Article: When Jerusalem fell to the British... Doctor Mohsen Mohammed Saleh
John Churchilly
translation from Arabic by Google, it may not be perfect...
Article: When Jerusalem fell to the British... Doctor Mohsen Mohammed Saleh
By: Dr. Mohsen Mohammed Saleh, Director General of Al-Zaytouna Center for Studies and Consultations.
Just as 9 December marks the anniversary of the start of the (first) Intifada in 1987, it also marks the anniversary of the British occupation of Jerusalem in 1917. On that day, the British ended nearly seven centuries of continuous Muslim rule over Jerusalem after its liberation from the Crusaders. The Ottoman Empire declared war on Britain on October 31, 1914, and after four years completely (October 31, 1918), the agreement to end the war with it was put into effect, but after Britain completed the occupation of Palestine and the rest of the Levant and Iraq, while the Ottoman withdrawal from the rest of Yemen and the Hijaz was being arranged.
Today, we are following some pauses on the scene of the fall of Jerusalem, after we talked in a previous article about the scene of the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine.
The first stop: Despite the state of weakness and exhaustion that the Ottoman Empire was suffering from, the British occupation of Palestine was not an easy task as some think. In the first two years of the war, the British position on the Palestine front was difficult, and the Ottomans had the upper hand in the initiative and attack, carrying out two major attacks on British forces in Egypt; they controlled parts of the Sinai throughout the period 1915-1916. British forces were only able to regain control of Sinai in late 1916, capturing al-Arish on 21 December 1916 and Egyptian Rafah on 8 and 9 January 1917.
The British began their attempts to occupy Palestine in the spring of 1917, securing their backs in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and forming an Arab belt supporting them from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. After Baghdad fell to them on March 11, 1917, in addition to the growing support in the Levant for the revolution of Sharif Hussein, which practically meant at that time support for the arrival of the British themselves, and the troubles this revolution caused to the Ottomans.
The first British attack on Palestine in the so-called First Battle of Gaza (25–27 March 1917) failed greatly, although British forces were five times as much as Ottoman forces and better equipped and equipped. The British have lost 4,450 dead and wounded, admitted by their army commander on the Palestine front, General Murray. The second British offensive also failed in the Second Battle of Gaza on 18-19 April 1917, losing about six thousand dead, wounded and captured, while the Ottomans lost 1,670 dead, wounded and missing. Following these failures, the British command removed Murray, and General Edmund Allenby was appointed in his place on 28 June 1917.
Third stop: The battles that ended with the British occupation of southern Palestine began up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem line on October 27, 1917, when Allenby reprepared the British army for the attack with about 100,000 fighters (without support services) against 20,000 Ottoman fighters. The British army lacked nothing in terms of clothing, food, housing and health care, while the Ottoman army was suffering from a difficult situation in terms of leadership, armament, capabilities and supplies, and the Ottoman soldier, as described by the Palestinian historian Khalil Sakakini, as he wrote in his memoirs on November 21, 1917, "hungry, shabby clothes, torn shoes, nothing to protect him from rain and cold, standing behind his cannon, jumping from the cold, and starving, so he could only break dry bread"!!
The British managed to occupy Beersheba on 31 October 1917, Gaza a week later, Lod and Ramle on 15 November, and Jaffa the next day. Arab operations contributed to the isolation of Ottoman forces in Ma'an, Tabuk and Hejaz, where they isolated about 23,000 Ottoman forces.
Fourth stop: On December 8, the situation became critical for the Ottoman forces in Jerusalem, and Ali Fouad, commander of the Twentieth Corps, felt that it was impossible to defend it, and decided to evacuate it so that its holy sites would not be destroyed. In the afternoon, Jerusalem Mayor Hussein al-Husseini handed over the handover document to the commander of the British Tenth Division. In the afternoon, the British army entered the city from three sides. Allenby's official entry into Jerusalem took place on 11 December 1917, with the participation of the commanders of the symbolic French and Italian forces that took part in the battles. In the city, British flags were raised, while delegates of the "Arab Revolt", whose flag was never raised, were absent. This observation was not lost on the Arab public, who were pained by this. Emile Al-Ghouri reported in his memoirs that Allenby, in his speech on the occasion of the occupation of Jerusalem, which he delivered to the country's leaders and dignitaries that day, spoke about the Crusades, ending his speech: "Now the Crusades are over"... To the outrage, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Kamel al-Husseini, withdrew from the "celebration," followed by many in protest.
