The San Remo
How the Jewish
National Home Entered International Law
Prof. Efraim
Karsh
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
There is probably no more
understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo
Conference of April 1920. Convened for a mere week as part of the post-WWI
peace conferences that created a new international order on the basis of
indigenous self-rule and national self-determination, the San Remo conference
appointed Britain as mandatory for Palestine with the specific task of “putting
into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British
Government [i.e., the Balfour Declaration], and adopted by the other Allied
Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the
Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other
country.”1 This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations —the postwar world organization and the UN’s
predecessor.
The importance of the Palestine
It is a historical tragedy
therefore that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership
and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of
the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a
Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood). Rather than keep
trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their
people’s statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed
its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their
Israeli neighbors. And what can be a more auspicious timing for this process
than the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference?
The San Remo
How the Jewish
National Home Entered International Law
Prof. Efraim
Karsh
From the Balfour
Declaration to the Paris
Though relegated since Roman
times to a small minority in the Land of Israel (renamed Palestine by the
Romans) under a long succession of imperial occupiers, not only was Jewish
presence there never eliminated but the longing for the ancestral homeland
occupied a focal place in Jewish collective memory and religious ritual for
millennia, with Jews returning to Palestine from the earliest days of
dispersion, mostly on an individual basis but also on a wider communal scale.
In the 1880s, however, a
different type of returnees began arriving: young nationalists who rejected Diaspora
life and sought to restore Jewish national existence in the historic homeland.
In August 1897 the First Zionist Congress was held in the Swiss town of Basle Palestine
This goal was achieved on
November 2, 1917 when the British government issued a formal statement (in the
form of a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild)
pledging to “use its best endeavors to facilitate the… establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” provided that “nothing
shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed
by Jews in any other country.”3
Reached after months of negotiations with the Zionist
movement, several British cabinet deliberations, and consultation with US
President Woodrow Wilson and prominent Anglo-Jewish leaders, this recognition
of the Jewish right to national rebirth by the then 7 foremost world power was
not only endorsed by Britain’s war allies but also by prominent pan-Arab
nationalists including Emir Faisal ibn Hussein of the Hashemite family, the
celebrated hero of the “Great Arab Revolt” against the Ottoman Empire and the
effective leader of the nascent pan-Arab movement. On January 3, 1919 , he signed an agreement with Chaim
Weizmann, upcoming leader of the Zionist movement, which endorsed the creation
of a Jewish national home in Palestine Palestine
Armed with this agreement, on February 27 the Zionists asked
the postwar peace conference, which had begun its deliberations in Paris the
previous month, to recognize “the historic title of the Jewish people to
Palestine and the right of the Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National
Home” and to appoint Britain as “Mandatory of the League [of Nations],” tasked
with creating “such political, administrative and economic conditions as will
secure the establishment there of the Jewish National Home and ultimately
render possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth, it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and
religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights
and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”5
The mandatory system to which the Zionists referred was
enshrined in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which sought
to steer those “colonies and territories” of the defunct Ottoman and German
empires that were “inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves
under the strenuous conditions of the modern world” toward independence as “a
sacred trust of civilization.” By way of doing so, each colony/territory was to
be administered by a League mandatory that was to guide it toward
self-governance in accordance with the distinct “stage of development of the
people, the geographical situation of the territory, its economic condition and
other similar circumstances.” More specifically, it stipulated that “Armenia,
Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine and Arabia must be completely severed from the
Turkish Empire” and that certain communities in these territories “have reached
a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be
provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and
assistance by a mandatory power until such time as they are able to stand
alone.”6
The implementation of Article 22, however, was easier said
than done, as historic rivalries and political differences among the great
powers that had been suppressed by the necessities of war-winning resurfaced at
the peace conference. While Britain and France sought the immediate designation
of mandates—the former as a means to reduce the financial burden of keeping a
million-strong army in the Middle East and to 8 undo the 1916 Sykes-Picot
agreement by bringing Palestine and the oil-rich region of Mosul under its
auspices;7 the latter in the hope of bringing “Greater Syria” under its
wing—President Wilson, though architect of the mandate system (or indeed the
League of Nations, which the US eventually failed to join), insisted on sending
an inter-Allied commission to Syria to gauge opinion there. However opposed to
the idea, neither British Prime Minister David Lloyd George nor his French
counterpart Georges Clemenceau felt able to dismiss the plan out of hand.
