1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel

By Barry Shaw

There are a few moments in history that create the destiny of a nation. For Israel, one of those moments was 1917.

This moment of history touched the imagination and sympathy of people. It repaired two millennium of injustice to the Jewish people by restoring them to their ancestral homeland. By retelling the critical events that took place a hundred years ago many of the injustices being practised against Israel today can be rectified.

This book recalls the spirit of Zionism, a spirit of self-sacrifice and determination that led to the birth of the one liberal democracy in the Middle East. This book covers the embryonic stage of that struggle in which both Palestinian Jews and Christian Zionists played a brave and committed role in the destiny of the Jewish people.

The territory known as Palestine became a critical crucible of World War One. It swung the tide of war in favour of the Allied forces. It was in essence the arena in which a clash of three empires took place and a Jewish state emerged out of the ashes.
The battlefields in Palestine were the backdrop to the realisation of a two thousand year dream by passionate Jews to establish a national homeland in the land of their forefathers.

1917. From Palestine to the Land of Israel is a tale of heroism and villainy as seen through the eyes of those who played important roles in the destiny of the land. This book draws you back a century into a kaleidoscope of swirling events that changed our world. You will be sucked into the maelstrom of a Middle East in turmoil, feel the passions and share the motives of those who placed their stamp on history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Shaw
• Release date: Mar 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370660384

Barry Shaw

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He was the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organisation formed in the wake of a spate of deadly Palestinian terror attacks on the author's hometown. The author speaks and writes of issues of the day relating to Israel and the Middle East and explains why and how unfolding events in the region relates to a wider world.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

There are a few moments in history that create the destiny of a nation. For Israel, one of those moments was 1917.

This moment of history touched the imagination and sympathy of people at that time as repairing two millennium of injustice to the Jewish people by restoring them to their ancestral homeland. By retelling the critical events that took place a hundred years ago we seek to right many of the injustices being practiced against Israel today.

This book recalls the spirit of Zionism, a spirit of self-sacrifice and determination that led to the birth of the one liberal democracy in the Middle East. This book covers the embryonic stage of that struggle.

Readers will encounter the seeds of resentment that caused the Israeli-Palestinian problem we have today.

The territory known as Palestine became a critical crucible of World War One. It swung the tide of war in favor of the Allied forces. It was in essence the arena in which a clash of three empires took place and a Jewish state emerged out of the ashes.

The battlefields in Palestine were the backdrop to the realization of a two thousand year dream by passionate Jews to establish a national homeland in the land of their forefathers.

This book draws you back a century into a kaleidoscope of swirling events that was to change our world. You will be sucked into the maelstrom of a Middle East in turmoil, feel the passions, share the motives of the heroes, the villains that placed their stamp on current events.

The world is what it is today due to the visions, the victories and the mistakes of the characters you will meet in an epic journey back in time.

Among the remarkable cast of characters are Lawrence of Arabia, General Edmund Allenby, Lord Arthur Balfour, Richard Meinertzhagen, Aaron and Sarah Aaronsohn, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, Joseph Trumpeldor, Colonel John Patterson, Prince Feisal, Winston Churchill, David Ben-Gurion, and the Three Pashas.

PRELUDE

The shifting sands of the Middle East are merciless. Edifices and empires have crumbled and disappeared. Its searing heat deceives the mind. What looks like a distant oasis is nothing but a shimmering mirage taunting you to your death with its promise of cool water, shade and sustenance. It’s a fata-morgana that fuddles the mind and leaves you defenseless to its harsh deceptive cruelty.

The landscape appears timeless in its barrenness. It resists even the most vigilant cultivation. It is not for the weak of heart. It is not for the weak. The shimmering shifting sand is full of deception, a deception that traps the unwary. Cultures and conquerors have succumbed to its timelessness and vanished from the face of the earth. Threatening figures appear out of nowhere to take everything you have. Even your life. Some do it in the name of a greater cause. Some do it in the name of a religion. Some do it because you have what they want. Some do it because they hate you.

