America’s peace team – a softly softly approach

          On 18 November 2017 Israel’s TV Channel 2 claimed a scoop, as it unveiled what it claimed were details of Washington's nascent peace plan. According to their report, the deal in the offing involved the US recognizing a Palestinian state in an arrangement that involved exchanges of territory with Israel, but that it would not be conforming to the long-held insistence by the international community, the Obama administration and the Palestinians that the new state must be based on the pre-Six Day War Green Line. The US, it seemed, would be reverting to the view generally held back in 1948 by all concerned, including Jordan, that those armistice lines were not appropriate as international borders. These needed to be established and agreed by negotiation. 

          The Channel 2 report maintained that the US had gone along with Israel’s insistence that its security demanded a military presence in the Jordan Valley, but had not accepted that it must be the Israel Defense Forces, or perhaps not exclusively the IDF. Questions surrounding the future status and administration of Jerusalem, the TV network reported, were not yet on the table.

          At every step of the way, Channel 2 reported, issues would be discussed in detail with a number of Arab states, Saudi Arabia in particular, and the idea of a regional conference on Israel-Palestine peace was being considered. Locked into the proposals was the idea of promoting Palestinian economic development to the tune of millions of dollars, donated largely by Sunni Arab states.

          Trump’s Israel-Palestine peace initiative is led by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, and Jason Greenblatt, the US special representative for international negotiations. Heavily engaged in devising a foolproof diplomatic initiative aimed at achieving a comprehensive peace agreement, they have deliberately set no time limit on their enterprise, convinced that painstakingly slow consolidation of each small step along the way is the key to bringing their enterprise to a successful conclusion.

          When it is finally ready, reports indicate that the team will release what has been described as “an intricately detailed plan”, after which, they believe, “a comprehensive MidEast peace deal” could be negotiated within two years.

          The Trump team is in accord with the principle of partition, an idea which traces its origins back to the Balfour Declaration, the statement by the British government in 1917 supporting the concept of a Jewish homeland in the region then known as Palestine. Subsequently Britain was mandated by the League of Nations to realize the project, but reconciling Jewish and Arab interests proved impossible and civil disturbance proliferated. The Arab revolt of 1936 finally goaded Britain into establishing a Commission under Lord Peel charged with reaching a workable solution. After much deliberation, Peel proposed the partition of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, the other Arab.

          The rationale? “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities … Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State.”

          What was true then remains true today, but the situation has become ever more complicated with the passage of time. For example, the question rarely asked is how peaceful co-existence can be achieved when Hamas, representing a substantial proportion of Palestinians, is opposed tooth and nail to any recognition of Israel. The recent Hamas-Fatah accommodation simply muddies the waters.

          Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas leads a Fatah party whose constitution states that Palestine, with the boundaries that it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit and the homeland of the Palestinian people. Why then has he spent the past twelve years nominally supporting the two-state solution? Because pressing for recognition of a Palestine within the pre-Six-Day War boundaries is a tactic inherited from Abbas’s predecessor, Yassir Arafat. It represented the first stage in a strategy ultimately designed to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine.

          The Trump team have recognized that a Palestinian state on pre-Six Day War boundaries will not do. Hamas would almost certainly seize power, just as it did in Gaza, and the PA leadership is very worried at the prospect of losing power to Hamas. Like it or not, they would need stronger defenses against “the enemy within” than their own resources could provide.

          An even more fundamental issue militates against the classic two-state solution. Vying with Hamas on the one hand, and extremists within its own Fatah party on the other, the PA has glorified the so-called “armed struggle”, making heroes of those who undertake terrorist attacks inside Israel, promulgating anti-Israel propaganda in the media and the schools, and reiterating the message that all of Mandate Palestine is Palestinian. The end-result is that no Palestinian leader dare sign a peace agreement with Israel unilaterally. The consequent backlash, to say nothing of the personal fear of assassination, have made it impossible.

          The Trump team understands these political realities, and their embryonic proposals indicate how they see the circle being squared.

          They are suggesting bringing the moderate Arab world on side, to provide a shield for the Palestinian negotiators. The nature of the projected peace conference has not been revealed, but what is known of the plans suggests that it might conceivably encompass Arab-Israeli peace as a whole, leading to “a comprehensive MidEast peace deal”. It is in this context that a new sovereign state of Palestine might be established and, in accordance with the 2002 Arab Peace Plan, normalisation of Arab-Israeli relations could follow.

