Chapter 11, Part 12: Item Two: The American Conspiracy

Item Two: The American Conspiracy

The Suez War ended with England and France losing their honor in the region through their odious collusion with Israel, while the standing of Abdel Nasser rose, as he came to represent Arab nationalism loudly and openly.[1]

The United States feared that Soviet influence would push further into the region than it already had, especially since the defeat of the aggressors in the Suez War had in practice deprived them of the ability to take part in settling the region's problems.. The United States judged that a political and military vacuum had arisen, and it resolved to "fill this vacuum" with what was called "the Eisenhower Doctrine".

On 5 January 1957 President Eisenhower sent a message to Congress stating that the United States wished to achieve the following:

1. Cooperation with all the states of the Middle East, giving them aid individually or collectively, and supporting their economic capacities.

In its form this is a principle no one could object to.

But what it hides is cause for concern. The word "collectively" points to the Johnston plan, which was drawn up to merge water resources, and in particular the use of the waters of the Jordan River, between the Arabs and Israel. It was a plan that the Arab countries benefiting from this river did not accept, and the states of the Arab League backed them in this..

Israel's expansionist policy, in the face of the Arab population explosion, rests on bringing Jews to it from every corner of the world.

Importing Jews needs food, and food needs water.. and the land allotted to Israel, as well as the land it seized, does not have water enough to satisfy its planned expansion, especially the lands of the Negev!

Political analysts are of the view that the Middle East will go up in flames over the seizure of water. Its quantity is small to begin with and does not meet the needs of the original inhabitants. Because of the danger of this explosive water situation, we have chosen to discuss the problem with the care it deserves.

To make use of the Jordan's waters, Jordanian experts in 1952, together with the American Technical Assistance Administration in Amman (Point Four), drew up a plan to use the waters of the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers for irrigation and electricity, building a dam on the Yarmouk at the Maqarin site, then building two power stations and cutting two canals on either side of the Jordan River in the Ghor area, the West Ghor Canal and the East Ghor Canal.

Syria supported the plan, and the international relief agency approved it and set aside forty million dollars for it from the agency's allocations for housing refugees.

But America soon withdrew its support for the plan. The relief agency, which gets most of its money from America, did the same.

This withdrawal is put down to the fact that the plan gave Israel nothing of the Yarmouk's waters, because that river runs through Arab land only.

So that America would not lose the opportunity, Eisenhower charged his adviser Eric Johnston on 16 October 1953 with traveling to the Middle East and persuading its states to accept a unified plan for exploiting the water resources of the Jordan Valley basin. He carried with him a technical report prepared by the engineer Main under the supervision of the American "Tennessee" Valley Authority.

This report, completed in the summer of 1953, contained a detailed plan for dividing the waters of the Jordan Valley basin among the states of the basin, on the basis of exploiting them jointly under the supervision of an international body appointed by the United Nations. It rests on the following proposals:

A. Building a dam on the Hasbani River to store its surplus water, then carrying the stored water through a canal 21 kilometers long to the village of "Tel Hai" in the occupied territories to generate electricity.

B. Diverting the waters of the Banias, Tell al-Qadi (Dan), Wazzani and Sraid rivers, as well as the Hasbani waters coming out of the power station.. to irrigate the Huleh areas, the hills of Upper Galilee and the Marj Ibn Amer valley in the occupied territories.

C. Building a diversion dam on the Yarmouk River at the Adasiyya site, to divert the river's floodwaters to Lake Tiberias through a large canal.

It is clear that this plan sacrifices Arab rights and solves Israel's problem of its growing need for water.

The Arab states objected to this plan because, first, it failed to allot any quantity of water to Lebanon, allotted Syria "a token quantity", and did not allot Jordan its full needs of water for irrigating the Ghor valleys.

And it allotted Israel more than 33% of the total of these waters.

The Arab states also objected to storing the water in Tiberias and then distributing it from there, because that would place it at the absolute mercy of Israel.

The Arab states held that Jordan's plan, agreed with Syria, for building the Yarmouk dam in the Maqarin area keeps Arab water on Arab land.

The astonishing thing is that Israel objected to international supervision in any form, so as to get the biggest morsel!

So the Arab objection to the Johnston plan was well founded, even if Israel dropped this objection of its own.

First: because it was a political plan to liquidate the problem of the Palestinian refugees by settling them in the Arab areas where they were living.

Second: because it gave Israel huge quantities of water so that it could absorb the largest possible number of Jewish immigrants.

