Thank you for posting this most interesting article.
You have led me to engage in further research of these events.
<hillelg123@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:202b2798-6377-42dc-89f9-790e918d8bce@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950373.html
Last update - 17:12 01/02/2008
Britain's treachery, France's revenge
By Meir Zamir
Tags: Britain, France, Syria
In the summer of 1944, when soldiers of Free France were still
fighting alongside the British against the Nazis in Europe, the two
colonial powers were engaged in a clandestine struggle in the Middle
East. That summer, French intelligence scored a major coup over its
British counterpart in the region. The French recruited a Syrian agent
who had access to top-secret correspondence between Syrian leaders -
among them President Shukri al-Quwatli and Foreign Minister Jamil
Mardam (who later became prime minister) - and leaders of neighboring
states. French intelligence also obtained re****ts sent by Syrian
diplomats in London, Wa****ngton, Moscow, Paris and a number of Arab
countries.
The identity of the Syrian agent is unknown, but cables transmitted
between Beirut and Paris suggest that his recruitment involved large
payments. The information he obtained was sent every week or two, in
packages of 40 or 50 do***ents, from Damascus to French intelligence
headquarters in Beirut, where they were translated from Arabic into
French. An intelligence officer or a translator sometimes added notes.
The French attached great im****tance to the speedy transfer of the
translated do***ents, so much so that they allotted a special plane
for this purpose. Extreme precautionary measures were taken to
preserve the secrecy of the operation, and only a few officials were
permitted to see the do***ents. There was also a ban on their
transferal to the French Foreign Ministry. One copy was sent directly
to the office of General Charles de Gaulle, who sometimes added his
comments and issued appropriate instructions.
After the war the French sought to regain control of Syria and
Lebanon, but Syria constituted a distinctive problem, in that its
independence had been declared already in 1941, after joint forces of
Britain and Free France liberated the country from the rule of the
Vichy regime. From then until 1945, de Gaulle tried to force a treaty
on Syria that would ensure France privileged status. After he
understood that a Syrian-French agreement was not possible due to
Syrian and British opposition, de Gaulle decided in April 1945 to send
military reinforcements to Syria and Lebanon. This move, coupled with
the harsh response of the French on May 8 in the city of Setif,
Algeria, where French forces massacred thousands of Algerians who were
demonstrating for their country's independence, badly rattled the
Syrian president. Quwatli feared that he would suffer the same fate as
Emir Faisal, who was expelled from Damascus by the French in July
1920.
At the end of May 1945, French forces attacked governmental
institutions in Syria. On May 30, General Bernard Paget, the commander
in chief of the British forces in the Middle East, issued an ultimatum
to the French to hold their fire immediately and return to their
barracks, or face a confrontation with far superior British forces. De
Gaulle and the provisional French government had no choice but to
comply. In the weeks that followed, with the tacit consent of the
British, Syrian nationalists massacred scores of French citizens, and
looted and destroyed the offices of French companies and French
cultural, educational and religious institutions. Thus did French rule
in Syria reach its violent and abrupt end.
In one of the most dramatic moments of the Syrian crisis, General de
Gaulle told Duff Cooper, the British ambassador to Paris: "We are not,
I admit, in a position to open hostilities against you at the present
time. But you have insulted France and betrayed the West. This cannot
be forgotten." On that same day, June 4, 1945, Cooper wrote in his
diary: "He is genuinely convinced that the whole incident has been
arranged by the British so as to carry out their long-planned policy
of driving the French out of the Levant in order to take their place."
It now emerges that de Gaulle had concrete proof that "perfidious
Albion" had struck again. That proof is contained in Syrian do***ents
from 1944-1945, and some from 1947, which are preserved in the French
archives and have now been made available to researchers. British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and
the rest of the British diplomatic corps persisted in their denials.
Britain, they asserted, had no surreptitious motives in Syria and
Lebanon, and in fact had mediated between Syria and France in an
effort to reach an agreement. Britain?s decision to intervene was the
direct result of de Gaulle's aggressive policy, and his suspicions
concerning Britain's role in the Levant bordered on paranoia and
Anglophobia.
