The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (62 page)

In late 1917 Talaat’s proxies approached their British enemy on a variety of fronts. At the end of October, Charlton Giraud, a French national with extensive business interests in Smyrna, where he made his home, appeared at the British consulate in Athens. He had been dispatched
²
by Rahmi Bey, the liberal Ottoman
vali
of Smyrna, ostensibly to discuss an exchange of interned Allied and Turkish civilians. Soon, however, it became apparent that he had a more important mission. Giraud reported to A. T. Waugh, British attaché at the Athens legation, that Rahmi Bey “would welcome
³
an understanding with us … The main obstacle … is Enver, who is committed to the Germans. But for him Rahmi might be able to win over Talaat and Djemal, the only other men who count.” Rahmi Bey would not have acted without Talaat’s implicit consent. The latter was fishing: The
vali
of Smyrna was his rod, Giraud was his lure.

Waugh approached the bait warily. He and a subordinate who also interviewed the Frenchman deemed Rahmi’s indirect advances “only of a kind
⁴
which might be expected in similar circumstances from any oriental of his class, and one of the objects of which may be to gauge the Allies’ general condition from their readiness to negotiate.” Yet ultimately, despite such suspicions, they concluded, as the British ambassador to Greece, Lord Granville, put it, “this is an opportunity which might be seized.”

Meanwhile Talaat was fishing in Switzerland. Here he dangled bait before two old hands, Dr. Parodi and Sir Horace Rumbold. This pair knew something about pourparlers with dissident Turks. In early November they happened to be helping arrange a meeting in Zurich regarding treatment and exchange of Allied and Turkish prisoners of war. Now they passed along the news that the Turks wished to take advantage of this conference
on neutral ground to meet secretly with British delegates to discuss broader issues—that is, a separate peace. Rumbold also reported
⁵
that the same Dr. Noureddin who had met with Aubrey Herbert in Interlaken the previous July had broken silence, was optimistic about “the project,” and intended to return to Switzerland soon.

During the second and third weeks of November 1917, Lloyd George’s War Cabinet engaged in serious deliberations about these signals emanating from Turkey. Balfour argued that Rahmi Bey’s twitch
⁶
upon the line merely indicated how Turkey would approach Britain when circumstances finally compelled her to do so. He advised that Britain not bite. Alfred Milner disagreed: “The time has come
⁷
when we must rely upon diplomacy as well as upon arms in order to detach Turkey … There is a growing party in Turkey which is very anxious for peace … notably Talaat and Djemal.” Then came word via Switzerland of the additional approaches; this tipped the balance. The War Cabinet began discussing specifically what terms to offer the Ottomans. Recall Dr. Weizmann’s reaction when he learned of J. R. Pilling’s trip to Switzerland to speak with Turks about a compromise peace. Recall his fury when he heard of Aubrey Herbert’s similar mission and how decisively he responded to Henry Morgenthau’s intended journey. It is safe to bet that five months later, had he known the War Cabinet was debating Talaat’s overtures, he would have reacted with comparable outrage. Such knowledge probably would have stopped Zionists celebrating the Balfour Declaration in their tracks.

The War Cabinet attempted to define its negotiating position. Ministers agreed that Britain and her allies must have permanent free passage through the Dardanelles Strait into the Sea of Marmara and thence into the Black Sea. In return Turkey should receive financial aid and protection from Germany if necessary; also that the state of Turkey itself should not be dismembered and should be allowed to keep Constantinople as its capital. (Russia had renounced her claim to that city after the February Revolution.) What to do about the rest of the Ottoman Empire proved a much more difficult subject.

Milner had supported Zionism in the War Cabinet and was an architect of the Balfour Declaration. Nevertheless, two weeks later, when he learned of Rahmi Bey’s approach, he argued that Britain should persuade the Ottomans they “could now get out of the war … without the loss of what still remains to them of Europe and of Asia Minor.” What did this mean for Palestine? Milner explained further during ensuing War Cabinet discussions. France and Italy would have to relinquish their territorial ambitions in the Middle East, at least partially. Britain could concede titular power
over some of the lands occupied by her troops. The Turkish flag could be allowed to fly over Mesopotamia, over Syria—over Palestine!

