Текст книги "The Arabs: A History"

Автор книги: Eugene Rogan

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

In the aftermath of the Qassam revolt, the heads of the Palestinian political parties attempted to reassert their leadership over the nationalist movement. In April 1936 the leading parties united in a new organization called the Arab Higher Committee. They called for a general strike by all Arab workers and government employees, as well as a complete boycott on all economic exchanges with the Yishuv. The general strike was accompanied by violent attacks on British forces and Jewish settlers. The nationalist leaders’ strategy backfired badly. The Palestinian Arab economy suffered far worse than the Yishuv as a result of the boycott. Britain flooded the country with 20,000 new troops to put down the rebellion. Britain also called on its allies in neighboring Arab states to persuade the Palestinian leadership to call off the general strike. On October 9, 1936, the kings of Saudi Arabia and Iraq joined the rulers of Transjordan and Yemen in a joint declaration calling on “our sons the Arabs of Palestine” to “resolve for peace in order to save further shedding of blood. In doing this,” the monarchs claimed implausibly, “we rely on the good intentions of your friend Great Britain, who has declared that she will do justice.”⁴³ When the Arab Higher Committee responded to the kings’ declaration and called for an end to the strike, the Palestinians felt betrayed by their own leaders and their Arab brethren alike. Their views were captured by the Palestinian nationalist poet Abu Salman, whose acerbic verses accused both the Palestinian leaders and British-backed Arab monarchs of selling out the Arab movement:You who cherish the homeland