De Gaulle, for his part, was as good as his word: He never forgot and
never forgave the British for one of the most galling and humiliating
episodes he endured in his long career. In his memoirs he repeats
obsessively his accusations against the British, for having betrayed
France and exploited its passing weakness in order to dislodge it from
a region in which it had religious, cultural and economic ties for
hundreds of years. Britain, de Gaulle maintained, had generated the
Syrian crisis deliberately in order to remove France from the Middle
East, because France constituted an obstacle in its path toward
creating an Arab federation under British hegemony. De Gaulle also
accused Churchill of attempting to take advantage of the Syrian affair
in order to oust him as head of the provisional French government.
Arab historians have described the crisis of May-June 1945 as a heroic
uprising by the Syrian nationalists, who expelled the French from
their country and thereby ensured its full independence. To this day,
the Syrians mark the French departure in the form of a national
holiday. But a perusal of hundreds of Syrian do***ents now available
in French archives will oblige scholars to reexamine the history of
the region, taking into consideration the secret alliance between
Britain and Syria, which allowed Britain to exercise considerable
control in Syria until 1948. Such a study may well have far-reaching
implications for the history of the struggle to establish the State of
Israel.
Vanqui****ng Syria
De Gaulle's feeling of betrayal was heightened by the fact that the
officer who represented Britain in Syria and Lebanon during the war
years was General Edward Spears, who had extricated de Gaulle from
France at the last minute before the Nazi conquest. On August 5, 1944,
Spears sent Riyad al-Sulh, the Lebanese prime minister, on a secret
mission to Damascus. So strict was British security that Sulh learned
the exact purpose of his mission only when he met with the British
consul in the Syrian capital. The consul dictated to Sulh a proposal
from His Majesty's Government to the Syrian government; Sulh was to
convey the proposal to Saadallah al-Jabiri, the Syrian prime minister,
who was also Sulh's father-in-law.
The British proposal included, among other points, Syria's unification
with Transjordan and Palestine to create "Greater Syria." Syria would
also have to accord Britain preferential status in military, economic
and cultural matters and not sign any agreement with other countries
without prior consultation with London. To persuade the Syrian leaders
to agree to these terms, Britain was ready to commit itself to defend
Syrian independence in the face of external aggression, continue the
White Paper policy in Palestine and put a complete halt to "Jewish
ambitions."
This clandestine British proposal to the Syrian government shows that,
contrary to what has been believed until now, in August 1944 the
British government gave its representatives in the Middle East the go-
ahead to implement Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said's "Fertile
Crescent Plan." This entailed forming Greater Syria by integrating
Syria with Transjordan, Palestine and Lebanon. At a later stage,
Greater Syria would be united in a federation with Iraq. The Christian
minorities in Lebanon and the Jews in Palestine would enjoy autonomy.
The do***ent elaborating the British proposal shows that after three
years of objecting, Churchill and Eden finally accepted the approach
of their representatives in the Middle East and adopted a strategy
congruent with the surging force of pan-Arabism. The obstacles were
formidable: Britain had to oust France from the Levant, violate its
commitments to the Zionist movement just when the scale of the
Holocaust in Europe was becoming apparent, and depose Jordan?s Emir
Abdullah. In addition, Britain could be certain that its moves would
anger the United States and the Soviet Union alike. Nevertheless,
Churchill and Eden, and afterward Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin,
allowed a group of overconfident diplomats and army officers to drag
them into a costly adventure, which was to put an end to British
hegemony in the Middle East six years later.
Between August 1944 and May 1945, the major obstacle to the
implementation of Britain?s plans was the obdurate opposition of
president Quwatli, who in the preparatory meetings for the
establishment of the Arab League, sup****ted the Egyptian-Saudi camp
against Iraq. The British and Syrian do***ents present a clear picture
of the pressure the British and the Iraqis applied on Quwatli. They
led de Gaulle, who closely followed the British and Iraqi intriguing,
to remark that the Syrian president was "the sole sincere politician
in those countries." To Georges Bidault, his foreign minister, he
noted the "duplicity" of the British government, which in London was
still promising to persuade Syria and Lebanon to conclude treaties
with France, while in Damascus its representatives were secretly
trying to get the Syrian government to sign a treaty with Britain.
