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Wednesday, May 19, 2021

How Britain Took Out the Heart of Jewish Origins; Judea and Samaria ; From The Jewish Homeland

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                       Hand to hand combat between the British and the Germans

Picture this: World War I (July 28, 1914-,November 11, 1918)  the bloodiest war ever on record.  It was nearing its end in 1917 and the heads of state of Allies had a meeting about what they were changing within in the countries.  Palestine was brought up.  Mandates were going to be given to allied countries for overseeing these places.  Palestine had been under the Ottoman Empire who had held it for the past 400 years.  That mandate was given to England.  The Ottoman territories in the Middle East became Class A mandates. Based on World War I agreements, Britain was given responsibility for Iraq and Palestine (later Palestine and Transjordan); France got Syria (later Syria and Lebanon). Britain was given the direction to help the Jews to create their Jewish Homeland.  They wound up helping the Arabs to enter the land but kept Jews out at the time they needed it the most;  WWII.                                                

                Palestine:  1920

Finally, in  July 1922, the League of Nations entrusted Great Britain with the Mandate for Palestine.  It had already been 4 years since the war was over.  Recognizing the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, Great Britain was called upon to facilitate the establishment of a JEWISH NATIONAL HOME in Palestine-which Jews called Eretz Israel, meaning---The Land of Israel.  

By September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement.  This memorandum was approved on September 11, 1922.  

                                              

    Prince Abdullah, brother of the important King to be-Faisal of Iraq

From that point forward, Britain recognized the land WEST of the Jordan River as Palestine which was only 23% of the entire territory, because they had had talks with Saudi Arabia's Prince Abdullah who was searching for land to rule, and Britain knew just the piece he might want.  This Abdullah was the brother of King Faisal I of Iraq, who had been at Amman, Jordan since February 1921.  They wanted to get in socially and politically with Saudi Arabia as rumor had it that they had oil in that massive field of sand.  

                                                

      Judea-Samaria Area-  Judea was the land of Judah, of the 12 tribes of Jacob.  King Solomon's death brought on division between Israel and Judah, and Judah was what was left of the once large empire of Israel.  Israel's capital had been Samaria, founded in 880 BCE by the Jewish King Omri.  The name, Samaria,  in this case, applies to the whole northern kingdom, which is the Central Highlands of what had then been changed to be called "Palestine" by the Romans. After the 1967 Six Day War, it is recognized again as Judea and Samaria but called THE WEST BANK by Jordan.  

Britain eyed the land EAST of the Jordan River as Transjordan which constituted 77% of the entire territory.  Technically, Palestine and Transjordan remained under the one mandate held by Britain, but most official documents referred to them as if they were 2 separate mandates.  Transjordan remained under British control until 1946. 

 King  Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was the third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Emir and Sharif of Mecca, who was proclaimed as King of the Arabs in June 1916.  

  • In March of 1908, after years of difficult conditions and failure, geologist George Bernard Reynolds discovered oil in Persia (modern-day Iran).
  • A year later, an oil company in the UK, Burmah Oil, created a subsidiary company to develop oil production in Persia, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), which started volume production of oil by 1913.
  • Britain’s Royal Navy was under the leadership of Winston Churchill, who wanted to shift its fuel source from coal to oil. The Navy thus became the company’s major customer and a de facto hidden power behind its success.
  • Iranian popular opposition to the APOC’s royalty terms whereby Iran only received 16% of net profits was widespread and created political discontent throughout the country.               


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  • Chaim Weizmann, 1st president of Israel:  chemist who improved British ammunition that helped to win the war; attended conference with Faisal.  

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  •                                                          
    Weizmann and Faisal 

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    The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement was a 3 January 1919 agreement between Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader who had negotiated the 1917 Balfour Declaration with the British Government, signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference. Together with a letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal's name to Felix Frankfurter in March 1919, it was one of two documents used by the Zionist delegation at the Peace Conference to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had prior approval of Arabs.

Saudi Arabians were largely nomadic. The country’s economy was based on tourism revenue from observant Muslims’ pilgrimages to the holy city of Mecca. After the discovery, Saudis established strong infrastructure dotted with wells, pipelines, refineries, and ports. Today, oil accounts for roughly 92% of the Saudi budget.  It wasn't until  March 3, 1938, that an American-owned oil well in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, drilled into what would soon be identified as the largest source of petroleum in the world.

So we learn that Britain needed oil more than they needed to help Jews created their National Homeland.                                                   

        Palestine under the Mandate of British                                                     
    Golan Heights and Metulla Fields in Upper Galilee

In 1923, Britain transferred a part of the Golan Heights to the French Mandate of Syria, in exchange for the Metula region.  The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant, spanning about 1,800 square kilometers.  Metula is a town in the Northern District of Israel. Metula is located next to the northern border with Lebanon. In 2019 it had a population of 1,615. Metula is the northernmost town in Israel.  Golan Heights was part of the original land to be the Jewish Homeland.                                                               

        Golan Heights  which belongs to Israel, while Palestinians consider it "Occupied."   Many Druze live here.  Israel captured Golan from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and formally imposed Israeli law there with the Golan Heights Law in 1981, in a move that was not internationally recognized. The international community has condemned the capture and annexation as an illegal military occupation by Israel..The Golan Heights Law is the Israeli law which applies Israel's government and laws to the Golan Heights. It was ratified by the Knesset by a vote of 63―21, on December 14, 1981.
                                                                        

Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein is King of Jordan, reigning since 7 February 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of Jordan since 1921, he is a 41st-generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/mar3/oil-discovered-saudi-arabia/#:~:text=Educator%20Family%20PreK-,On%20March%203%2C%201938%2C%20an%20American%2Downed%20oil%20well,Middle%20East%2C%20and%20the%20world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mandate-system#:~:text=The%20Ottoman%20territories%20in%20the,(later%20Syria%20and%20Lebanon).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_bin_Faisal_Al_Saud


1 comment:

  1. spot on nadene.
    the brits heavy (and self-serving) hand in the deal vastly complicated things..

    ReplyDelete