Lord Curzon responded furiously: “I ask how far
⁸
our own pledges and commitments will enable us to make any concession, even that of a purely ostensible or nominal sovereignty, to the Turks in respect of the Asiatic possessions which we have in part or in whole lopped off from her. Almost in the same week that we have pledged ourselves, if successful, to secure Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, are we to contemplate leaving the Turkish flag flying over Jerusalem?”

Mark Sykes, likewise outraged, weighed in with yet another powerfully argued paper prepared at the request of War Cabinet secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey. “We are pledged
⁹
to Zionism, Armenian liberation, and Arabian independence,” he wrote. These should be Britain’s “only desiderata.” As for the question of the flag, “it is impossible to ask Armenians and the King of Hejaz to accept Turkish suzerainty, symbolized by a flag which connotes the old doctrine of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.” He did not mention the Zionists, but surely the Ottoman flag offended them too. Sykes concluded: “This is not palatable reading for those who desire easy and swift things.”

Perhaps it was not, yet Milner digested it and prevailed. The War Cabinet arranged for A. T. Waugh and another intelligence officer, C. E. Heathcote-Smith, who had known Rahmi Bey before the war, to sound out the
vali
of Smyrna. They could meet with him ostensibly to discuss an exchange of interned civilians. The War Cabinet also empowered a British delegate to the Zurich conference on prisoners of war to speak about a separate peace with Turkish representatives there. Ironically they chose the man whom Marmaduke Pickthall had first approached at the Foreign Office back in 1916, Thomas Legh (the second Baron Newton), a Conservative MP and an assistant under secretary of state for foreign affairs. Unlike Waugh
¹⁰
and Heathcote-Smith, who were instructed merely to get Rahmi Bey talking, Lord Newton was told that while he must not initiate discussions about peace, he could outline what he understood the British position would be if formal talks took place. This included the Ottoman flag over Palestine.

Then everything changed. At a meeting on December 2, the date on which Zionists celebrated the Balfour Declaration in London at the Opera House, Rahmi Bey explained that earth-shaking news had just arrived from the Eastern Front, news that significantly reduced his country’s interest in a
separate peace. “This is the most favorable
¹¹
moment of the war for Turkey,” Heathcote-Smith reported Rahmi Bey as saying, although “I got the impression that it was Talaat rather than Rahmi who was talking.” The
vali
continued: “We had only one real enemy and this was Russia. Russia today is offering an armistice and peace on the basis of the freedom of nationalities.” German military might had prevailed in the East after all. It could save the Ottoman Empire yet. Why then discuss a separate peace with Great Britain? Turkish interest in that subject would revive only if she again feared imminent defeat. In the meantime Rahmi Bey was happy to leave open the channel of communication.

Discussions in Switzerland developed along different lines from those in Greece because they began later in December and took place over a more protracted period of time. By then Britain had recouped the loss of Russia, to a certain extent, with victories in Palestine, culminating for the moment in Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem on December 11. Zionists cheered these victories, not realizing that they revived to a degree Turkish interest in reaching a settlement.

In Switzerland, Newton made contact, through Sir Horace Rumbold, with two Turks already stationed there. Rumbold thought little of them. The first belonged to the Ottoman legation but “the fact that he is
¹²
known to be Anglophil would probably cause any communications made by him through his Minister to the Turkish Government to be discounted.” The second, whose brother was the
wakil
, or general factotum, of a former grand vizier, suffered from the same lack of credibility. He received his Egyptian pension from British officials in Berne. Nevertheless one or the other or possibly a third Turk altogether (for no name is mentioned) had expressed a “strong desire” to meet the British emissary when he should arrive. Lord Newton agreed to a conference. There he followed instructions, stating only what he thought British policy toward Turkey would be. In reply the “Agent, who is believed
¹³
to be in the confidence of Talaat, stated that large section of Turks would recommend anything which would free them from Enver and German domination … He is considering advisability of proceeding to Turkey and personally communicating our views to Talaat.”

Newton also made contact with a Turkish delegate to the conference on prisoners of war, Mouktar Bey, former Ottoman ambassador to Berlin, who was, according to Rumbold, “the only important Turk from our point of view.” What then transpired cannot quite be pieced together. Mouktar Bey had reason to be cautious. Of the five Ottoman delegates to the conference, three had been chosen by Talaat, two by Enver: “Needless to say, they
watched each other very carefully.” Mouktar quickly realized that a German and a Turkish spy were tracking him. The German had booked a room next to his at the hotel in Zurich. Nevertheless he managed to get a telegram to Talaat. He reported that “Lord Newton had given [me] to understand that England would be quite ready to come to an arrangement with Turkey if the latter would embark on
pourparlers
for a separate peace.” How do we know this? “We get all the details about Mouktar’s proceedings from his friend Hakki Halid Bey,” Rumbold reported smugly to Lord Balfour.