They have title to nothing yet claim everything. They have no written law. They are bound by no code. What you have is what they take. It’s not just survival. It’s kill or be killed. There is no place for the benevolent or the benign. Those that emerge out of nowhere can be as cruel and as life-threatening as the searing heat.

The shifting sands of the Middle East are merciless.

IN THE BEGINNING…

The beginning began with the end of Israel.

The House of Israel began to fracture after the death of King David. Although his son, Solomon, constructed the Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem the kingdom was in moral decay and political meltdown. Solomon’s architectural achievements were matched by his womanizing. He was reputed to have had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines. It’s hardly likely you could run a kingdom and keep that number of women in check and indeed the kingdom was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Jewish Temple was destroyed, the land pillaged and thousands taken into slavery in Babylon. Crying over their lost kingdom, caused by their abandonment of their God and the loss of their moral compass and national strength, the Jewish slaves sat by the waters of the Euphrates and remembered Zion.

The Babylonian Empire began to crumble under its own debauchery. The story goes that King Belshazzar called for the golden vessels plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem for a night of drinking with his friends, his wives and his concubines. During his drunken revelry the king imagined a hand writing an omen on the palace wall. The writing on the wall predicted the fall of Babylon to the Persians. And so it came to pass. According to the Book of Daniel, 5:30-31, the king was killed that very night and the Persians under Cyrus conquered Babylon and released the Children of Israel from their bondage.

The Jews rushed back to Zion to rebuild their lives and their Temple around which they pledged to live good and creative lives. They were granted land by the ruling Persian Empire in which to govern their own lives. They issued their own silver coins imprinted with the letters YHD – Yehud, Jew. The land, referred to in Ezra as ‘Yehud Medinata,’ the Jewish State.

According to the Book of Ezra, many thousands of Jews made their way back to Jerusalem and to Yehud Medinata in huge waves of Aliyah – going up to Zion. In a real sense, this was a pilgrimage of a permanent nature. They were there not just to pray, but to stay.

The events leading to the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem represents the final chapter in the historic narrative of the Hebrew Bible.

Waves of conquerors swept through the land. From Alexander the Great to the Greeks who inflamed a Jewish revolt due to their Hellenistic paganism. The Jewish Hasmonean dynasty was the result of the successful Maccabean revolt against the Greeks in 140 BCE but this peaceful reign was short-lived.

The Romans arrived to spoil it all. It started well. Trade and construction was good until the Roman rulers began to impose impossible taxes and other impositions on the Jewish inhabitants.

The reconstruction of the Second Temple had begun immediately on the return of the Babylonian Jews but its finest glory was completed by King Herod. Ten thousand skilled laborers were employed. When completed it was an enormous and impressive edifice. Sadly, its days were numbered.

Trouble was brewing in the days of Jesus. There was rebellion in the air. In the year 66 CE, the Jewish population rebelled against an oppressive Roman rule.

Herod ruled with ruthless brutality. His killing spree was paranoiac. It wasn’t just Jesus that he executed. He killed forty six members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious court. He also put to death the remaining Hasmonean family. He ended up killing his own wife and children.

The glory of the mighty Roman Empire was anything but glorious to the Jews of Judea. The taxes, the military restrictions, the Roman rule made the once proud Judeans increasingly subjugated to the insensitive control of their conquerors. The land descended into anarchy.

A major rebellion was led by a handful of angry Jewish fighters but grew throughout the land. They struck back at Rome inflicting heavy casualties among the Roman soldiers. The Romans brought in reinforcements from Syria but met defeat at the Battle of Beit Horon. Employing guerilla tactics the rebels waited until the large Roman force squeezed through the narrow mountain pass causing the disciplined invaders to lose their formation. They were ambushed and assaulted with arrows before being rushed by the massed force of Jewish rebels. The Romans lost six thousand men. It was an embarrassment that could not stand. The Jewish revolt had to be put down.

Furthermore, the news reached Rome that they had not only lost so many soldiers but that the Jews had taken their Aquila, the important standard bearing the figure of an eagle that proceeded their troops into battle and their leaders into capitals over which they reigned. It was the symbol of the might of Rome. The loss of the Aquila symbolized the loss of Roman prestige. Roman pride demanded the total suppression of this revolt and the destruction of a people that insulted the honor of imperial Rome.

