Theodor Herzl and the birth of political Zionism

The History of the Jewish people lasted over 4000 years and, in order to understand their desire to have a safe homeland, exalted during the end of 1800 and the beginning of 1900, we have to go back to the 135 AD.

In this year Judea, where is located Jerusalem, was a province of the Roman Empire and it was a home for the Jewish people. In 135 AD the emperor Adriano broke up a rebellion in this region, rose up because the Jews did not want to accept Roman occupation. He expelled the Jews from Judea, forced migration also known as “Diaspora” and renamed the province “Syria Palaestina”.

Consequently, the Jewish people emigrated in Europe, Middle East, Africa but also India. However, they were always discriminated and persecuted, considered also as scapegoat: in fact there was an anti-semitism ideology, which was based on a racist theory. This was originally formulated in France and Germany in the nineteenth century and, according to it, people from 'Aryan race' would be better than Jews, for the physical psychologic characteristics.

In 1860 was born Theodor Herzl (in the adjacent picture) in a German-speaking jewish family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, even if he was not a religious man. He became a journalist and he wanted to report the anti-Semitism, spread in Russia but also in European States, where a large part of the population was christians and so they accused them of Christ's death, but also being the cause of plagues and poisoned water and the death of children.

In 1894 in Paris he analysed the" Dreyfus affair", where a french jewish officer was accused of being a german spy and this was a clear case of public anti-semitism because all accusations were false.

In 1896 he wrote “Der Judenstaat”, where he talked about the Jewish homeland and the Jewish State, but he also tried to awake the european governments about Jewish persecution. Therefore, he gave birth to" Zionism", a political movement, whose aim was to create a State for Jewish people, a peacefully homeland for them. The term "Zionism" came from the mountain Zion, where there is Jerusalem. So in 1897, he organized the first Zionist Congress in Basle (Switzerland), where was the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine was discussed, in a diplomatic way because Herzl was really tolerant and openminded, in fact he thought that violence was not the answer to Jewish people. Palestine was not the only choice: Herzl considered also Argentina and British East Africa (in Uganda took place the sixth Zionist Congress) as possible homeland. Only in 1948 the Jewish State was officially established thanks of the United Nations led by David-Ben Gurion, but this is the cause of today’s conflict in this area, between them and the Arabs.

SINAI, PALESTINA,MESOPOTAMIA CAMPAIGNS

The European Powers have enlarged their conquests, and so their supremacy and influence, around the world, in order to expand commerce.
In the first World War lot of crucial campaigns were carried out, in particular, in the Middle East, mainly shaped during this period. England was one of the most important nation which had lot of influence in this area: for example Great Britain occupied Egypt.
Egypt was a strategic land mainly for the presence of Suez Canal, built in 1869 by French, which connected the Mediterranean sea with Red Sea .
This canal is very important for the British because it allowed the navigation from Europe to Asia, and so it represents the biggest interest for Powers. Because of this strategic interest, European State fought each other in various campaigns, that took place in Sinai (part of modern Egypt), Palestine and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which lasted four years and the British lost 55.000 men, while the number of the Ottoman men died is unknown.

During WW1, the British Empire decided to expand further to north along the Tigris River. Even if the British troops led a successful campaign, they had a significant stop at the end of 1915, when the British army was besieged in Kut (town near Baghdad), and this event is known as ‘First Battle of Kut’, which is the worst defeat, but also humiliation, of the Allies in World War I.
Because of this, the British retreated, although the campaign in Mesopotamia was successful.

