Friedman: Twice-Promised Land?
The myth of a twice-promised land is used (among other things) to question Israel’s legitimacy.
Ben Gurion University history professor Isaiah Friedman published a book in the year 2000 tackling the myth that Israel was promised by the British to both the Jews and the Arabs. He hopes that clarifying the truth behind the myth may “help create a better climate of international understanding” regarding Jewish-Arab relations.
The myth promoted by British historian Arnold J. Toynbee still holds sway to this day. For example, in 2003, a group of Palestinian Arabs requested an apology from the British for the Balfour Declaration, issued two years after the supposed promise of Palestine to them. In 2016, an Israeli Jewish woman published a memoir she entitled A Land Twice Promised. Therefore a review of what Friedman discovered when he examined the archive materials after they were made available to researchers in London is relevant to us today.
The Arabs base their claim to Palestine upon a letter written by Sir Henry McMahan, High Commissioner of Britain in Egypt to King Hussein, Sharif of Mecca and head of the Arab troops involved in the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in the Hejaz, now Saudi Arabia. However, according to Friedman’s research, there are two major points of misunderstanding. These are:
- The McMahan letter of 1915 did not include the land west of the Jordan River in the promise of independence.
- This was not a one-sided promise without conditions. Independence would be dependent upon the active participation of the Arab tribes in their own overthrowing of the Ottomans in their own regions. In fact, the Arabs in what is now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel fought on the side of the Ottomans and the Germans and not against them. They were not enthusiastic to replace the Turks with the British and the French. Only the tribes in the Hejaz fought on the side of Britain. Because of this, Friedman writes, it was “the Arabs who remained in debt, not the British” and the Hejaz tribe was rewarded as promised.
Toynbee was personally involved in the events surrounding Palestine at the time. In 1915, he worked at the intelligence office of the British Foreign Office and in 1919 he was a delegate at the Paris Peace Conference. This gives him authority when he writes about the McMahan letter. But Friedman argues that Toynbee did not consider the entire context of communications and meetings that were taking place during the time period between 1915 and 1920, material to which he, Friedman, only accessed in full in the late 1980s. Furthermore, Friedman asks why Toynbee, in a 1918 memorandum:
recommended that Britain assume the role of trustee of the Jewish National Home, rather than hand Palestine to the Arabs, if he thought that it was included in the boundaries of Arab independence?
Changing Attitudes?
It appears that Toynbee initially supported the Jewish return to the Land of Israel and later changed his mind. This mirrors Arab sentiments as well, since initial reactions of some Arab leaders and intellectuals to the influx of Jews to the region was regarded positively. In fact, as reported to me by Emeritus History Professor Amatzia Baram, they welcomed the Jews to Palestine and regarded the Jews as coming home:
how is one to explain the fact that Ahmed Lutfi al-Sayyid, President of Cairo University was an official guest at the inauguration of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925? Al-Sayyid, in fact, wrote a highly complimentary and congratulatory letter to the university. Even earlier, in March 1918, in his al-Qibla magazine, Sharif Hussein of Mecca congratulated the Jews for returning to the Middle East.
According to an American Egyptian blogger, Egypt under King Farouk was very receptive to the idea of a Jewish state and had warm relations with Chaim Weitzmann. Egypt even banned an anti-Zionist publication, and pro-Zionist publications and activities operated freely until the 1940s. As opposed to many places around the world, the port at Alexandria was open to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. That later changed when antisemitism raised its head, explains Middle Eastern politics expert Samuel Tadros, partly as a way to shift attention away from the failures of the leadership by blaming the Jews and partly due to the influence of Nazi propaganda among the Muslim Brotherhood. Antisemitism later turned into anti-Zionism.
Friedman’s Study of Primary Sources
Friedman was able to reach his conclusions as a result of access to primary sources that only were opened to researchers in the 1960s and to which he had availed himself in the 1980s. It seems nobody reported on these sources before him. Most importantly, he had access to the original McMahan letter, its translation into Arabic,
— which was thought to have been lost — as well as its retranslation into English made at the British Residency in Cairo in November 1919.
By examining these documents, misunderstandings became clear when comparing the Arabic term used to refer to certain districts and the way the term was translated back into English, giving an entirely different meaning.
Also, by going through the actual correspondance, memorandi and personal notes written by the persons active and influential at the time, Friedman was able to piece together a complex web of interactions that characterized the attitudes and intentions of the time.