The revolt had spread throughout Judea with Yosef ben Matityahu leading the Jewish fighters in the Galilee. The Roman general Vespasian was ordered to put down the northern rebellion. He, together with his son, Titus, ruthlessly went in pursuit of the rebels. Those they did not kill escaped south to join other rebel groups or to evade the Roman bloodshed. News of their early success reached a Roman capital that was experiencing political upheavals. Vespasian was ordered back to restore order in Rome leaving his son, Titus, to continue the suppression of the Jews of Judea.

Titus moved on Jerusalem and put the city to siege. The siege left hundreds dead of starvation and disease. It took the Roman legions seven months to break into the city. Titus killed anyone the Romans didn’t need as slaves or servants. The Roman historian Josephus recorded that Titus crucified five thousand Jews who were scavenging for food.

The Temple was engulfed in flames. When the flames died down all that was left was the western retaining wall at the side of the Temple Mount. This is the site at which Jews gather to pray today. It was called The Wailing Wall by the Jews who weep over the destruction of their most holy shrine.

The Romans set fire to what they could not plunder. Jews were forbidden to enter into Jerusalem. The treasures of the Jewish Temple together with the slaves were transported back to Rome. The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum bears the motif depicting this military triumph.

The battle ground moved into the blazing heat by the shores of the Dead Sea. The Zealots fought their way to Masada, the extravagantly luxurious summer palace built by Herod the Great on the peak of a plateau mountain in the middle of nowhere. The only access to this fortress-like palace was by foot up a winding pathway. Yet, despite its impregnability they succeeded in taking over the mountain fortress. This is where the final dramatic battle between the Jewish rebels and the Roman Empire took place.

After a dramatic siege, during which the Romans exerted great effort and resources in constructing a massive ramp slope up the mountainside using thousands of Jewish slaves they brought up their battering rams. The Masada survivors numbered almost a thousand. As the Romans began their final assault on the ramparts, the rebel leader, Eleazer ben Yair, called on the survivors to commit a collective suicide rather than fall as slaves to the Romans. He told them;

"Since we long ago resolved never to be servants to the Romans, nor to any other than to God Himself, who alone is the true and just Lord of mankind, the time is now come that obliges us to make that resolution true in practice. We were the very first that revolted, and we are the last to fight against them, and I cannot but esteem it as a favor that God has granted us, that it is still in our power to die bravely, and in a state of freedom."

They cast lots to pick the ten men that would kill the remainder which they did with love and honor. Then they drew lots to decide who would be the final survivor who would then commit suicide.

When the Romans broke into to the fortress palace they had no one to capture or to take into slavery, safe for two women survivors who told their story to Flavius Silva, the Roman general.

Today, Masada symbolizes the determination of the Jewish people not to fall as slaves and to be free in their own land. Unfortunately, with the fall of Masada and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish people were to be dispersed into two thousand years of persecution that left them wandering the globe in search of shelter and protection, save for the remnants that clung to a life of poverty and survival in their ancient land.

In 135 CE the Roman emperor Hadrian, wishing to blot out any Jewish connection with the land renamed what had been called Provincia Judea into Provincia Syria Palaestina. This was the Latin version of the Greek definition of the administrative area they had conquered from the Jews.

Palaestina – a Roman curse inflicted on defeated Jewish people. Palestine - a Roman punishment inflicted on the land of Israel. An ignominy designed to erase any trace of Jewish connection or heritage over the land.

Some believe the biblical quotation that those who curse Israel shall be cursed and those that bless Israel shall be blessed. There is some merit in this for students of history. Like conquerors before them the Roman Empire disintegrated after they set Jerusalem on fire, slaughtered the population and made off with their plunder.

The remnants of the people and the land suffered through centuries as Christian and Muslim forces fought over a deteriorating landscape.

With the passage of time, the name was shortened to Palaestina. It was used by the Crusaders and adopted by the Ottoman Turks who linked Palestine to their administration based in Damascus.

OTTOMAN PALESTINE

The Mamelukes were the last of the forgotten empires after they were vanquished in 1486 by a new regional power.

