According to a British ambassador named Sir Edward Grey, after the fall of the Ottoman
Empire during WWI “all the powers including ourselves are trying hard to get what they
can out of Turkey.”
Great Britain had an objective to secure a passage from their colony in India to the
Mediterranean sea.
By gaining control of Egypt, parts of Palestine and Iraq they would effectively control territory
from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean sea, making trade routes all that more efficient
and thus Britain richer.
In order to meet this objective, the British pretty much promised anyone who could help
them, anything that they could.
Hello everyone.
This is Thought Monkey.
In this video we are going to explore how the modern day state of Israel and much of
the Middle East became what it is today.
In order to take down the Ottomans in WWI, the British developed a relationship with
the Arabs in the hopes that they would inspire a revolt that could undermine the Empire.
They began to talk with a man named Sharif Husayn of Mecca, a descendant of the Prophet
Muhammad and the official guardian of the Islamic holy places of the two holy Islamic
cities of Medina and Mecca.
In order to lure the Arabs to revolt, Husayn was vaguely promised various regions of the
Middle East by the British in order to help him establish an independent Arab kingdom.
These promises were made to encourage Arabs to side with the Brits and became the basis
of Arab claims to region after the war.
Speaking about the British commitments to Husayn and the Arabs, one British official
stated that, “What we have to arrive at now is to tempt the Arab peoples into the
right path, detach them from the enemy and bring them over to our side.
This on our part is at present largely a matter of words and to succeed we must use persuasive
terms and abstain from haggling over conditions.”
In other words British officials had no intent to be precise in their letters to Husayn to
ensure that no direct promises about specific pieces of land were given.
By 1915 the British had already begin talking about how to divvy up the Middle East.
Iraq and Palestine were talked about being two regions in which a railway could be built
linking the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
The British also knew that their ally’s, the French, had aspirations in the region.
In the Sykes-Picot Agreement areas of control in Arab lands were decided by the British
and French.
The French were given Lebanon, Syria and part of Anatolia, while the British were given
Egypt, Iraq and eastern Palestine (now known as Jordan).
This agreement also provided a buffer by the French between the British and the Russians
– another objective that the British had.
For a while the British had no direct interest in Palestine.
The only main strategic interest it had in it was to provide the buffer between French
controlled Syria and Lebanon and British controlled Egypt.
This all changed when David Lloyd George became Prime Minster of Great Britain.
George was a Zionist sympathizer.
A Zionist was a person who was interested in forming a state for the Jewish people.
So as it began to look like Russians were backing out of the war, Zionists in London
began to promote the idea that Zionism could be a way to persuade Russian Jews to encourage
their government to stay in the war.
At the same time the British hoped to gain U.S. aid in the war effort.
Similarly, they thought that American Jews would encourage President Woodrow Wilson to
enter the war.
These sentiments led to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 – which ultimately promised the
Jews a national home in Palestine – which the Arabs would eventually claim contradicted
the promises they had received from the British, earlier in the war.
Before the signage of the Balfour Declaration, there was debate.
In fact one Jewish statesman – Edwin Montagu - objected to the Balfour Delcaration saying
that defining Jews as a separate nation would threaten the position of Jews already assimilated
in different countries.
He even believed that the establishment of a Jewish nation would increase European anti-Semitism
as it would emphasize their distinctiveness.
Regardless of this somewhat prophetic prediction – the Balfour Declaration was signed and
the Jews were promised “a national home” in Palestine.
When the Declaration was signed, the British sent further assurances to Husayn and the
Arabs that the Arabs in Palestine would be granted political freedom (something that
was not written in the Balfour Delcaration).
This led Husayn to feel unconcerned and in fact he welcome the Jews into Arab lands much
as the Ottomans did after they gained control of the Middle East hundreds of years before.
By 1921 – the fate of the Middle East had been pretty much decided and the borders of
the Middle East have not changed much since.
The territories administered by the British included Iraq, Trans-Jordan, Palestine, and
Egypt – while the French took Syria and Lebanon.
The British pretty much gained all they had wanted.
Between 1920-1939 the Zionists who had come to live in Palestine alongside the Palestinian
Arabs, swiftly made demands unfavorable to the Arabs and even British.
The Jews demanded that the Hebrew language be given equal status with Arabic, that Jews
were to be appointed as government officials, that a Jew were to be made mayor of Jerusalem,
that half of the municipal council of Jerusalem would be Jewish.
All this was demanded by Zionists even though Palestine was still 4/5 Muslim.
Zionists also demanded that Jewish government employees be given a higher salary than the
Arabs.
Also, while Zionists were allowed to fly their flag, Arabs were not.
All of these actions and more provided a lot of conflict between the competing groups in
Palestine.
In fact joint Muslim-Christian groups started to form as early as 1918 and were encouraged
by British military authorities who began to see the Zionist activities as adding to
major instability in the region.
Within these twenty years, the British began to argue amongst themselves about what to
do with Palestine.
British military officials in Palestine were in favor of the Palestinian Arabs as they
saw the Zionist’s abrasiveness as an act of instability.
On the other hand British officials in London used the Zionist movement as a way to justify
their occupation of the region.
Great Britain continued to back the Zionists until the beginning of WWII when it seemed
like their support of the Zionist’s would antagonize surrounding Arab countries.
Due to this the White Paper of 1939 was signed which officially disclaimed the Balfour Declaration
and at the time would seem to make sure that the Arabs would dominate Palestine and create
a Palestinian state.
It is often that as victims we blame the most obvious people for our problems.
But the conflicts in the region of Palestine today can be linked with the poorly made decisions
by the British who act in self-interest and knowingly promised two competing groups of
people, the same land.
History allows us to step back and gain a bigger picture of why things are happening
the way they are.
Stay tuned for the third and final video which will detail the rise of Israel and the major
developments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as we know it today.