Instead they embarked on an intricate game of procrastination that drove the
exasperated Wilson Syria Oberlin College Chicago Wilson Syria
It was thus left to Britain France Italy Ottoman Empire and
the creation of a new regional order on its ruins. This proved no easy task as
the two war allies quickly found themselves at loggerheads over the region’s
future. Lt. Gen. Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force
(EEF) that had driven the Ottoman armies from the Levant ,
was openly contemptuous of the meager French contribution to the fighting. He
encouraged local Arab leaders to resist the French attempts to enforce their
authority in areas designated to them by the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He also
cultivated Faisal as the “supreme authority in Syria Levant ’s future. No
less galling for the French was the British refusal to withdraw the EEF from
the Levant before the peace conference had reached its
decision. Requests to increase the number of French troops in Syria Britain
During a visit to London in December 1918, Clemenceau, one
of the least imperialistically minded of French politicians, acquiesced to
Lloyd George’s request that Britain be given control over Palestine (the
northern half of which was designated by the Sykes-Picot Agreement as an
international zone) and Mosul (included in the French sphere) in return for
recognition of France’s Syrian mandate. As the British seemed to be dragging
their feet on the promised evacuation of troops from Syria
Even after the conclusion of a formal agreement on the
withdrawal of British forces from Cilicia and Syria beginning on November 1,
1919 and their replacement by French troops “west of the Sykes-Picot line” and
by an Arab force “at Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo,” Clemenceau would not
forgive Lloyd George for what he considered an attempted double-cross.12
Faisal’s imperial dream
To complicate matters further, Anglo-French differences were
skillfully exploited by Faisal to further his grandiose ambitions. Already
during the anti-Ottoman revolt the emir had begun toying with the idea of
having his own “Greater Syrian” empire, going so far as to negotiate this
option with key members of the Ottoman leadership behind the backs of his
British war allies. 13 When this initiative came to naught, Faisal tried to
insert his imperial dream into the postwar peace agreements, and by way of
doing so he sought to win over the Zionist movement, which he believed had
great influence in the Western chancelleries. On June 4, 1918 , several months before the end of WWI, the
emir hosted Chaim Weizmann at his camp near Aqaba, on the northern tip of the Red
Sea , where he acknowledged “the necessity for cooperation between
Jews and Arabs” and “the possibility of Jewish claims to territory in Palestine
When they met again in London Syria US Damascus America
These alleged sentiments culminated in the historic
Weizmann-Faisal agreement. Two months later, with his candor questioned after
publicly describing the prospective Jewish national home as a potential source
of regional conflict,16 Faisal sought to reassure the Zionists of his continued
adherence to the agreement. “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look
with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement,” he wrote to Felix
Frankfurter, a prominent American Zionist (and future US Supreme Court
justice), “and we regard [the Zionist demands] as moderate and proper. We will do
our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the
Jews a most hearty welcome home.”17 “Between the Arab leaders, as represented
by Faisal, and 10 ourselves there is complete understanding, and therefore
complete accord,” an evidently relieved Weizmann wrote Balfour.18
Weizmann’s optimism was largely misplaced. Faisal was
speaking from both sides of his mouth. In his testimony to the Paris peace
conference a month after signing the agreement with Weizmann the emir refrained
from mentioning, let alone endorsing, the Balfour Declaration, proposing
instead to leave Palestine’s future “for the mutual consideration of all
parties interested.”19 This phrasing not only gave the country’s non Jewish
population a veto power over the establishment of a Jewish national home (in
contrast to the Balfour Declaration that rendered them “civil and religious
rights” but no say over Palestine’s future): it also made Sharif Hussein of
Mecca, Faisal’s father and notional leader of the “Great Arab Revolt” who
sought to establish a unified Middle Eastern empire, and presumably Faisal
himself (as would-be king of Syria) serious contenders to Palestine’s inclusion
in their prospective kingdoms. As the emir put it on one occasion, since Syria Britain France
Hence, no sooner had Faisal promised Clemenceau (during a Paris Syria Syria
Convened for the first time on June 3, 1919 , about a week before the commission’s
arrival, the General Syrian Congress was anything but representative. No real
elections had ever been held and its delegates belonged by and large to the
small circle of (mostly Iraqi) nationalists who had fought alongside Faisal
during the war and manned his administration in its wake. One need only note
that 35 of the Congress’s 120 seats were held by members of the tiny
nationalist group al-Fatat, which even after the war numbered a mere 200, or
that only two of the 16 delegates who allegedly represented the predominantly
Christian Lebanon were Maronites, to appreciate the non-representative nature of
this assembly.24
Such were Faisal’s hopes that the King-Crane Commission
(“the best thing he had ever heard of in his life” to use his own words) would
facilitate his imperial dream that he was not deterred from threatening to set
the region ablaze should it fail to arrive in the region, or should the British
forces be withdrawn from the Levant in favor of a French mandate. “Unless you
can at once enable me to reassure Faisal and tell him that the Commission is
coming out and will decide the future of the country, it is certain he will
raise the Arabs against the French and ourselves,” Allenby warned Balfour. “If
this rising under Faisal should take place, it will not only endanger the
position of British troops in Syria Palestine Syria
Faisal’s machinations did not escape the commission’s
notice. “There were evidences of considerable pressure exerted by the
Government to secure the union of all elements upon one program. Government
agents tried hard to persuade, cajole, or threaten all, Christians and Moslems
alike, into subscribing,” read a confidential appendix to its report designed
“For the use of Americans only.”26 Yet ignoring the flimsiness of the
“evidence” submitted to the commission, King and Crane preferred the General
Syrian Congress’s suggestions to those of some of their advisors, recommending
that “Emir Faisal be made the head of the new united Syrian
State Lebanon Syria Syria
Similarly, while feigning “a deep sense of sympathy for the
Jewish cause,” the commission dismissed the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine Palestine
These conclusions were based on what the commission heard
from the General Syrian Congress as well as the 1,863 petitions it
received—most of which were known to be “not 12 proportional to their
respective populations,” to reflect “the influence of organized propaganda,” or
to have been “fraud[ul]ently secured.”30 Ignoring these facts altogether, as
well as the Congress’s highly unrepresentative and self-serving nature, the
King-Crane report uncritically cited its assertions at some length as if they
were statements of fact rather than a propaganda ploy to promote Faisal’s
Syrian kingdom:
We oppose the pretensions of the
Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria Palestine
We ask that there should be no
separation of the southern part of Syria Palestine Lebanon
In other words, at a time when he reassured the Zionists of
his continued commitment to the creation of a Jewish national home in
Palestine, Faisal was busy manipulating the peace conference into eschewing
this very goal, describing Jewish national self-determination as a clear and
present danger to the local population, and demanding the abandonment of the
idea altogether and the suspension of all Jewish immigration.
