ARAB WORLD WAR I RESULTS

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What did the Arabs get as a result of World War I?

After the 1918 armistice of World War I, the Allies organized the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration to provide an interim government for Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. In July 1919, the General Syrian Congress convened in Damascus and called for Allied recognition of an independent Syria, including Palestine, with Faisal as its king. When no action was taken on the proposal, the congress in March 1920 unilaterally proclaimed Syria independent and confirmed Faisal as King. Iraqi representatives similarly announced their country's independence as a monarchy under Abdullah. The League of Nations Council rejected both pronouncements, and in April 1920 the San Remo (Italy) Conference decided on enforcing the Allied mandates in the Middle East.

At the San Remo Conference, representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Greece, and Belgium met to discuss problems arising from World War I. Members of the supreme council of the Allies took leading parts. Methods of executing the Treaty of Versailles (1919) were discussed, the basic features of a peace treaty with Turkey were adopted, and mandates in the Middle East were allotted.

The mandated territories were divided into three classes, according to their stage of economic and political development and their location, and were then assigned to individual powers. Class A consisted of Iraq (British), Syria and Lebanon (French), and Palestine (British). However, Articles 94 and 95 of the Treaty of Sevres clearly differentiated between the Mandates being created for Iraq and Syria on the one hand (Article 94) where the existence of the communities living there would be provisionally recognized as independent nations, as contrasted on the other hand to the Mandate being created for Palestine (Article 95) where no such recognition was to be given to the Arab community living there. Indeed they were only promised local autonomy so far as circumstances permit (Article 3 of the Mandate).

The French Mandate over Syria was enforced when French troops occupied Damascus in July 1920, and Faisal was served with a French ultimatum to withdraw from Syria. He went into exile, but the next year was installed by the British as King of Iraq. French rule in Syria was oppressive and the Syrians were an embittered, disillusioned people whose leaders kept them in ferment. After revolts in 1925 the French military government moved toward greater self-government, an obligation demanded of France by the League of Nations, but not completed until after World War II. In 1925 the Aleppo and Damascus provinces of Syria were joined, and in 1926 Lebanon became an independent republic under French control.

Muslims reacted very suspiciously to the British Mandate for Palestine, rightly seeing this designation as a victory for Zionism. Less accurately, they worried about it signaling a revival in the Crusader impulse. No prominent Muslim voices endorsed the delineation of Palestine in 1920; all protested it.

Instead, Muslims west of the Jordan directed their allegiance to Damascus, where the great-great-uncle of Jordan's King Abdullah II was then ruling; they identified themselves as Southern Syrians. Interestingly, no one advocated this affiliation more emphatically than a young viriluantly anti-Semitic man named Amin al-Husayni. In July 1920, however, the French overthrew this Hashemite king, in the process killing the notion of a Southern Syria. Isolated by these events, the Muslims of Palestine made the best of a bad situation. One prominent Jerusalemite commented just days following the fall of the Hashemite kingdom:

• after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine.

Following this advice, the leadership in December 1920 adopted the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state. Within a few years, this effort was led by Amin al-Husayni, later the Mufti of Jerusalem who eagerly collaborated with the Axis in WW II.

In March 1921, Winston Churchill, then British Colonial Secretary, established Abdullah as ruler of Transjordan, a territory that was created from almost 80% of the British Mandate in Palestine, carved from the potential Jewish National Home that was the purpose of the Mandate in the first place. In 1925, the British added an additional 60,000 sq. km. of desert to eastern Palestine (i.e. Transjordan) forming an "arm" of land to connect Transjordan with Iraq and to cut Syria off from the Arabian Peninsula.

Thus by the mid-1920s the modern countries of the Middle East had been established, except for the promised Jewish Homeland in Palestine. No Jewish presence was permitted in most of these territories surrounding the British Palestine Mandate:

Note: Israel today has an area of 20,770 sq. km. (excluding West Bank and Gaza Strip), far smaller than any of the countries in the table, except Lebanon. Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey.

Sources and additional reading on this topic:

• Library of Congress Country Studies
• CIA World Fact Book
• Theories on the Rise of Arab Nationalism
• The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine
• Arab countries versus Israel