The final stage in this British campaign of intrigue, provocation and
pressure was played out in May 1945, with the aim of coercing Quwatli
to sign an agreement with Britain. The secret British efforts to expel
France from Syria were coordinated by Colonel Walter Stirling (who
sometimes operated in the guise of a correspondent for The London
Times). In a re****t dated May 22, Stirling described a scene which
could have come straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy: Even as
Mardam was plotting to replace him, Quwatli was lying sick in bed,
clutching a piece of paper on which the American consul general,
George Wadsworth, had written - in the name of his government - an
undertaking to back Syria's struggle to free itself from colonial
rule. Quwatli declared to Stirling that the United States was the
Arabs' best friend, whereas the British were egoistic and could not be
relied upon for very long as they changed their position according to
their interests.
On May 29, at the height of the French assault on his government's
institutions, Quwatli finally gave in to the British and agreed to
subject his country to British hegemony, in return for Britain's
defense of Syria against the French. The following day General Paget
issued the ultimatum to the French forces to observe an immediate
cease-fire. The do***ents in the French archives show that the secret
agreement was concluded hastily and consisted of seven letters: five
from President Quwatli to Terence Shone, the British minister in Syria
and Lebanon (to which Mardam was a cosignatory) and two from Shone to
the Syrian president. Additional correspondence relating to the
agreement was exchanged between Quwatli, Mardam and Shone between June
2 and July 2.
All five letters Quwatli sent open with the same sentence, in which
the Syrian president swears on his honor, in his name and on behalf of
the Syrian nation to establish Greater Syria; to grant Britain
concessions for oil exploration in Syria and a preferential political,
economic and financial status in the country; to adopt a foreign
policy compatible with Britain's; and to allow Britain a role in
establi****ng the Syrian army. Apparently Quwatli's immediate concern
was that his commitment to the British remain absolutely secret, and
Shone?s two letters to him undertook, on behalf of his government, not
to divulge the existence of his letters.
In the years that followed, Quwatli and Mardam enjoyed the admiration
of the Syrian public in particular and of the Arab world as a whole
for having led Syria to full independence without any foreign
presence. But the Syrian do***ents reveal the extent of British
control in Syria and the various methods the British employed to
ensure that Quwatli would toe the line. The British continued to
exploit Damascus' fear of the return of the French and further
heightened it by emphasizing the Zionist and Soviet threats, as well
as the ambitions of Emir Abdullah to crown himself king of Greater
Syria.
At the end of 1945, the new Labour government took advantage of
Syria's fears of a possible change in British policy to ensure that
Damascus would uphold its May 1945 undertakings to Britain. In pro-
British Iraq, Nuri al-Said took steps to coordinate Syria?s foreign
policy with that of Iraq in regional and inter-Arab relations. British
officers were employed in the Syrian army, although officially it was
claimed that they had been hired privately by the Syrian government.
British intelligence also used Syrian agents for subversion against
France in North Africa. However, the major obstacle to the Anglo-Iraqi-
Syrian plan was not France, but the thrust of the Zionist movement to
establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
In the service of Britain
In June 1945, in a debate in the French Consultative Assembly on the
Syrian crisis, Bidault warned the British: "Hodei mihi, cras tibi" (in
Latin: It is my lot today, yours tomorrow). Indeed, in the following
years French intelligence did its utmost to exact a high price from
Britain in the Middle East. The French were not motivated purely by
revenge, but also by the ambition to restore their influence in the
Levant, particularly in Lebanon, and counter British subversion in
North Africa. The Syrian Foreign Ministry's do***ents, which the
French received from their agent in Damascus, afforded them ample
op****tunity to act against the British in the Middle East, as well as
against the governments of Quwatli-Mardam in Syria and of Sulh in
Lebanon. In the period 1945-1948, the most effective French weapon
against Britain in the Middle East was its sup****t for the struggle of
the Zionist movement. In a meeting held on October 6, 1945, with Marc
Jarblum, head of the Zionist organization in France, de Gaulle stated
that "the Jews in Palestine are the only ones who can chase the
British out of the Middle East." On November 10, in a visit to Paris,
David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, was told by foreign
minister Bidault that France sup****ted the Zionist cause.
