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A Century of War
and France issued a new Anglo-French declaration on November 7, 1918, four days before the European Armistice ending the war with Germany. The new declaration insisted that Britain and France were fighting for ‘the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations.’6 That noble result was not to happen. Once the solemn pledges of Versailles had been signed, Britain, with its approximately 1-million-strong military force in the region, established its military supremacy over the French area of the Middle East as well. By September 30, 1918, France had agreed to British terms for creating what were called ‘zones of temporary military occupation.’ Under this agreement, the British would occupy Turkish Palestine, under what was called Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, along with the other parts of the British sphere. Recognizing the French inability to deploy sufficient troops into the designated French areas after the exhaustion of war in Europe, Britain generously offered to act as the overall supreme military and administrative guardian, with General Sir Edmund Allenby, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, as the de facto military dictator over the entire Arab Middle East after 1918, including the French sphere. In a private discussion in London in December, 1918, British Prime Minister Lloyd George told France’s Clemenceau that Britain wanted France to attach the ‘Mosul to Iraq, and Palestine from Dan to Beersheba under British control.’ In return France was said to have been assured of the remaining claims to Greater Syria, as well as a half share in the exploitation of Mosul oil, and a guarantee of British support in the postwar period in Europe, should France ever have to ‘respond’ to German action on the Rhine.7 This private understanding set the stage for later events in a profoundly tragic manner, as we shall see. ARTHUR BALFOUR’S STRANGE LETTER TO LORD ROTHSCHILD But postwar British designs for redrawing the military and economic map of the Ottoman Empire included an extraordinary new element— all the more extraordinary in that many of the most influential advocates of the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, including Lloyd George, were British ‘gentile Zionists’.8
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