On the Egyptian front, the first offensives were organized by the Ottoman Empire, which was reduced by now to Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and a part of Saudi Arabia.
As a matter of fact, the Ottomans, taking back the Suez Canal, wanted to inflict a serious blow to the British Empire, in order to block the access to its harbors.
Therefore, the Ottomans made two offensives, one in 1915 and the other in 1916 and both had the same result : they were a failure, so they could not conquest the Suez Canal. Later, also the British took the offensive, and they were supported by Australia, India and the Arabs. In 1915 and 1916 the British, after numerous attempts, got the Suez Canal.
In 1917, the Great Britain was able to take Gaza and Jerusalem, a strategic city and 1918, with the support of her allies, was trying to extend her borders. They knew that the armistice was their last chance to take more land, before negotiation with the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, during the battle of Megiddo, British troops broke the enemy line, entered in the Ottoman territory and took Damascus and all the way of north to Aleppo. By the end of October, the Great Britain forced the Sultan to sign an armistice. Meanwhile, at the beginning of November, the Austro-Hungarian Empire signed an armistice and so Germany and those armistices allowed the end of the war between England and Ottoman Empire. By the end of the War, the Allies had to divide the territories of the Middle East. French took control of what is now Syria and Lebanon, including Damascus, while Great Britain had its influence over of what is now Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. A famous movie called "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), which took place during these campaign, shows the story of the colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, a secret agent who helped the Arabs, allied with the British empire, to repel the Ottomans, coordinating the uprising of Arabs.

SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT

United Kingdom started to fight with the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during WW1: the military attack was known as “the Gallipoli Campaign”, whose aim was to keep safe a route to relieve their eastern ally, Russia. This peninsula belonged to the Ottomans, which was located in Turkish Thrace, with the Aegean Sea and the strait of the Dardanelles, an important sea route. During this campaign, Russia's allies Great Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibious landing on the peninsula, with the purpose to conquest Constantinople, the capital of Ottoman Empire. The naval attack was a failure and after eight months, with many casualties on both sides, the land campaign was abandoned and the invasion force was withdrawned to Egypt.

The Gallipoli campaign was a disaster for the allies because the Turkish were able to fend off them successfully, while the British were only able to fend off the Ottoman Empire when it tried to attack Canal Suez in 1915. United Kingdom was eager to get help to fight the Turkish, so they searched it thought the desire of independence of the Arabs, who have been under Ottomans’ control for hundred years.

The campaign was one of the greatest Ottomans’ victories during the War: in Turkey, this is regarded as a crucial moment in the nation's history. The struggle laid the foundations for the Turkish War of Independence and the following declaration of the Republic of Turkey, eight years later.

From mid 1915 to early 1916 Sir Henry McMahon -a british important commissioner in Egypt- and Hussein Bin Alì -the Sharif of Mecca- had a correspondence concerning the political status of the lands under the Ottoman Empire.
(Here you can read the whole correspondence: http://www1.udel.edu/History-old/figal/Hist104/assets/pdf/readings/13mcmahonhussein.pdf )

The aim of this correspondence was to destroy the power and the influence of the Turkish in the Middle East and United Kingdom promised Alì an indipendent Arab State. In October 1915, Sir Henry McMahon wrote a letter to Hussein Bin Ali, the future head of arab revolt, where he specified the border of this Arab State: Alì woud have controlled Syria, Jordan and Iraq but Mersina, Alexandretta and portions of Syria (the west part marked with purple in the map below) shouldn't be considered as purely arab and so they had to be excluded from this new State.

In the last part of the agreement, McMahon tried to convince the Arabs to rise up against the Turks.
It is important also to talk about T. E. Lawrence:

He was famous as Lawrence of Arabia and he was depicted as mystical fellow. This guy had a kinship with Arab's. His correspondence with British government actually show that he was doing strategery, he had a more cynical view of this relationship with Arab's.
This are some correspondence that he wrote in early 1916:

“...activity seems beneficial to us, because it matches with our immediate aims, the break-up of the Islamic bloc and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire” (It is referred to Hussein and his revolt)

“If we can arrange that this political change shall be a violent one, we will have abolished the threat of Islam, by dividing it against itself, in its very heart. There will then be a Khalifa in Turkey and a Khalifa in Arabia, in theological warfare” (A khalifa is a kind of seat in Islam).