Lord Newton, however,
¹⁴
denied he had made any such declaration to the Turk. Perhaps then Mouktar was making it up in order to impress his master. Or conceivably he was reporting his interpretation of something said to him by Dr. Parodi, for we know that they talked too. At any rate, and despite the waxing and waning and perhaps waxing again of Turkey’s interest in a separate peace, British interest remained strong. Not surprisingly, the next move appears to have come from her.

For some months the War Cabinet had been contemplating trying to detach Austria too from the Central Powers. Just as it had been receiving feelers from Talaat, it had been receiving them from Count Albert von Mensdorff, Austria’s prewar ambassador in London. Amazingly, Horace
¹⁵
Rumbold relayed these overtures too; really, he did occupy the center of the spider’s web. And just as the War Cabinet debated how to respond to the Turks, so it considered what to do about Austria. In mid-December, at the same time as Lord Newton was conducting his negotiations with Mouktar Bey, the South African Jan Smuts, who was the War Cabinet’s newest addition, made a secret journey to Geneva to talk matters over with the count, who likewise traveled there incognito. Their discussions proved unproductive. Mensdorff aimed at a general peace; Smuts aimed at separating Austria from Germany. But while in Switzerland Smuts and a second Briton, Phillip Kerr, private secretary to Lloyd George and a future British ambassador to Washington, spoke with Turks too.

Again we cannot be precise about what was said or even to whom, but we do know that afterward Kerr and Rumbold arranged for Dr. Parodi to “cause a communication in the following sense to be made unofficially and verbally to Mouktar Bey.” Then they laid out the terms we have seen Milner outline in mid-November at the War Cabinet, except apparently in one respect. Kerr first submitted the instructions for Parodi to his superior, Smuts. The latter made a single alteration: “to include Palestine
¹⁶
in the area over which the Allies might be willing to allow the Turkish flag to fly.” So he was a Milnerite too. Like Milner, he had supported authorization of the
Balfour Declaration the previous month. The Zionists thought him a strong supporter.

Two days before Smuts amended Kerr’s instructions for Parodi, Foreign Office mandarins debated how far British agents might go to reassure Turks, and specifically what should be said regarding the Turkish flag in Palestine. They must have had before them the memorandum in which Milner first argued for the separate peace. “I trust that
¹⁷
the language regarding Palestine may be modified,” Sir Ronald Graham urged. “To agree to any form of Turkish suzerainty over Palestine would be regarded by the Zionist Jews as a complete betrayal and alienate all their sympathies from us. Dr. Weizmann, for instance, would drop the whole scheme at once.” Lord Hardinge, who was prepared to revise Sykes-Picot, as we have seen, nevertheless found Graham’s warning persuasive. “I doubt the wisdom of saying so much to Mouktar Bey,” he cautioned Balfour. The foreign secretary concurred too as he made clear in a cable to Rumbold.

In other words, the War Cabinet and the Foreign Office came to contradictory conclusions on this crucial matter. Moreover apparently they gave out contradictory instructions. On March 21, 1918, while Parodi remained engaged in talks with Mouktar Bey, Rumbold received a wire from Balfour
¹⁸
drawing attention to a telegram he had “sent at the end
¹⁹
of December”—obviously the one referred to above—“in which the Foreign Office state that His Majesty’s Government could not grant the Turkish flag in Palestine.” Likely Balfour sent this reminder because he wanted to change the instructions Smuts and Kerr had issued a few months earlier. Possibly confirming this, in August 1918, in a letter to the newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, who was serving as the government’s minister of information, Balfour explained the instructions “we” had given to Lord Newton and to Rumbold and Dr. Parodi the previous winter. “We thought
²⁰
it of great importance that the Turkish flag should not be flown in either Palestine or Syria.” Who “we” refers to must remain ambiguous, but clearly it did not mean Milner or Smuts or perhaps even the War Cabinet. It may have meant the Foreign Office. What view Prime Minister Lloyd George took of this apparent disagreement, we will discover in our next section.