The Ottoman Empire, once a mighty regional power, rich at its source but desperately poor in its outlying and neglected territories had an influence that spread from the central powerhouse of Constantinople to Africa and Asia, across the Middle East and into the southern and eastern regions of Europe.

As anyone visiting Topkapi Palace in Istanbul can attest, the world as far away as Japan came to pay their respects and offer rich gifts of appeasement to the mighty Sultans and conquerors that reigned over the Ottoman Empire.

But this Empire began to wane with military defeats in Europe and economic stagnation at home. The Ottoman tax collectors raped vast areas of its once fertile produce leaving them desolate of both vegetation and people. Palestine became a barren and neglected sanjak of Syria. It continued to maintain its fading influence in its administrative capitals. The comparison between the riches of the Ottoman regional power center in Damascus and the barrenness of the Syrian district of Palestine can be read in Mark Twain’s ‘The Innocents Abroad.’ Of Damascus, he wrote;

Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only used to the God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria.

The ‘God-forsaken barrenness’ of Palestine, part of an eyalet or administrative district of the Ottoman Empire, was described by Twain as;

"a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent mournful expanse.... desolation.... we never saw a human being on the whole route.... hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

The holy city of Jerusalem was a dusty town. Outside the city walls Bedouin shepherds herded their goats to sparse pastures while within the walls the majority Jewish population was either merchants, tradesmen or impoverished people anchored to this place through their faith.

There was a British Consul in Palestine in 1857 who reported that The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.

The American writer, Mark Twain, is much quoted from his observations while traveling gloomily throughout Palestine. Riding through the Jezreel Valley he recorded, There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent, not for thirty miles in either direction.

Continuing his journey he found, Nazareth is forlorn. Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today…Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Savior’s presence.

The historian, David Landes, explained the dire condition of the land; As a result of centuries of Turkish neglect and misrule, following on the earlier ravages of successive conquerors, the land has been given over to sand, marsh, the mosquito, clan feuds, and Bedouin marauders.

CHRISTIAN ZIONISM

The 19th Century British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, held a deeply-felt detestation of the Ottoman Empire for its barbarity against its Christian subjects. He held Zionist aspirations for the Holy Land; that the Jews would return to Zion. This was a common Victorian-era characteristic derived from the Christian faith. Preachers had been prophesizing a Jewish return to the Holy Land as early as 1762 when Charles Wesley who, together with his brother John, founded the Methodist movement and wrote psalms and prayers for such a deliverance. Quoting from Isaiah 66:99, one psalm included the lines;

"Oh that the chosen band

Might now their brethren bring

And gathered out of every land

Present to Zion’s King.

Of all the ancient race

Not one be left behind

But each compelled by secret grace

His way to Canaan find.

We know it must be done

For God hath spoke the word

All Israel shall their Saviour own

To their first state restored.

Rebuild by His command

Jerusalem shall rise.

Her temple on Moriah stand

Again, and touch the skies."

This was the core of the Anglican revival in the Church of England that found its voice in calling for the return to Zion of God’s holy people.

It was religious words like these that touched the souls of British political leaders from the Earl of Shaftesbury to Palmerston to Lloyd George.

Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, born a Jew but baptized a Christian, wrote a novel ‘Tancred’ in 1857 which foretold of a Jewish return to Palestine.

Before that, Disraeli had visited Jerusalem prior to publishing another fiction, ‘The Wondrous Tale of Alroy,’ in 1833. It told of a Kurdish Jew who led a failed revolt against the Turks in the twelfth century.

Disraeli held no religious fervor as he visited Jerusalem but his brief time in this Ottoman-controlled place sparked within him a desire to write a novel of a Jewish political resurrection against the Turkish oppressor based on an ancient claim to Jewish sovereignty.

In this, he preceded Theodor Herzl, the prominent founder of Zionism, by many years. In a sense, Disraeli’s book about David Alroy was a metaphor for his own political ambitions as a Tory keen to uplift the empire of Britain but with a fear of the social limitations of having been born a Jew.

