How Zionism helped create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

At the end of 2014, according to the American magazine Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Oil of Saudi Arabia, Ali al-Naimi, said: “His Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model of good relations between Saudi Arabia and other states and the Jewish population. the state is no exception. ” Recently, Abdullah’s successor, King Salman, expressed similar Israeli concerns about the growing agreement between the United States and Iran on the latter’s nuclear program. This has led some to say that Israel and KSA represented a “united front” in their opposition to the nuclear agreement. This was not the first time that the Zionists and the Saudis found themselves in the same position, dealing with a perceived common enemy. In North Yemen in the 1960s, the Saudis financed a campaign of a mercenary army, led by the British imperialist, against the revolutionary Republicans, who seized power after the overthrow of the authoritarian imam. Egypt Gamal Abdul-Nasser militarily supported the Republicans, while the British encouraged the Saudis to finance and arm the remaining remnants of the imam’s supporters. In addition, the British organized the Israelis to throw weapons for British agents in North Yemen, 14 times. The British, in fact, militarily, but secretly, united the Zionists and the Saudis in North Yemen of the 1960s against their common enemy.

However, as this author previously wrote, it is necessary to return to the 1920s in order to fully appreciate the origin of this informal and indirect union between Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity. A bright study by Dr. Askar H. Al-Enazi entitled “The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914–1927” In addition and uniquely provided anyone who studies British imperialism with original sources of evidence for the origin of this alliance. This study by Dr. Enazy affects the next part. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by British imperialism in the First World War led to the fact that three authorities remained on the Arabian Peninsula: Sharif Hejazi: Hussein bin Ali Hejazi (in the west), Ibn Rashid Hail (in the north) and Emir Ibn Saud from Najah (in the east) and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis.

Ibn Saud entered the war in early January 1915 on the side of the British, but was quickly defeated, and his British aide, William Shakespeare, was killed by an ally of the Ottoman Empire, Ibn Rashid. This defeat greatly undermined the usefulness of Ibn Saud for the Empire and left him in a state of war for a year.[1] Sharif made the greatest contribution to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, changing loyalty and leading the so-called “Arab uprising” in June 1916, which eliminated the Turkish presence from Arabia. He was convinced to completely change his position, because the British convincingly forced him to believe, thanks to the correspondence with Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, that a united Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf would be created after the defeat of the Turks. The letters exchanged between Sharif Hussein and Henry McMahon are known as McMahon-Hussein correspondence.

It is clear that Sharif, as soon as the war ended, wanted to give the wartime promises to the English or what he perceived as wartime promises, as expressed in the aforementioned correspondence. The British, on the other hand, wanted Sharif to accept the new reality of the Empire, which was to divide the Arab world between them and the French (Sykes-Picot Agreement) and implement the Balfour Declaration, which guaranteed the “national home”. for the Jewish people in Palestine by colonization with European Jews. This new reality was contained in the Anglo-Hijaz treaty, written by the British, which Sharif did not want to sign at all.[2] In the end, the uprising of 1916 against the Turks was called the “Arab uprising” and not the “Hijazi uprising”.

Sharif made it clear that he would never sell Palestine the Balfour Declaration of the Empire; he will never agree to the establishment of Zionism in Palestine and will not accept the new random frontiers that the British and French imperialists have drawn through Arabia. For their part, the British began to call it “obstructionist”, “nuisance” and have a “recalcitrant” position.

The British told Sharif that they were ready to take decisive measures to secure his approval of the new reality, no matter what service he rendered them during the war. After the Cairo Conference in March 1921, where the new minister of colonies, Winston Churchill, met with all British operatives in the Middle East, TE Lawrence (that is, from Arabia) was sent to meet with Sharif to bribe and intimidate him to accept the British Zionist colonial project in Palestine. Initially Lawrence and the Empire offered Rs 80,000.[3] Sharif completely rejected this. Then Lawrence offered him an annual payment of £ 100,000.[4] Sharif refused to compromise and sell Palestine to British Zionism.

