Clemenceau’s ambitions were as shameless as those of Lloyd George. When Clemenceau agreed to meet Lawrence, he justified his claim to Syria by explaining that the French had ruled Palestine in the Crusades: “Yes,” answered Lawrence, “but the Crusades failed.” Besides, the Crusaders never took Damascus, Clemenceau’s primary target and the heart of Arab national aspirations. The French still hoped to share Jerusalem under Sykes–Picot, but the British now rejected that entire treaty.
The U.S. president, son of a Presbyterian minister, had endorsed the Balfour Declaration: “To think that I, the son of the manse,” said Wilson, “should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people.” He was influenced by both Protestant Hebraism and his adviser, Louis Brandeis, a Jew from Kentucky who had been nominated by Wilson to the Supreme Court. Brandeis, known as “the People’s Lawyer,” was an incorruptible paragon of American scholarship and public service but in 1914, only 15,000 of 3 million American Jews were members of his U.S. Zionist Federation. By 1917, hundreds of thousands of American Jews had become involved; evangelical Christians were lobbying for Zionism; and ex-President Teddy Roosevelt, who had visited the Holy City with his parents as a boy, was backing “a Zionist State around Jerusalem.”
Nonetheless Wilson faced a painful contradiction between Zionism and the self-determination of the Arabs. The British had at one point suggested an American mandate—a new word to describe something between a protectorate and a province. Wilson actually considered the possibility. But, faced with the Anglo-French grab for Palestine and Syria, he despatched an American commission to investigate Arab aspirations. The King–Crane Commission, led by a Chicago valve-manufacturer and the president of Oberlin College, reported back that most Palestinian and Syrian Arabs wished to live in Faisal’s Kingdom of Greater Syria—under American protection. But these findings proved irrelevant when Wilson failed to restrain his imperialist allies. It still took two years for the new League of Nations to confirm that the British got Palestine and the French, Syria—which Lawrence called “the mandate swindle.”
On 8 March 1920, Faisal was proclaimed King of Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) and appointed Jerusalem’s Said al-Husseini as his foreign minister, while the mufti’s brother Amin had for a short time served in the royal court. The excitement generated by the creation of this new kingdom emboldened the Palestinian Arabs to stand up to the Zionist threat. Weizmann warned that there could be trouble. Jabotinsky and the former Russian revolutionary Pinkhas Rutenberga created a Jewish self-defence force, 600 strong. But Storrs ignored the alarm bells.
STORRS: THE NABI MUSA RIOTS—FIRST SHOTS
On the morning of Sunday 20 April 1920, in a city tense with Jewish and Christian pilgrims, 60,000 Arabs gathered for the Nabi Musa festival, led by the Husseinis. The diarist Wasif Jawhariyyeh watched them singing songs in protest against the Balfour Declaration. The mufti’s younger brother, Haj Amin al-Husseini, incited the crowds, holding up a picture of Faisal: “This is your King!” The mob shouted, “Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!” and poured into the Old City. An old Jew was beaten with sticks.
Suddenly, recalled Khalil Sakakini, “the furore turned into madness.” Many drew daggers and clubs, crying, “The religion of Muhammad was founded by the sword!” The city, observed Jawhariyyeh, “became a battlefield.” The crowd chanted, “Slaughter the Jews!” Both Sakakini and Wasif hated violence but were starting to loathe not just the Zionists but the British too.
Storrs came out of the morning service in the Anglican Church to find Jerusalem out of control. He rushed to his headquarters in the Austrian Hospice, feeling as though someone “had thrust a sword into my heart.” Storrs had only 188 policemen in Jerusalem. As the riot intensified in the course of the next day, the Jews feared they would be wiped out. Weizmann burst into Storrs’ office to demand help; Jabotinsky and Rutenberg grabbed their pistols and mustered 200 men at police headquarters in the Russian Compound. When Storrs banned this, Jabotinsky patrolled outside the Old City, exchanging shots with Arab gunmen—that was the day the shooting really started. In the Old City, some streets of the Jewish Quarter were under siege, and Arab intruders gang-raped some Jewish girls. Meanwhile the British were trying to police the Holy Fire ceremony but when a Syriac moved a Coptic chair “all hell broke loose,” and the doors of the Church caught fire in the brawl. As a British official left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a little Arab girl fell from a nearby window, hit by a stray bullet.