Syrian do***ents recently uncovered shed new light on events that led
to the establishment of the State of Israel and call for a
reexamination of certain basic beliefs concerning British policy in
Palestine from 1945-1948. The British proposal to Syrian leaders in
August 1944 and the secret Anglo-Syrian agreement of May 29, 1945,
reveal that Britain had assured Syria - a country not previously known
to have been under British hegemony - that it would limit Jewish
immigration and thwart the emergence of an independent Jewish state in
Palestine. The agreement also reveals that by the summer of 1945,
Britain had already formulated a Middle East policy based on an Iraqi-
Syrian alliance, which included a plan for the formation of Greater
Syria, which was to include Palestine. That policy patently could not
accommodate the creation of an independent Jewish state in any part of
Palestine.
Hundreds of Syrian diplomatic do***ents covering the period June-
December 1945 provide details of negotiations between Syria and other
Arab states and Britain's new Labour government on the Palestine
question. It becomes apparent how the future of Palestine played a key
role in inter-Arab rivalry and how the British government invoked the
Zionist threat to ensure that the Syrian leaders abided by their
secret undertaking to Britain.
Neither American warnings, Soviet threats, pressure by the kings of
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, nor criticism by Syrian representatives in
Wa****ngton and Paris were able to detach Quwatli and Mardam from their
commitments to sup****t British policy. Whenever Quwatli, under Saudi
and Egyptian pressure, sought to free himself from the grip of the
British, they played the French and Zionist cards, while the Iraqi
government drew on pro-Iraqi Syrian politicians, particularly in the
Aleppo region, to withstand the pressure. And always hovering in the
background was the dreaded Emir Abdullah and his ambitions for the
Syrian crown. Each time it seemed that Quwatli was no longer heeding
"British advice," British agents in Syria or Transjordan, including
Colonel Stirling, gave large sums of money to tribal sheikhs in the
Syrian desert in return for their
declared allegiance to Emir Abdullah.
The British exploited the Zionist aspirations for a Jewish state in
Palestine not only to threaten the Syrians, but also to induce them to
cooperate. Indeed, following the secret Anglo-Syrian agreement,
Quwatli and Mardam began to assume direct responsibility for ensuring
that Palestine would become an integral part of Greater Syria,
controlled by them from Damascus. Subsequently, in addition to
rejecting the Zionist thrust for a Jewish state, the Syrian leaders
also rebuffed the demands of the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-
Husseini, for an independent Palestinian state under his control.
Thus, for example, Mardam warned the British that France was using the
mufti, who received political asylum in France in 1945-1946, to
subvert the Syrian and British interests. In 1947-1948, Quwatli and
Mardam clashed repeatedly with the mufti, particularly over the
appointment of Fawzi al-Qawuqji as head of the Arab Army of Salvation.
De Gaulle and Truman
The Syrian do***ents enhance understanding of two significant events
on the road to Israel's establishment: President Harry S Truman's
letter of August 31, 1945, to British prime minister Attlee, demanding
that Britain allow the immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees from
camps in Europe to Palestine; and the well-known speech by Soviet
foreign minister Andrei Gromyko in the United Nations on May 14, 1947
endorsing the establishment of a Jewish state.
Ten days before Truman sent his letter, de Gaulle visited the United
States for a first meeting with the president. De Gaulle attached
considerable im****tance to the visit, as France desperately needed the
United States' sup****t for the restoration of its Great Power status
in Europe and in its overseas colonies, particularly in Indo-China,
and for solving its pressing economic problems. The Syrian crisis had
greatly damaged France's standing in the United States, so it was
vital for de Gaulle to prove to the Americans that Britain, which had
conspired with the Syrians to expel France from its mandated
territories, was the real culprit.