Third: because it would lead the Arabs to recognize Israel implicitly, since the plan required the agreement of both the Arab states and Israel.[2]

What I know is that Syria and Jordan began building the Maqarin dam one day, but Israel attacked it and wrecked the works that had been completed.

This subject was a matter of debate in the Council of Ministers in the days of the union, in 1959 as I recall. Messrs. Ahmad Abd al-Karim and Akram al-Hourani demanded that it be carried out by force, and Gamal Abdel Nasser answered them that this would mean war with Israel.

A committee headed by Farid Zayn al-Din[3] was formed to study the matter from every angle.. and it came back with a report supporting Abdel Nasser's view that the time was not right for war.. After that some Syrian ministers resigned from the cabinet for other reasons.

2. Setting up a program of military aid based on supporting the self-reliant capacities of the free countries.

3. Acceptance of the idea of military aid and military cooperation.

This meant that the United States had the right to use its armies to protect the territory of the countries of the Middle East and defend their independence, if they asked for it, against any aggression by an armed force from outside aiming to establish international communist control over one of the peoples of the Middle East.

Iraq and Jordan declared their support for the Eisenhower Doctrine of filling the vacuum.

It should be noted that the Jordanian army was financed by an annual British subsidy of five million pounds sterling. Because of this financing, Jordan accepted a British officer, General Glubb, as the commander of this army.

To end this anomalous situation, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia pledged, at a conference they held in Cairo on 19 December 1956, to pay Jordan an annual subsidy of 12.50 million pounds, the share of Egypt and of Saudi Arabia being five million each and Syria's share two and a half million.

King Hussein dismissed General Glubb and appointed Major General Ali Abu Nuwar in his place, and he appointed the national leader Sulayman al-Nabulsi Prime Minister.

On 6 April 1957 al-Nabulsi declared that his country rejected the Eisenhower Doctrine "and that the vacuum they talk about exists only in the minds of those who talk about it".

But the Arab states did not pay Jordan what they had pledged. So the King hastened to dismiss al-Nabulsi's cabinet and asked for American aid of twenty million dollars a year, to be allocated entirely to the army. America agreed to the request, and the King dismissed Abu Nuwar on a charge of taking part in a plot for a coup against him, and appointed a caretaker cabinet that soon hastened to announce its acceptance of the Eisenhower Doctrine.

Saudi Arabia expressed no opinion on this doctrine.

Camille Chamoun, the President of the Lebanese Republic, who cooperated with the West, accepted it on 16 March 1957.

Syria and Egypt rejected it..

The Lebanese people rose against their president, who had accepted the Eisenhower Doctrine, and launched an armed revolt in late July 1958. Chamoun hastened to ask for American help, and America sent him ten thousand soldiers to prop up his rule against his own people.

The People's Party stood against the Eisenhower Doctrine, and it issued a statement on 26/1/1957 which said:[4]

"The Arab nation, which has tasted the miseries of colonialism and still fears its aggression, and which has struggled and fought to free itself from it and rid itself of foreign influence, will continue its struggle and its fight to resist colonial ambitions and attempts at foreign domination, whether in the form of military pacts (the Baghdad Pact), bilateral treaties, joint defense, a tripartite statement, the filling of a so-called vacuum (the Eisenhower Doctrine) or the defense of the region's security; for the removal of foreign influence from some Arab countries, as a result of the bloody struggle and continuing fight of their peoples, has created no vacuum in them. In any case this so-called vacuum will not be filled by influence of another kind; rather, the Arabs alone, who hold sovereignty in their own lands, will fill every vacuum by themselves, and they are worthy of governing their countries themselves, of enjoying alone their wealth and riches, and of resisting every influence in them other than their own."

In the face of the Syrian refusal, American hands went to work.. and set about weaving a conspiracy against the Syrian regime, which Syrian intelligence soon uncovered.

The Syrian government broadcast an official communiqué on 12/8/1957 announcing the discovery of the conspiracy.

According to the facts set out in the communiqué, Colonel Ibrahim al-Husayni, who held the post of Syrian military attaché at our embassy in Rome, had agreed with Adib al-Shishakli to carry out a military move to overthrow the regime.. But intelligence planted "the honorable officer" in the conspiracy, and he revealed its secrets to them.

"Some army units would move on the capital to carry out a military coup, while American agents would assassinate a group of officers so that the coup would succeed.."

The American in charge of planning and financing the conspiracy was Mr. Stone, the second attaché at the American embassy in Damascus.. When the threads of the conspiracy were uncovered, the Syrian government decided to expel him from Syria together with two of his assistants, for their involvement in it.