His conclusion: Palestine was not twice-promised. Not by a long shot. It is time we argue that point whenever anyone raises it in our presence. This brief recap of the main points of Friedman’s research should provide the ammunition required.
Professor Isaiah Friedman may have claimed back in 2000 to have discovered the Arabic-language original of the 1915 letter from High Commissioner McMahon to Sharif Hussein of Mecca, but the fact is that that original has been known to historians for a very long time.
Historians have known for a long time that the Arabic word used in the letter was “wilaya”, which simply means “district”. In his letter to Sharif Hussein, McMahon promised independence for all the Arab lands, except the territory lying to the west of a line drawn from the “Wilaya of Aleppo” through the “Wilaya of Homs” to the “Wilaya of Damascus”. That territory was to be excluded from the promised independent Arab state because of the French interest in that area.
It is clear that the term “wilaya” meant the districts surrounding the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Damascus. Accordingly, the region to be excluded from the promised Arab state did not include any land lying to the south of the immediate surrounds of Damascus. It comprised only the present Lebanon and the coastal region of the present Syria. The excluded territory defined in the McMahon letter cannot have included Palestine, ie the territory lying west of the Jordan River, since that territory lies well to the south of Damascus and its immediate environs.
After the First World War and the establishment of the British Mandate over Palestine, the British Government needed to justify its promise to the Zionists to allow the establishment of a “National Home for the Jewish People” in Palestine, which precluded its being included in the independent Arab state promised in the McMahon letter. In order to do that, the British Government claimed that Palestine was part of the territory lying west of the line from the “Wilaya of Aleppo” to the “Wilaya of Damascus”.
I support of that interpretation, the British Government claimed that the Arabic word “wilaya” used by McMahon in the Arabic-language version of his letter corresponded to the Turkish word “vilayet”, which was the official designation of a province of the Ottoman Empire. The British Government claimed that the term “Wilaya of Damascus” as used by McMahon actually meant the Vilayet of Damascus, which was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Since the Vilayet of Damascus had included the territory lying to the east of the Jordan River, the British Government argued that McMahon had intended to exclude the territory west of the Jordan River, ie Palestine, from the territory promised to the future independent Arab state.
The problem with that argument is that McMahon had referred to the “Wilaya of Homs” as well as to the “Wilaya of Aleppo” and the “Wilaya of Damascus”. Although there was a Vilayet of Aleppo and a Vilayet of Damascus, there was no Vilayet of Homs. The logical conclusion is that when McMahon used the Arabic word “wilaya”, he did not mean the official Ottoman designation for a province, “Vilayet”, but just the general term “district”.
It follows that McMahon only intended to exclude from the Arab state territory lying to the immediate west of Damascus, ie the present Lebanon, and did not intend to exclude Palestine, the territory west of the Jordan River.
It is obvious that Professor Friedman’s book is sim ply typical Zionist propaganda, designed to refute Palestinian claims to a state on territory west of the Jordan River.
PS: I do not know whether Professor Friedman is still living. Since he was born in 1921, it seems unlikely.
You are correct in making the distinction between the Ottoman and Arabic meanings for the term “vilayet”. But you are mistaken in claiming that the exclusion of what became Israel in the promise to the Arabs came after WWI. Friedman used personal correspondences and letters (some confidential) to and from many interested parties from 1915-16 to explain his understanding of the situation. For example, McMahon claimed, in a letter to Sir Edward Gray, that he was deliberately vague regarding “the extent of French claims in Syria [and] how far His Majesty’s Government have agreed to recognize them.” al-Faruqi told Sykes in Cairo in November 1915 that “Arabs would agree to convention with France, granting her monopoly of all concessionary enterprise in Syria and Palestine.” The border al-Faruqi suggested for Palestine was up to the Hedjaz Railway.
Your comment and mine here are just examples of the controversy that arose over the letter that was not meant to be official or binding as the negotiations over territories and boundaries was set to be conducted after the war. What is fundamental to Friedman’s conclusions is what was communicated in 1915-16. (I have no way to refute his claim that the Arabic version of the letter and the retranslation back into English at a later date were truly unavailable until he found them in the archives.)
Given that many Israeli Jewish scholars write against Israeli interests, I do not think anything is obvious as you put it.