Gladstone, like other politicians after him, was touched by this religious philosophy that led him to believe in the justice of restoring the Hebrews into their ancient homeland. He predicted this would occur under a benign British rule and with British assistance.

Into the 20th Century, a similar Bible-believing politician, David Lloyd George, was fated to move history forward by his determination to destroy an Ottoman Empire that was flexing its muscles and allying itself with the Germans against whom Britain was at war in Western Europe.

After numerous failed attempts Lloyd George no longer held any illusions that Britain could strike a deal with the Turkish Ottomans. His attitude had changed. He now wanted to acquire Palestine for Britain. He also wanted to develop the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine under a British protectorate. The restoration of the Jews to Zion was an integral part of his nonconformist faith.

To David Lloyd George places from the Bible and in Palestine were more intimately familiar to him than those closer to home on the map of the Western Front.

THE YOUNG TURKS

The political restructuring of the old Ottoman order by the radical Young Turks brought more chaos than peaceful development. Battle lines were drawn. Old enemies sensed an opportunity to seek freedom and independence from the yoke of the Ottoman Turks. Among them were the Kurds and the Armenians. The Pan-Islamism of Abdul Hamid, the last sultan to have had full control between 1879 and 1908, was not popular. Large non-Muslim areas resisted with the increasing European influence attempting to thwart the encroachment of the Young Turks who were brandishing the expansion of Turkish influence as a political and military cause.

The Armenians who pressed for independence from the Ottomans suffered genocide. An estimated one and a half million of their people were systematically displaced and slaughtered by the Turks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The tax vultures and corrupt land administrators of the Ottomans were swooping over their domain looking for meagre pickings to finance their military ambitions.

By the beginning of the 20th Century, the Ottoman Empire was described as the sick man of Europe following a century of decline, military defeats, poverty and political instability. In a revolt in 1908, a group of young military officers known as the Young Turks seized power from the old Ottoman regime and began to implement a series of reforms.

The leaders of the Young Turk movement were the three Pashas – Mehmet, Enver, and Djemal. Djemal was the powerful and cruel governor of Ottoman Palestine centered on Damascus, the capital of Syria.

The Young Turks were backed by Germany who understood the potential of a revitalized Turkish ally. The Germans allied with the Turks to challenge British influence and power in the region. They also saw a Turkish intervention as distracting the British from German ambitions in Europe, a distraction that would draw down British forces into the Middle East.

The Turks were badly in need of outside assistance. They had suffered heavy losses in Balkan Wars which had dragged on from October 1912 through to May 1913 and in which they had been beaten by the combined armies of Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria. They had lost territory, part of which led to the establishment of Albania.

The new Turkish government began to mobilize their army on August 2, 1914.

A fatal mistake for the Ottoman Turks was the decision of Enver Pasha, the former Ottoman military attaché in Berlin, to reject the generous military aid offer of the British. He allied with the Germans. What swung the decision for Enver Pasha was that the British offer was conditional on Turkey’s neutrality while the German offer came with the attractive reward of territorial gains in the Caucuses in return for a Turkish alliance with Germany against Russia. In the traditional bazaar mentality of personal gain and profit, adding territory was infinitely more seductive than standing still. The Germans understood the Ottoman mindset better than the British.

The German-Ottoman Alliance was to have remained covert to give them time to execute their joint plans but it quickly became apparent when Turkey allowed two German warships to enter into the waters of the Dardanelles. In a prolonged game of cat and mouse the German battleships, the Goeben and the Bresla, outwitted a British navy caught between protecting French shipping, guarding the Adriatic and preventing German ships from joining the Austrian fleet. The situation for the naval fleet was exacerbated by contrary and confusing orders from the British Admiralty that allowed the German warships to evade British action.

The fraud of Turkish neutrality became obvious to Britain and diplomatic relations were broken off on October 30, 1914. The British were now certain that the Ottoman Turks would enter the war on the side of Germany and the next move confirmed that fear. The Imperial German Navy took command of the Ottoman Navy. The Turks were also impressed by early German gains and successes in the opening stages of what became known as The Great War.

