under his own name. But once he got to Moscow and Picot arrived, the Russians told them they found the agreement good too. After some minor adjustments, the Sykes-Picot Agreement became the Tripartite Agreement, the essentials unaltered.

When Sir Henry McMahon in Cairo learned what Sykes and Picot had wrought, he warned the Foreign Office not to tell the Arabs. “I feel that divulgence
¹⁰
of agreement at present time might be detrimental to our good relations with all parties and possibly create a change of attitude in some of them … It might also prejudice the hoped for action of the Sherif who views French penetration with suspicion.” Here was the crux of the matter. As with the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, so with the Sykes-Picot Agreement: Interested parties at the time and ever since have argued over the aims and motives of the men responsible for it. The issue around which the debate revolves is whether Sykes-Picot contradicted promises that McMahon had conveyed, or was in process of conveying, to Sharif Hussein. In short, did the agreement shortchange the Arabs?

There was first the matter of land west of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. Sykes and Picot allocated it to France. The British could truthfully say that they had reserved that strip of coastline for France in the correspondence with Hussein. But Hussein could reply with equal accuracy that
he had stated clearly in his own letters that the coastal strip was intrinsic to Arabia; he had merely deferred insisting upon it in order to maintain good relations with Britain and so that Britain could maintain good relations with her wartime ally France. Later when they learned of it, the sharif and his followers charged that Britain acted in bad faith by conceding this territory to France without obtaining Arab agreement first.

There was second the matter of land south of that coastal strip. Sykes and Picot had allocated to France the stretch extending nearly to Acre. To the international condominium, they allocated land reaching south all the way to Gaza (except for the British enclave at Haifa and Acre). To Britain, they gave land south of Gaza all the way to the Egyptian border. Taken together, these allocations were essentially the land of Palestine. Again the British could point to McMahon’s letters, which withheld from the sharif land west of the
vilayet
or district of Damascus. As we have seen, however, whether that included Palestine or not depends upon the definition of
vilayet
. Accordingly here too, when they learned what the British and French had done, the sharif and his followers may or may not have had legitimate cause for complaint.

A similar cloud of doubt hovers above the Red Area claimed by Britain in Mesopotamia, most of which is now present-day Iraq. McMahon, in his third note to Hussein, had excluded from the sharif’s kingdom-to-be the
vilayet
of Baghdad; now Britain could argue that she was not contradicting terms laid down in the high commissioner’s letters. On the other hand, the sharif had accepted only that Britain might occupy this land temporarily for a fee. Moreover, in subsequent letters both McMahon and Hussein deferred final settlement of the question. Was Britain acting prematurely in claiming it now? The Arabs charged that she was.

As for Areas A and B,
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the French and British spheres of interest, this was land where Sykes and Picot envisaged establishment of a “State or confederation of States under the aegis of an Arabian prince.” It is worth noting that its original northern border, the upper limit of Area A (amended after consultation with the Russians), corresponded to a line, Alexandretta-Aintab-Birijik-Urfa-Midiat-Zakho-Rowanduz, that the Arab deserter from the Turkish army, Faruki, had suggested to McMahon even as British officials were conferring with Picot. That it appears virtually unaltered in the first published iteration of the Sykes-Picot Agreement seems to indicate that Britain was trying to take Arab views into account while negotiating with her French ally. But the British did not inform Faruki (or Hussein) that the negotiations were taking place, which suggests that they favored
France over Arabia and would sacrifice the interests of the latter to the former if necessary. This is what the Arabs later charged the British had done.

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,”
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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 treaty
¹³
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 people
¹⁴
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 State
¹⁵
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 of
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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’s
¹⁷
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 historians
¹⁹
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.”