Revolt against the outright oppression

Liberate the homeland from the kings

Liberate it from the puppets

I thought we had kings who could lead the men behind them ⁴⁴

Abu Salman spoke for the disenchanted Palestinian masses when he asserted that the liberation of Palestine would come from its people, not its leaders. In the aftermath of the general strike the British responded once again with a commission of enquiry. The report of the Peel Commission, published July 7, 1937, sent shock waves through Palestine. For the first time, the British acknowledged that the troubles in Palestine were the product of rival and incompatible national movements. “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country,” the report acknowledged. “About 1,000,000 Arabs are in strife, open or latent, with some 400,000 Jews. There is no common ground between them.” The solution proposed by the Peel Commission was partition. The Jews were to gain statehood in 20 percent of the territory of Palestine, including most of the coastline and some of the country’s most fertile agricultural land, in the Jezreel Valley and the Galilee. The Arabs were allotted the poorest lands of Palestine, including the Negev Desert and the Arava Valley, as well as the hill country of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The population of Palestine did not correspond to the geography of partition. This was particularly problematic as major Arab towns and cities were included in the proposed Jewish state. To iron out such anomalies, the Peel Commission held out the possibility of “population transfers” to remove Arabs from territories allocated to the Jewish state—something that in the later twentieth century would come to be called ethnic cleansing. Britain’s recommendation of forced transfer won the chairman of the Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), over to the partition plan. “This will give us something we never had, even when we were under our own authority” in antiquity, he enthused—namely, a “really Jewish” state with a homogenously Jewish population.⁴⁵ To compound Arab grievances, the partition plan did not envisage an independent Palestinian state but called for the Arab territories to be appended to Transjordan, under Amir Abdullah’s rule. The people of Palestine had grown deeply distrustful of Abdullah, seeing him as a British agent who was covetous of their lands. For the Palestinians, the Peel Commission’s recommendations represented the worst possible outcome for their national struggle. Far from securing their rights to self-rule, their population was to be dispersed and ruled by hostile foreigners—the Zionists and Amir Abdullah. The Jewish Agency accepted the terms, Amir Abdullah agreed with the Peel Commission, and the Palestinians went to war against both the British and the Yishuv. The second phase of the Palestinian Arab Revolt lasted two years, from the autumn of 1937 through 1939. On September 26, 1937, Palestinian extremists murdered the district commissioner in Galilee, L. Y. Andrews. The British arrested 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders, deported many to the Seychelles, and declared the Arab Higher Committee illegal. Without central leadership, the revolt degenerated into an uncoordinated insurgency that ravaged the Palestinian countryside. The insurgents attacked British police and army patrols and Jewish settlements, assassinated British and Jewish officials, and killed Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the occupation authorities. They sabotaged railways, communications, and the oil pipelines that crossed through Palestine. Villagers found themselves caught between the insurgents, who demanded their support, and the British, who punished all those suspected of aiding the insurgents. The effects on the Palestinians were devastating. Every Arab attack against the British and the Yishuv brought massive reprisals. The British, determined to suppress the revolt militarily, dispatched 25,000 soldiers and policemen to Palestine?the largest deployment of British forces abroad since the end of the First World War. They established military courts, operating under ?emergency regulations? that gave the mandate the legal trappings of a military dictatorship. The British destroyed the houses of all persons involved in attacks, as well as all persons known or suspected of having aided insurgents, under the legal authority of the emergency regulations. An estimated 2,000 houses were destroyed between 1936 and 1940. Combatants and innocent civilians alike were interned in concentration camps?by 1939, over 9,000 Palestinians were held in overcrowded facilities. Suspects were subjected to violent interrogation, ranging from humiliation to torture. Younger offenders, of between seven and sixteen years, were flogged. Over 100 Arabs were sentenced to death in 1938 and 1939, and more than thirty were actually executed. Palestinians were used as human shields to prevent insurgents from placing land mines on roads used by British forces.⁴⁶ The use of overwhelming force and collective punishments by the British degenerated into abuses and atrocities that would forever stain the mandate in the memory of the Palestinians. The most heinous atrocities came in retaliation for the killing of British troops by insurgents. In one well-documented case, British soldiers took revenge for comrades killed by a land mine in September 1938 by loading more than twenty men from the village of al-Bassa into a bus and forcing them at gun point to drive over a massive land mine the British themselves had buried in the middle of the village access road. All of the occupants were killed by the explosion, their maimed bodies photographed by a British serviceman before the villagers were forced to bury their men’s remains in a mass grave.⁴⁷ The Palestinian Arabs had been thoroughly defeated and by 1939 had no fight left in them. Some 5,000 men had been killed and 10,000 others wounded—in all, over 10 percent of the adult male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. However, the British could hardly claim victory. They could not sustain the cost of suppressing the revolt, and they could not impose their policies on the Palestinian Arabs. With war looming in Europe, Whitehall could no longer afford to deploy so many troops to suppress a colonial war. To restore peace to their troubled Palestine mandate, the British shelved the Peel Commission’s partition plan of 1937. Once again, a royal commission was convened to reexamine the situation in Palestine, and once again, the commission published a White Paper that sought to address Palestinian Arab grievances. The 1939 White Paper was the best deal Britain ever offered the Palestinian Arabs. The new policy capped Jewish immigration at 15,000 each year for five years, or 75,000 total. This would raise the population of the Yishuv to 35 percent of the total population of Palestine—a minority large enough to look after itself, but not so large as to take control of the country as a whole. There would be no further Jewish immigration without the consent of the Arab majority—which all parties acknowledged was unlikely to be forthcoming. Jewish land purchase was to be banned or severely restricted, depending on the region. Finally, Palestine would gain its independence in ten years under joint Arab and Jewish government ?in such a way as to ensure that the essential interests of each community are safeguarded.?⁴⁸ The 1939 White Paper was unsatisfactory to both Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The Arab community rejected the terms because it allowed Jewish immigration to continue, if at a reduced rate, and because it preserved the political status quo and delayed independence by a further ten years. The Yishuv rejected the terms because it closed Palestine to Jewish immigration just as Nazi atrocities against Jews were escalating. (In November 1938, Nazi gangs had terrorized German Jewish citizens in Kristellnacht, or the “night of broken glass,” Europe’s worst pogrom to date.) The White Paper also ruled out the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, relegating the Yishuv to a minority status in a future Palestinian Arab state. The leadership of the Yishuv itself was divided by the 1939 White Paper. David Ben-Gurion made clear his opposition to the White Paper from the outset. However, he identified Nazi Germany as the greater threat to the welfare of the Jewish people and famously vowed to fight on Britain’s side against Nazism as though there were no White Paper. The extremists in the Zionist movement—the Irgun and the Stern Gang—responded to the White Paper by declaring Britain the enemy. They fought against the British presence in Palestine as an illegitimate imperial state denying independence to the Jewish people, and they turned to terror tactics to achieve a Jewish state in Palestine. By the end of the Second World War, when Nazism had been eradicated, Britain would find itself combating a Jewish revolt of far greater magnitude than the Arabs had ever mounted against British rule.