Britain’s fears were further confirmed when the two German warships sailed into the Black Sea to the Russian port of Odessa. They bombarded the naval port and sank several Russian ships. As a result Russia declared war on Turkey on November 2. Britain and France declared war on Turkey a few days later on November 5.

The Ottoman response was to declare jihad (holy war). They launched an offensive in the Caucuses in an effort to regain lost Ottoman provinces. They also prepared to attack the British who were protecting Egypt aiming to cut the Suez Canal and block shipping. Their other motivation was to wean Egypt away from the British influence and join the Turkish-German alliance.

The European attitude as the world entered the 20th Century was that Arabic-speaking peoples were incapable of successfully governing themselves or of sustaining genuine independence without a major power protecting them. The only independence that tribal Arab clans sought at that time was a form of personal fiefdom. As Reginald Wingate, the Governor-General of the Sudan was to write in 1915, I conceive it to be not impossible that in the dim future a federation of semi-independent Arab states might exist under European guidance and support, linked together by racial and linguistic grounds owing spiritual allegiance to a single Arab Primate.

Who is to say, as we observe the current mess that is the Middle East, that Wingate got it wrong? However, as events unfolded, Wingate attempted to bring in powerful Arab tribes under the umbrella of British influence and reward them for their war efforts alongside the British.

THE IMPOSTER

In studying British political and military ventures in the Middle East it is surprising to see how they acted based on flimsy pieces of intelligence or propositions receiving from dubious characters.

One such character that turned heads in London was a young man named Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi who caught the attention of an impressionable young career politician, Mark Sykes. Faruqi was to die young in Iraq in 1920 during a tribal raid but, five years earlier, he became an important agent between British officials and Arab leaders that left a trail of misunderstandings and mistrust that lingered for many years after his untimely death.

He emerged out an agreement of sorts between Lord Kitchener and the Emir Hussein of Mecca, the Islamic head in the Arab region of the Hejaz, at the beginning of the Great War. Horatio Herbert Kitchener was the Secretary of State for War. His imposing mustachioed face with steely eyes was used widely in recruitment posters throughout Britain. Every street corner and shop displayed the iconic poster with Kitchener pointing out of the frame at the observer with the message Your country needs you, which exhorted the nation’s young men to go fight the enemy on the battlefields of Europe. Kitchener assessed that the spiritual leader could be a man of influence and of military benefit to Britain. By early 1915 both men had agreed that Hussein would not use his religious prestige against the interests of Britain in the Ottoman war and that, at some time in the future, he would use it in Britain’s favor.

His agreement with Britain bolstered Hussein’s ego and ambition. The British Command in Cairo was surprised to receive, in the summer of 1915, a demand from Hussein that most of Arab Asia should become an independent Arab kingdom under his rule. His request was greeted lightly and with some mirth. Some considered him useful but not much more than a jumped up potentate getting above his station. Britain indicated that they could consider him as head of a future caliphate, but not a kingdom.

The British were not aware that Hussein was in a weak position and that the Ottoman Turks had threatened to depose him. Hussein had sent his son Feisal to plead with the Grand Vizier in Constantinople only to learn that there was little chance of a change of heart, the decision simply delayed due to the war. On his way to Constantinople, Feisal went secretly to sound out the Arabs in Damascus. The Damascus Arabs were hesitant. They believed, rightly as it turned out, that the Germans would enter the war on the side of the Young Turks. They also informed Feisal that they preferred to be on the side of the Muslim Turks than the European Christians.

Hussein’s demand for a kingdom was based on the Damascus Arabs advising him via Feisal not to join the Allies unless Britain pledged to support an independent Arab Western Asia. They wanted to use Britain as a strong negotiating card to play against the Ottoman Turks who needed their compliance.

By the time Feisal returned to the Syrian capital after his unsuccessful meeting in Constantinople he found the Arabs in crisis. Djemal Pasha, the strong Turkish Governor of Syria that included the district of Palestine, had discovered an Arab plot against him and had begun taking steps to smash the revolt at birth. He arrested many of the leaders and expelled others. He also dismantled three Arab army divisions and sent most of their officers to fight and face death in Gallipoli. In its place he established the Turkish 4th Army. The remaining Arabs told Feisal that they were now unable to revolt against the