It can be assumed that to ensure secrecy, de Gaulle would have
revealed details of the Anglo-Syrian agreement only to president
Truman. In any event, from August 22-24 the two leaders held three
meetings. On the 24th, the Syrian ambassador to Wa****ngton, Nazim al-
Qudsi, re****ted to Damascus that he had been urgently summoned to the
State Department and asked to present his government's response to the
question of whether Syria had agreed to unite with Iraq and whether
the Syrian government was colluding with the British government to
this end.
Puzzled, the Syrian diplomat, who knew nothing about any such
agreement, immediately transmitted the American request to Damascus.
The denial by Syrian Prime Minister Faris al-Khuri did not allay
American suspicions. On August 25, al-Qudsi re****ted that he had
learnt that the United States would sup****t the Jewish cause in order
to prevent total British control in the Middle East. Six days later,
President Truman sent his famous letter to the British prime minister.
In the following months, al-Qudsi re****ted on extremely hostile
statements by American officials against the British and Syrian
governments. Secretary of state James Byrnes stated that the British
wanted to expel the French from Syria and Lebanon only to take over
the oil resources. An American official wondered whether the United
States had recognized Syria?s independence only to see it come under
British control, adding that "Britain, at this stage, is the true
master of your country." Another diplomat declared that "Britain's
intervention was intended to subjugate you and your economy, which is
to say, it only seeks to colonize you." A further re****t reveals the
Americans' opinion of what they viewed as ruinous British policy in
Palestine. According to one diplomat, the British were responsible for
the chaotic situation there, and he cautioned his Syrian interlocutor
that Britain was exploiting the Jewish-Arab conflict in order "to
achieve control in all the Arab states."
The Syrian diplomatic correspondence reveals also the intense Anglo-
American rivalry over the exploitation of the Syrian economy. The
British used their influence there to further the interests of British
companies, at the expense of American firms. Terence Shone, now the
British ambassador to Damascus, went so far as to warn Mardam against
allowing American banks to operate in Syria, as "that would constitute
capitalist colonial exploitation of the Syrian economy."
The Syrian government's refusal in 1947-1948 to grant a permit to the
Trans-Arabian Pipeline company - Tapline - to lay an oil pipeline from
Saudi Arabia through Jordan and Syria to the Mediterranean coast in
Lebanon only increased American anger. Externally, it appeared that
the Syrian government was acting in line with secret decisions made by
the Arab League to boycott the Americans and the British because of
their Palestine policy. In fact, the Syrians' refusal was tacitly
encouraged by the British. In any event, Truman held the British
government responsible and constantly pressured Bevin to compel Syria
to grant Tapline the necessary permits.
What did Ben-Gurion know?
The French were more than happy to supply president Truman with new
proof of British scheming, particularly in Palestine. But did France
inform the Soviet Union of the secret Anglo-Syrian agreement or of the
British intention to forge an anti-Soviet regional alliance with the
participation of Iraq, Syria and Turkey - a plan they also learned
about from the British-Syrian correspondence? If the Soviets had known
of this, they would certainly have done their utmost to foil the
British designs in the region overall and in Palestine in particular.
A comparison of the British-Syrian and Soviet-Syrian correspondence
indeed reveals a recurrent pattern: Issues secretly raised by the
British with the Syrians were referred to by the Soviets within days.
For example, when the British demanded that their armed forces remain
in Syria even after the French evacuation, the Soviet representative
in Damascus, Daniel Solod, immediately protested. When the British
invited the Syrian government to send delegates to a secret conference
in London to discuss the defense of the Middle East against external
threats, a Soviet official in Moscow protested to the Syrian
representative, Faiz al-Khuri. These and other examples suggest that
France kept the Soviets abreast of British activity in the Middle East
and North Africa.
