History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

In the dealing and fighting that marked the ‘peace’, the only Arab clan to emerge triumphant were the Saudis in Arabia. The Emir Feisal, head of the Hashemites, whom Britain had backed, had to be content with Transjordan. He was well disposed towards Jewish settlement, believing it would raise Arab living standards. ‘We Arabs,’ he wrote to Felix Frankfurter, 3 March 1919, ‘especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. . . . We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.’30 But Feisal overestimated both the numbers and the courage of Arab moderates prepared to work with the Jews. The British had in fact been warned during the war that if the rumours of the Jewish home proved true, they must expect trouble: ‘Politically’, wrote one of Sykes’ best Arab informants, ‘a Jewish state in Palestine will mean a permanent danger to a lasting peace in the Near East.’