Chapter 3, Part 3: The First World War, Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration
Section Three
The First World War
In August 1914 a great world war broke out between two hostile camps:
The first included England, France and Russia in particular, and was later joined by America.
The second included Germany, Austria and the Ottoman state.
The war lasted four years. Our country was one of its victims and tasted aloes and colocynth (the bitterest of plants) in it.
The allied powers, Britain, France and Russia, agreed to tear the Ottoman Sultanate to pieces, and concluded among themselves a secret treaty in Petersburg in 1916, under which they divided the spheres of influence that would follow the Sultanate's defeat.
Russia's share was the provinces of Erzurum and Bitlis and the land south of Kurdistan as far as Jazirat Ibn Umar, "and these lands shall be entirely subject to the government of His Majesty the Tsar of Russia and shall be considered among his possessions" (Article One).
France's share was the Syrian coast from Naqoura (south Lebanon) and up northward as far as Latakia and then Alexandretta, Lebanon as defined by the international agreement of 1861, and Cilicia, Aintab, Mardin and Kharput (Article Two).
Britain's share was Iraq and the southern Syrian coast including Haifa and Acre, as well as the region stretching from the Persian Gulf to the end of the Red Sea (Article Three).
This secret treaty provided for making the port of Alexandretta international and for treating Palestine and its holy places as outside Turkish territory, "on condition that it be placed under a special administration in accordance with an agreement to be concluded between France, England and Russia".
The agreement also contained a fourth clause in Article Three providing for the creation of an independent Arab state or alliance of Arab states in the interior regions, this to be done by a special agreement to be concluded between France and England.
This special agreement was concluded on 9 May 1916. It is the agreement known as the agreement of Sykes (the Englishman) and Picot (the Frenchman), under which Syria, Palestine and Iraq were divided between the two states.
On top of that, Britain hastened to issue the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917 under Zionist pressure, for the creation of a national home for the Jews in Palestine.
For the record I will say:
Lloyd George, Prime Minister of Britain, sent the President of the United States, Mr. Wilson, the text of the agreement reached with Chaim Weizmann, the evil spirit behind the Balfour Declaration, and the President approved it. That was before the declaration was announced, and France and Italy hastened to approve this ill-omened promise after it was announced.
President Wilson had in mind the creation of a league of nations to settle disputes between states.
This league was indeed created. But the American people did not agree in 1920 to America's involvement in the affairs of Europe, so England and France dominated the league and steered it in the direction they wanted, one that in part served Zionist ambitions.
The fact is that the victory of the Allies in 1918 confirmed the following facts:
1. Germany was broken up and its military power destroyed.
2. The Ottoman Empire was broken up and its spoils divided among the victors.
3. France and Britain occupied the whole of the eastern Arab world.
4. Palestine was given a special status under the British umbrella in order to carry out the Zionist policy.. which ended with the creation of Israel.[1]
We would point out in particular that the chief figures at the peace conference were:
1. President Wilson, President of the United States, who was surrounded by three Jews: Justice Brandeis, whom Weizmann used to compare to Abraham Lincoln, the interpreter Mantoux, and Colonel Kisch (an Englishman by origin who served for a long time in Palestine during the Mandate).
2. Lloyd George, whose secretary was the Jew Sassoon.
3. Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France, whose secretary was also a Jew, Mandel Rothschild.
4. The Prime Minister of Italy.
When Wilson withdrew and went home after the vote that took place there in 1920, three of the great men remained on the international stage. But the Italian Prime Minister was not in a comfortable position because of his country's weakness, so the decisive word at the conference belonged to Britain and France.
England was following a policy with three faces:
The first: it was negotiating in secret with Sharif Hussein, Emir of Mecca, for a revolt against the Ottoman Sultanate to help the Western war effort, in exchange for the promises of Henry McMahon, England's representative in Egypt, which included its recognition of the independence of the Arab lands in general.[2]
The second: negotiations with France and Russia on dividing influence and occupying the Arab lands whose independence it had promised Sharif Hussein.
The third: currying favor with the Zionist Jews by handing them Palestine.
Today it has become possible for Arab researchers to examine the original secret documents in the Western foreign ministries, now that their publication has been allowed (except for what is still banned) because fifty years have passed, and to study them objectively in a way that can establish the responsibility of those states, and especially England, which exploited the Arabs' ambitions to build their nation and then betrayed them.[3]
Endnotes:
[1] We would especially urge the reading of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", translated by Mr. Ajaj Nuwayhid in two volumes, Dar Tlass, 1948, and the introduction with which he prefaced these crude protocols.
[2] See the impartial study of these documents in the book by General Mustafa Tlass, The Arab Revolt, pp. 135-176, and the references cited in that study.
[3] We would mention that the first such document published anywhere in the world was the text of the Sykes-Picot treaty. The Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs published this document after the communists took power, on the personal order of Trotsky, who was appointed foreign minister on 28/11/1917, in order to expose how the Allies had betrayed their allies.