Deeply impressed, hopeful that the French would not prevent Faisal from becoming King of Syria, Gertrude asked for an interview with him. She spent a couple of hours talking to him one morning as he was sitting for Augustus John, who had taken a studio in Paris to paint the most interesting of the delegates. Among her papers exists an untitled, undated record of two early interviews with Faisal, one of them in Paris:
In John’s studio I told him that I believed that no power on earth would make France relinquish the Syrian Mandate. He had received this opinion with surprise and dismay. I had gone straight from this interview to lunch with Mr. Balfour and after lunch when the other guests had left had related my conversation with Faisal and reiterated my conviction regarding the attitude of the French. Mr. Balfour . . . assure[d] me in a purely private capacity that he was in agreement with me. Thereupon I begged him to clear Faisal’s mind of illusions . . . so that he might shape his course accordingly. Mr. Balfour thereupon summoned Ian Malcolm and said “Ian, will you make a note of what she says so that I may not forget to acquaint Lloyd George.” Ian producing an exquisite notebook from an impeccable pocket had made the desired entry—and I, feeling that Ian’s notebook was the epitome of all culs de sac, had left Paris a day or two later.
Lord Arthur James Balfour, Lloyd George’s languid Foreign Secretary, had issued a Declaration in November 1917 that the British government approved “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” As Gertrude, thinking of the Sykes-Picot treaty and all the trouble that had caused, wrote in a letter to Sir Gilbert Clayton, former head of the Arab Bureau in Cairo: “Mr. Balfour’s Zionist pronouncement I regard with the deepest mistrust—if only people at home would not make pronouncements how much easier it would be for those on the spot!”
Contentious as the declaration would be, the wording had been watered down somewhat from the original proclamation that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people.” When the first draft of the Declaration had been put to the Cabinet, Sir Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India—the man who had reprimanded Gertrude for having communicated her views to him over the head of A. T. Wilson—mounted a vehement opposition despite being Jewish himself, stating that Zionism was a “mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom.” Was his own loyalty, he demanded, to be to Palestine? And what would be the repercussions for the rights of Jews living in other countries? Many Jewish leaders in the West believed that to offer Palestine to the Jews would be a disservice to Jewry; moreover, the Jews already settled in Palestine anticipated, and dreaded, the trouble that Zionism was about to cause. In support of his argument, Montagu had read out to the Cabinet a strongly argued letter from Gertrude, whose persuasive words had resulted in the rephrasing of the document. She was angered by the tendency of the Zionists and the statesmen at the Conference to talk as if Palestine was empty of people; and she could see that Arabs and Jews could not live peaceably side by side. As long ago as January 1918 she had written to Clayton:
Palestine for the Jews has always seemed to us to be an impossible proposition. I don’t believe it can be carried out—personally I don’t want it to be carried out, and I’ve said so on every possible occasion . . . to gratify Jewish sentiment you would have to override every conceivable political consideration, including the wishes of the large majority of the population.
It was not the first time that the Zionists’ dream of a homeland would exclude any consideration for the people who already lived there. The first Zionist congress in 1897 had produced the plan to buy Uganda as a home for the Jews. Thirty years on, what about the rights of the existing community in Palestine? There were five hundred thousand Arabs there, four-fifths of the population. How was the protection promised by the Declaration to be delivered, if it became the home of the Jewish nation?
Half the Jews in the world lived in abject misery in the area called the Pale, now Belarus, the Ukraine, and eastern Poland. It was stifling in the summer, bitterly cold in the winter, and desperately poor land at any time. The Russian government gave no protection to its seven million Jews, who were continually subjected to pogroms and murderous anti-Jewish riots. Some of them turned to revolution, like Trotsky, and hundreds of thousands left to begin new lives in America and Western Europe. At the start of the war, there were three million Jews in America and three hundred thousand in Britain, many of them refugees.