A more intriguing question is whether the French passed on information
from their Syrian source to the heads of the Jewish Agency, David Ben-
Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Was Ben-Gurion?s almost prophetic ability
during 1945-1948 to foresee regional and international developments
and prepare the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) for a
military confrontation with the Arab states based on prior knowledge
of British and Arab secret intentions? Did his distrust of Britain's
role in Palestine, ****trayed by historians as "obsessive" and
"paranoid," derive, like de Gaulle's suspiciousness, from accurate
intelligence? Was Ben-Gurion?s belief that the British were involved
in a secret conspiracy with Arab leaders to prevent the establishment
of a Jewish state based on information provided by the French? And did
his fateful decision to declare the establishment of the State of
Israel on May 14, 1948 - and later to impose major operational
decisions on his generals - stem from secret information he received
from the French about the Arabs' military plans?
Initial research was carried out in the last two months in three
archives (the Ben-Gurion archives in Sde Boker, the Haganah archives
in Tel Aviv and the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem), and Ben-
Gurion's diaries, particularly his war diaries for December 1947-July
1949, were also consulted, with the aim of discovering whether
information from the Syrian do***ents was made available to Ben-Gurion
and whether he knew its exact origin. Also examined were the modes by
which intelligence information was transmitted and those who were
possibly involved on the Israeli side.
Within the framework of this article only a few of the findings can be
cited. For example, on October 15, 1944, Ben-Gurion met in Beirut with
General Paul Beynet, the French delegate general in Syria and Lebanon.
Their meeting was probably arranged by Eliyahu Eilat (Epstein), who
had met Beynet on September 6, a month after French intelligence
learned of the secret British plan to expel France from Syria and
Lebanon and foil the establishment of a Jewish state. Ben-Gurion
recounts his meeting with General Beynet at length, particularly the
emphasis he laid on the im****tance of a Jewish state for the existence
of a Christian Lebanon.
On November 23, 1944, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary that he had sent a
letter with Captain Blanchard to Marc Jarblum, the representative of
the Zionist Organization in France. Blanchard was an intelligence
officer who had served with the forces of Free France in Syria and
Lebanon during the war. In 1945, together with Tuvia Arazi, an
intelligence officer and a liaison between the Jewish Agency and Free
France, he accompanied Ben-Gurion to some of his meetings with French
officials in Paris. Blanchard continued to be involved in the secret
contacts between France and the Zionist movement or Israel in the
following years. Ben-Gurion was in Paris in May and June 1945, when
the Syrian crisis erupted. His diary entries show clearly that he
endorsed wholeheartedly the French charges against the British. If
Britain was ready to go to such extremes against France in Syria and
Lebanon to ensure its regional status, it was obvious to him that it
would be ready to impose its own solution on the Yishuv as well. In a
diary entry on June 8, he noted that the French were seeking the
cooperation of Jewish groups in order to undermine security in
Palestine and that emissaries of the underground breakaway militias
Etzel and Lehi had visited Beirut.
By September, it had become apparent that the Labour government did
not intend to modify British policy in the Middle East. The French
learned this from the Anglo-Syrian correspondence. On October 1, Ben-
Gurion sent his well-known directive from Paris to Moshe Sneh, the
head of the Haganah, instructing the defense forces to cooperate with
Etzel and Lehi in armed resistance against British rule. The
establishment of the united resistance movement was seen at the time
as an extreme measure and was strongly criticized by some of Ben-
Gurion's colleagues, as this ended a quarter-century of close
cooperation between the Zionist movement and Britain. Ben-Gurion
remained in Paris throughout nearly the whole of 1946 and early 1947,
directing the struggle against the British from his tem****ary
headquarters in the Royal Monceau Hotel on Avenue Hoche.
Other im****tant discoveries relate to the three agreements the Jewish
Agency entered into in 1946 with Egyptian Prime Minister Ismail Sidqi;
with Emir Abdullah; and with the Maronite Church on a compromise
solution for Palestine based on partition. These agreements can be
better understood if one takes into account that all four parties
involved were adversely affected by the Anglo-Iraqi-Syrian deal of
1945. The French provided details of the Anglo-Iraqi intrigues to the
Egyptians and the Maronite church. As for Emir Abdullah, he may have
heard about them from officials of the Jewish Agency, with which he
had maintained close ties since the 1930s.