Nor was Faisal deterred from accompanying his political
machinations with intimidation attempts whenever he deemed it necessary. As the
peace conference reconvened in London on February 12-April 10, 1920 (with the
salient absence of the United States) to discuss the Turkish peace treaty, it
was warned by Allenby that “any decision incompatible with Arab aspirations
concerning Syria Palestine or Mesopotamia taken without Faisal’s presence will
not be acknowledged by Arabs and will cause great difficulties in the future
for which [the Arab] nation declines all responsibility.”32 This was of course
a hollow threat given Faisal’s unpopularity among his would-be Syrian subjects,
who resented their domination by this foreign ruler and his batch of alien
associates. As late as November 1919, a year after the Ottoman surrender, the
EEF’s new chief political officer, Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, reported that
“the whole movement” in Syria
Ignoring this reality altogether, Allenby kept amplifying
the seriousness of his protégé’s threat. As the emir was about to convene the
General Syrian Congress for a special session that would declare Syria’s
independence and crown him as king, Allenby warned Lord Curzon, who, in October
1919, had replaced Balfour as foreign secretary, that the only way to prevent
this development was for the London Conference to recognize Faisal “as
representative of [the] Arab State including [the] British provinces of
Mesopotamia and Palestine and [the] French provinces of Lebanon and [the]
littoral.”34
No sooner had Curzon told Allenby to warn Faisal off any
“irresponsible action” that would “seriously compromise” Syria’s future35 than
he was informed that on March 8, 1920, the General Syrian Congress had
proclaimed the emir as King Faisal I of Syria “within its natural boundaries,
including Palestine,” in political and economic union with Iraq.36 And while
the proclamation demanded that France and Britain vacate the country’s western
(Lebanon) and southern (Palestine) parts, Allenby sought to sweeten the pill to
his superiors by passing Faisal’s assurance that neither the “proclamation of
[independence] nor his own advent to the throne of Syria will change the
friendly relations between Syria and Great Britain.” Rather, these moves were a
desperate bid to urge the peace conference to end its inordinate delay in
deciding the fate of the defunct Ottoman territories and “fulfill its promises”
to the “Arab people.”37
As Curzon remained unimpressed, instructing Allenby “to
inform Amir Faisal at once that H.M. Government cannot recognize the right of
Damascus Congress, of whose composition or authority they know nothing, to
settle [the] future of Syria Palestine Mosul Mesopotamia ,” the field marshal upped the ante. Were Britain France Britain Syria Palestine Mesopotamia ,
the Administration in Syria France Palestine Mesopotamia
to [the] British.”38
The foreign secretary would have nothing of this effective
resuscitation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. While Britain Middle
East , and while it was not averse to the emir’s proclamation as
King of Syria “by a properly constituted Syrian authority,” this was hardly the
case here. The General Syrian Congress was a “self-constituted body without
representative character or authority” that sought to confront the League
of Nations with a fait accompli at a time when it was drawing up
the mandates for Palestine Mesopotamia ,
and Syria Mesopotamia
in the first place given the unanimous opposition by its sociopolitical elites
to Hashemite rule? If the emir was truly interested in resolving the Syrian
imbroglio rather than imposing his own grand ambitions, he should come to
Europe to (yet again) make his case to the peace conference, “with
corresponding recognition of [the] special positions of France in Syria and
Lebanon and [the] British in Palestine, the latter including obligation to
provide a national home for Zionists in that country.”39
Curzon proved prescient. Allenby’s doomsday scenario failed
to materialize. The only outburst of violence was a pogrom in Jerusalem Palestine Syria Lebanon France Palestine Mesopotamia
mandates to Britain
Zionist problems and misconceptions
Faisal’s blatant machinations notwithstanding, the Zionist
leaders were surprisingly trusting of the emir. Though alarmed by the
incitement emanating from Damascus to the extent of trying to attach a liaison
officer to the King-Crane Commission and obtaining an American pledge that
Palestine would be “specifically excluded” from the commission’s terms of
reference,40 they would not see Faisal for the duplicitous and subversive force
he was. In a letter to Balfour on April 9, Weizmann praised the emir’s
(supposed) effort “to exercise all his influence towards having his estimate of
the Zionist cause and the Zionist proposals as ‘moderate and proper’ shared by
his following.”41 A few weeks later he wrote Faisal, together with Frankfurter,
to express “deep gratitude of [his] continued efforts towards friendliest
relations between Arabs and Jews” and to assure him of the Zionist movement’s
determination to “further the happiest cooperation.”42
As late as October 1919 Weizmann still considered Faisal a
staunch ally who appreciated the immense potential of Arab-Jewish cooperation,
advising his Zionist colleagues to ignore the emir’s latest definition of
Palestine (in an interview with a London Jewish newspaper) as an inextricable
part of the prospective Arab kingdom.43 “He is very upset about his own
affairs, of course, and is dead-set against the French,” he wrote to a Zionist
friend after a London meeting with Faisal in late September. “This naturally
complicates our relations with him, but I think he’ll just have to put up with
it.”44 Another meeting with the emir left him even more upbeat. “He is ready to
take Jewish advisers and is willing, even anxious, to have Zionist support in
the development and even administration of the Damascus
We, of course, would be willing
to make a very great effort to help Faisal, as it would help us very much
towards establishing good relations with the Arabs both in Palestine Syria Palestine Damascus Damascus Mecca Syria Palestine
It was only Faisal’s March 1920 self-enthronement that
forced the Zionist leadership to acknowledge the true nature of his ambitions.
