THE "PEACE" WE'RE STILL PAYING FOR:

How France Sank The Original Mideast Peace (Edwin Black, 10/13/04, Jewish Press)

At the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919, in a flag-bedecked, battle-scarred but victorious Paris, the great top-hatted Allied men of vision and illusion gathered to remake the world and invent the post-Ottoman Middle East. At those fateful meetings, the Arabs and Jews formally agreed to mutually endorse both their national aspirations.

This was the deal: The Jews could have an unrestricted Zionist state in Palestine. The British could have Iraq and its fabulous albeit still undrilled oil. The Arabs only wanted Syria and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Arabian Peninsula.

During the first days of the League of Nation`s Paris Peace Conference, Faisal, accompanied by T.E. Lawrence (widely dubbed Lawrence of Arabia) met in Paris with Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann. Following up on meetings the two leaders had held the previous June in Aqaba, Faisal signed an enlightened and tolerant nine-point agreement endorsing the Balfour Declaration and inviting the Zionists to coexist in Palestine.

“Article II: Immediately following the completion of the deliberations of the Peace Conference, the definite boundaries between the Arab State and Palestine shall be determined by a Commission to be agreed upon by the parties. Article III: All such measures shall be adopted as will afford the fullest guarantees for carrying into effect the British Government̓s [Balfour] Declaration of the 2nd of November 1917. Article IV: All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures, the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.”

The entire agreement was typed in English. But at the bottom, Faisal hand-penned in Arabic this stern warning: “Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever.” Directly beneath that inscription the signatures of Weizmann and Faisal were duly affixed. [...]

But at the Paris sessions, the French snubbed Faisal. Regardless of prior representations by the British, the French were uninterested in relinquishing their designs on greater Syria, especially since the Lebanon region was overwhelmingly Maronite Christian. Many French officials simply considered the Arabs a threat.

One of the most depressing books you'd ever want to read is David Fromkin's excellent A Peace to End All Peace which shows how many of the seeds of our current troubles in the Middle East--not to mention of WWII and the Cold War--were sown in the post-WWI soil by the cynical British and French and the profoundly inept Woodrow Wilson.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 17, 2004 10:44 AM