The British withdrawal
The Syrian do***ents reveal the close ties that were formed between
Lebanese Prime Minister Riyad al-Sulh and Brigadier Iltyd Clayton,
whose official position was liaison officer to the Arab League in the
British Middle East Office in Cairo. From 1946-1948, Sulh played an
im****tant part in the meetings of Arab leaders concerning Palestine,
while Clayton had a key role in the British intelligence service in
the Middle East after World War II.
The Syrian do***ents also show that in the summer of 1947, the Syrian
leaders were concerned about some of Sulh's improved relations with
France and his collaboration with the mufti, who then resided in
Beirut. The Syrian ambassador in London, Najib Armanazi, who spoke
with General Spears, informed Mardam that Sulh?s policy was being
coordinated with the British. In another re****t, Armanazi informed
Mardam that Clayton had received a "carte blanche" to promote the
Greater Syria plan, which was "still on the table." After meeting Sulh
in Beirut, Mardam re****ted to president Quwatli that Sulh's activities
were indeed being coordinated with the British. At the end of
September 1947, a Haganah intelligence agent re****ted that Riyad al-
Sulh and the mufti, with tacit British sup****t, were planning to
foment protests and strikes by Arab Palestinians in early October
against the emerging partition plan. The re****t added that armed bands
would be allowed to cross the border from Lebanon and attack Jewish
settlements in the Galilee. It is noteworthy that in September and
October, Brigadier Clayton was in Lebanon, where Arab League meetings
took place to formulate joint Arab diplomatic and military policy in
Palestine. Arab affairs experts who were advising Ben-Gurion doubted
the agent's re****ts, but another expert on the subject, Jewish Agency
representative Eliahu Sasson, who arrived in New York from Paris on
the eve of UN discussions on partition, warned that these activities
were being coordinated with the British.
In the next two weeks, Ben-Gurion placed the Yishuv on alert; forces
were mobilized and sent to the Galilee, and Jewish settlements were
fortified. Some historians have viewed this as an overreaction and a
sign of panic, while others see it as merely a military exercise
intended as a warning to the British. But if we take into account the
information obtained by the French from their Syrian source on the
close collaboration between Sulh and Clayton, which they had surely
conveyed to Ben-Gurion or to the Haganah, Ben-Gurion's reaction is
more readily understandable.
At the end of 1947 and in the early months of 1948, the French
continued to send re****ts of Sulh?s collaboration with Clayton, in
some cases via Morris Fischer, a Yishuv intelligence officer who
served with the forces of Free France in Syria and Lebanon until 1945,
and was afterward appointed Jewish Agency representative in Paris. (He
became nascent Israel's first ambassador to France.) For example, on
January 13, Fischer re****ted that Clayton had reached a secret
agreement with Sulh on the withdrawal of the British forces from the
Galilee to Haifa, to give the Arab Army of Salvation freedom of
maneuver.
These examples, and others not cited here, do not by themselves
necessarily constitute unequivocal proof that the French shared
information they gleaned from the Syrian do***ents with the Israelis.
However, if we take into account the secret Anglo-Syrian agreement,
the intense French hostility toward the British in the aftermath of
their expulsion from Syria and Lebanon, and the close collaboration
between France and the Zionist movement during 1945-1948, this
possibility appears quite reasonable. In any case, the Syrian
do***ents uncovered so far in French archives will oblige historians
to re*****s British policy in the postwar Middle East in general, and
in Palestine in particular.
It might be appropriate to conclude with the remark of the French
consul general in Jerusalem, René Neuville, who declared in June 1948,
at the height of the Jordanian Arab Legion's siege of Jerusalem:
"There are those who pull the trigger and those who pull the strings.?
Meir Zamir is a professor of Middle East history in the Department of
Middle Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
All rights reserved by the author.
#############################################
The story rings as true to me.
Churchill was imperialist and ammoral,
de Gaulle was a man who did not forgive.
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