          The concept of a three-state Confederation of Jordan, Israel and Palestine has not appeared in the peace team’s plans, but it makes sense in terms of providing the security required by all three. A confederation is a political entity of independent sovereign states which agree to cooperate on issues of common concern. Such a confederation could be established simultaneously with a sovereign Palestine, and its prime purpose could be the defense of the confederation as a whole. Cooperation in the fields of commerce, infrastructure and economic development might be other objectives, and would accord with proposals already leaked from the Trump team. 

          What has emerged so far is promising. Further leaks are eagerly awaited.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line: 28 November 2017:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Trumps-peace-team-a-softly-softly-approach-515382

Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 November 2017:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/30112017-americas-peace-team-a-softly-softly-approach-oped/

A new Cold War?

        

        The struggle for dominance between Saudi Arabia and Iran – one the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, the other of the Shi’ite – is being conducted up and down the Middle East. In Syria and Yemen, the conflict has descended into open conflict. In Iraq it is largely a struggle for political superiority. Elsewhere the two countries are competing by proxy, providing varying degrees of support to opposing sides in disputes in Bahrain, Qatar, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

        This long-time rivalry has itself been caught up in a wider geopolitical struggle –Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev has called it the "New Cold War" – namely, American support for Saudi Arabia and its allies as opposed to Russian support in Syria’s civil war for Iran, Hezbollah and President Bashar al-Assad.

        The analogy with the original super-power standoff, however, is far from exact, because the position of the two principals – US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin – are ambivalent. Trump admires strong man Putin, and was quite prepared in July 2017 to sign a joint US-Russian cease-fire agreement covering south-western Syria. Unfortunately Trump realized too late that one effect of the deal was greatly to strengthen Iran’s position in Syria, the last thing he wishes. An attempt by Trump to readjust the balance may have led to a further joint US-Russian agreement in November, under which Iranian forces were barred from operations on the Golan Heights.

        Putin’s acquiescence in this curbing of Iranian expansionism demonstrates his own nuanced position. He is collaborating closely with Iran in the Syrian civil conflict because both are intent on benefitting from the eventual re-establishment of full Syrian sovereignty. His cooperation does not extend to endorsing Iran’s toxic anti-West, anti-Israel policies. Nor does he want to be seen by the Sunni majority in the Middle East, or by Russia’s millions of Sunni Muslim citizens, as enabling the Iranians to build a Shia crescent across the region. And Putin has rejected Iranian demands to share Russia’s long-established naval base at Tartus.

        So Russian and Iranian interests do not always coincide, but the Kremlin is not about to ditch its current alliance with Iran. At the same time it remains keen to maintain good relations with Israel. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been trying to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent presence in Syria. According to well-placed sources in Moscow, Putin is planning to propose a formula under which no foreign country will be allowed to turn Syria into a platform for attacking neighboring states. This is unlikely to satisfy Netanyahu, since it would still leave Iran powerfully placed politically inside Syria, although it could prevent them from establishing air and missile bases there. 

        Putin by no means shares Iran’s declared intention to eliminate Israel from the Middle East. On the contrary, he seems intent on expanding Russian influence in the Jewish state. One example is the 20-year deal signed in 2013 between Russia’s Gazprom and the Levant Marketing Corporation, allowing for the exclusive purchase by Russia of three million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Israel‘s Tamar offshore gas field.

        LNG is a major player in the developing political configuration in the Middle East and beyond. For example, Netanyahu visited Moscow in April 2016, and while Syria was the nominal subject for discussion in his closed-door meeting with Putin, media speculation centered on the possibility that they were also exploring whether Russia’s Gazprom might have a major hand in developing Israel’s Leviathan LNG field in the Eastern Mediterranean. 

        That possibility has since been exposed as a pipedream (literally), since plans for new multi-national pipelines from Israel’s Leviathan LNG field to the EU have been agreed, and they will break Gazprom’s virtual monopoly in supplying Europe with gas. Two Leviathan projects are in prospect: one pipeline going via Cyprus to Greece and Italy, the other running to Turkey, where it will join the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP) and from there to Europe. The agreement to construct the first was signed in April 2017 by the energy ministers of Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Italy. It is estimated that the project will take about eight years to complete, and cost some six billion euros. 

         As for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his energy ambitions stretch far beyond the shores of Israel. He dreams of using TANAP to transport gas not only from Azerbaijan and Israel, but also from Qatar. In the current stand-off between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, supported by the Gulf states, Erdogan has placed himself firmly on Qatar’s side, even to the extent of sending troops there. Qatar has the world's largest reserves of natural gas, reserves that will enable it to maintain production for 160 years, and media speculation has it that together with Turkey it is indeed resurrecting the dream of a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey.