One of Jabotinsky’s recruits, Nehemia Rubitzov, and a colleague covered their pistols with medical white coats and entered the Old City in an ambulance to organize the defence. Rubitzov, Ukrainian-born, had been recruited by Ben-Gurion into the Jewish Legion, changing his name to Rabin. Now, as he calmed the terrified Jews, he encountered and rescued “Red Rosa” Cohen, a spirited ex-Bolshevik newly arrived from Russia: they fell in love and married. “I was born in Jerusalem” said their son, Yitzhak Rabin, who as Israeli chief of staff many years later would capture Jerusalem.15
HERBERT SAMUEL: ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE
By the time the riots ebbed, five Jews and four Arabs were dead, 216 Jews and 23 Arabs wounded. Thirty-nine Jews and 161 Arabs were tried for their part in what came to be known as the Nabi Musa riots. Storrs ordered raids on Weizmann’s and Jabotinsky’s homes: Jabotinsky was found guilty of possessing guns and sentenced to fifteen years. Young Amin Husseini—“the chief fomenter” of the riots, in Storrs’ words—was sentenced to ten years, but escaped from Jerusalem. Storrs sacked Mayor Musa Kazem Husseini, though the British naively blamed Jewish Bolsheviks from Russia for the violence.
The liberal Weizmann and socialist Ben-Gurion continued to hope for a gradually evolving homeland and a modus vivendi with the Arabs. Ben-Gurion refused to recognize Arab nationalism: he wanted Arab and Jewish workers to share “a life of harmony and friendship,” but sometimes he exclaimed, “There’s no solution! We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want it to be theirs.” The Zionists now started to reorganize their old Hashomer—the Watchmen—into a more efficient militia, Haganah—the Defence.
Each act of violence fed the extremists on both sides. Jabotinsky absolutely recognized that Arab nationalism was as real as Zionism. He argued implacably that the Jewish state, which he believed should encompass both banks of the Jordan, would be violently opposed and could be defended only with an “iron wall.” In the mid-twenties, Jabotinsky split off to form the Union of Zionist-Revisionists with a youth movement, Betar, that wore uniforms and held parades. He wanted to create a new sort of activist Jew, no longer dependent on the genteel lobbying of Weizmann. Jabotinsky was adamant that his Jewish commonwealth would be built with “absolute equality” between the two peoples and without any displacement of the Arabs. When Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, Jabotinsky mocked the cult of Il Duce—“the most absurd of all English words—leader. Buffaloes follow a leader. Civilised men have no ‘leaders.’ ” Yet Weizmann called Jabotinsky “Fascistic’ and Ben-Gurion nicknamed him “Il Duce.”
King Faisal—the hope of the Arab nationalists—was doomed by French determination to possess Syria. The French forcibly expelled the king and smashed his ragtag army, completing the collapse of Lawrence’s plans. The end of Greater Syria and the riots helped form a Palestinian national identity.b
On 24 April 1920, at the San Remo Conference, Lloyd George accepted the Mandate to rule Palestine, based on the Balfour Declaration, and appointed Sir Herbert Samuel as the first high commissioner. He arrived at the station in Jerusalem on 30 June, resplendent in a white uniform, pith helmet with feathers, and a sword, to the boom of a seventeen-gun salute. Samuel may have been Jewish and a Zionist but he was no dreamer: Lloyd George found him “dry and cold.” A journalist thought he was “as free from passion as an oyster” and one of his officials noted he was “stiffish—never seems able to forget his office.” When the military governor handed over control of Palestine, Samuel managed one of his few recorded j
okes, signing a chit that read “Received from Major-General Sir Louis J Bols KCB, One Palestine, complete.” He then added “E and O [Errors and Omissions] excepted,” but there would be many of both.
Initially Samuel’s calm tact soothed Palestine after the shock of Nabi Musa. Setting up Government House in the Augusta Victoria on the Mount of Olives, he released Jabotinsky, pardoned Amin Husseini, temporarily limited Jewish immigration and reassured the Arabs. British interests were no longer the same as they had been in 1917. Curzon, now foreign secretary, was opposed to full-blown support for Zionism and watered down Balfour’s promises. There would be a Jewish home but no state then or later. Weizmann felt betrayed but the Arabs regarded even this as disastrous. By 1921, a total of 18,500 Jews had arrived in Palestine. During the next eight years, Samuel allowed in another 70,000.16
In the spring of 1921, Samuel’s boss Winston Churchill, the secretary of state for colonial affairs, arrived in Jerusalem accompanied by his adviser Lawrence of Arabia.
