Barr - A line in the sand: the Anglo-French struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948

ALSO BY JAMES BARR

Setting the Desert on Fire

A

LI N E

IN THE

SA N D

The Anglo-French Struggle

for the Middle East, 19141948

JAMES BARR

W. W. Norton & Company

New York London

For Anna

CONTENTS

To allay tensions that threatened the Entente Cordiale, Sir Mark Sykes proposed dividing the Middle East with France along a line that ran from the e in Acre to the last k in Kirkuk.

( Getty Images)

Franois Georges-Picot, the French negotiator of the deal with Sykes. The British complained that his tactic was to give nothing and to claim everything.

(By kind permission of Mme Anne Parent)

T. E. Lawrence in Damascus, October 1918. Lawrence hoped that he and the Arabs could render the Sykes-Picot agreement irrelevant by reaching Damascus before the wars end.

( Rolls Royce Heritage Trust)

Georges Clemenceau (left) and David Lloyd George at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919. The two leaders fell out spectacularly over the settlement of the Middle East. ( Getty Images )

Sultan Atrash, leader of the Druze revolt against the French. The French always suspected that Atrash enjoyed British support. ( G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection/Library of Congress )

Winston Churchill with his wife, Clementine (left), and advisers Gertrude Bell and T. E. Lawrence (right). Churchill convened the Cairo conference in March 1921 to rubber-stamp Feisal as the new ruler of Iraq. ( Newcastle University)

Syrian rebels are executed in Damascus, 1925. Britain tried to distance itself from Frances methods during the Druze revolt. ( Bettman/CORBIS)

The mufti, August 1937. Having helped organize opposition to the French in Syria, the mufti turned his attentions against British rule in Palestine in the 1930s. ( Bettmann/CORBIS)

Orde Wingate. After Britain failed to engage French assistance, to defeat the Arab rebels Wingate proposed special night squads comprising local Jews and using aggressive tactics. ( Imperial War Museum IND 2085)

British soldiers at Palmyra, 1941. The British waged a short but bloody war that year to wrest Syria and Lebanon from the Vichy French. ( Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Edward Louis Spears (left) and Georges Catroux. Spears was dispatched to the Levant in 1942 to hold the Free French to the promise of independence they had made to the Syrians and Lebanese. (Photos Service Cinema Forces Franaises Libres)

Egged on by his hard-line advisers, Jean Helleu had the newly elected Lebanese government arrested in November 1943, precipitating a far-reaching political crisis. ( Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Elected prime minister of Lebanon in 1943, Riad as-Sulh worked closely with the British to expel the French from the Levant. ( Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Churchill and Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Armistice Day, 1944. Days after the assassination of Lord Moyne, de Gaulle insisted that France was not conspiring against Britain in Palestine, but during the next three years Paris was to provide a safe haven for Zionist terrorists operating against Britain. ( Imperial War Museum BU 1292)

Avraham Stern. The help Stern and his gang received from the Vichy French was maintained by the Free French.

Lord Moyne. Moyne, the most fervent backer of Britains Greater Syria plan to oust France from the Levant, was murdered by the Stern Gang in November 1944, just as the plan appeared to be coming to fruition. ( Getty Images)

Ernest Bevin and Clement Attlee, January 1946. Clem, Bevin said to Attlee one day, about Palestine. According to the lads in the Office, weve got it wrong. Weve got to think again. ( Getty Images)

The aftermath of the King David Hotel bombing, July 1946. ( Imperial War Museum E31968)