        In the current political climate it stands little chance of realization. Such a pipeline would have to run through Saudi Arabia and Syria. Even if the standoff between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is one day resolved, as long as Putin retains his dominance in Syria he would never approve the project. Gazprom’s current dominance of the European gas market is already heavily threatened by the Leviathan-based projects. Another competitor drawing on Qatar’s LNG reserves could deliver Gazprom its death blow in Europe. Putin will ensure that it never happens.

        In this area, too, the US does not find itself at odds with Russia. The US is well on the way to becoming completely self-sufficient in energy – a situation estimated to arise as soon as 2021 – but at the moment is still importing LNG and crude oil. The US may have started to export petroleum products and coal, but this represents no threat to Russia’s Gazprom.

        So Trump is content to allow the LNG head-to-head in the Middle East play itself out, estimating that the end game will see Russia diminished, at least commercially, as Israel’s oil-based products begin competing in the European market. For the rest, Trump does not like Putin‘s liaison with Iran, but it is clearly a marriage of convenience. There is no love lost between the parties.  

        By and large the waters in the Middle East are muddied. As for a new Cold War, the situation scarcely seems to match up to the historic model.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 21 November 2017:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/A-new-Cold-War-514786

Published in the Eurasia Review, 25 November 2017:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25112017-a-new-cold-war-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 3 December 2017:
http://mpc-journal.org/blog/2017/12/03/a-new-cold-war/

Kurdish pawn sacrificed on the Middle East chessboard

 Polls, referendums and declarations of independence have become a 21st century fashion, but none can claim much success.  South Sudan has been a hotbed of civil strife ever since it broke away from Sudan in 2011.  When the prospect of Scottish independence was put to the people in a constitutional referendum in 2014, it failed to gain a majority.  Catalonia’s bid for independence in an unconstitutional poll on October 1, 2017 is collapsing before the Spanish government’s determination to uphold the constitution.  And the referendum held by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) on 25 September, despite achieving over 90 percent approval from voters, has backfired spectacularly. Instead of paving the way to statehood, or boosting the Kurds’ bargaining power in negotiations, it has triggered a humiliating reversal of fortunes for Iraq’s Kurds.

Denounced as illegal by Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, the Kurdish referendum was – for various reasons, not all of them consistent – viewed as “untimely” by the US and much of the Middle East.  As far as the US was concerned, the referendum came at a peculiarly inappropriate moment.  President Donald Trump’s administration has committed itself to the delicate process of tying Saudi Arabia into the anti-Islamic State (IS), anti-Assad, coalition in Syria, of creating a Saudi-Iraqi alliance, and thence possibly of binding Saudi into a broader initiative aimed at addressing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Brett McGurk, the US special presidential envoy, has played a key role. When Iraqi prime minister al-Abadi (a Shia Muslim) met King Salman of Saudi Arabia (leader of the Sunni Muslim world) on October 22. 2017, McGurk was present, together with US secretary of state Rex Tillerson.  This wooing of Saudi Arabia – which may have started in earnest in May 2017, with Trump’s visit to Riyadh – was carried a stage further in late October when Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, undertook a secret mission there, his third in 2017.    

It was into the midst of this flurry of diplomatic activity that the Kurdish referendum and its aftermath intruded.  It was an unwelcome distraction from what the Trump administration undoubtedly regarded as matters of greater moment.  The trouble is that in Iraq Trump, perhaps unwittingly, has been pursuing a policy – including his attitude to Kurdish independence – ultimately destined to empower the very player he least wishes to: Iran. 

Iran’s influence within Iraq is formidable and growing. In 2014 when IS, having seized Mosul, advanced south towards Baghdad, the first power to respond was Iran.  It rapidly dispatched weapons and military advisers to support Iraq’s struggling army. Since then Iranian-backed Shia militias have formed part of Baghdad’s efforts to defeat IS.

 The weak and ineffective Iraqi military of the early 2000s, transformed by US training and equipment into a highly effective fighting force, is now largely run by Iran which vastly increased its influence during the Obama years. Iran also controls a significant part of Iraq’s political apparatus.  The Shi’ite Supreme Islamic Council parliamentary bloc, under Iranian guidance, introduced laws on October 31 making it illegal to demonstrate support for Israel, for example by raising the Israeli flag in public.    