Nationalist ideas, which grew in popularity throughout the war, led in France, Germany, and Austria to a general suspicion of minorities, and particularly of their Jewish minorities. At the same time, Jews’ longing for a nation of their own intensified. In Britain, the leading Zionist was Chaim Weizmann, a reader in biochemistry at Manchester University and a man of extraordinarily engaging personality. For him Palestine, the last Jewish kingdom to have been destroyed by the Romans, was the only place for a Jewish homeland. He wanted a land where a Jew could be “one hundred per cent a Jew,” not an assimilated Jew obliged to designate himself by another nationality. These he despised—and they included individuals as prominent as Lord Rothschild and Edwin Montagu. Before the war Weizmann interviewed some two thousand people in an attempt to win them over to the cause. His conquests included Lord Robert Cecil, who helped him to convince Balfour. The Zionist dream struck a romantic chord in the Foreign Secretary, who believed that there should be a national home for “the most gifted race that mankind has seen since the Greeks of the 5th century.” Weizmann had also converted Mark Sykes, Lloyd George, and Churchill, Churchill’s sympathies having already been enlisted by the support he was given in his first election by the prominent Jewish community of Manchester.
At the beginning of the war, when Balfour was First Lord of the Admiralty and Lloyd George was Minister of Munitions, Weizmann had created an almost indelible debt to himself. At a time when Britain was facing a hopeless shortage of explosives, he had invented a process for making acetone, essential for their manufacture. He presented it to the government without taking a penny for it throughout the war: he asked for nothing but the support of Britain for the Zionist cause, and it was a promise that could not be forgotten.
The Jewish Legion, volunteers within the Royal Fusiliers, fought bravely alongside Allenby in his advance on Damascus. When he set up his administration there, he duly made his pronouncements in both Hebrew and Arabic. A few months later, the Zionists bought an estate in Jerusalem and Weizmann laid there the foundation stone of the Hebrew University. When Weizmann arrived at the Paris Peace Conference, he made impassioned speeches and backed the British claim for the mandate over Palestine. Not surprisingly, when he and Faisal were introduced to each other, they discovered common ground: neither wanted the French mandate. Faisal, somewhat contemptuous of the Palestinians, whom he regarded as borderline Arabs, and much preoccupied with his own problems, agreed vaguely with Weizmann that there was “plenty of land to go around.” Faisal foresaw a beneficial future for the Palestinian Arabs in partnership with Jewish immigrants, who would be bringing their Western education and energy to a barren land. On 3 January 1919 they signed an agreement to encourage immigration in return for the Zionists’ support for an independent Arab state.
After the Conference, a commission distinguished by its insignificance was sent by America to investigate the future of Palestine and canvass public opinion in Syria. The two individuals carrying out the commission discovered, as Gertrude could already have told them, that there was deep opposition to the Zionist programme on the part of the Palestinian Arabs: they recommended that the notion of a Jewish homeland be abandoned. Gertrude was well aware that up to this time the Arabs in Palestine had not regarded themselves as a nation. “In one respect Palestine has reason to be grateful to the Balfour declaration: the country has found itself in opposing it. National self-consciousness has grown by leaps and bounds . . . The eager desire of education everywhere manifest has been induced by a jealous wish to be level wi
th the Jews.”
Nobody paid any attention to the commissioners’ findings; neither was there any chance of reading their report, as it was never published.
It was unfortunate that, while Weizmann had worked his charm at the Conference, the Palestinians had not attended. Instead, and for the first time, they rioted in Jerusalem against the proposal for Jewish settlement in Palestine. They sent Balfour a stream of letters and petitions, but these were all destroyed by his private secretary before he could read them. The truth was that nobody wanted to turn their minds to the problem. It was the opinion of those who did spare a thought for the Palestine question that, in the words of Lord Curzon, the area “will be a rankling thorn in the flesh of whoever is charged with its Mandate.” So it was for the High Commissioner of His Majesty’s Government in Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel. On his inauguration, Gertrude wrote even-handedly of the friction between the Jews and the Arabs: of the Zionists’ tactlessness in the free expression of their hopes for the future of Palestine, and the Arabs’ deep resentment of the economic and financial powers granted to the newly established Zionist Commission. This, a committee under Weizmann, had been appointed by the British to be resident in Jerusalem, where it would represent Jewish issues to the local British officials. “The roaring of responsible members of the Commission, as for instance the declaration that Palestine is to be as Jewish as America is American, will continue to echo behind the High Commissioner’s dovelike notes, which they effectively drown,” Gertrude commented.