On March 31, days before the Jerusalem Palestine Mesopotamia ), not for
any inherent reasons of justice but simply because we cannot afford to fight
him, in other words because of our weakness,” he argued,
F. would know that we have
yielded to pressure, and would utilize his enhanced position to make us yield
more and more. It is evident from the way how F.’s ambitions grew. Two years
ago he was a Bedouin sheik, a capable but modest soldier; at present he is
attempting to play the role of a Near Eastern Napoleon and to set up an Arab
Empire from the Euphrates almost to the Nile.46
Unbeknownst to Weizmann, the appeasing line of Allenby and
his anti-Zionist administrators in Palestine
This had not always been the case. As early as June 4, 1917 , five months before the
Balfour Declaration, Jules Cambon, secretary-general of the French foreign
ministry, issued a letter (on Prime Minister Ribot’s authority) that endorsed
the national rebirth of the Jewish People in its ancestral homeland. “You
consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy
Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and
of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the
renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of
Israel were exiled so many centuries ago,” he wrote to the Zionist leader Nahum
Sokolow. “The French Government, which entered this present war to defend a
people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory
of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which
is bound up with that of the Allies. I am happy to give you herewith such
assurance.”47 16
Though French support for the Jewish national home slackened
as the government realized that this gesture would not sway the Zionist
movement behind its demand of Palestine’s internalization, and while Paris was
not consulted during the formulation of the Balfour Declaration and feared its
detrimental implications for the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Sokolow managed to
obtain (on February 10, 1918) a public statement from Foreign Minister Stephen
Pichon that “there is complete agreement between the French and the British
governments in matters concerning the question of a Jewish establishment in
Palestine.” In a public clarification issued four days later, Pichon
substituted “the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine Palestine
By then the Philo-Semitic Clemenceau (who played an
important role in the rehabilitation of the falsely imprisoned French Jewish
officer Alfred Dreyfus in the face of rampaging antisemitism) 49 had reassumed
the premiership after a decade-long absence and Franco-Zionist relations had
improved. Shortly after the Zionist appearance before the Paris peace
conference in late February 1919, André Tardieu, a member of the French
delegation (and future prime minister of France), issued an official statement
saying the French government would neither oppose the placement of Palestine
under British trusteeship nor the establishment of a Jewish State there—a goal
the Zionists dared not openly pronounce at the time.50
In its testimony to the conference, the Zionist delegation
outlined the boundaries of the prospective Jewish national home whereby the
northern border was to run from a point on the Mediterranean south of Sidon
along the Litani River (in today’s Lebanon) past Mount Hermon to the vicinity
of the Hijaz Railway (some 30 miles east of the Jordan River), which was to
constitute Palestine’s eastern frontier.
These boundaries were largely commensurate with the British
definition, which envisaged Palestine Beersheba Syria Palestine France
On September 11,
1919 , Weizmann met the French chief advisor on Syrian affairs who
intimated that “the French would accept the Litani river line without
difficulty.”52 He was left with a similarly upbeat impression after a meeting
with Pichon, who indicated that while the French were not “deeply interested in
the details of this or that line of the Palestinian-Syrian frontier, provided
there is general satisfaction of France London Palestine Syria Palestine
Matters came to a head when Lloyd George read a telegram
from US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, leader of the American Zionists
and President Wilson’s close confidant, warning that the application of the
Sykes-Picot Agreement to Palestine “would defeat full realization of [the]
promise of [a] Jewish [National] Home” by dividing the country “in complete
disregard [of its] historic boundaries,” and that the only way to implement the
Balfour Declaration, which had been “subscribed to by France as well as other
Allies and Associated Powers,” was to concede the proposed Zionist boundaries.
