The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (20 page)

The three men walked back up the beach to the tent, passing Zeid’s protectors. Storrs scrutinized the sharif’s youngest son: “He is about 5.5′
³²
in height, fair in complexion, with fine eyes and the round face and Greek profile characteristic of Circassians. He is evidently attempting to encourage the growth of a somewhat backward beard.” The young man wore a caftan of Egyptian silk. Brilliant gold cords fixed the head shawl. In fact, both Zeid and his relative were so faultlessly attired that Storrs believed they must have stopped and changed costume just before reaching the beach. This was, perhaps, an Arabian attempt at maneuver.

The three waited in the tent for coffee, sitting on divans, the sand beneath their feet covered by two Shirwan rugs (of poor quality, Storrs judged) and two Killim carpets. Zeid confirmed the plan and schedule for the risings. Storrs asked for details. “We will summon the Turks to surrender and shoot them if they refuse,” Zeid said. “If they surrender we will imprison them until the end of the war. We intend to destroy the Hijaz railway as far north as Medain Salih, which will be our advance guard.” Then Zeid returned to the talking points provided by his father and older brother. The grand sharif wanted guns,
³³
ammunition, and money. He asked once more that the British send reinforcements to land on the Syrian coast. “His father felt very strongly on this point,” Storrs recorded. Storrs stuck to the British line: Money and weapons would be forthcoming, and perhaps advisers to train Arab soldiers in their use, but not soldiers in any quantity. At this juncture a slave dressed in white and silver served the coffee. “As soon as decently possible after this,” Storrs reports, I “took [Zeid’s] arm and told him it was time to be getting to the ship.”

By now he had taken his measure of the man: “soft in his ways and vague in his ideas … and though by no means intelligent quite capable of understanding and conveying to or from his father any instructions or explanation
with which he may be entrusted.” With this judgment Hogarth concurred: “Zeid struck me
³⁴
as amiable but weak … not a man of action but a Harem Arab.” The business conducted on HMS
Dufferin
therefore, when the men clambered aboard, merely reprised what had taken place earlier on shore. The British promised to send guns and ammunition and, later, more money. Then Storrs arranged a meal, and for the Arabs to be photographed, and a guided tour of the ship: “I had them shewn [sic] and explained the wireless, which appeared to fascinate them, the guns, the Captain’s bath-room and other wonders of the deep.” Here as elsewhere in Storrs’s memoirs and papers, we recognize a tone. That same condescending attitude allowed Sykes so cavalierly to redraw Arabian borders, and the British government in India to look upon Mesopotamia as its own preserve, and McMahon to write to Lord Hardinge that promises made to Arabs need not be binding upon the British government.

Then it was over. The two young men disembarked from the ship into a canoe with the bundles of
al-Haqiqa
, the £10,000, and one thousand cigarettes, which Storrs thoughtfully added as a gift for Feisal and Ali, the only smokers in the sharif’s family. Then with the Arabs gone, the three Englishmen shared impressions. That the revolt would now take place none doubted. “The conception,
³⁵
plan and intended execution of the rising have every appearance of genuineness,” Storrs concluded. That the revolt was well conceived and would succeed remained an open question in their minds. “Far too much
³⁶
has been left to the last moment and to luck,” Hogarth warned.

Still, England had evidently gained a prime objective. Merely by taking place, regardless of its success or failure, the Arab Revolt would divert the Turks; it would blunt their call for jihad; it would convert many Arabs to the Allied cause. And it would have another entirely unforeseen consequence as well. Somehow on their journey across the Hejaz, von Stotzingen’s party caught wind of the impending revolt and, frightened by that prospect, decided to turn back. It was then that they met up with the Bedouins, with fatal consequences for some but not all of the party. (Von Stotzingen himself, Neufeld, and Neufeld’s bride eventually made it back safely to Germany.) Von Stotzingen’s mission had been to recruit soldiers for jihad against the Allies, not only on the Arabian Peninsula but across the Red Sea in the Sudan and Egypt. The repercussions could have reached east too, across the Indian Ocean into South Asia. “Had the sherifian revolt
³⁷
never done anything else than frustrate that combined march of Turks and Germans to southern Arabia in 1916, we should owe it more than we have
paid to this day,” Hogarth would write in 1920. HMS
Dufferin
steamed slowly northward upon a molten and breathless sea. Upon its deck three Englishmen congratulated themselves on a job well done.