CHURCHILL CREATES THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST:
LAWRENCE’S SHERIFIAN SOLUTION
“I liked Winston so much,” said Lawrence afterwards, “and have such respect for him.” Churchill had already enjoyed a career of swashbuckling adventure, bumptious self-promotion and irrepressible success. Now in his late forties, the colonial secretary was confronted with the punishing cost in blood and treasure of garrisoning a new empire: Iraq was already in the grip of a bloody insurgency against British rule. Churchill therefore called a conference in Cairo to hand over a certain amount of power to Arab rulers under British influence. Lawrence proposed granting a new kingdom of Iraq to Faisal.
On 12 March 1920, Churchill convened his Arab experts in the Semiramis Hotel while a pair of Somalian lion cubs played around their feet. Churchill enjoyed the luxury, having no wish to experience “thankless deserts,” but Lawrence hated it. “We lived in a marble bronze hotel,” he wrote. “Very expensive, and luxurious—horrible place. Makes me Bolshevik. Everybody in the Middle East is here. Day after tomorrow, we go to Jerusalem. We’re a very happy family: agreed upon everything important”—in other words, Churchill had accepted the “Sherifian solution”: Lawrence finally saw some honour restored in the wake of the broken British promises to the sherif and his sons.
The old sherif, King Hussein of Hejaz, was no match for the Wahabi warriors led by the Saudi chieftain Ibn Saud.c When his son Abdullah tried to repel the Saudis with 1,350 fighters, they were routed: Abdullah had to flee through the back of his tent in his underwear, surviving “by a miracle.” They had planned that Faisal would rule Syria-Palestine and Abdullah would be king of Iraq. Now that Faisal was getting Iraq, this left nothing for Abdullah.
While Churchill’s conference was proceeding in Cairo, Abdullah led thirty officers and 200 Bedouin into today’s Jordan—technically part of the British Mandate—to seize his own meagre fiefdom—even though Lord Curzon thought he was “much too big a cock for so small a dunghill.” The news of this escapade presented Churchill with a fait accompli. Lawrence advised Churchill to back Abdullah. Churchill despatched Lawrence to invite the prince to meet him in Jerusalem.
At midnight on 23 March, Churchill and his wife, Clementine, set off for Jerusalem by train, and were greeted at Gaza by enthusiastic crowds crying “Cheers for the minister” and “Down with Jews! Cut their throats!” Churchill, understanding nothing, waved back with oblivious bonhomie.
In Jerusalem he stayed with Samuel at the Augusta Victoria Fortress where he met four times with “the moderate and friendly” Abdullah, hopeful occupier of Transjordan, escorted by Lawrence. Abdullah, who hoped for a Hashemite empire, thought the best way for Jews and Arabs to live together would be in one kingdom under him with Syria added later. Churchill offered him Transjordan provided he recognized French Syria and British Palestine. Abdullah reluctantly agreed, whereupon Churchill created a new country: “Amir Abdullah is in Transjordania,” he remembered, “where I put him one Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem.” The mission of Lawrence, who had finally shepherded Faisal and Abdullah to two thrones, was complete.d
The Palestinian Arabs petitioned Churchill, alleging, in the tradition of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that “the Jew is a Jew the world over,” that “Jews have been among the most active advocates of destruction in many lands” and the Zionists wanted to “control the world.” Churchill received the Jerusalemites under the ex-mayor, Musa Kazim al-Husseini, but insisted “it’s manifestly right that Jews should have a National Home, a great event in the world’s destiny.”
Churchill’s fathere had imbued him with an admiration for Jews and he saw Zionism as just outcome after two millennia of suffering. During the Red scare after Lenin created Soviet Russia, he believed that the Zionist Jew was “the antidote” to “the foul baboonery of Bolshevism” which was “a Jewish movement” led by a diabolical bogeyman called the “International Jew.”