55
This sent Philippe Berthelot, secretary-general of the
French foreign ministry, who led most of the negotiations at the London
Conference and who was “very scornful of the idea of a Jewish National Home”
(to use Lloyd George’s words), into a tirade.56 Disparaging Brandeis as having
“an exaggerated sense of his own importance” (effectively contradicting his own
earlier claim that “President Wilson was entirely guided by Mr. Brandeis”), he
dismissed the Zionist proposal as “too extravagant to be considered for a
single moment” before proceeding to lament Allied support for the “largely
mystical” Zionist movement, which in his view was based on the misconceived
hope of “rescuing large numbers of wretched Jews in Russia and Central Europe”
at a time when “the great majority of these so-called Jews [probably] had very
little real Jewish blood in their veins.”57
Having propagated the Zionist position at the beginning of
the conference in the hope of persuading his French counterparts “to take a
liberal view of their obligations in regard to the settlement of the future
boundaries of Palestine France
This feigned affinity proved extremely short lived. When the
Supreme Allied Powers met again on April
19-26, 1920 in the Italian resort town of San
Remo
No sooner had Curzon requested that the Balfour Declaration,
“which had been accepted by the Allied Powers,” be written into the Palestine Palestine France Palestine League of Nations —not
least since “he could not recall that general acceptance had [ever] been given
to Mr. Balfour’s declaration by the Allied Powers.” 61
Curzon was taken aback. “M. Berthelot was possibly not fully
acquainted with the history of the question,” he corrected his French
counterpart with quintessential English understatement. The terms of the
declaration had been communicated in February 1918 to Foreign Minister Pichon
and approved by him, as they had been by President Wilson and also by Italy Greece China Serbia Siam Palestine France
The Italian prime minister, Francesco Nitti, interceded. “It
was useless to go into past history,” he said. “It appeared to him that in
principle the Powers were generally in agreement as to the desirability of
instituting a national home for the Jews.” Yet the discussion had revealed
Anglo-French differences regarding the rights of Palestine Britain
This drew Millerand into action. Already at the London
Conference the French had used the issue of Christianity’s holy sites as a
vehicle for reintroducing the internalization of Palestine envisaged by the
Sykes-Picot Agreement, only to run into unwavering British opposition.64 Now
that his Italian counterpart had reintroduced the issue, the French prime minister
wouldn’t miss the opportunity to gain a say in administering Palestine at
Britain’s expense. “He was not precisely informed as to what had transpired
during the discussions which Mr. Lloyd George had held with M. Clemenceau on
the [holy sites] subject,” Millerand said. And while he had no objection to the
award of the Palestine Britain Palestine Palestine Britain France
Lloyd George would not fall for this honey trap. While it
made sense for a European power to act as protector of the Roman Catholic
community so long as Palestine Britain Turkey Britain
The present trouble, however,
was a practical one. It was most undesirable to have two mandatories in Palestine Palestine Great Britain
This view prevailed. The French backed down, only to resume
the attack on the writing of the Balfour Declaration into the terms of the
mandate. Berthelot dismissed the declaration as “a dead letter” and claimed
that “all the Jews in France were anti-Zionist, and had no desire at all to go
to Palestine,” whereas Millerand suggested to repeat the declaration’s
substance while omitting the provision that “The mandatory will be responsible
for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 8th [2nd]
November, 1917, by the British government and adopted by other Allied
powers.”67
Curzon seemed at a loss as to what exactly the French were
opposing. Were they against a Jewish national home in the first place or were
they concerned with protecting the rights and privileges of Palestine France Britain Palestine
Effectively evading Curzon’s points, Millerand shifted the
discussion to the need to safeguard “the civil and political rights of the
French community in Palestine,” triggering yet another exchange with the
British foreign secretary, who failed to see what “political rights” meant in
French law and in what ways they differed from the Balfour Declaration’s civil
rights:
In the British language all
ordinary rights were included in “civil rights.” He was anxious to avoid
introducing in the treaty a word which might have a different meaning for the
French and for the British, and might revive the “religious” rights which has
[had] just been disposed of.69
Yet again Nitti stepped into the fray to facilitate a French
climb-down. It seemed to him that this latest difference was a matter of form
rather than substance, he said; and much as he understood the French point
regarding political rights, there was no reason for further procrastination on
the matter as the conference was “quite agreed as to what was intended and
designed.”70 With Millerand acquiescing in Nitti’s request on condition that
the relinquishment of French religious privileges not be formally mentioned in
the treaty and that France’s point on political rights be recorded in a
procès-verbal, the terms of the Palestine Mandate were quickly agreed, and
incorporated into the Turkish Peace Treaty that was signed four months later in
the French town of Sèvres:
The High Contracting Parties agree
to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22 [of the Covenant of
the League of Nations ], the administration of Palestine League of Nations for approval.71
Epilogue
“Among the more satisfactory items of news from San Remo is
the statement that Great Britain is to receive a mandate for Palestine which
will be considered, in terms of Mr. Balfour’s Declaration, a national home for
the Jews,” read a London Times editorial on April 27, 1920:
We recently called attention to
attempts there were being made to invalidate that Declaration, which embodied
wisely, albeit tardily, the only sound policy the Allies could adopt towards
the Jewish people… But though this opposition was at length overcome, and the
promise given, the opponents of the promise have not wearied in their efforts
to render it nugatory. They dislike the idea that the Jews should have a
national home of their own and would fain persuade the non-Jewish world that
the Jews are merely a religious denomination without special race character.
This observation proved prescient. The drafting of the terms
of the mandate and their ratification by the League of Nations Council,
necessary to make them operative, proved a far more arduous and prolonged
process than the Zionists envisaged. On the territorial demarcation issue, to
mention one major obstacle, they had to contend not only with France’s
minimalist perception of Palestine’s northern border but also with Britain’s
effective exclusion (by the March 1921 Cairo Conference) of Transjordan from
the territory of the Jewish national home and the appointment of Emir Abdullah
ibn Hussein of Mecca, Faisal’s elder brother, as its temporary ruler.
