Jerusalem. The Biography

Arabic and the latter German Yiddish’. Faisal and Lawrence hoped that the Sherifians and Zionists could cooperate to build the kingdom of Syria. Lawrence explained: ‘I look upon the Jews as the natural importers of Western leaven so necessary for countries in the Near East.’ Weizmann recalled that Lawrence’s ‘relationship to Zionism was a very positive one’, as he believed that ‘the Arabs stood to gain much from a Jewish Homeland’.
    At their oasis summit, Faisal ‘accepted the possibility of future Jewish claims to territory in Palestine’. Later, when the three men met again in London, Faisal agreed that Palestine could absorb ‘4–5 million Jews without encroaching on the rights of the Arab peasantry. He did not think for a moment there was any scarcity of land in Palestine,’ and approved a Jewish majority presence in Palestine within the Kingdomof Syria – providing he received the crown. Syria was the prize and Faisal was happy to compromise to secure it.
    Weizmann’s diplomacy at first bore fruit. He had joked that ‘a Jewish state without a university is like Monaco without the casino’, so on 24 July 1918 Allenby drove him in his Rolls-Royce up Mount Scopus. There the foundation-stones were laid for the Hebrew University by the mufti, the Anglican bishop, two chief rabbis and Weizmann himself. But observers noticed that the mufti looked sick at heart. In the distance, the Ottoman artillery boomed as the guests sang ‘God Save the King’ and the Zionist anthem Hatikvah. ‘Below us lay Jerusalem,’ said Weizmann, ‘gleaming like a jewel.’
    The Ottomans were still fighting powerfully in Palestine, while on the Western Front there was as yet no sign of victory. During these months, Storrs was sometimes told by his manservant that ‘a Bedouin’ was waiting for him. He would find Lawrence there, reading his books. The English Bedouin then disappeared just as mysteriously. In Jerusalem that May, Storrs introduced Lawrence to the American journalist Lowell Thomas, who thought ‘he might be one of the younger apostles returned to life’. Thomas would later help create the legend of Lawrence of Arabia.
    Only in September 1918 did Allenby retake the offensive, defeating the Ottomans at the Battle of Megiddo. Thousands of German and Ottoman prisoners were marched through the streets of Jerusalem. Storrs celebrated ‘by playing upon my Steinway a medley of “Vittoria” from La Tosca, Handel’s Marches from Jephthah and Scipio, Parry’s “Wedding March” from the Birds of Aristophanes’. On 2 October, Allenby allowed Faisal, King-designate of Syria, and Colonel Lawrence to liberate Damascus with their Sherifians. But, as Lawrence suspected, the real decision-making had started far away. Lloyd George was determined to keep Jerusalem. Lord Curzon later complained: ‘The Prime Minister talks about Jerusalem with almost the same enthusiasm as about his native hills.’
    Even as Germany finally buckled, the lobbying had already started. On the day the armistice was signed, 11 November, Weizmann, who had an appointment arranged before this momentous development, found Lloyd George weeping in 10 Downing Street reading the Psalms. Lawrence canvassed officials in London to help the Arab cause. Faisal was in Paris to put his case to the French. But when the British and French clashed in Paris over the division of the East, Lloyd George protested that it was Britain that had conquered Jerusalem: ‘The other governments had only put a few nigger policemen to see we didn’t steal the Holy Sepulchre.’

1919–20
     
    WOODROW WILSON AT VERSAILLES
     
    Meeting in London a few weeks later, Lloyd George and the French Premier Georges Clemenceau traded chips in the Middle East. In return for Syria, Clemenceau was accommodating:
     
CLEMENCEAU: ‘Tell me what you want.’
    LLOYD GEORGE: ‘I want Mosul.’
    CLEMENCEAU: ‘You shall have it. Anything else?’
    LLOYD GEORGE: ‘Yes I want Jerusalem too!’
    CLEMENCEAU: ‘You shall have it.’
     
    In January 1919, Woodrow Wilson, the first US president ever to leave the Americas while in office, arrived in Versailles to settle the peace with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. The protagonists of the Middle East came to lobby the victors, with Faisal, accompanied by Lawrence, striving to prevent French control of Syria; and Weizmann hoping to keep Britain in Palestine and win international recognition for the Balfour Declaration. The very presence of