Editing Palestine (section)

=====Sykes-Picot Agreement=====

Throughout WW1 (1914-1918), Jews averaged 11% of the total population of the Palestinian region of the Ottoman province ("Vilayet") of Syria. The British had guaranteed a Jewish state in the holy land as early as 1914, while at the same time telling the Ottoman Syrians that they would have a free nation. Of course, this was before the Ottomans allied with Germany and the Central Powers.

The French assured Faisal I of this and his father (Sharif Husseini) agreed to help the British fight the Ottomans on the premise of freeing the Arab world from invasion and subjugation by foreign powers after the war. Faisal played a leadership role in the Arab Revolution against the Ottomans, along with T.E. Lawrence. After the war, however, the French and British told Faisal they'd lied to him, and that the Sykes-Picot plan was already in place to be ratified by the time Jerusalem fell. Faisal I fled west into Syria, where he was chosen to rule Syria as king by the Syrian National Congress. He ruled from March to July 1920, when the French sent troops to expel him. Instead, Faisal came again under the wing of Britain, who arranged for him to rule as King of Iraq under British administration at the Cairo Conference in March 1921. Faisal's brother Abdullah was given the Kingdom of Jordan. Following Faisal's expulsion, the French claimed Syria and governed it as a French Mandate. Faisal believed in a Syrian state which would take on a universal and civilizational character, but it never came to pass. However, he tried to realize a universal civilization state in Iraq.<blockquote>"There is no meaning for words like Jews, Muslims, and Christians within the concept of nationalism. This is simply a country called Iraq and all are Iraqis." - King Faisal of Iraq</blockquote>In the first world war, the Ottomans were not equipped to fight the British and French. They were poorly trained and their weaponry was not as advanced. As British forces planned to take Istanbul via the Gallipoli peninsula, they were defeated in a rare Ottoman victory in 1915. However, by 1920, the British and French had fought their way into the Ottoman capital and occupied it. Jerusalem surrendered earlier, on December 9th, 1917, and was taken by the British by the end of the month.

The British and French secretly agreed in the middle of the war on how they were going to carve up Ottoman territory following the fall of the empire. France was poised to gain control over northern territory in modern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, northern Iraq, and northern Israel-Palestine, while the British were to control most of Jordan, Iraq, southern Israel-Palestine (the Negev), Kuwait, and down the coast of the Persian gulf to Bahrain and Qatar. The northern half of the Palestinian region was to be governed by the allies jointly, including Jerusalem, Gaza, and everything north, with Britain controlling ports in Haifa and Acre. Though the Russian Tsardom was in on the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Soviets were excluded following the revolution in 1917. Today, this is the general shape of the Middle Eastern borders, originally carved up by the allies of WW1.

The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was implemented by the Treaty of Sévres in 1920, which formally dissolved the Ottoman empire; internationalized Istanbul and its Bosphorus strait; gave pieces of Anatolian territory to the Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, French, British, and Italians; and put the former Ottoman-Syrian territory of Palestine under joint Western control. When Ottoman rebels resisted the foreign powers ferociously, a new agreement was drawn up: the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which set the modern borders of Turkey.
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Instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration, advising Sykes of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and negotiating with Britain on financing European Jewish immigration to Palestine was Chaim Weizmann, successor to Theodor Hertzl as leader of the WZC and first President of Israel. Weizmann was in the ears of Lord Balfour, the Rothschild family, Mark Sykes, and others; he was bent on gaining British support for the Jewish state in Palestine, and in 1914 advised the British to wage war against the Ottomans. He was a contemporary of fellow Zionists David Ben-Gurion and Vladimir Jabotinsky.

The League of Nations was formed in 1920 to enforce peace of a unipolar and cosmopolitan nature across the world. The League ratified the Treaty of Sévres in 1922, formally granting Britain internationally-recognized control over what was henceforth the British Mandate of Palestine. This division of the Middle East was a major disaster for Arab-Western relations as it not only subjugated the peoples, but arbitrarily drew borders through communities and lands with deep historical, cultural, religious, and ethnic interconnection. The Treaty of Sévres sparked the beginning of Arab nationalism.

This and future agreements underscore the transition into the monopoly-imperialist system from the old colonial-imperialist system in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. The land which was already conquered was being divided up by the European imperialist powers. The old imperialism of colonies, pillaging, and enslavement via direct military domination was waning in the era of finance capital; the new imperialism of monopolism and economic domination was emerging. 

This was the true essence of both World Wars-- they were ''inter-imperialist'' wars, fought by European powers to carve up "spheres of influence" and monopolize the vast resources, including land and labor, of all the nations of Earth. With the unipolar world emerging out of the chaotic non-polarized pre-Mongolian world (i.e. with monopolist states laying claim to the entire world), they warred over which nation was to become the "unipole", or the single pole of power in the world. This sometimes meant ''"allying"'' with their competitor nations to wipe out non-competitors, just as monopoly combines (syndicates, cartels, trusts, etc) did in this period.

We have thus seen, since the Crusades, a joint operation by the Western powers, with their center moved from Constantinople to London and later to Washington D.C., to carve up the Middle East and subjugate the population.

With regards to Arab nationalism, its origins lay in the Other. Arab nationalism was a reaction to the Turkish nationalism of the Young Turks, which was a reaction to Armenian and Slavic nationalism supported by the Romanovs, themselves inspired by Europe. Ultimately this all shows that the larger problem is rooted in nationalism.

In addition to Arab nationalism came a resurgence in struggle for Islamic theocracy, except this time it was in the context of unipolar modernity.

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was a Sunni organization in the Arab world, which was founded in 1928 by the scholar and teacher Hassan al-Banna. He believed a universal pan-Islamic authority spanning the Arab world could be attained by promoting Islamic ways of life through civil society and social services; some might say much in the vein of Karl Kautsky, the cosmopolitan bourgeois socialist of the inter-war [[2nd International]]. The MB is reformist first and foremost, idealist and universalist in it's vision-- this mode of politics amounts to political activism and charity, as well as diplomatic and reformist political ends. The MB spread to Palestine in the 1940s in the West Bank. Having a large presence in countries across Northern Africa and Middle East, they only worked with the local militaries. This move was successful in Egypt helping the Free Officers rise to power, but less so in other countries where the Brotherhood was either suppressed or couped.

Prior to their presence in the West Bank, Palestinians politically expressed themselves in secular terms, even as a people of deep faith. After the MB arrived in the West Bank, Islam figured much more prominently in Palestinian politics. The MB was soon discredited in the eyes of Palestinians by its support for King Hussein of Jordan in opposition to Prime Minister Nablus in the mid-1950s. During Jordanian rule the MB was watched closely by Jordanian intelligence and didn't gain widespread popularity until the mid- to late-1970s, especially in the northern West Bank. They were always a highly decentralized organization, which led to some members violently attacking British soldiers and others.

According to CIA documents, "Only in Syria, Sudan, and Jordan, however, did the Brotherhood gain ''political'' significance. The basic goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is the creation of a modern political community based on Islamic precepts. Like the movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini that deposed the Shah of Iran in February 1979, the Brotherhood calls for the elimination of corrupting, Western influences in society."