Behind this new anti-Israel legislation lies the long-standing warm relationship between the Kurds and Israel.  Media images during the independence campaign showed the Israeli flag in rally after rally being waved alongside that of the Kurds. This counted for nothing with Washington as far as the independence referendum was concerned.  “The vote and the results lack legitimacy,” declared Tillerson, “and we continue to support a united, federal, democratic and prosperous Iraq.” 

          

          But the Trump administration seems to have turned a Nelsonian blind eye to the true state of affairs in Iraq.  In pursuit of prime minister al-Abadi and a possible Iraqi-Saudi coalition, they chose to sacrifice the freedom-seeking Kurds on the altar of a so-called democratic Iraq that is already under the thumb of the President’s main bête noir – Iran.

It was always most unlikely that any Saudi-Iraqi agreement would stick, but the firing of an Iranian missile on November 4, 2017 by the Iranian-controlled Houthis in Yemen aimed at Riyadh, almost certainly scuppers the idea before it was launched.  Fortunately the Saudis intercepted and destroyed it in mid-flight, but the moving spirit behind the operation could scarcely be in doubt.

Meanwhile al-Abadi, backed by the US and also the Iranian power brokers in Iraq, has moved decisively against the disheartened Kurds.  He tried to assure them that they are not the enemy, even as Iraqi forces backed by Shi’ite militias moved into areas of the north previously held by the KRG.  Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish president, who announced on 29 October that he was resigning, blamed the loss of Kirkuk on a deal cut by a wing of Kurdistan’s other main party to allow Iraqi troops to enter. As a result the KRG’s international airspace has been closed, and the Kurds have lost nearly half of the territory they have controlled since the war against IS began. Neighboring Turkey and Iran have closed their borders to the land-locked area. 

Some newspaper reports allege that the Trump administration attempted to broker a delay in the Kurdish independence referendum.  In return for a postponement, it is suggested, the Kurds were offered letters from the United States and Britain promising to facilitate and support the Kurds’ negotiations with Baghdad, and if, after two years, negotiations had not progressed, the US would support a referendum.

Saadi Pira, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the main opposition to Barzani, said members of his party told Barzani that they supported the US initiative. But, said Pira, nothing would dissuade Barzani from conducting the referendum.  Two US officials did not deny to the Washington Post that a draft letter had been written, but said Tillerson never sent it to Barzani.

Barzani blames elements in “another party” for the loss of Kirkuk, but the PUK maintains that a deal was necessary to avoid bloodshed, and that economic pressures could bring Kurdistan, already struggling to pay salaries, to its knees.

As Iraqi forces entered Kirkuk, the Peshmerga were ordered to stand down in line with the deal.

“We have betrayed Kirkuk,” said Lt. Burhan Rashid, a Peshmerga fighter.  “We have betrayed Kurdistan.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 14 November 2017:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Kurdish-pawn-sacrificed-on-the-Middle-East-chessboard-514199

Published in the Eurasia Review, 18 November 2017:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/18112017-kurdish-pawn-sacrificed-on-the-middle-east-chessboard-oped/

Putin's Syrian strategy

In March 2011, inflamed by the popular uprisings then spreading across the Middle East, 15 boys from a Syrian village scrawled on a wall some graffiti in support of the so-called Arab Spring. They were arrested by Syrian security forces and brutally tortured. One of them, 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, was killed. Protests erupted across the country. The response by President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces was to kill hundreds of demonstrators and imprison many more. Opposition to Assad hardened, and in July defectors within the military announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a rebel group dedicated to overthrowing the government. Syria slid into civil war.

          The UN Security Council viewed the situation developing in Syria with alarm, and on October 4, 2011 put to the vote a statement expressing grave concern, maintaining that the solution to the crisis was "through an inclusive and Syrian-led political process with the aim of effectively addressing the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the population." The resolution was vetoed by both China and Russia.

          The position adopted by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was dictated by his belief that the rapidly worsening Syrian crisis provided him with a major political opportunity.

          Historically, Russian influence has been strong in Syria. It extends back to before Syria emerged from French control as an independent sovereign state in April 1946. Two months earlier an agreement between the USSR and Syria had already guaranteed Soviet support for Syrian independence. No surprise, then, that in 1971, under an agreement with President Hafez al-Assad, the Soviet Union was allowed to open a naval base in Tartus, a facility which Russia continues to regard as vital to its national interests. The collaboration deepened. In October 1980 Syria and the Soviet Union signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation providing for regular consultations, coordination of responses in the event of a crisis, and military cooperation. That treaty remains in force.