While the British were trying to convince bin Alì to rise a revolt in Arabia against the Turkish, they had a secret negotiation with French on how to divide the Middle East, after the Ottomans’ defeat. The british representative was Mark Sykes, while the french one was Francois George-Picot and Russia supported this agreement, whose discussion was concluded in May 1916.

The eastern Turkey would be occupied by the French, while the British would have occupied the southern Mesopotamia, insuring the control of the oil fields, one of the most important factor in the global power. Now, there were these two protectorates, that could be one or two independent Arab states under ‘protection’. But the reality of this protectorate is that British and French had real power and influence on these states. The Sykes-Picot Agreement also gave the British the chance to have access to the Mediterranean Sea. One of the consequences of this agreement was that Palestine, a melting-pot of different cultures and religions, became an international property that would be administrated by different States.

Then, in 1917 a letter, known as the Balfour declaration, was sent from the Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, who was a leading member of the Jewish community. In this document, Balfour’s not saying that British would support a State for the Jewish people, but he’ s saying that they would support the possible existing of a national home for Jewish people and, at the same time, that nothing shall be done that could interfere with the civil and the religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. All this, obviously, make Arabs uncomfortable. On one side, it seems like the British was promising an independent Arab state, but at the same time, in the Balfour Declaration, British was promising a homeland that might will become, one day, a State. To make Arabs more uncomfortable, all this happened in 1917. In this year, in Russia there were been some important revolutions, the Zar was overthrown and the in October, Bolsheviks took over. They wanted to exit from the war and they didn’ t like all these secret deals, between French and British, that Russia had supported until that moment.

Russia finally published this letter and Arabs rose up: they were afraid that the British would have created only a State for Jewish people.

Regardless of which side of the situation we consider, a lot of issues were happening in this period: there were a lot of tensions and conflicts, and the british secretary sad, in a public declaration, that most of the problems and conflicts of that period was caused by some previous facts. For example, the Balfour Declaration: in fact, this accord have had to British an interesting but disgraceful story, that had caused a war.

Arabia after World War I

Before the Great War, the British already had a presence in the Middle East: Egypt was a British protectorate, formalized during the war, and so Kuwait. They were eager to get the help of Arabs in order to defeat the Ottomans on Sinai, Mesopotamia and Palestine fronts.

The United Kingdom chose Hussain bin Alì, the Sharif of Mecca, that is the spiritual and political leader of the city, as the head of Arab revolt, which was mediated by Thomas Edward Lawrence (also known as Lawrence of Arabia) at the beginning of WW1. It rose up against the Turkish in 1916 and Alì accepted this role because Great Britain promised him an independent Arab State, from Egypt to Persia, with the exception of British possessions. In 1916, he declared himself as the King of Hejaz, which is the west coast of Arabian peninsula (a strategical territory thanks to the presence of Mecca and Medina), from 1916 to 1924. One year later, however, a group called "Saudi's", conquered the reign of bin Alì: they were inhabitant of Nedj region (a little over Hejaz) and they supported Ibn Saud (in the adjacent picture), who declared himself as the king of Hejaz and Nejd, territories later called as "Saudi Arabia" (1932). He ruled over this area, made rich by the presence of oil fields, until 1953.

However while the British were trying to convince Alì to help them to fight the Ottoman Empire, they dealt secretly with the French in Sykes-Picot agreement, but in 1917 the Balfour Declaration, which showed the British intent to create a homeland for the Jewish people, was made public,. In 1919 Alì's son Faisal bin Hussein joined the Paris Peace Conference, where he tried to reach out Zionist movement in order to find help to establish an independent Arab State.

In 1920, was signed the Treaty of Sèvres, which marked the beginning of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following the Sykes-Picot Agreement: the huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states, mainly controlled by France and Great Britain thanks to the League of Nations mandate, which were, however, basically colonies. The British obtained the mandate over Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan while the French achieved Syria and Lebanon. Their tactic was to divide Middle East area into smaller states, disregarding ethnic and religious differences, provoking revolts among minorities, in order to guarantee the European supremacy.