Faisal left France in April 1919 a disappointed man, and visited the Pope in Rome before returning to Syria to put down a guerrilla war along the coastline. In September, Lloyd George and Clemenceau reached a provisional agreement. British troops in Syria would be replaced by French garrisons. Arab troops would be maintained in the eastern region, under French supervision. The British government invited Faisal to discuss the situation in London. Faisal set out again, was again treated with discourtesy in Marseilles, and was forced to bypass Paris. At Boulogne and Dover he was received respectfully by a British admiral and a guard of honour, and at the station in London by Foreign Office representatives. He was informed about the recent prime ministers’ agreement, but assured that the arrangement would be only temporary.
He returned to Syria to find that his father, Hussain, refused to acknowledge his negotiations. Neither would Hussain ratify or acknowledge the peace terms encapsulated in the Treaty of Versailles.* When he arrived in Damascus, Faisal was greeted by ten thousand Arabs marching in protest against the forthcoming French mandate. An Arab Congress met the following March to demand complete Arab independence in Syria. Meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, along the Euphrates, Arab tribes were making war against Faisal’s only allies, the British. Gertrude describes him at about this time:
Faisal, with his high ideals, his fair conception of the Arab cause which he alone represented and defended—acutely sensitive to sympathy or political antagonism, trying to hold his own against the covert hostility of the French and the ardent folly of his own adherents; harassed by his family, deserted by the British government . . . without one single person near him from whom he could seek affection and impartial guidance . . .
Caught between the priorities of the West and the extremists in Syria, Faisal was confronted by Arab nationalists demanding that he accept the crown of Syria. He took time to make his decision. He cabled Lord Allenby in Cairo, and asked for advice. If he accepted, he pointed out, it might be possible to fend off an uprising, but if he refused it might cause one. The answer also took time, and when it came it was so evasive and vaguely worded that he allowed himself to be elected King. Neither Great Britain nor France acknowledged the coronation: Britain because she could not, France because she would not. Those who perceived Faisal as self-constituted were able to accuse him of going over to the extremists.
In April 1920, at the San Remo Conference, Syria was officially put under a French mandate. Faisal had been invited to attend, but he had grown weary of rushing across the world at the summons of the West, only to be treated in summary fashion and dismissed. By inexorable degrees, Syria had arrived at the point where a conflict was inevitable.
As soon as the Conference had agreed to the French mandate, Damascus erupted. Faisal’s position was impossible. The Syrians were calling him pro-French, the French were calling him pro-British, and the British were saying he was backing the cause of Arab extremism. He could have submitted to the French or stood up for the Arabs. Choosing the latter course would have been natural for him, but the matter was taken out of his hands. General Gouraud arrived in Damascus as the first French High Commissioner, ironically the very general who had awarded Faisal the Légion d’Honneur.
He found rebellion in the air. There were now ninety thousand French troops in Syria, and the French had taken the all-important ports. When Faisal officially protested against the foreign occupation and appealed against the mandate to the Supreme Council, Gouraud made his move. He demanded from Faisal an unconditional recognition of the mandate, the adoption of French as the government language, an immediate reduction in the Syrian army, the abolition of conscription, the free movement of troops on the railways, the French occupation of Aleppo, and the punishment of all Arabs who had rebelled against the mandate. Faisal asked for forty-eight hours to consider, but before that time ran out the French produced another battery of ultimatums. Then, on 22 July, Arab tribesmen took the law into their hands and attacked a French outpost. The following day the French routed them and marched on to occupy Damascus. “The resistance of the Arabs . . . was not led by Faisal,” noted Gertrude, “and was in fact in defiance of his orders . . . General Gouraud immediately issued a proclamation, beginning ‘The Amir Faisal, who has brought this country to the brink of ruin, has ceased to reign.’ ” Gouraud sent an order for him to leave Damascus within twenty-four hours.