At the end of the First World War, Britain’s mastery over the Middle East was unrivaled. Its troops occupied the Arab world from Egypt to Iraq, and its control over the Persian Gulf was unassailable. Although few in the Arab world had wanted the British to rule over them, most viewed their colonial overlord with respect, however grudging. The British were efficient, inscrutable, orderly, technologically advanced, and militarily strong. Britain was truly great, a colossus that towered over its colonial possessions. Two decades of colonial rule revealed the colossus to have clay feet. Across the region the British faced a gamut of opposition, from moderate nationalist politics to radical armed insurgency. In Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt, the British were forced to negotiate and renegotiate the terms of their unwelcome presence. Each British concession to Arab opposition, every reversal of policy, revealed the fallibility of the imperial power. It was the rising threat of fascism in Europe, however, that turned Britain’s Middle Eastern possessions into the vulnerable underbelly of the British Empire. At times, it looked as though the Arab colonies might slip from Britain’s control. British actions in Iraq and Egypt during the Second World War demonstrated the weakness of their position in a way that presaged the end of Britain’s dominion in the Middle East.

In Iraq, the British faced a pro-Axis coup d’йtat on April 1, 1941. Iraq was then ruled by an unpopular regent, Prince Abd al-Illah (r. 1939–1953), who ruled on behalf of the child King Faysal II (r. 1953–1958). When Abd al-Illah backed British calls for the resignation of the popular prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Kaylani, on grounds of his pro-Axis leanings, key Iraqi officers put their support behind the prime minister. The top military officers believed Germany and Italy would win the war and that Iraq’s interests lay in fostering good relations with the Axis. The regent, fearful of a military coup, fled Iraq for Transjordan, leaving Rashid Ali and the Iraqi military in control. Rashid Ali’s continued exercise of political authority in the regent’s absence was deemed by Britain to constitute a coup. In spite of Rashid Ali’s every effort to demonstrate to the British that no fundamental change had occurred, the nationalist tone of his new cabinet (which included Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the grand mufti exiled for his extreme nationalist views, who was a close advisor to Rashid Ali) served only to exacerbate Britain’s fears. Invoking the terms of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, the British requested permission to land troops in Iraq. Rashid Ali and the nationalist officers demurred, as they mistrusted British intentions. Undaunted, the British began landing troops without official sanction. The Iraqis threatened to fire on unauthorized British aircraft, which the British warned would be grounds for war. Under the circumstances, neither side could afford to back down. Britain and Iraq went to war in May 1941. Fighting began outside the British base at Habbaniyya and lasted several days until the Iraqi forces fell back on Falluja, where they regrouped to defend Baghdad. Fresh British troops were sent from India and Transjordan. Rashid Ali turned to Germany and Italy to request assistance against the British. The Axis powers managed to send thirty aircraft and some small arms but, under the time constraints, were unable to intervene more directly. As British forces closed in on Baghdad, Rashid Ali and his political allies, including Hajj Amin al-Husayni, fled the country. They left the mayor of Baghdad to negotiate an armistice with the British, and the country as a whole in a state of chaos. It was the Jewish community of Baghdad that fell victim to the chaos after the fall of Rashid Ali’s government in 1941. Anti-British sentiment combined with hostility to the Zionist project in Palestine and German notions of anti-Semitism to produce a pogrom unprecedented in Arab history, known in Arabic as the Farhud. The Jewish community of Baghdad was large and highly assimilated into all levels of society—from the elites to the bazaars to the music halls, in which many of Iraq’s most celebrated performers were Jewish. Yet all of this was forgotten in two days of communal violence and bloodshed that claimed nearly 200 lives and left Jewish shops and houses robbed and gutted, before the British authorities decided to enter the city and restore order. The fall of Rashid Ali’s government led to the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq. The regent, Abd al-Illah, and those Iraqi politicians most sympathetic to the British were returned to power by their former colonial master. Iraqi nationalists were outraged. They argued that Rashid Ali enjoyed widespread support among the Iraqi people. Clearly the British would only allow the Iraqis a leadership that met with London’s approval. Coming only nine years after Iraq had achieved its nominal independence, this intervention served to discredit both Great Britain and the Hashemite monarchy in the Iraqi people’s eyes. Britain, however, was the ultimate loser in Iraq. The mandate, which had once been a success story, was now left with a shaken monarchy, a dangerous military, and a population so hostile to Britain’s role in the Middle East that they preferred to throw their lot in with Britain’s Axis enemies.

