Jerusalem’s deputy police chief, the assistant provost marshal, newly appointed by Allenby, was a great-nephew of Montefiore who would have been appointed chief if he had not been Jewish. “There is a great prevalence of venereal disease in the Jerusalem Area,” reported Major Geoffrey Sebag-Montefiore, who deployed guards around the Holy Places. He raided bawdy houses, which were usually full of Australian soldiers, and had to waste much of his time investigating cases where soldiers were accused of sleeping with local girls. “The brothels in Jerusalem are still giving considerable trouble,” he informed Allenby in June 1918. He moved them into an allotted area, the Wazzah, which made policing easier. In October he wrote, “there’s been trouble keeping Australians out of brothels. A squadron now provide a picquet [patrol] for the Wazzah.” Major Sebag-Montefiore’s reports usually read: “Venereal Disease is rampant. Otherwise nothing of note to report.”
Among the cafés at the Jaffa Gate, Arabs and Jews debated the future of Palestine: there was a capacious breadth of opinions on both sides. On the Jewish side, this extended from the ultra-Orthodox who despised sacrilegious Zionism, via those who envisaged Jewish colonies fully integrated across an Arab-ruled Middle East, to extreme nationalists who wanted an armed Hebrew state ruling a submissive Arab minority. Arab opinion varied from nationalists and Islamicist fundamentalists who wanted Jewish immigrants expelled, to democratic liberals who welcomed Jewish aid in building an Arab state. Arab intellectuals discussed whether Palestine was part of Syria or Egypt. During the war, a young Jerusalemite called Ihsan Turjman wrote that “The Egyptian Khedive should be joint king of Palestine and the Hejaz,” yet Khalil Sakakini noted that “the idea of joining Palestine to Syria is spreading powerfully.” Ragheb Nashashibi founded the Literary Society, demanding union with Syria; the Husseinis set up the Arab Club. Both were hostile to the Balfour Declaration.
On 20 December 1917, Sir Ronald Storrs arrived as military governor of Jerusalem—or, as he put it, “the equivalent of Pontius Pilate.”14
ORIENTAL STORRS: BENEFICENT DESPOT
In the lobby of the Fast Hotel, Storrs bumped into his predecessor, General Barton, in his dressing-gown: “The only tolerable places in Jerusalem are bath and bed,” declared Barton. Storrs, who favoured white suits and flamboyant buttonholes, found “Jerusalem on starvation rations” and remarked that “the Jews have as usual cornered the small change.” He was enthused by his “great adventure” in Jerusalem which “stands alone among the cities of the world,” yet like many Protestants he disliked the theatricality of the Churchg and regarded the Temple Mount as a “glorified union of the Piazza San Marco and the Great Court of Trinity [College, Cambridge].” Storrs felt he was born to rule Jerusalem: “To be able by a word written or even spoken to right wrong, to forbid desecration, to promote ability and goodwill is to wield the power of Aristotle’s Beneficent Despot.”
Storrs was not the average Colonial Office bureaucrat. This imperial peacock was a vicar’s son and Cambridge classicist with “a surprisingly cosmopolitan outlook—for an Englishman.” His friend Lawrence, who despised most officials, described him as “the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient, despite his diversion of energy in love of music and letters, of sculpture, painting, of whatever was beautiful in the world’s fruit.” He remembered hearing Storrs discuss the merits of Wagner and Debussy in Arabic, German and French, but his “intolerant brain rarely stooped to conquer.” In Egypt, his catty barbs and serpentine intrigues earned him the nickname Oriental Storrs after Cairo’s most dishonest shop. This unusual military governor set about restoring battered Jerusalem, through a motley staff that included:
a cashier from a bank in Rangoon, an actor-manager, 2 assistants from Thomas Cook, a picture-dealer, an army-coach, a clown, a land-valuer, a bosun from the Niger, a Glasgow distiller, an organist, an Alexandria cotton-broker, an architect, a junior London postal official, a taxi driver from Egypt, 2 schoolmasters, and a missionary.
In just a few months, Storrs founded the Pro-Jerusalem Society, funded by the Armenian arms-dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff and the American millionaires, Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan Jr. Its aims were to prevent Jerusalem becoming “a second-rate Baltimore.”