And so the first experiment in Arab self-determination was stamped out by the French army boot. Faisal and his younger brother Zaid quietly left Damascus, his reign having lasted less than five months. From Der’a, the scene of the Arab Revolt’s greatest triumph, he travelled under British auspices to Haifa, then to Egypt and Europe. Ronald Storrs was there to greet him on the platform at al-Qantara station, where he found the ex-King of Syria sitting on his luggage awaiting the train. Storrs saw that “The tears stood in his eyes and he was wounded to the soul.”
Gertrude reacted with pain and anger. “In my opinion there were scarcely words strong enough to express my sense of our responsibility for the Syrian disaster. It is impossible to see, nor I think can the French themselves see, where their policy is leading them . . .” Faisal told her in a later interview that he had counted on a firm alliance between the British government and the Hejaz:
You deserted me in Syria—it is therefore incumbent upon me to form a new scheme. You must remember that I stood and I stand, entirely alone. I have never had the support of my father or my brother Abdullah. They were both bitterly jealous of the position which the successful issue of the Arab campaign had given me in Syria . . . I have never had the confidence of my family.
Faisal and Gertrude were by now on close terms, and he was speaking remarkably frankly. He continued:
While I was in Paris in 1919, my father was continually urging me to force the Allies to fulfil their promises to the Arabs. I did not even know what the promises were—I had never seen the correspondence with McMahon. But in any case to force the Allies was out of the question. What power had I? What wealth? I could only reason and negotiate. That was what I did. I continued to do so when I was left face to face with the French.
His hand was forced by his own followers, he said. At the same time as they had nominated him King of Syria, they had nominated Abdullah King of Iraq.
I knew that the whole business was laughable, but I gave it my countenance in order to appease my own brother. He is, as you know, older than I am—I wanted to give him a status in the Arab world in order to disarm
his hostility.
Gertrude could see well enough, now, where the French policy in Syria was leading:
. . . the growing hatred of French control which has been the permanent feature in the history of Syria since our evacuation in November 1919, has by recent events been so deeply embittered that no palliative which can be applied by the French government can be of avail.
[Beside the Syrian Muslims and the Christians] another element has taken the field; the Druzes, flawlessly courageous, unassuageably vindictive, ruthlessly cruel, will neither fear to oppose their small numbers to the forces of the French Republic, nor forgive the injuries . . .
It is the French policy which has combined the . . . Druze and Syrian Arab . . . Their cause has become one . . . Sooner or later, the French must go.
In its attempts to subject the Arabs to military rule, France would further fragment Syria. In the summer of 1925, the Druze instigated a nationalist uprising. Once again Damascus exploded into war, and the French indiscriminately bombed the ancient city into a ruin. Syria would continue for years in a state of ungovernable chaos.
Meeting Faisal, getting to know him and watching with horror as events unfolded in Damascus; concerned about violence in Palestine; appalled by the scale of the insurgency breaking out along the Euphrates as A.T. completed his last months in office, it was no wonder that Gertrude described the disintegration of the Middle East as resembling the collapse of the Roman Empire.
As the British mandate in Iraq became official, A.T. was preparing for his own departure. Preparations also began for an Arab Constituent Assembly in Baghdad, but everyone was waiting for the return of the well-respected Sir Percy Cox from London. Gertrude, rejoicing in the imminent arrival of the man she trusted and could work with, now bent her mind to a workable scheme for putting in place some kind of democratic process: “I’m happy and interested in my work and very happy in the confidence of my chief. When I think of this time last year . . .”
Gertrude Bell Page 44