          This is the background to Putin’s declaration, early in 2012, of his firm support for Assad in the civil conflict then raging in Syria. Shortly afterwards Russia began supplying him with large quantities of arms. On 20 August 2012, moved no doubt by suspicions that chemical weapons were being deployed by the Assad regime, US President Barack Obama declared: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” Just a year later, on 21 August 2013, suburbs around Damascus held by forces opposed to Assad were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll ranged up to 1,729.

          Despite his clear warning, Obama havered and wavered over his response. Putin, however, sprang into action. Setting himself up as an honest broker, Putin succeeded in diverting Obama from taking military action by convincing him that Assad had agreed to dismantle and dispose of his chemical arsenal - the arsenal that Assad had denied owning in the first place.

          In the event Assad did nothing of the sort. Chemical stockpiles were retained, production of nerve gas maintained and its deployment continued. Despite this, Russia has subsequently vetoed no less than nine Security Council resolutions that sought to condemn Assad's government for its conduct of the war, impose sanctions or refer it to the International Criminal Court.

          Putin’s latest blocking action is particularly egregious.

          In April 2017 there was a chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun that left dozens of civilians dead and hundreds wounded.

          Back in 2015 the UN had set up its Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) specifically to identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks, and to assign accountability for human rights abuses that have drawn international condemnation. The mandate of the JIM. which was to report on the nerve agent attack on Khan Sheikhoun by the end of October, was due to expire in November. On October 24 a resolution intended to extend the JIM’s mandate was put to a Security Council vote. It was vetoed by Russia.

         The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria is tasked with probing war-crimes allegations, and its investigators had already formally accused the Syrian government of using sarin in that attack. Their report added that this was one of over 20 Syrian government attacks involving chemical weapons since March 2013. This report, too, was rejected by Russia.

          Moscow’s veto decisions have been condemned by the US, Britain and others as an attempt to shield the perpetrators from answering for the most controversial human rights abuses of Syria’s six-year civil war. But in the realpolitik world of the Middle East nothing succeeds like success. When Putin sent his forces into Syria on September 30, 2015, he had two main objectives in view – to establish Russia as a potent political and military force in the region, and to secure his hold on the Russian naval base at Tartus and the refurbished air base and intelligence-gathering centre at Latakia. He achieved both, as he launched massive air and missile attacks mainly against Assad’s domestic enemies, namely the rebel forces led by the FSA.

          With the sustained support of Russia, allied to the huge self-interested Iranian military effort, Assad has succeeded, against all the odds, in retaining his grip on power and in winning back large areas of Syria once overrun and occupied by Islamic State. As a result his hand has been greatly strengthened in the Geneva-based peace negotiations with the various rebel factions. 

          Assad continuing as president of Syria, even in the short-term, would guarantee Putin’s military presence and consolidate his increasing political clout in the affairs of the Middle East. It would also raise the prospect of replicating the old Cold War alignments, with the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and its allies in one camp, and Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Shi’ite world of Islam in the other. Fortunately that outcome is not really in prospect because Russia’s relations with Israel, a matter of commercial self-interest on both sides, are particularly close, centred as they are on the natural gas deposits in Israeli waters. In that lies the hope of a non-confrontational outcome to the Syrian tragedy.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 8 November 2017:
http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/Putins-Syrian-strategy-513646

Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 November 2017:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/09112017-putins-syrian-strategy-oped/

How France pre-empted Balfour, and why he came to Palestine

           For so historic a document, the letter that has come to be known as the Balfour Declaration is surprisingly, even starkly, simple. It is difficult to believe that the British Foreign Office in the very heyday of British imperialism did not run to crested notepaper. Yet the letter from foreign secretary Lord Balfour to one of the leading figures in Britain’s Jewish community, Lord Rothschild, is a small sheet of paper with the words “Foreign Office” typed just above the date, November 2nd, 1917.

        Asking Rothschild to “bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation”, the declaration in question ran:
        “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

        Subsequent events are too well known to require elaboration. Following the Great War, the League of Nations endorsed an Anglo-French agreement to dismember the Ottoman empire, assigning control of the territories mainly to the two colonial powers. The British government was mandated to take over the whole region then known as Palestine, and to put into effect its desire, as expressed in the Balfour Declaration, to establish there a national home for the Jewish people.

        The declaration has come to be remembered as either “one of the greatest acts of Western statesmanship in the 20th century” (vide British parliamentarian Richard Crossman) or “the single most destructive political document on the Middle East in the 20th century” (according to Palestinian scholar-activist Walid Khalidi). What is not generally known is that Britain’s Balfour Declaration was preceded – and may have been kick-started – by a letter from the head of France’s foreign office, Jules Cambon, issued on the authority of French prime minister, Alexandre Ribot.