The Axis had its supporters in Egypt as well. Egyptian nationalists were not satisfied with the partial independence achieved in the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. Britain continued to exercise disproportionate control over Egypt’s affairs and full control over Sudan. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Egypt was flooded with British troops, and the Egyptian government seemed more subordinate to Britain since independence than it had been before. This situation was intolerable to a new generation of Egyptian nationalists whose enmity for Britain made them look with favor on Britain’s Axis enemies. The Italians and the Germans played on nationalist sentiment to isolate the British in Egypt. The Italians launched a powerful new radio station to carry their propaganda to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean. Radio Bari trumpeted the accomplishments of the fascist government of Benito Mussolini. The combination of extreme nationalism, strong leadership, and the military might of fascism appealed to Egyptian nationalists far more than the petty squabbles of the multiparty democracy that Britain had imposed on their country. With Germany and Italy at war with Britain, many in Egypt hoped to see the Axis powers defeat the British and force them from Egypt once and for all. With the launch of the North African campaign in 1940, some Egyptian nationalists believed the moment of deliverance was at hand. Italian forces crossed from Libya to attack British positions in Egypt. German forces joined the Italians in North Africa with the specially trained Afrika Korps, commanded by the brilliant field marshal Erwin Rommel. By the winter of 1942, Axis forces posed a real threat to Britain’s position in Egypt. Some Egyptian political leaders, including even King Faruq himself, seemed quite receptive to the idea of Germany driving the British out of Egypt for them. British mistrust of Egyptian prime minister Ali Mahir’s fascist leanings led them to demand his resignation in June 1940. This sort of intervention revealed Britain’s disregard for Egypt’s sovereignty and independence and further soured Anglo-Egyptian relations. As German and Italian forces gained the upper hand in the battlefields of North Africa, the British sought to crush support for the Axis within Egypt’s political circles. Ironically, the only Egyptian political party with reliable antifascist credentials was the nationalist Wafd party. On February 4, 1942, the British high commissioner Sir Miles Lampson presented King Faruq with an ultimatum either to name Mustafa Nahhas to form an entirely Wafdist government or to abdicate his throne. To back up his ultimatum, Lampson deployed British tanks around Faruq’s Abdin Palace in central Cairo. The Abdin Palace ultimatum shattered twenty years of Anglo-Egyptian politics by compromising the three pillars of the system: the monarchy, the Wafd, and the British themselves. King Faruq had betrayed his country by succumbing to British threats and allowing a foreign power to impose a government upon him. Many nationalists believe their king should have stood up to the British, even at the risk of death. As for the Wafd, the party that had won the support of the Egyptian people to struggle against imperialism had agreed to come to power by the bayonets of the British. Yet it was the hysteria behind the ultimatum that revealed how weak and threatened the British were in the face of Axis advances in the Western Desert. The British were on the defensive against the Axis and Egyptian nationalism alike, and had shown their fallibility. The three-way power struggle between the British, the palace, and the Wafd collapsed in February 1942. All three parties would be swept away a decade later in the revolutionary ferment of the 1950s.

The British entered the Middle East with the intention of integrating the Arab world into an empire they thought would last forever. They encountered stiff opposition from the outset—in Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine in particular. As nationalist opposition mounted and the cost of formal empire escalated, Britain tried to modify the terms of empire by conceding nominal independence and securing its strategic interests by treaty. Yet even this concession to their nationalist opponents failed to reconcile the Arabs to Britain’s position in the Middle East. By the Second World War, internal opposition left Britain highly vulnerable in its Arab possessions. Italy and Germany were quick to exploit Britain’s weakness and played on Arab national aspirations to the Axis powers’ advantage. As the Arab world slipped from Britain’s control, the British Empire in the Middle East proved more of a liability than an asset. The only possible consolation for the British was that their imperial rival France had proven no more successful in its Arab possessions.