A no less crucial problem related to the mandate’s ultimate
goal. With their original demand that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the
national home of the Jewish people” already watered down by the Balfour
Declaration, the Zionists asked the peace conference to recognize “the historic
title of the Jewish people to Palestine and the right of the Jews to
reconstitute in Palestine their National Home… [which would] ultimately render
possible the creation of an autonomous Commonwealth,”72 as states were often
called at the time. Yet while prominent British politicians (notably Lloyd
George and Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill) had no qualms about conceding
in private their vision of the Balfour Declaration as culminating in
full-fledged statehood,73 British drafters watered down the Zionist demand for
a self-governing commonwealth to “self-governing institutions” thus obfuscating
the National Home’s ultimate aim and insinuating these institutions’ relevance
to Palestine’s non-Jewish communities. “I should much prefer myself to see the
phrase ‘self-governing institutions’ omitted entirely,” Weizmann lamented.
“[T]his means little or nothing and preceding, as it does, the reference to the
Jewish National Home serves to circumscribe the meaning of the latter.”74 Yet
this formulation was eventually inserted in the July 1922 League of
Nations ’ mandate:
The Mandatory shall be
responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and
economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national
home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing
institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all
the inhabitants of Palestine
But the thorniest bone of contention revolved around the
demand—considered by Weizmann “the most important part of the Mandate”76—that
the preamble to the mandate include explicit recognition of “the historic title
of the Jewish people to Palestine.” In early June 1920, just over a month after
the San Remo conference, the Zionists found to their horror that the first
official British draft of the mandate deleted the reference to “the historical
connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the claim this gives them to
reconstitute Palestine as their National Home,” driving Weizmann to urge Balfour
and the newly installed High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Herbert Samuel,
among others, to have this reference reinserted.77 This was quickly done, only
to have it removed yet again from the next draft of the mandate four months
later. “You told me once that you thought the clause unnecessary because the San
Remo Palestine Palestine England
No friend of Zionism, Curzon didn’t fail to identify the
unspoken cause of Weizmann’s alarm. “What they really want this particular
clause in the Mandate for,” he wrote to Lloyd George, “is that this sentence
may be the foundation on which, at every stage, they may hold a claim for
preferential treatment in Palestine, and ultimately for the complete government
of the country…. I won’t have it.”79 Unimpressed by his foreign secretary Lloyd
George had the clause reinserted, albeit in a watered down form. And thus it
was that rather than viewing “the historical connection of the Jewish people
with Palestine” as underpinning the claim “to reconstitute Palestine as their
National Home,” this millenarian attachment was mentioned in the preamble to
the mandate as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that
country.”
These difficulties notwithstanding, it was an extraordinary
feat of diplomacy that within less than five years of its issuance the Balfour
Declaration had been endorsed by the official representative of the will of the
international community: not in the “technical” sense of supporting the
creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine but in the deeper sense of
recognizing the Jews as a nation deserving self-determination in its ancestral
homeland. This is something that successive Palestinian leaderships have been
loath to acknowledge to date.
Notes
1 “British Secretary’s Notes of a Meeting of the Supreme
Council, held at the Villa Devachan, San Remo Saturday, Apr. 24, 1920 ,
at 4 p.m. ,” in E.L. Woodward &
Rohan Butler
2 Avalon Project, “The Palestine July 24, 1922 ,
Preamble.
3 Walter Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1970), p. 36.
4 Ibid., pp. 37-8.
5 “Secretary’s Notes of a Conversation Held in M. Pichon’s
Room at the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, on Thursday, 27th February, 1919, at 3 p.m.,”
Foreign Relations of the United States. Paris Peace Conference 1919
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942- 47), Vol. 4, pp. 161-4
(hereinafter FRUS – Paris Peace Conference).
6 “Secretary’s Notes of a Conversation Held at Mr. Pichon’s
Room at the Quai D’orsay, Paris, on Thursday, January 30, 1919, at 11a.m. -
Draft Resolutions in Reference to Mandatories,” ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 795-6; “The
Paris Covenant for a League of Nations. Text of the Plan adopted by the Peace
Conference April 28, 1919 ,”
Article 22 (New York: League to Enforce Peace, 1919).
7 The Sykes-Picot Agreement provided an Anglo-French
undertaking “to recognize and protect an independent Arab
State Ottoman Empire . Occupying vast territory,
from Aleppo to Rawandaz and from the Egyptian-Ottoman border to Kuwait, the new
state was divided into two spheres of indirect influence in which Britain and
France respectively were to have “priority of right of enterprise and local
loans” as well as the exclusive right “to supply advisers or foreign
functionaries at the request of the Arab State or Confederation of Arab
States.” In the areas excluded from the Arab State, Britain and France were “allowed
to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire
and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of
Arab States.” The area of direct French control, the “Blue Zone,” extended from
Cilicia to the Iranian frontier in the east and to Acre
in the south, including the Syrian coastal strip, the Lebanon Galilee . The area of direct British
control, the “Red Zone,” encompassed southern Mesopotamia
including Baghdad Kuwait Haifa Acre
in Palestine Kew ),
CAB 42/11/9.