        On June 4, 1917, Nahum Sokolow, secretary-general of the World Zionist Organization, received the following:
        “You kindly explained to me your project to develop Jewish colonization in Palestine. You believe that, given favourable circumstances, and with the independence of the Holy Places assured, it would be an act of justice and reparation to help in the rebirth, under the protection of the Allied Powers, of Jewish nationality in the land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago. The French government, which entered the current war to defend a people unjustly attacked, and which continues the struggle to ensure the victory of right over might, can feel nothing but sympathy for your cause, the success of which is linked to that of the Allies. I am happy to give you such an assurance.”

        As Chaim Weizmann’s biographer Jehuda Reinharz has noted, the Cambon letter “in content and form was much more favorable to the Zionists than the watered-down formula of the Balfour Declaration” that followed it. The French accepted a rationale for the renaissance of the Jewish people in terms of “justice” and “reparation,” and acknowledged the historical Jewish ties to the land. The letter bound Zionism to the cause of all the Allies.

        Historians Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, praising Nahum Sokolow’s diplomatic skills in circumventing the strong anti-Zionist feeling within official French government circles, judged that “the Quai d’Orsay had been skilfully and decisively out-maneuvered.” French objections to a possible British declaration had been neutralized.

        “Our purpose,” explained Sokolow, looking ahead, “is to receive from the [British] government a general short approval of the same kind as that which I have been successful in getting from the French government.”

        And indeed as soon as he could Sokolow deposited the Cambon letter at the British foreign office, where it stimulated a spirit of competition. British officials who sympathized with Zionism now urged that Britain “go as far as the French.”

        From whichever side of the fence one regards the events of 1917 and beyond, it seems clear that France shares with Britain both the bouquets and the brickbats.

        Although the British Mandate for Palestine did not come into force until September 1922, its terms were drawn up in April 1920. As soon as they became known, Arab riots broke out in Jaffa. This affected British public opinion, and voices began to be raised opposing the whole enterprise, and especially its likely cost. An All-Arab Congress, meeting in Geneva in July and August 1921, demanded all-Arab self-government for Palestine. Back in Britain, although a motion to repeal the Declaration failed in the House of Commons, it won a majority in the House of Lords.

        This growing opposition gave impetus to the idea that Lord Balfour should visit Palestine and that, through him, the world could be shown what had been achieved since his historic letter. Chaim Weizmann arranged for Balfour to conduct the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University on April 1, 1925. In March Lord Balfour’s party travelled by ship to Cairo, and from there took the train to the Holy Land. As early as the 1920s Palestine Railways had a line running from Egypt via Lydda and Tel Aviv as far as Haifa.

        On the appointed day a vast crowd assembled on Mount Scopus. “A new era has begun,” said Balfour. “The great cultural genius that came to an end, and that had been dormant for so many years, is now going to be renewed.” A long list of diplomats and academics who attended the ceremony described it in glowing terms.

        The fact that the historic event had been recorded on film seemed to pass from the public consciousness. It was only in 2013 that film researcher Yaakov Gross rediscovered the rare footage, and published it on YouTube. In fact a cameraman, Kamil Suago, funded by the French-Jewish banker Albert Kahan, accompanied Lord Balfour throughout his travels in Palestine. Balfour was greeted everywhere by enthusiastic crowds, and his visit was adjudged an outstanding success. It confirmed the British government’s determination to exercise its Mandate.

        Despite Britain’s eventual failure to fulfil the hopes set out in the Balfour Declaration, the British government continues to endorse the part it played in the eventual emergence of the State of Israel. In May 2017 a petition to Parliament called on the government to “apologise to the Palestinian people” over the Balfour Declaration because the UK’s colonial policy had caused “mass displacement” and injustice. The petition failed to gather sufficient signatures to trigger a parliamentary debate, but nonetheless the Government issued a formal response: “The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologise. We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves towards peace.”

        As an earnest of Britain’s stance, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when in the UK in February 2017, was invited by prime minister Theresa May to attend the centenary celebrations in London.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 1 November 2017:

http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/How-France-pre-empted-Balfour-and-why-he-came-to-Palestine-510940

Published in the Eurasia Review, 1 November 2017:

http://www.eurasiareview.com/01112017-how-france-pre-empted-balfour-and-why-he-came-to-palestine-oped/