CHAPTER 8

The French Empire in the Middle East

France long had coveted Greater Syria—that land mass embracing the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan—for its empire in the Arab world. Napoleon had invaded Syria from Egypt in 1799, though his progress was checked by stubborn resistance from the Ottoman defenders in Acre, and he was forced to withdraw. France gave its support to Muhammad ’Ali in his invasion of Syria in the 1830s, hoping to extend French influence over the region through their Egyptian ally. When Egypt withdrew from Syria in 1840, the French deepened their ties to the indigenous Catholic communities of Syria, particularly the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. When the Druzes massacred the Maronites of Mount Lebanon in 1860, France dispatched a campaign force of 6,000 men in a transparent bid to stake its claim to the Syrian coast. Again the French were frustrated, as the Ottoman government managed to reassert control over its Arab provinces for the next half century. The First World War finally offered France the opportunity to secure its claim to Syria. At war with the Ottoman Empire, France and its Entente allies could openly discuss the division of Ottoman territories in the event of victory. The French government won Britain’s support for its ambitions through intense negotiations between Sir Mark Sykes and Franзois Georges-Picot over the years 1915–1916, culminating in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Having already colonized Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, France was confident it had the knowledge and experience to rule Arabs successfully. What worked in Morocco, the French maintained, would work in Syria. Moreover, France had earned the loyalty and support of the Maronite Christian community of Mount Lebanon over the decades. Indeed, by the end of the First World War, Lebanon was probably the only country in the world with a significant constituency actively lobbying for a French mandate. Late-Ottoman Lebanon was a strangely truncated land. In the aftermath of the Christian massacres of 1860, the Ottomans and the European powers conferred to establish a special province of Mount Lebanon in the highlands overlooking the Mediterranean to the west, and the Bekaa Valley to the east. The Ottomans had kept the strategic coastline, with its port cities of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Tripoli, under their own direct administration. In 1888 the Syrian littoral was redesignated as the Province of Beirut. Mount Lebanon was for the most part cut off from the sea, and the Province of Beirut was at many points no more than a few miles wide. One of the chief shortcomings of the autonomous province of Mount Lebanon was its geographic constraints. The territory was too small and infertile to support a large population, and many Lebanese were driven from their homeland in search of better economic opportunities in the last years of Ottoman rule. Between 1900 and 1914 an estimated 100,000 Lebanese—perhaps one-quarter the total population—left Mount Lebanon for Egypt, West Africa, and the Americas.¹ This was a cause of growing concern to the twelve-member Administrative Council that ruled Mount Lebanon, whose members were drawn proportionately from the territory’s diverse communities. As the First World War came to an end, the members of the Administrative Council aspired to a larger country and looked to their long-time patron France to help achieve their ambitions. The Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon met on December 9, 1918, and agreed on the terms it wished to present to the Paris Peace Conference. The council sought Lebanon’s complete independence, within its “natural boundaries,” under French tutelage. By “natural boundaries,” the council members envisaged the expansion of Mount Lebanon to include the coastal cities of Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre as well as the eastern Bekaa Valley up to the western slopes of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. A Lebanon within its “natural boundaries” would be framed between rivers to the north and south, mountains to the east and the Mediterranean to the west. The people of Mount Lebanon knew that France had advocated such a “Greater Lebanon” since the 1860s, and they hoped to achieve this critical land mass through a French mandate. Consequently, the Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon was formally invited by the French government to present its case to the Paris Peace Conference—unlike such inconvenient Arab states as Egypt or Syria, which were snubbed or excluded because their nationalist aspirations conflicted with imperial ambitions at the conference. The Administrative Council dispatched a five-man delegation to Paris headed by Daoud Ammoun, a leading Maronite politician.² Ammoun set out Mount Lebanon’s aspirations in his address to the Paris Peace Conference’s Council of Ten on February 15, 1919: We want a Lebanon removed from all servitude, a Lebanon free to pursue its national destiny and reestablished in its natural frontiers—all indispensable conditions for it to live in its own freedom and to prosper in peace. Yet we all know that it is not possible for us to develop economically and to organize our liberty without the support of a great power, as we lack the technicians trained in the workings of modern life and Western civilization. Always in the past, France has defended us, supported us, guided, instructed and secured us. We feel a constant friendship for her. We wish for her support to organize ourselves, and her guarantee of our independence.³