Churchill loved Jerusalem, where, he declared, opening the British Military Cemetery on Mount Scopus, “lies the dust of the Caliphs and Crusaders and Maccabees!” He was drawn to the Temple Mount, which he visited whenever possible, begrudging every moment away from it. Before he returned to England, he was still holding court on the Mount of Olives when the mufti of Jerusalem died unexpectedly. Storrs had already sacked the Husseini mayor so it seemed rash to upset the family further by also taking away the post of mufti. Besides, the British were attracted to the ascendancy of the Families who resembled their own gentry. Samuel and Storrs therefore arranged that the mayor and the mufti should each be chosen from the two pre-eminent Families: their feud would make them the Montagues and Capulets of Jerusalem.17
a Storrs called Rutenberg, a Russian Socialist Revolutionary whom Kerensky had in 1917 appointed Deputy Governor of Petrograd, “the most remarkable of them all.” He had commanded the Winter Palace before it was stormed by Trotsky’s Red Guards. Rutenberg was “thickset, powerful, dressed always in black, head strong as granite, utterances low and menacing, brilliant and fascinating” but also “versatile and violent.” In 1922, Churchill supported Rutenberg, an engineer, in his bid to found the hydroelectric works that powered much of Palestine.
b The word “Palestinian” came to mean the Palestinian Arab nation, but for the first half of the twentieth century the Jews there were known as Palestinians or Palestinian Jews; the Arabs known as Palestinian Arabs. In Weizmann’s memoirs (published 1949) when he writes “Palestinian” he means Jewish. A Zionist newspaper was called Palestine, an Arab one Filistin.
c The ageing Hussein became the King Lear of Arabia, obsessed with filial ingratitude and British perfidy. Lawrence, on his last mission, was sent to persuade the bitter king to compromise with Anglo-French hegemony or lose his British funding. He wept, raged and refused. Soon afterwards, Hussein was defeated by Ibn Saud and abdicated in favour of his eldest son, who became King Ali. But the Saudis conquered Mecca, Ali was ejected and Ibn Saud declared himself king of Hejaz, then of Saudi Arabia. The two kingdoms are still ruled by their families—Saudi Arabia and Hashemite Jordan.
d The twenty-five-year-old American Lowell Thomas of Colorado made his fortune launching Last Crusade, a travelling show that told the legendary adventures of “Lawrence of Arabia.” A million people saw it in London alone and even more in America. Lawrence despised and loved it, watching the show five times. “I saw your show and thank god the lights were out,” he wrote. “He’s invented some silly phantom thing, a matinee idol in fancy dress.” Lawrence finished his memoirs, using that old title, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a creamily baroque yet poetical work that was a mix of history, confession and mythology—“I prefer lies to truth, particularly where they concern me,” he joked. Yet for all its faults it is surely a masterpiece. Afterwards, Lawrence changed his name, joined the air force and retired into obscurity, dying in a motorcycle accident in 1935.
e Lord Randolph Churchill became friends with the Rothschilds and others when this was still risqué among
st aristocrats. When he arrived at a house party, an aristocrat greeted him, “What Lord Randolph, you’ve not brought your Jewish friends?” at which Randolph replied, “No I didn’t think they’d be amused by the company.”
CHAPTER 48
The British Mandate
1920–1936
THE MUFTI VERSUS THE MAYOR:
AMIN HUSSEINI VERSUS RAGHEB NASHASHIBI
The man they chose as mayor was the very personification of the Arab boulevardier: Ragheb Nashashibi smoked cigarettes in a holder, carried a cane and was the first Jerusalemite to own an American limousine, a green Packard, always driven by his Armenian chauffeur. The debonair Nashashibi, the heir to the orange-groves and mansions of the most recent but richest of the Families,a fluent in French and English, had represented Jerusalem in the Ottoman Parliament, and had hired Wasif to arrange his parties and give oud lessons to him and his mistress. Now that he was mayor, he gave two parties a year, one for his friends, and one for the high commissioner. As a veteran campaigner against Zionism, he took his role seriously as Jerusalemite seigneur and Palestinian leader.
The man they chose as grand mufti was Nashashibi’s wealthy cousin, Haj Amin Husseini. Storrs introduced the young rabble-rouser of the Nabi Musa riots to the high commissioner who was impressed. Husseini was “soft, intelligent, well-educated, well-dressed with a shiny smile, fair hair, blue eyes, red beard and a wry sense of humour,” recalled the mayor’s nephew Nassereddin Nashashibi. “Yet he told his jokes with cold eyes.” Husseini asked Samuel, “Which do you prefer—an avowed opponent or an unsound friend?” Samuel replied, “An avowed opponent.” Weizmann commented drily that, “in spite of the proverb, poachers-turned-gamekeepers are not always a success.” Husseini turned out to be, in the words of the Lebanese historian Gilbert Achcar, “a megalomaniac who presented himself as the leader of the whole Islamic world.”
Jerusalem Page 59
