Middle East Mysteries – WWII Middle East - Columbia Christianity

Anxious to win the war, the British had given contradictory promises to the Arabs and the Jews and also to their allies, the French and the Russians. In November of 1917, revolutionaries of the Bolshevik revolution found secret papers from the former czarist regime. The Russian Revolutionaries made public a secret agreement made in May of 1916 called the Sykes-Picot agreement. This agreement showed that the British and French had a secret plan to carve up the Ottoman Empire dividing the “spoils of war” among themselves, without giving any of the territory to the Arabs!

In the same month the British issued the famous Balfour Declaration. This declaration pledged British support for a national Jewish homeland in Palestine. These conflicting promises were to cause endless problems for the British in the years to come, and even greater problems for the Arabs and Jews.

At the peace conference in Paris that led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Arab delegates were betrayed as the victorious allies divided the Ottoman Empire between British and French spheres. The newly formed “League of Nations” gave Britain a mandate to rule over Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. The French received a similar mandate to rule over Syria and Lebanon. Neither the Jews nor the Arabs received what they had been promised!

The British allowed unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine but this led to Arab outcries. Fearful of Jewish takeover, the Arabs demanded that the British end Jewish immigration. This they did, but on the eve of World War II, in which 6 million Jews would be put to death in the Nazi Holocaust. The escape route to Palestine had been cut off just when it was needed most.

In the three decades the British controlled Palestine, the political map of the region continued to change. The Egyptians regained their sovereignty in 1922 and Iraq in 1932, though Britain continued to have considerable influence over both. Lebanon received independence from France in 1941. Syria followed five years later in 1946, the same year Britain created an independent Palestine-Arab state when it gave independence to Jordan.

Following the end of WWII in 1945, an exhausted Britain began to withdraw from the empire. Pakistan and India were given independence in 1947. A withdrawal from Palestine was to follow less than a year later.

The United Nations voted to divide Palestine between the Arabs and the Jews, with Jerusalem to become an international city. The Israelis accepted the plan’ the Arabs rejected it! Jewish leaders proclaimed the birth of the independent Jewish nation of Israel the evening of May 14 1948. Within hours, armies from five surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel, determined to destroy the fledgling state with its population of a mere half-million.

The war lasted until the following year with Israel gaining territory in addition to the land granted by the UN resolution. Most of the Arabs in those areas left their lands and have been refugees ever since, consigned to makeshift settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Those Arabs who stayed in Israel were granted citizenship in the new country and ironically, today enjoy considerably more personal freedoms than their fellow Arabs in the Arab ruled countries.

More wars followed. In 1956 Israel sided with the British and French against Egypt in an attempt to take back the Suez Canal. American intervention forced the three nations out, a big boost to Arab nationalism. Within a few years, the French lost Algeria and by 1971 the British completely withdrew from the region.

Replacing Britain and France came the Cold War antagonists, America and the Soviet Union, using “proxy states” to thwart the other’s interest and ambitions. That is basically the political situation leading up to this very day. However, with the recent "Arab Spring" and fall of many "strong man" dictators throughout the Middle East today, changes are certainly in the wind once again.

However, nothing ever stopped the strong desire of Arab unity and nationalism. Today there are 57 Islamic nations, most of them ruled by Muslims. This includes 22 Arab countries, which hold the majority of the world’s known reserves of oil, lifeblood to the global economy (Remember, it is oil that brought Japan into WWII). Knowing the history of Islam and the Middle East, it really is not surprising to see them at the forefront of world affairs and current events today.

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