Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Wars and ConflictsΒ  permalink

Turmoil Pure Turmoil

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by youngjerry (U7266788) on Tuesday, 16th February 2010

  Wouldn't it have beneficial to world peace (certainly in the Middle East)if the British Government had not betrayed the Arab nations, and permitted Lawrence of Arabia to set up the United Arab Republic in what was then called Palestine?(Which is exactly what he hoped for and what the British government promised to do)
  Why this betrayal towards a brave man who in later years despised the the British Government for their betrayal.
  They only have themselves to blame for the turmoil pure turmoil that is now in the Middle East today.
  

  Link to this forum: Turmoil Pure Turmoil

  Report message1

• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Tuesday, 16th February 2010

  "....Wouldn't it have beneficial to world peace (certainly in the Middle East)if the British Government had not betrayed the Arab nations, and permitted Lawrence of Arabia to set up the United Arab Republic in what was then called Palestine..."
  
  
  That assumes we know how the world would have looked if this had happened. We don't.
  
  
  
  "...They only have themselves to blame for the turmoil pure turmoil that is now in the Middle East today...."
  
  
  When people say 'they only have themselves to blame', they normally mean that they are living with their own mistakes. Whatever the right and wrongs of the British Mandate, I think we walked away from it quite successfully.
  
  
  
  

  Link to this forum: Turmoil Pure Turmoil

  Report message2

• Message 3

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Tuesday, 16th February 2010

  I doubt it, the assumption underlying your statement is that the Arab "nation" wwas united under the leadership of Faisal. This was not the case. Lawrence had had the greatest difficulty in reconciling the different warring factions amongst the Arabs in order to raise the Arab Revolt against the Turks in 1916. After the turks were defeated the fragile unity of the arabs fell apart. Saudi Arabia was only united under the rule of the Saud family in 1932 only after considerable rivalries had been overcome.
  
  Besides, to have replaced one empire (the Ottoman) by another one, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, under Faisal would not really have accorded with Wilsonian principles. Of course Britain and France had their own self-interest, particularly in guarding their commercial interests in the Suez Canal which was the main reason that both powers had been drawn into the quagmire of Middle East politics since the 1870s but Churchill, at the Cairo Conference of 1921, with Lawrence as his principal adviser, set up (Trans)jordan and Iraq as the first self-governing Arab states in 600 years and Lawrence pronounced himself satisfied with the result which went some (although obviously not all) of the way to undoing the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1917.
  
  The idea that an Arab Empire, under monarchical rule, could have been a stable entity given the fact that Arabs had not ruled themselves for 600 years and their history of internecine disputes seems to me to be wishful thinking and its improbability seems to have been borne out by subsequent events.

  Link to this forum: Turmoil Pure Turmoil

  Report message3

• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Wednesday, 17th February 2010

  Wouldn't it have beneficial to world peace (certainly in the Middle East)if the Arabs had not betrayed the Palestinians ny rejecting partition in 1948, or failing that managing to smother the infant state of Israel at birth with their vastly superior forces?(Which was exactly what Bevin and the British Govt. of the day hoped for.)
  

  Link to this forum: Turmoil Pure Turmoil

  Report message4

Back to top