The Lebanese delegation was not seeking French colonialism in Lebanon but French assistance toward their ultimate goal of independence. However, the French seemed only to hear what they wanted to hear, and they were glad to use the Lebanese delegation to legitimate their own claims over Lebanon. The Administrative Council, however, did not speak for all Lebanese. Over 100,000 Lebanese emigrants lived abroad—in Africa, Europe, and the Americas—and took a passionate interest in the political future of their homeland. Many of the Lebanese expatriate community had come to see themselves as members of a broader Syrian people that embraced йmigrйs from Palestine, inland Syria, and Transjordan. These “Syrians” included some of Lebanon’s most celebrated men of letters, including Khalil Gibran, author of the mystical masterpiece The Prophet. They saw Lebanon as an integral if distinct part of Greater Syria and lobbied for the independence of Syria as a whole, under French tutelage. Given their support for French rule, the Lebanese advocates of Greater Syria were also invited to present their case at the Paris Peace Conference. One of the most prominent of the Lebanese expatriates was Shukri Ghanim. President of the Syrian Central Committee, a nationalist network with branches in Brazil, the United States, and Egypt, Ghanim appeared before the Council of Ten in February 1919, calling for a federation of Syrian states under French mandatory rule. “Syria must be divided into three parts,” he argued, “or four, if Palestine is not excluded. Greater Lebanon or Phoenicia, the region of Damascus, and that of Aleppo, [should be] constituted in independent, democratic states.” Yet Ghanim did not believe all Syrians were created equal, concluding ominously, “France is there to guide, advise and balance all things, and—we should not fear to say this to our compatriots, who are reasonable men—will dose our liberties according to our different states of moral health.”⁴ While we can only guess what Ghanim meant by “moral health,” it is clear he believed Lebanon was far more advanced than the other parts of Syria and better prepared to enjoy full political liberties under French protection than Damascus, Aleppo, and the like. In many ways, Ghanim’s appeal was more in line with French thought than Daoud Ammoun?s presentation on behalf of the Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon. There was, however, a third trend in Lebanese politics that was overtly hostile to France’s position in the Levant. The Sunni Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians of coastal cities like Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon, and Tyre had no wish to be isolated from the mainstream of Syrian political society and find themselves reduced to a minority in a Christian-dominated Lebanese state. It was a clear divide between the French-oriented politics of Mount Lebanon and the Arabism of the coastal province of Beirut. Coming out of centuries of Ottoman rule, the nationalists in Beirut wished to be part of a larger Arab empire and threw their support behind Amir Faysal’s government in Damascus. Faysal, who had led the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule from the Hijaz to Damascus between 1916 and 1918, spoke on behalf of the political aspirations of the Lebanese of the coastal plain when he addressed the Council of Ten in Paris in February 1919. Lebanon, he argued, was an integral part of the Arab kingdom promised to his father, Sharif Husayn, by British High Commissioner Sir Henry McMahon and should come under Faysal’s Arab government in Damascus, without any mandate at all. Amir Faysal’s plea to the great powers in Paris met with widespread support among Arab nationalists in Beirut. Muhammad Jamil Bayhum was a young intellectual who became one of Faysal’s ardent supporters. In July 1919, Bayhum was elected to represent Beirut in the Syrian Congress convened in Damascus in advance of the King-Crane Commission. “The French authorities tried everything to prevent the election from taking place, applying pressure on both the electors and the candidates,” Bayhum recalled. “However, their attempts to persuade and coerce were in vain.”⁵ Lebanon was well-represented in the Syrian Congress, with twenty-two delegates from all parts of the country. Bayhum joined the Syrian Congress, which opened on June 6, 1919, in a state of heightened excitement. The delegates firmly believed they had assembled to communicate the political wishes of the Syrian people, through the King-Crane Commission, to the great powers at the Paris Peace Conference. They aspired to an Arab state in all of Greater Syria under Faysal’s rule in Damascus, with little or no foreign interference. Bayhum described the political atmosphere in Damascus as charged with optimism and high ideals, comparing the city to the revolutionary Paris of 1789. “We participated in the Congress, with the representatives of Palestine, Jordan, Antioch, Alexandretta, and Damascus, all of us hoping that the allied states would hear our appeals, and deliver the freedom and independence that had been promised to us.”⁶ Bayhum remained in Damascus to attend all of the sessions of the Syrian Congress, well after the King-Crane Commission had come and gone in July 1919. He watched in dismay as Britain withdrew its troops from Syria in October 1919 and French forces began to take their place. Over the winter of 1919–1920, France began to impose increasingly stringent terms on the isolated Amir Faysal that fragmented Greater Syria and stripped Faysal?s government of its independence. In March 1920 the Congress declared the independence of Greater Syria, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the imposition of mandates by presenting the European powers with a fait accompli. The Syrian Congress staked its claim to Lebanon as an integral part of Syria, asserting in its declaration of independence: “We will take into consideration all patriotic wishes of the Lebanese with respect to the administration of their country, within its prewar limits, on condition that Lebanon distances itself from all foreign influences.” The Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon was quick to protest the Syrian Congress’s declaration and insisted that Faysal’s government had no right “to speak on behalf of Lebanon, to set its frontiers, to limit its independence and to forbid it to call for the collaboration of France.”