When financial bribery failed to convince Sharif, Lawrence threatened him with a takeover of Ibn Saud. Lawrence argued that “politically and militarily, the survival of Hijaz as a viable independent Hashemite kingdom was completely dependent on the political will of Britain, which had the means to protect and maintain its dominance in the region.”[5] Between negotiations with Sharif, Lawrence found time to visit other leaders on the Arabian Peninsula and told them that if they did not tow the British line and enter into an alliance with Sharif, the Empire would free Ibn Saud and his Wahhabis, who would eventually be in the British 39; back and call & # 39 ;.[6]
At the same time, after the conference, Churchill went to Jerusalem and met with the son of Sharif, Abdullah, who became the ruler of the “Emir” of the new territory, called “Transjordan”. Churchill told Abdullah that he should convince “his father to accept the Palestinian mandate and sign the corresponding treaty,” if not “the British will untie Ibn Saud against Hejaz.”[7] In the meantime, the British were planning to release Ibn Saud on the ruler of Hail Ibn Rashid.

Ibn Rashid rejected all the overtures from the British Empire made to him through Ibn Saud to become another puppet.[8] Moreover, Ibn Rashid expanded its territory to the north to the new mandatory Palestinian border, as well as to the borders of Iraq in the summer of 1920. The British began to worry that there might be an alliance between Ibn Rashid, who controlled the northern part of the peninsula and Sharif, who controlled the western part. Moreover, the Empire wanted land routes between the Palestinian ports in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf to be ruled by a friendly party. At the Cairo Conference, Churchill agreed with the imperial officer, Sir Percy Cox, that “Ibn Saud must be” given the opportunity to take Grad. “[9] By the end of 1920, the British gave Ibn Saud a “monthly” grant of 10,000 pounds sterling in gold in addition to his monthly subsidy. He also received abundant stockpiles of weapons for a total of more than 10,000 rifles, as well as a critical siege and four field guns with British-Indian instructors.[10] Finally, in September 1921, the British liberated Ibn Saud on Hail, who officially surrendered in November 1921. It was after this victory that the British assigned Ibn Saud a new title. He was no longer “the emir of Nadj and the leader of his tribes,” but “the sultan of Nadj and his dependencies.” Hail dissolved according to the Sultan of the Empire Najda.

If the Empire thought that Sharif with Ibn Saud on its border and armed to the teeth by the British would finally become more amenable to the separation of Arabia and the British Zionist colonial project in Palestine, they would be short-lived. A new round of negotiations between the son of Abdullah, acting on behalf of his father in the Trans-Jordan and the Empire, led to the development of a draft treaty on the adoption of Zionism. When he was taken to Sharif with his son’s cover letter asking him to “accept reality”, he did not even bother to read the contract and instead drafted a contract in which he himself rejected new sections of Arabia and Balfour. Declaration and sent it to London for ratification![11]

From 1919, the British gradually reduced Hussein’s subsidies to such an extent that by the early 1920s they had suspended them, while at the same time continuing to subsidize Ibn Saud until the early 1920s.[12] After three more rounds of talks in Amman and London, the Empire realized that Hussein would never transfer Palestine to the British Zionist project or accept new divisions in Arab lands.[13] In March 1923, the British told Ibn Saud that he would end his subsidy, but not without giving him an advance “grant” of £ 50,000 in advance, which equals an annual subsidy.[14]

In March 1924, a year after the British awarded the “grant” to Ibn Saud, the Empire announced that it had stopped all discussions with Sharif Hussein to reach an agreement.[15] A few weeks later, the forces of Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers began to rule what British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon called the “last blow” on Sharif Hussein, and attacked the territory of Hijazi.[16] By September 1924, Ibn Saud captured the summer capital of Sharif Hussein Taif. Then the Empire wrote to the sons of Sharif, who were awarded the kingdoms in Iraq and Transjordan, not to provide any assistance to their besieged father, or they were informed in diplomatic terms that they should not put up with interference in hedjas.[17] In Taif, the Wahhabis of Ibn Saud committed ordinary killings, killing women and children, as well as visiting mosques and killing traditional Islamic scholars.[18] They captured the most sacred place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924. Sharif Hussein was forced to abdicate the throne and went into exile in the port of Hijazi Akaba. He was replaced as a monarch by his son Ali, who made Jeddah his government base. When Ibn Saud moved to besiege the rest of the Hijaz, the British took the time to begin the inclusion of the northern port of Hijazi Aqaba in Transjordan. Fearing that Sharif Hussein might use Aqaba as a base for rallying the Arabs against Ibn Saud from the Empire, the Empire made it clear that he was saying that he should leave Aqaba or Ibn Saud and attack the port. For his part, Sharif Hussein replied that he