No one was more delighted than Storrs by the titles, costumes and colours of the city. He initially became friends not only with the Husseinish but also with Weizmann and even Jabotinsky. Storrs thought there was “no more gallant officer, no one more charming and cultivated” than Jabotinsky. Weizmann agreed that Jabotinsky was “utterly unJewish in manner and deportment, rather ugly, immensely attractive, well spoken, theatrically chivalresque, with a certain knightliness.”
Yet Storrs found Zionist tactics “a nightmare, reflecting the Turkish proverb: ‘The non-crying child gets no milk.’ ” The Zionists soon suspected that he was unsympathetic. Many Britons despised Jabotinsky and the Russian Jews swaggering around Jerusalem in paramilitary khaki belts, and considered the Balfour Declaration unworkable. A sympathetic British general handed Weizmann a book—the Zionist leader’s first encounter with the Protocols of the Elders of Zioni—“You’ll find it in the haversack of a great many British officers here and they believe it,” warned the general. Not yet exposed as a forgery, the Protocols was at its most plausible, with Britain backing Zionism and Bolshevik Russia apparently dominated by Jewish commissars.
Storrs was “much more subtle,” observed Weizmann. “He was everyone’s friend.” But the governor protested that he was being “pogrommed” and that these obstreperous “samovar Zionists” had nothing in common with Disraeli. When the governor told the prime minister about Arab and Jewish complaints, Lloyd George snapped, “Well, if either one side stops complaining, you’ll be dismissed.”
Despite Arab alarm about the Balfour Declaration, Jerusalem was quiet for two years. Storrs supervised the restoration of the walls and the Dome, the installation of street lights, the creation of the Jerusalem Chess Club and the dynamiting of Abdul-Hamid’s Jaffa Gate watchtower. He especially relished his power to rename Jerusalem: “When the Jews wished to rename Fast’s Hotel [as] King Solomon and the Arabs [as] Sultan Sulaiman [Suleiman the Magnificent], either of which would have excluded half Jerusalem, one could order it to be called The Allenby.” He even established a nuns’ choir which he conducted himself, and tried to mediate the Christian brawling in the Church, adhering to the sultan’s 1852 division. This satisfied the Orthodox but displeased the Catholics. When Storrs visited the Vatican, the pope accused him of polluting Jerusalem by introducing ungodly cinemas and 500 prostitutes. The British never managed to solve the viciously petty feuds.j
The actual status of Palestine, to say nothing of Jerusalem, was far from decided. Picot again pushed the Gallic claim on Jerusalem. The British had no idea, he insisted, how much the French had rejoiced over the capture of Jerusalem. “Think what it must have been like for us who took it!” retorted Storrs. Picot next tried to assert French protection of the Catholics by presiding on a special throne at a Te Deum in the Church, but the scheme collapsed when the Franciscans refused to co-operate.
When the mayor died unexpectedly of pneumonia (perhaps contracted by surrendering too often in the pouring rain), Storrs appointed his brother, Musa Kazem al-Husseini. But the impressive new mayor, who had served as the governor of Ottoman provinces from Anatolia to Jaffa, gradually assumed leadership of the campaign against the Zionists. The Arab Jerusalemites placed their hopes in a Greater Syrian kingdom ruled by Prince Faisal, Lawrence’s friend. At the First Congress of Muslim–Christian Associations, held in Jerusalem, the delegates voted to join Faisal’s Syria. The Zionists, who were still unrealistically adamant that most Arabs were reconciled to their settlement, tried to appease local fears. The British encouraged friendly gestures by both sides. Weizmann met and reassured the grand mufti that the Jews would not threaten Arab interests, presenting him with an ancient Koran.
In June 1918, Weizmann travelled across the desert to mee
t Faisal, attended by Lawrence, at his encampment near Aqaba. It was the start of what Weizmann exaggerated as “a lifelong friendship.” He explained that the Jews would develop the country under British protection. Privately, Faisal saw a big difference between what Lawrence called “the Palestine Jews and the colonist Jews: to Faisal the important point is that the former speak Arabic and the latter German Yiddish.” Faisal and Lawrence hoped that the Sherifians and Zionists could cooperate to build the kingdom of Syria. Lawrence explained: “I look upon the Jews as the natural importers of Western leaven so necessary for countries in the Near East.” Weizmann recalled that Lawrence’s “relationship to Zionism was a very positive one,” as he believed that “the Arabs stood to gain much from a Jewish Homeland.”