But three thousand miles to the northwest, off the Orkney Islands, Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener had just perished in icy waters amid gale-force winds. He had been on his way to Russia on a diplomatic mission when his ship, HMS
Hampshire
, struck a German mine. Thus did fate deny the British initiator and prime architect of his country’s alliance with Grand Sharif Hussein any chance to see the fruit, whether good or ill, of his labors.

Feisal had gone to Medina, but Djemal Pasha remained uneasy. Anticipating trouble, he decided to send Fakhri Pasha, a seasoned divisional commander, after him. “I explained to him the situation and … asked him … if occasion required to arrange … all necessary measures of defence.” Djemal also prepared “two or three battalions
³⁸
and one or two mountain batteries at Damascus … they could be entrained within half an hour of receiving the first signal.” By this time, late May, Hussein had already dispatched the letter to McMahon asking him to send Storrs to meet Abdullah, and in Medina, Ali and Feisal were busy making preparations for the uprising. Ali secretly contacted the tribal chiefs to warn them that action was pending. Feisal sent word to his bodyguard back in Damascus: They must leave that city immediately. He reviewed the fifteen hundred Mujahid fighters, who everyone supposed would take part in the invasion of Sinai, and discussed its real mission with their officers. When Fakhri arrived in Medina, the two brothers brought him out to Hezret Hamza to review the troops again. “We lunched together,” Fakhri reported to Djemal. “The volunteers were
³⁹
indulging in all the sports beloved of the Beduins [sic] and singing songs about the blows they were going to inflict upon the English.” On the evening of June 4
⁴⁰
he accepted an invitation to dine with Feisal and Ali at their Medina quarters. The brothers assured him that the first contingents of Mujahids would depart for Dara in two days’ time. It was an unexceptional occasion.

The next morning, however, Ali sent a note to Fakhri. Perhaps he had written it before dinner the previous evening. Fakhri read it with surprise and growing anger. “In accordance with my father’s orders the transport of the volunteers to Palestine will be suspended,” Ali wrote. “I have therefore decided to return with the Mujahids to Mecca instead of wasting my time here. I regret that I must go without taking leave of you. Please excuse me!” Ali did not state it plainly, but Fakhri Pasha understood what was about to
happen: Ali would not be returning with his troops to Mecca, he would be throwing them against the Turks. Frantically Fakhri sought to contact Djemal Pasha, finally tracking him down by telephone in Beirut. “The railway will be attacked tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest,” he warned. “Ali Bey will interrupt our communications between Medina and Syria and attempt a surprise attack on Medina … I have assumed command of all the troops.” Djemal sent the Damascus battalions and batteries at once. Let the two brothers waste their time in the desert blowing up railway track. That could be repaired. He was determined to hold Medina against all comers.

Ali and Feisal had ridden out to Hezret Hamza at daybreak. There before the fifteen hundred Arab fighters, they fired their rifles into the air and proclaimed the independence of Arabia in the name of their father the Grand Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Then the two brothers led their now-rebel army into the desolate reaches beyond Medina to join the tribes Ali had recruited earlier. They would tear up the railway. They would besiege Fakhri Pasha and his reinforced Ottoman army in Medina. The die was cast. The date was June 5.

Abdullah had arrived in Taif three days earlier. As in Medina, Ottoman soldiers crowded the city, refugees from the blast-furnace heat of Mecca. Likewise seeking relief from the blazing sun, the Turkish
vali
rested there. The grand sharif had either seized or cut the telegraph lines into Mecca, but not yet those extending from it, presumably on the grounds that control of cables in meant control of cables out. Taif, then, remained on line, but its messages could be intercepted in Mecca. During that first week of June no one in Taif knew anything about Ali and Feisal’s actions far to the north.

Abdullah consulted with the local sheikhs. All was in readiness; they waited only for the word to strike. Abdullah told them that a date had been set: Saturday, June 10. Then on the morning of June 9
⁴¹
he received a summons to meet with the Turkish
vali
later in the day. A nervous Abdullah accepted quickly enough but took precautions. At the time appointed he rode with four picked men toward the
vali
’s palace. They reined in before it. “I left Faraj with the horses,” Abdullah recalled. He entered the building with his three comrades “and posted Hosaan at the top of the stairs”; traversed a long hallway, and stationed the two remaining sheikhs outside the
vali
’s room.