“I never recognized the mandates of the Arab countries and still protested against the British government, which made Palestine the national home for the Jews.”[19]
Sharif Hussein was forced to leave Aqaba, the port he liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the “Arab uprising” on June 18, 1925 on HMS Cornflower.

Ibn Saud began the siege of Jeddah in January 1925, and the city finally surrendered in December 1925, ending the 1000-year rule of the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. The British officially recognized Ibn Saud as the new king of Hejaz in February 1926, and other European powers followed suit for several weeks. The new united state of the Wahhabis was renamed the Empire in 1932 the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (KSA). A certain George Rendel, an officer who worked in the Middle East at the Foreign Office in London, claimed the title of a new name.

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At the propaganda level, the British served the Hejaz capture of Wahhabis on three fronts. First, they depicted and argued that Ibn Saud’s invasion of Hejaz was caused by religious fanaticism, and not by geopolitical considerations of British imperialism.[20] This deception still occurs to this day, most recently in Adam Curtis’s famous BBC documentary “Bitter Lake,” in which he states that “the cruel, intolerant vision of Wahhabism” led the Bedouins to create Saudi Arabia.[21] Secondly, the British portrayed Ibn Saud Wahhabi fanatics as a soft and misunderstood force that only wanted to bring Islam back to its purest form.[22] To this day, these Islamist jihadists are portrayed in a most benevolent way when their armed uprisings are supported by the UK and the West, such as Afghanistan from the 1980s or in modern Syria, where they are referred to in the Western media as “moderate rebels”. Thirdly, British historians portray Ibn Saud as an independent force, and not as a British tool that was used to hold someone who was perceived as superfluous for imperial demands. For example, a recent study on the history of the Arabs by Professor Eugene Rogan claims that “Ibn Saud had no interest in the struggle” of the Ottoman Empire. This is far from certain, since Ibn Saud entered the war in 1915. He also deceitfully claims that Ibn Saud was only interested in achieving “his goals,” which, fortunately, always coincided with the goals of the British Empire.[23]
In conclusion, it should be noted that one of the most neglected aspects of the Balfour Declaration is the commitment of the British Empire to “make every effort to promote” the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people.” Obviously, many countries in the modern world were created by the Empire, but what makes the borders of Saudi Arabia distinctive is that its northern and northeastern borders are a product of the Empire, conducive to the creation of Israel. At least the collapse of two Arab sheikhdoms, Heil and Hijas, by Wahhabis Ibn Saud, is based on the refusal of their leaders to promote the Zionist project of the British Empire in Palestine.

Therefore, it is clear that the desire of the British Empire to impose Zionism on Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of modern Saudi Arabia. There is another irony in the fact that the two most holy places in Islam today are governed by the teachings of the Saudi clan and the Wahhabis, because the Empire laid the foundations for Zionism in Palestine in the 1920s. At the same time, it is not surprising that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are interested in military intervention on the side of the “moderate rebels,” that is, jihadists, in the current war against Syria, a country that secretly and openly rejects the Zionist colonization of Palestine.

Since the United States, the “successor” of the British Empire in defending Western interests in the Middle East, seems to be becoming increasingly hesitant militarily in the Middle East, it is inevitable that these two countries are rooted in the Balfour Empire, the Declaration of Israel and Saudi Arabia will create a more open alliance to protect their common interests.

Numan Abd al-Wahid. This article was originally published here.

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