The losses of the battles for the occupation of southern Palestine, including Jerusalem (October 31-December 11, 1917), which lasted about six weeks, show that the British faced violent resistance, despite their enormous superiority in capabilities, as the British admitted (according to their documents) that there were 19,000 casualties among them, while they estimated the Ottoman losses at 15,000 dead and 12,000 prisoners.
Fifth stop: The British waited more than nine months to occupy the rest of Palestine, attempting to attack Transjordan and northern Palestine between 22 March and 3 April 1918, but the attack ended in failure. When the British launched their decisive offensive on September 19, 1918, their army under Allenby's command numbered 468,000, including about 100,000 fighters. Remarkably, the army fighters were more Indians than the British themselves (51,400 Indians versus 48,400), and the various support and logistical support units had about 112,000 Indians and 227,000 British. 129,000 Egyptians were employed in the services, but none of them were fighters. Here, it is noted that British colonialism resorted to exploiting its colonies in India and Egypt, and using its people as fuel for its wars and to serve its interests.
The Ottoman army totaled 104,000, including 29,000 fighters. Northern Palestine was protected by the Seventh Army commanded by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) in Nablus, the Eighth Army commanded by Javad Pasha in Tulkarm, and the Fourth Army commanded by Jamal Pasha in Amman.
The British ended the occupation of the rest of Palestine within about a week of the start of their offensive, and occupied the rest of the Levant in October 1918.
The final result of British losses in the Palestine War, from beginning to end, was later admitted by British Secretary of War Evans (at a session of the House of Commons in 1922) that it cost the British army 16,366 dead and 38,090 wounded. It is more than what the Zionists admitted to incurring in their wars and losses over the past seventy years, since the 1948 war until now (2018)!!
The sixth stop: The impact of the Arab revolt led by Sharif Hussein was certainly great, as we mentioned earlier, as this hit the morale of the Ottoman army, and many of its soldiers leaked, and increasing numbers of people relied towards the end of the war on the establishment of the promised Arab state, and large segments of them viewed the British as allies and not as enemies, which greatly facilitated the implementation of the British plans . Allenby had been sent to the British Chief of Staff on 5 October 1917 (three weeks before his attack), indicating that all his calculations in the occupation of southern Palestine were based on the premise that the situation of the Arabs would continue to be satisfactory, and that Sharif Hussein's men would cover his wing and communications from the east, and stressed that their continued support "depends on their continued belief that we will fulfill our covenants", which implies the need for the continuation of the British deception of their Arab allies against the Ottomans.
However, a good number of Palestinians (and the rest of the country under Ottoman rule) remained loyal to the Ottomans because they did not trust the British and perhaps doubted the feasibility of Sharif Hussein's revolution. According to the Palestinian historian who lived through that period, Ihsan al-Nimr, many of those fleeing the Ottoman army in the Nablus area, when they learned of the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot, returned to volunteer in the Ottoman army. The same British reports indicate that a number of areas and tribes remained loyal to the Ottomans, even after the British occupation of southern Palestine and prior to the British occupation of the northern part of Palestine.
The seventh stop: that the Palestinian consensus did not budge all the time in hostility to the Zionist project, and that anti-British sentiment increased rapidly, with their deception, their reneging on their promises and their practical adoption of the Zionist project. Soon, secret societies of a military nature began to form, during the first months of the completion of the British occupation of Palestine, to serve as a striking arm in the event of a revolution in the country. Since the beginning of 1919, the "Fedayeen" association, initially called the "Black Hand", was based in Jaffa, with branches in Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm, Ramle and Gaza. A British naval intelligence report of 4 November 1919 acknowledged the growing pro-Turkish sentiment among the Muslim community, that all lower and middle classes supported them, that cards were being distributed advocating the Islamic idea, that hostility against Zionism was increasing in all segments of society, and that the movement had taken a form very hostile to the British.
It was not long before the Palestinian national movement regained its ability to take initiative, and its Arab and Islamic dimension, and united its ranks towards demanding an end to the British occupation and the abolition of the Zionist project. It wasn't until the first uprising of the Palestinian people erupted in April 1920, the Jerusalem Intifada or the Season of the Prophet Moses.
Source: Arabi 21, 21/12/2018
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