⁷ Yet political leaders in Mount Lebanon were growing increasingly concerned over France’s intentions. In April 1920, Britain and France confirmed the final distribution of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire at the San Remo conference. Lebanon and Syria were awarded to France, and Palestine and Iraq passed to British rule. Though many in the Maronite community had sought French technical assistance and political support, they somehow expected France to act out of altruism rather than imperial self-interest. As France began to prepare for its mandate over Lebanon, its military administrators started to impose their policies on the Administrative Council in Mount Lebanon. In turn, politicians in Mount Lebanon began to question the wisdom of seeking French assistance in state-building. In July 1920, seven of the Administrative Council’s eleven members made a spectacular U-turn and sought an accommodation with King Faysal’s administration in Damascus. They drafted a memorandum calling for joint action between Syria and Lebanon to achieve complete independence for both countries, and a negotiated resolution of territorial and economic differences between the two sides. The dissident Lebanese councilors called for the formation of a Syro-Lebanese delegation to present their claims to the European powers still gathered in Paris. However, when the French got wind of the initiative they arrested the seven councilors on their way to Damascus. The arrest of some of Lebanon’s most respected politicians sent shock waves throughout the region. Bishara al-Khoury (1890–1964) was a young Maronite lawyer who had worked closely with the French military administrators in Lebanon (he would later become independent Lebanon’s first president). Late in the night of July 10, 1920, the French high commissioner, General Henri Gouraud, asked al-Khoury to come to his residence to discuss an urgent matter. Al-Khoury found Gouraud among his officers, pacing anxiously. The high commissioner informed al-Khoury that the French had just arrested the seven dissident councilors. “They were traitors who were trying to unite with Amir Faysal and append Lebanon to Syria,” Gouraud explained. “The Administrative Council has been dissolved.” Al-Khoury was stunned. “On what basis did you undertake this violent act?” Gouraud replied that they were found with a memorandum setting out their objectives. “You are a Lebanese before all else,” the Frenchman said to Khoury. “Do you agree with their actions?” Al-Khoury, who had not been shown the text of the councilors’ memorandum, responded cautiously: “I agree with all who seek independence, though I would not turn to anyone from outside Lebanon.” “We are agreed,” replied one of the French officers. Gouraud informed al-Khoury that the seven councilors would be brought before a military tribunal for their crimes. The trial of the dissident councilors alienated some of France’s strongest advocates in Lebanon. As a trained lawyer, al-Khoury was appalled that such an important trial could be concluded in just two days, and he described the proceedings taking place “in a climate of terrorism.” He was offended when Lebanese witnesses were forced to declare “their love of France” as part of their testimony. The defendants were fined, forbidden to work in Lebanon, and exiled to Corsica. Worse yet, when al-Khoury finally got to read the text of the councilors’ memorandum, he found himself in sympathy with most of their objectives.⁸ The French were seriously undermining their support base in Lebanon by these high-handed actions. Nevertheless, French plans for the new Lebanese state proceeded apace. On August 31, 1920, the frontiers of Mount Lebanon were extended to the natural boundaries sought by Lebanese nationalists, and the “independent” state of Greater Lebanon was established the following day under French assistance. Yet the more France assisted, the less independence Lebanon enjoyed. The defunct Administrative Council was replaced by an Administrative Commission, headed by a French governor who answered directly to High Commissioner Gouraud. By imposing a new administrative structure on Lebanon, France began to shape the political culture of the new state in line with its own views of Lebanese society. The French saw Lebanon as a volatile mix of communities rather than as a distinct national community, and they shaped the political institutions of the country accordingly. Positions within the new Administrative Commission were allocated by religious community in keeping with a system known as confessionalism. This meant that political office was distributed among the different Lebanese religious communities (or confessions, in French), ideally in proportion to their demographic weight. Given its long history as patron of Lebanon’s Catholics, France was determined to ensure that Lebanon would be a Christian state. The challenge for France was to expand Lebanon’s boundaries without making the Christians a minority in their own country. Although Christians represented 76 percent of the population of Mount Lebanon, they were a distinct minority in the newly annexed coastal cities and the eastern territories in the Bekaa and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. The proportion of Christians in Greater Lebanon was thus only 58 percent of the total population and, given differences in fertility rates, declining.