At their oasis summit, Faisal “accepted the possibility of future Jewish claims to territory in Palestine.” Later, when the three men met again in London, Faisal agreed that Palestine could absorb “4–5 million Jews without encroaching on the rights of the Arab peasantry. He did not think for a moment there was any scarcity of land in Palestine,” and approved a Jewish majority presence in Palestine within the Kingdom of Syria—providing he received the crown. Syria was the prize and Faisal was happy to compromise to secure it.
Weizmann’s diplomacy at first bore fruit. He had joked that “a Jewish state without a university is like Monaco without the casino,” so on 24 July 1918 Allenby drove him in his Rolls-Royce up Mount Scopus. There the foundation-stones were laid for the Hebrew University by the mufti, the Anglican bishop, two chief rabbis and Weizmann himself. But observers noticed that the mufti looked sick at heart. In the distance, the Ottoman artillery boomed as the guests sang “God Save the King” and the Zionist anthem Hatikvah. “Below us lay Jerusalem,” said Weizmann, “gleaming like a jewel.”
The Ottomans were still fighting powerfully in Palestine, while on the Western Front there was as yet no sign of victory. During these months, Storrs was sometimes told by his manservant that “a Bedouin” was waiting for him. He would find Lawrence there, reading his books. The English Bedouin then disappeared just as mysteriously. In Jerusalem that May, Storrs introduced Lawrence to the American journalist Lowell Thomas, who thought “he might be one of the younger apostles returned to life.” Thomas would later help create the legend of Lawrence of Arabia.
Only in September 1918 did Allenby retake the offensive, defeating the Ottomans at the Battle of Megiddo. Thousands of German and Ottoman prisoners were marched through the streets of Jerusalem. Storrs celebrated “by playing upon my Steinway a medley of ‘Vittoria’ from La Tosca, Handel’s Marches from Jephthah and Scipio, Parry’s ‘Wedding March’ from the Birds of Aristophanes.” On 2 October, Allenby allowed Faisal, King-designate of Syria, and Colonel Lawrence to liberate Damascus with their Sherifians. But, as Lawrence suspected, the real decision-making had started far away. Lloyd George was determined to keep Jerusalem. Lord Curzon later complained: “The Prime Minister talks about Jerusalem with almost the same enthusiasm as about his native hills.”
Even as Germany finally buckled, the lobbying had already started. On the day the armistice was signed, 11 November, Weizmann, who had an appointment arranged before this momentous development, found Lloyd George weeping in 10 Downing Street reading the Psalms. Lawrence canvassed officials in London to help the Arab cause. Faisal was in Paris to put his case to the French. But when the British and French clashed in Paris over the division of the East, Lloyd George protested that it was Britain that had conquered Jerusalem: “The other governments had only put a few nigger policemen to see we didn’t steal the Holy Sepulchre.”
a Jemal returned to Istanbul in 1917, but on the Ottoman surrender the following year he fled to Berlin where he wrote his memoirs. He was assassinated by Armenians in Tbilisi in 1922 as revenge for the Armenian genocide, even though he claimed, “I was convinced the deportations of all Armenians was bound to cause great distress,” and it may well be true, as he said, that “I was able to bring nearly 150,000 to Beirut and Aleppo.” Talaat was also assassinated; Enver was killed in battle, leading a Turkic revolt against the Bolsheviks in Central Asia.
b On 3 December, Ottoman secret police raided the house of Sakakini, who was hiding the Jewish adventurer and spy, Alter Levine, a kindness that was almost the last example of the old Ottomanist tolerance between Jews and Arabs. Both were arrested and despatched to Damascus: they had to walk the whole way.
c Two years later, the Colonists were still trying to get their carriage returned or the cost reimbursed, writing to Military Governor Storrs: “On 8th December 1917 the late Governor borrowed our wagon complete with oil, cloth cover and spring seat, whip, pole and two horses.”
d The Arab boy holding the historic bedsheet stuck the broomstick into the ground, but it was purloined by the Swedish photographer. The British threatened to arrest him at which he surrendered it to Allenby, who gave it to the Imperial War Museum, where it remains.