In return, the American government expelled the Syrian ambassador in Washington, Dr. Farid Zayn al-Din.

I remember that once, on a visit to Rome in 1956, Ibrahim al-Husayni got in touch with me to meet me, and I excused myself.. But I found him sitting in the hotel lobby at about four in the afternoon.. waiting for me. He introduced himself, since I did not know him.. and began talking to me about how bad things were inside Syria.. and that the regime there had to be brought down.. He asked me to pass his message on to Rushdi al-Kikhya.

I made him understand that our party is not a party of coups: it neither approves of them nor takes part in them for any purpose whatever. And this is true. If one of us strayed, that straying confirms the general principle, namely that the exception proves the rule.

I did not pass these words on to Rushdi, because I knew how firmly he held to legitimacy and how he disliked the "politics" of the night and their harmful effects.

This conversation confirms that the news of the 1957 conspiracy was not foreign to the thinking of al-Husayni, who talked in a hotel lobby with a member of the Chamber of Deputies about a coup against the system of government.. with such boldness.. and determination.. For it is well known of the People's Party that it works only within the framework of the Constitution, has no contact with military men and makes no room for them in its ranks. This is a principle from which it has never departed.. indeed it is against civil servants belonging to political parties.. as I have pointed out more than once.

The conspiracy failed before it reached the stage of execution.. But America's eyes stayed fixed on Syria, so that the Middle East would not slip out from under its influence and fall under "Russian influence".

A meeting was held in Ankara attended by the King of Iraq, the King of Jordan, the Turkish President and the American Ambassador Loy Henderson, at which the situation in the region was discussed, and especially "the Syrian problem". After this meeting the American ambassador went to Beirut and held a meeting with the Lebanese President, Camille Chamoun. As soon as he returned to Washington he told his government that "the crisis in Lebanon is serious, and that this country will not be able to remain an ally of the West for more than six months unless action is taken quickly to rid the Syrian government of its Soviet elements".[5]

President Eisenhower (the author of the doctrine named after him) adds the following: "Syria was more exposed to communist penetration than Egypt, which is dominated by an enthusiastic man, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was able to negotiate with the communists and accept their aid without this leading to serious harm.

But in Syria, which is ruled by a weak man (he means President al-Quwatli), communist penetration passes over the head of the government and goes straight to the army, the foreign ministry and the political parties."[6]

I would like to say that in those days we did not sympathize with the communists as a domestic political force of any weight; but people's sympathy went to the great power of the Soviet Union, because of the despair that had taken hold of us over the blind American policy, which saw nothing in the Middle East but Israel and the preservation of its existence.. and nothing else.

When popular pressure on the pro-Western rulers grew stronger and the revolution of 14 July 1958 broke out in Iraq, American forces landed in Lebanon on 15 July 1958 and in Jordan on the 17th of the same month.. The atmosphere became highly charged when the Soviet Union moved its forces on the Turkish border in response to this American intervention, and Khrushchev took the matter to the Security Council.

And so the Eisenhower Doctrine found a practical way to be applied.

The cause of all this ferment was that every Arab leader sang in his own cage and danced on the ruins of his people.

Endnotes:

[1] On this the two scholars Mariantoni and Oberson say:
"Instead of London and Paris regaining their former influence in the Middle East, they were humiliated militarily and diminished politically, and the Soviet Union and America took their place."
The work cited earlier: What Has Not Been Said about the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Paris 1992, p. 89.

[2] The National Council for Arab Culture published a special issue of the review al-Wahda, which it issues in Rabat, on "Arab Water Security", January 1991.
See also: the article by Dr. Salih Zahr al-Din in the same review, and the article by Dr. Adil Abd al-Salam in the Palestinian Encyclopedia, Part Two of Volume One, p. 250 ff., published in Beirut in 1990.
We have also looked at the book by Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, entitled "The Time of Peace", Paris edition of 1994, and found that he speaks in it of water in the Fertile Crescent with the eagerness of a thirsty man, saying "water slips under political borders, so it does not know its owner.." and that therefore all the states of the region must cooperate to share it among themselves, Chapter Nine, p. 59 ff.

[3] Deputy Foreign Minister of the union state (a Syrian).

[4] See Appendix No. 8.

[5] See: Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, al-Siyasa al-Kharijiyya al-Suriyya 1946-1982 (Syrian Foreign Policy), p. 335.

[6] The same source, footnote 106, p. 458, quoting the book by "Marcel Colombe", Le Moyen-Orient arabe et le non-alignement, Paris 1972.