Then Abdullah entered it, with a pistol hidden beneath his cloak. “If there was any trouble
⁴²
I was to shoot the
vali
in the room and they were to
dispatch anyone who tried to interfere outside.” In fact, the
vali
harbored no designs; he remained ignorant of events in Medina. But the continual jockeying with the emir for control of the Hejaz preyed upon his nerves. When Abdullah appeared before him, the
vali
reiterated these concerns. Then two Ottoman officials entered the room. One of them whispered in the
vali
’s ear. Abdullah tightened his grip upon the pistol. But the
vali
only shook his head and ordered the men to leave. Later Abdullah learned they had been urging the
vali
to arrest him.

It was a narrow escape, and when a shaken Abdullah left the palace, he immediately ordered that the telegraph wires into Taif be severed. Now the city was entirely cut off. The next day, as planned, he launched the siege of Taif.

Back in February the grand sharif already had devised his opening gambit: He would send a letter to Enver Pasha, first among the triumvirate of Young Turks leading the Ottoman Empire. No copy survives,
⁴³
but both Abdullah and Djemal summarize it in their memoirs. Hussein offered, in this communication, to do what the Ottomans wanted: He would send additional troops for the invasion of Egypt and still more to face the British in Iraq; he would endorse the jihad. But he stipulated that the Ottomans must do something for him in return. They must pardon the prisoners in Djemal’s jails, grant autonomy to Syria and Iraq within the empire, and recognize him as hereditary emir of the Hejaz. It is impossible that the grand sharif did not understand he was crying for the moon. Therefore he was preparing the way for revolt. When the Ottomans rejected his offer, he would have his casus belli.

Meanwhile he ratcheted up tensions in Mecca. First he asked the British to extend their blockade in the Red Sea to the Arabian coast. He believed, rightly as it turned out, that those affected would blame the Turks for provoking Britain rather than Britain for prosecuting the war. As the blockade tightened, supplies dwindled throughout his kingdom. “Purveyors have begun to refuse to give provisions,” reported the acting governor and commandant of Mecca from Hamidiye, the Ottoman headquarters in that city. “Everyone reclaims
⁴⁴
his money. Even wood ration is now given day by day.… provisions sent to Taif have not arrived.” A few days earlier he had warned that as a result of the blockade, people in Mecca were showing “an attitude of distrust of the government.”

In Constantinople the Ottomans were puzzling over Hussein’s letter. Enver Pasha sent it to Damascus, telling Djemal that he could not make
heads or tails of it. The latter understood it well enough, according to his account, but he approached the matter obliquely. “Your father,” he cautioned Feisal, who was at that point still in Damascus, “has many enemies … in Constantinople … trying every day to rouse the Government’s suspicions against [him].” The grand sharif’s son “turned pale,” according to Djemal. The commander of the Fourth Army sent a more transparent warning to Hussein: “The men who form
⁴⁵
the present Government … would never forgive anyone who had the audacity to hamper them in the war upon which they have entered for the good of the Mohammedan world.”

The time for a parting of the ways was near at hand. We may imagine the grand sharif and his son Abdullah in nearly continual consultation in Mecca; messages in code and invisible ink secreted in sword hilts must have been flying to and fro between Ali and Feisal, both now in Medina, and the sharif and Abdullah in Mecca. When the brothers in Medina finally set the date for their rising and informed their father of it, Hussein wrote to Enver in Constantinople and to Djemal in Damascus: “He [Hussein] considered himself
⁴⁶
compelled to break off relations with the Government until the request was acceded to which he had made to Enver Pasha two months before.” At that point Ali sent his own brief note to Fakhri Pasha. He and Feisal rode off into the desert with their fifteen hundred soldiers.

In Mecca Bimbashi Mehmed Zia Bey, the acting governor and commandant, had no knowledge of these developments. But as tensions grew because of the British blockade and ensuing mutterings, he devised a defense, in case matters should reach the breaking point. He must hold three main Ottoman outposts in the holy city, he concluded: Hamidiye (the headquarters), Fort Jeyad (which was close by), and the Jiyad Barracks (located on the outskirts of town). But he continued to hope that it would not be necessary to implement the plan. The evidence suggests that when the crisis finally arrived, it took him by surprise.