Recounting the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference. April
25, 1920.
Syria and
Mesopotamia (Iraq) were to be given to the Hashemites, as was Transjordan. It also codified
the Jewish People's rights to the Land of Israel into international law according
to the terms and policy of the Balfour Declaration, namely that “His Majesty’s
Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home
for the Jewish people,” and that Britain “will use their best endeavours
to facilitate the achievement of this object.”
This event
was celebrated in Jewish communities worldwide and treated as if it was a
Jewish national holiday.
The Arabs,
of course, objected. Feisal and Abdullah saw themselves as HaShemite rulers of
the Middle East until the House of Saud engaged them in fierce battles during this
time of history.
As is usual
in the Arab world, both hated each other but were united against allowing Jews to
gain any ascendency in the Middle East.
For them
all, it was a stain on the Arab tradition of conquest to allow a non-Arab,
non-Muslim, presence to take hold in the region.
The 400-year-old
non-Arab Ottoman Empire had been accepted with silence by the impoverished
local Arabs in the barren district of Palestine in deference to the Islamic
rulers of Constantinople.
Not long
after the San Remo Conference, Britain began to view their geopolitical
interests in the Middle East differently.
The British realized,
prompted by the Americans, that the Arabs had something valuable under their feet.
Oil. This greasy liquid would be necessary for Britain’s motorized and industrialized
future prosperity.
The Suez
Canal, built by the French in 1800, was also an asset for Britain. It acted as
a vital trade artery to India.
Post San
Remo the British became aware that they could ill-afford to upset the Arabs. If
they did their future self-interests would be gravely impaired.
The British
went back on their obligations to the Jews. They went as far as to close off pre-state
Palestine to Jewish immigration during the critical and tragic period of World
War Two.
Had the
British lived up to their word, the Holocaust may not have happened. Hitler
wanted to expel Europe’s Jews, but no one was prepared to take them, and
British had effectively locked them out of what had been promised to be the
National Home of the Jewish People.
Had these
Jews been allowed to enter their future state, Israel today would have been
celebrating the 72th anniversary of a nation, not with nine million Jews, but a
Jewish State with twenty million Jews.
That is the bitter-sweet
legacy of Western cynical, confused, and deadly policies post San Remo.
Barry Shaw,
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
No comments:
Post a comment