8 “Minutes of the Daily Meetings of the Commissioners
Plenipotentiary, Thursday, March 27th,
1919 ,” FRUS – Paris
9 “Mr. C.R. Crane and Mr. H.C. King to the Commission to
Negotiate Peace,” Beirut July 10, 1919 , ibid., pp. 749-50;
“Report of the American Section of the International Commission on Mandates in Turkey Paris Aug. 28, 1919 , ibid., pp.
751-848.
10 See, for example, Allenby to Faisal, Oct. 13, 1918, FO
371/3384/175365; Faisal to Allenby, Nov. 2, 1918, and Allenby’s response, FO
371/3384/182643; Allenby to War Office, Oct. 19, 21, 22, 1918, FO
371/3384/175365, 175481 & 177569; F. Georges-Picot’s telegram of Nov. 14,
1918, in E. Brémond, Le Hedjaz dans la Guerre Mondiale (Paris: Payot, 1931), p.
308.
11 See, for example, “Notes of a Conference Held in the
Prime Minister’s Flat at 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on Thursday, March 20, 1919, at
3p.m.,” FRUS - Paris Peace Conference, Vol. 5, pp. 1-9; “Notes of a Meeting
Held in President Wilson’s House, Place des Etats-Unis, Paris, on Wednesday,
May 21, at 11a.m.,” ibid., pp. 756-63; “Notes of a Meeting Held at Mr. Lloyd
George’s Residence, 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on Thursday, May 22, at 11a.m,” ibid.,
pp. 808-12.
12 See, for example, Clemenceau to Lloyd George, Nov. 9, 1919 , DBFP, Vol. 4, p. 521.
13 Efraim and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle
for Mastery in the Middle East 1789-1923 (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 194-7.
14 Kinahan Cornwallis, “Zionists and Syrians in Egypt,” Arab
Bulletin, No. 87, Apr. 30, 1918, FO 882/27; Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Sokolow,
Apr. 18 & July 17, 1918, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (New
Brunswick & Jerusalem: Transaction Books & Israel Universities Press,
1977), Ser. A, Vol. 8, pp. 137, 233-4; Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence Arabia . The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence
(London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 511-13. 26
15 “Weizmann’s memorandum as sent to Crowe of his interview
with the Emir Faisal at the Carlton Hotel on 11 Dec. 1918 . Colonel T.E. Lawrence acted as their
interpreter,” The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. 9, pp. 69-71;
Weizmann to David Eder, Dec. 17, 1918, ibid., pp. 71-72.
16 Ibid., p. 119, fn 7.
17 Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 38-40.
18 Weizmann to Balfour, Apr. 9 1919 , The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann,
Vol. 9, p. 129. 19 “Secretary’s Note of a Conversation Held in M. Pichon’s Room
at the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, on Thursday, 6 February, 1919, at 3p.m., FRUS –
Paris Peace Conference, Vol. 3, p. 891.
20 Zeine N. Zeine, The Struggle for Arab Independence (Beirut:
Khayat’s, 1960), p. 50.
21 “M. Clemenceau to the Emir Feisal,” Apr. 17, 1919 & Clayton to Foreign Office, May 21, 1919 , DBFP, Vol. 4, pp.
252-3, 265, fn 3.
22 For the complete memorandum submitted by the General
Syrian Congress to the commission see Abu Khaldun Sati al-Husri, Yawm Maisalun:
Safha min Tarikh al-Arab alHadith (Beirut: Dar al-Ittihad, 1964), pp. 262-4.
23 “Report by British Liaison Officer on Political Situation
in Arabia ,” Damascus May 16, 1919 , DBFP, Vol. 4,
p. 264.
24 Eliezer Tauber, The Formation of Modern Syria and Iraq
(London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 15; Khairiyya Qasmiyya, al-Hukuma al-Arabiya fi
Dimashq bayna 1918-1920 (Cairo: Dar alMaarif, 1971), p. 67, fn 2.
25 Allenby to Balfour, May 30, 1919, DBFP, Vol. 4, p. 256;
“Notes of a Meeting Held in M. Pichon’s Room at the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, on
Saturday, May 31, 1919, at 5:30 p.m.”, FRUS - Paris Peace Conference, Vol. 6,
pp. 136-7.
26 “Confidential Appendix to the Report Upon Syria Aug.
28, 1919 , FRUS – Paris
27 Report of the American Section of the International
Commission on Mandates in Turkey
28 Reports by Clayton (Beirut Sept. 26, 1919 , DBFP, Vol. 4, pp.
439-40.
29 “Report of the American Section of the International
Commission on Mandates in Turkey Paris
30 Ibid., pp. 764-5.
31 Ibid., p. 793.
32 Meinertzhagen to Curzon, Feb. 19, 1920 , DBFP, Vol. 13, p. 218.
33 Meinertzhagen to Curzon, Oct. 21, Nov. 10, Dec. 2, 1919,
ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 495, 523, 565-6, 615. 34 Allenby to Curzon, Mar. 7, 8, 1920,
ibid., Vol. 13, pp. 221, 223.
35 Curzon to Allenby, Mar.
8, 1920 , ibid., p. 222.
36 For the text of the proclamation see Husri, Yawm
Maisalun, pp. 278-8.