e One of Allenby’s officers was Captain William Sebag-Montefiore MC, aged thirty-two, great-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, who used to tell how, near Jerusalem, he was beckoned by a beautiful Arab woman who led him to a cave where he found and arrested a group of Ottoman officers.
f When the Nusseibehs showed Allenby round the Church, they claimed that he asked for the keys. “Now the Crusades have ended,” he said. “I return you the keys but these are not from Omar or Saladin but from Allenby.” Hazem Nusseibeh, Jordanian foreign minister in the 1960s, tells the story in his memoirs, published in 2007.
g Storrs made an exciting discovery in the Church. Much to the fury of the Greek priests, he found the last Crusader grave at the south door—that of a signatory of Magna Carta and tutor to Henry III named Philip d’Aubeny, a three-times Crusader who died in Jerusalem in 1236 during the rule of Frederick II. Storrs had the grave guarded by English soldiers.
h The Husseinis were prospering; they now owned over 12,500 acres of Palestine. Mayor Husseini was popular with Arabs and Jews alike. Storrs liked Mufti Kamil al-Husseini. Until then, the mufti was actually only leader of the Hanafi school of Islamic law (favoured by the Ottomans); there are four such schools. Storrs now promoted him to Grand Mufti not just of all four schools in Jerusalem but of all Palestine. The mufti requested that his younger brother Amin al-Husseini join Prince Faisal in Damascus when the city fell; Storrs agreed.
i When the Protocols was published in English, it became influential in Britain and America (backed by Henry Ford), until in August 1921 the London Times exposed it as a forgery. It had been published in German in 1919, and Hitler believed that it contained the truth about the Jews, explaining in Mein Kampf that the forgery claim “is the surest proof they are genuine.” When it was published in Arabic in 1925, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem recommended the book to his congregants.
j The Greeks argued with the Armenians over the division of the Virgin’s Tomb. The Armenians feuded with the Syriac Jacobites over the cemetery on Mount Zion and ownership of the St. Nicodemus Chapel in the Church, where the Orthodox and Catholics fought over the use of the northern staircase at Calvary and ownership of a strip floor at the eastern arch between the Orthodox and the Latin chapels there. The Armenians fought the Orthodox over the ownership of the staircase on the east of the main entrance—and over the right to sweep it. The Copts fought the Ethiopians over the latter’s precarious rooftop monastery.
CHAPTER 47
The Victors and the Spoils
1919–1920
WOODROW WILSON AT VERSAILLES
Meeting in London a few weeks later, Lloyd George and the French Premier Georges Clemenceau traded chips in the Middle East. In return for Syria, Clemenceau was accommodating:
CLEMENCEAU: Tell me what you want.
LLOYD GEORGE: I want Mosul.
CLEMENCEAU: You shall have it. Anything else?
LLOYD GEORGE: Yes I want Jerusalem too!
CLEMENCEAU: You shall have it.
In January 1919, Woodrow Wilson
, the first U.S. president ever to leave the Americas while in office, arrived in Versailles to settle the peace with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The protagonists of the Middle East came to lobby the victors, with Faisal, accompanied by Lawrence, striving to prevent French control of Syria; and Weizmann hoping to keep Britain in Palestine and win international recognition for the Balfour Declaration. The very presence of Lawrence, as Faisal’s adviser, wearing British uniform combined with Arab headdress, outraged the French. They tried to get him banned from the conference.
Wilson, that idealistic Virginian professor turned Democratic politician and now international arbiter, proclaimed that “every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interests and for the benefit of the populations concerned.” He refused to countenance an imperial carve-up of the Middle East. The three potentates soon came to resent each other. Wilson regarded Lloyd George as “slippery.” The seventy-eight-year-old Clemenceau, squeezed between the self-righteous Wilson and the land-grabbing Lloyd George, complained, “I find myself between Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte.” The playful Welshman and the buttoned-up American got on best: Lloyd George admired the latter’s idealism—providing Britain got what he wanted. In a wood-panelled room in Paris, lined with books, these Olympians would shape the world, a prospect that amused the cynical Balfour as he superciliously watched “three all-powerful, all-ignorant men carving up continents.”
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