How Turkey Lost The Land Of Palestine

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Land of Palestine at end of World War I and what the Jews had to do first.  If the land hadn't gone back to the desert, it had turned into swamps where the mosquitoes thrived and gave people Malaria. Only Jews would be wanting to take back this land and turn it into the garden it had been because of their religion and their genealogy.  Their ancestors had created an empire here.  Their religious roots were here..  It was still in their prayers.  From the time of the Exodus and Moses and Joshua to the year of 70 CE, it was their home.  The Romans had destroyed it and killed and scattered the remaining Jews, forbidding their re-entrance.  Mark Twain visited the land February 1867 and described the barrenness of it. (p. 203 Innocents Abroad)  who said the land was 150-160 miles long and only 40-60 miles wide,  which was the land holding of the Ottoman Empire, who lost their land holdings later at the end of WWI.  That's what can happen in a major war.  When you lose, you really lose.  The Ottoman Empire captured the region in 1516 and ruled it until Egypt took it in 1832. Eight years later, the United Kingdom intervened and returned the region to the Ottomans.  So Turkey had held the land for 393 years, and lost it to the Allies of WWI.  The gamblers lost.

 Coins commemorating Aluf Bar Kokhba's efforts 62 years after losing Jerusalem  in 70 and holding it for 3 years

Palestine was a land mass, never a country.  It hadn't changed since the Romans had renamed it as Palaestina in 135 when they got it back from Aluf Bar Kokhba, the Jewish general who had retaken it and held it for 3 years before being killed in the battle over it.                         

British and German wounded,  in World War I.  Bernafay Wood, 19 July 1916. Photo by Ernest Brooks.

The German invasion of Belgium caused Britain to declare war on Germany on August 4, 1914. Most of the main parties were now at war. In October 1914, Turkey (Ottoman Empire)  joined the war on Germany's side, becoming part of the Central Powers.  Italy, which was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I, was neutral in 1914 before switching to the Allied side in May 1915.

World War I's Allies were the British and others against the Germans, the Ottoman Empire and a few others. On December 9, 1917, the British captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans.  The Treaty of Sevres officially ends the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire on August 10, 1920  and marks the beginning of the latter’s partitioning. Only the territory that becomes Turkey is independent of British and French control.

 The USA didn't enter the war until 1917 with the Allies. The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 6 to 13 million. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million.

In November of 1916, President Woodrow Wilson won a close re-election under the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” Yet in early 1917 when Russia’s internal political revolutions effectively took them out of the war against Germany, the prospects for the Allies darkened. Already receiving massive shipments of supplies and a near limitless line of credit from the U.S., the Allies needed reinforcements.  Things had gone from bad to worse, with Wilson cited Germany's violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war.  So On April 4, the Senate voted to declare war against Germany by a vote of 82-6. At 3:12 a.m. on April 6,1917,  the House of Representatives passed the resolution in a vote of 373 to 50.The United States went to war.  By 1918, the war was over.  In the end, around 4,000,000 soldiers were mobilized and 116,708 American military personnel died during World War 1 from all causes (influenza, combat and wounds). Over 204,000 were wounded and 757 U.S. civilians died due to military action.

November 11, 1918:  Having been given 72 hours to agree to Allied demands, Germany signs the armistice. Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch orders that all hostilities on the Western Front cease at 11 a.m. Paris time.

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.                                      

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.  The Germany-Ottoman Alliance was ratified by the German and Ottoman Empires on August 2, 1914, shortly following the outbreak of World War I. It was created as part of a joint effort to strengthen and modernize the weak Ottoman military and to provide Germany with safe passage into the neighbouring British colonies.  It was a greedy decision and their loss.  They have to accept the consequences of their dumb move.  The Ottoman Empire was the cause of millions to die needlessly. It was never to be forgotten or forgiven. They lost their land fair and square, like Palestine.  

 The land of Palestine consisted of 45,000 square mile area populated by Arabs, Jews and others.  President Woodrow Wilson declared the principle of self-determination should govern any postwar reorganization of territories that were controlled by the Ottoman Empire.  The Allies decided to allocate a piece of the land to the group that lived there, worked the land, and built the infrastructure.                      

                      Churchll, a statesman and an artist

Winston Churchill, even back in 1908, visioned a strong free Jewish state on this land. He said later, "It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national center and a national home and be reunited and where else but in Palestine with which for 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?  We think it will be good for the world, good for the Jews, good for the British Empire, but also good for the Arabs who dwell in Palestine...They shall share in the benefits and progress of Zionism.  " (found by Benny Morris, historian).                               

 During the 1920-1922 period, Jewish leaders had gone to the British and made their case as to why they needed the land at this time.  Out of it came the British Balfour Declaration of Lord Balfour, speaking of just such a situation.  The fact was that there was already a Jewish homeland existing in parts of Palestine, and its recognition by the Balfour Declaration became a matter of binding international law when the League of nations made it part of its mandate to the British to rule the land for the next 30 years, and then hand it over to---hopefully, the Jews.                                  

The true fact was that there were always some Jews who had remained in Palestine.  The land was never devoid of them, just as there were a few Arabs living in the land as well.  The land was nearly empty of a population, deserted land full of weeds where mosquitoes thrived in swamps that had taken over.  When the Jews had been conquered in 70, the land tried to spit out all human population as well.  Then there were the Turks, demanding tax money from those that had remained, making it even harder to thrive there.

The major complaint coming out of many Arabs to the Balfour Declaration was that they envisioned Palestine as a separate entity rather than as part of Syria.  Ask any Arab at the time and they would say they were Syrian Palestinians.  .Jews said they were Palestinians.  The Peel Commission's comments were " The Arabs had always regarded Palestine as included in Syria."  They didn't want a separate Palestine because that might bring to fruition a Jewish population legally living there, which was weird since they were living there at the time anyway.  I don't believe Arabs at that time had any schools that they attended to learn facts.   

Emir Faisal's delegation at Versailles, during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Left to right: Rustum Haidar, Nuri as-Said, Prince Faisal, Captain Pisani (behind Faisal), T. E. Lawrence, unknown member of his delegation, Captain Tahsin Kadry.

  Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi (Arabic: فيصل الأول بن الحسين بن علي الهاشمي, Fayṣal al-Awwal bin al-Ḥusayn bin 'Alī al-Hāshimī; 20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933) was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 until his death.                                                   

Faisal (right) with Chaim Weizmann in Syria, 1918-They had an agreement.  

This is why Emir Feisal was all for Jews living in Palestine again and was agreeable in meetings.  He wanted his Arabs to learn from the Jews. He became king of Syria and Iraq later on.    Only a few actually lived on the land, and others were Bedouins who rode camels back and forth on the land. As Jews returned in large groups as Aliyote, Feisal had to formerly be on the Arab side, so changed towards Jews.  Arabs owning land sold it to Jews at extremely inflationary prices, but being precious to them, they bought it at those prices.   

Resource:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#:~:text=The%20total%20number%20of%20deaths,Powers%20lost%20about%204%20million.

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

The Case For Israel by Alan Dershowitz

https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/us-enters-war

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