37 Allenby to Curzon, Mar. 13, 14, 1920, DBFP, Vol. 13, pp.
224-5, 229-30. The same excuse was made by Nuri Said, Feisal’s right-hand man,
during a London Syria Apr. 1, 1920 , FO
371/5034/E2681.
38 Curzon to Allenby, Mar. 13, 1920, DBFP, Vol. 13, p. 225;
Allenby to Curzon, Mar. 18, 20, 1920, ibid., pp. 231, 233-4.
39 Curzon to Allenby, Mar. 19, 22, 1920, ibid., pp. 231-2,
235. See also House of Commons Hansard, “Syria Mar. 19, 1920 ,
Vols. 126-7.
40 Weizmann to Simon, Mar. 27, 1919 , The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann,
Vol. 9, p. 125. 41 Weizmann to Balfour, Apr.
9, 1919 , ibid., p. 130.
42 Weizmann and Frankfurter to Faisal, May 19, 1919 , ibid., p. 142.
43 Weizmann to the London Zionist Bureau, Oct. 16, 1919 , ibid., p. 233.
44 Weizmann to Bella Berligne, Sept. 22, 1919 , ibid., p. 222.
45 Weizmann to Balfour, Sep. 27, 1919 , ibid., p. 231. 28
46 Weizmann to Sir Louis Bols, Mar. 31, 1920 , Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 332-3.
47 Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1961), pp. 416-17.
48 Ibid., pp. 590-1; Martin Kramer, “The Forgotten Truth
About the Balfour Declaration,” Mosaic, June
5, 2017 .
49 Barnett Singer, “Clemenceau and the Jews,” Jewish Social
Studies, 43/1 (Winter 1981), pp. 47-58.
50 Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error (New York: Shocken,
1966), p. 245.
51 David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), Vol. 2, p. 1144. Likewise, Balfour maintained
that Palestine Syria Paris Syria Palestine Mesopotamia ,”
Aug. 11, 1919 , DBFP, Vol.
4, p. 347; Balfour to Curzon, July 2,
1919 , ibid., p. 302. 52 Weizmann to Philip Kerr, Sept. 11, 1919 , The Letters and
Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. 9, p. 213.
53 Ibid. (emphasis in the original); Weizmann to Balfour, Sept. 26, 1919 , ibid., p. 227.
54 Meinertzhagen to Curzon, Mar. 2, 1920 , DBFP, Vol. 13, p. 220.
55 “British Secretary’s Notes of an Allied Conference held
at 10, Downing Street, London, SW1, on Saturday, February 21, 1920, at 11a.m.,”
ibid., Vol. 7, pp. 183-4.
56 Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, Vol. 2,
p. 1162.
57 DBFP, Vol. 7, pp. 107, 184.
58 “British Secretary’s Notes of an Allied Conference held
at 10, Downing Street, London, SW1, on Tuesday, February 17, 1920, at
3.30p.m.,” ibid., p. 105.
59 “British Secretary’s Notes of an Allied Conference held
at 10, Downing Street, London, SW1, on Saturday, February 21, 1920, at 11a.m.,”
ibid., pp. 182, 185. 29
60 Lloyd George, The Truth, vol. 2, p. 1155; Jan Karl
Tanenbaum, “France
61 “British Secretary’s Notes of a Meeting of the Supreme
Council, held at the Villa Devachan, San Remo, on Saturday, Apr. 24, 1920, at 4
p.m.,” DBFP, Vol. 8, pp. 159-60.
62 Ibid., pp. 160, 168.
63 Ibid., p. 162.
64 “British Secretary’s Notes of an Allied Conference held
at 10, Downing Street, London, SW1, on Tuesday, February 17, 1920, at
3.30p.m.,” ibid., Vol. 7, pp. 103-6, 108-12.
65 “British Secretary’s Notes of a Meeting of the Supreme
Council, held at the Villa Devachan, San Remo, on Saturday, Apr. 24, 1920, at 4
p.m.,” ibid., Vol. 8, pp. 163-5.
66 Ibid., pp. 164, 66.
67 “British Secretary’s Notes of a Meeting of the Supreme
Council, held at the Villa Devachan, San Remo, on Saturday, Apr. 24, 1920, at 4
p.m.,” ibid., pp. 163, 167.
68 Ibid., pp. 167-9.
69 Ibid., p. 169.
70 Ibid., p. 170.
71 “The Treaty of Peace between the Allied and associated
Powers and Turkey August 10, 1920 ,
http://www.hri.org/docs/sevres/part3.html., Articles 95-7.
72 “Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine Feb. 3, 1919 , The Letters
and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. 9, p. 391.
73 Ibid., Vol. 10, xix.
74 Weizmann to Herbert Samuel, July 29, 1920 & to Curzon, Aug. 11, 1920 , ibid., pp. 2, 14.
75 Avalon Project, “The Palestine July 24, 1922 ,
Article 2.
76 Weizmann, Trial and Error, p. 280. 30
77 Weizmann to Herbert Samuel, July 29, 1920 , The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann,
Vol. 10, pp. 2-3.
78 Weizmann to Curzon, Oct. 30, 1920 , ibid., p. 77. 79 Ibid., fn. 4; Weizmann,
Trial and Error, p. 280.
No comments:
Post a Comment