⁹ Ignoring the new demographic realities of Lebanon?s population, the French favored their Christian clients and gave them disproportionate representation in the governing Administrative Commission: ten Christians to four Sunni Muslims, two Shiite Muslims, and one Druze representative. Though the French experts believed this archaic system of government best fit the political culture of the country, many Lebanese intellectuals were increasingly uncomfortable with confessionalism and aspired to a national identity. In the newspaper Le Rйveil, one journalist wrote: “Do we wish to become a nation in the real and whole sense of the word? Or to conserve ourselves as a laughable mix of communities, always separate from each other like hostile tribes? We must furnish our selves a unique unifying symbol: a nationality. That flower can never thrive in the shadow of steeples and minarets, but only under a flag.”¹⁰ Yet the first flag that the French allowed independent Lebanon was the French Tricolour with a cedar tree at the center. France was beginning to show its true colors in Lebanon. In March 1922, Gouraud announced that the Administrative Commission would be dissolved and replaced by an elected Representative Council. The measure angered Lebanese politicians both because the French had acted unilaterally and because the new elected assembly would have even fewer responsibilities than the former Administrative Commission. Far from being an elected legislature, the Representative Council was barred from discussing political matters and was to meet in session for only three months of the year. The decree gave legislative power to the French high commissioner, who could adjourn or dissolve the Representative Council at will. Even France’s most ardent Lebanese supporters were outraged. “This decree of enslavement now gives [France] the image of a conquering power casting treaty and friendship beneath the boot of its victorious soldiers,” wrote one disillusioned Francophile йmigrй.¹¹ Undeterred by the growing Lebanese opposition to their rule, the French proceeded with elections for the Representative Council. They spared no effort to ensure that their supporters were elected and that their opponents were excluded. Muhammad Jamil Bayhum, the Beirut delegate to the 1919 Syrian Congress, had opposed the mandate in principle and was outspoken in his criticism of French administrative measures in Lebanon. Though he had never considered running for office, close friends persuaded him to join an opposition slate. Bayhum met with the French administrator responsible for organizing the elections to see if the authorities would object to his candidacy. The official, Monsieur Gauthier, assured him that the elections would be free and that the French authorities would not intervene in the process at all. Encouraged by Gauthier’s response, Bayhum announced his candidacy on a strong nationalist slate, which quickly rose to the top of the polls. Despite Gauthier’s assurances, it was soon clear that France had every intention of intervening in the electoral process. Once the French came to appreciate the electoral appeal of the nationalist list, they worked to undermine its candidates. Within weeks of their first meeting, Gauthier called Bayhum to his office and asked him to withdraw his candidacy, on ?an order from the highest authority.? Bayhum was outraged, having spent an intense month on the campaign trail. Gauthier was direct: ?We will oppose you in the elections, and if you are elected we will expel you from the Council by force.? When Bayhum refused to back down, he found himself in court facing charges of electoral fraud. During the court hearing, the judge called Gauthier himself as a witness. “My good sir, do you not have many complaints against Monsieur Bayhum confirming that he bribed the secondary electors to buy their votes?” the judge asked. “Indeed, indeed,” replied Gauthier. The judge turned to Bayhum and said, “I have an enormous file [on you].” He pointed to a folder. “It is overflowing with complaints against you for buying votes, which is something the law forbids.” Bayhum argued his case to no avail. The charges of electoral fraud were left hanging over Bayhum to pressure him to withdraw his candidacy for the council. After his hearing, Bayhum retired to discuss strategy with the other members of the nationalist list. One of his friends was Gauthier’s personal physician, and the doctor offered to call upon the French administrator to try to persuade him to drop the charges against Bayhum. The doctor returned from his interview laughing, much to the surprise of Bayhum and his friends. Gauthier had dismissed the doctor’s efforts to speak on Bayhum’s behalf, replying: ‘You, my friend, have no experience in politics. I would say that it is Monsieur Bayhum himself who has obliged us to keep him out of the Assembly. What we want is this: if we place a glass on a window sill it will stay in its place, and not budge a hair’s breadth.” The doctor understood Gauthier’s message all too well: the French would tolerate no challenge to the institutions they put in place. Someone like Bayhum threatened to knock the “glass” of French colonial rule right off the Lebanese window sill. Bayhum recalled: “We all laughed with the doctor at this ridiculous policy, imposed on our country by the mandatory power. This was the same country that had promised to help us attain our independence.” Bayhum withdrew his candidacy and chose not to stand for the council at all.¹² The elections confirmed France’s intention to rule Lebanon as a colony rather than assist it in achieving independence. These measures convinced some of France’s strongest supporters to join the growing ranks of Lebanese nationalists struggling against French rule. It was an ominous beginning for the French Empire in the Middle East in the interwar years. If France couldn’t make things work in Lebanon, how would it manage in its other Arab territories?