Jerusalem: The Biography

Monty Parker, who never grasped the gravity of all this, sailed back to Jaffa that autumn but was advised not to land ‘or else there might be more trouble’. He told the syndicate that he would ‘proceed to Beirut’ to visit the prisoners. His plan was then to go on: ‘To Jerusalem to quiet the press and get hold of the Notables to see a little bit of reason. Once all is quiet, get the Governor to write to the Grand Vizier and say it’s safe for us to return!’ Jerusalem never did ‘see a little bit of reason’ but Parker kept trying until 1914.^*

There were diplomatic complaints between London and Istanbul, Jerusalem’s governor was sacked, Parker’s accomplices were tried but acquitted (because nothing had been stolen), the money was gone, the treasure chimerical, and the ‘Parker fiasco’ brought down the curtain on fifty years of European archaeology and imperialism.⁶

WORLD WAR

1914–1916

JEMAL PASHA: THE TYRANT OF JERUSALEM

Parker’s adventure had exposed the realities of the Young Turks’ rule over Jerusalem: they were no less venal and inept than their predecessors, but they had raised Arab expectations of autonomy, if not more. A nationalist newspaper, Filastin, was founded in Jaffa to express this new consciousness. But soon it became clear that the Young Turks remained a ruthless and secretive organization with only a democratic façade. They were Turkish nationalists who were determined to suppress not just Arab hopes but even the teaching of Arabic. Arab nationalists started to found secret clubs to plot for independence and even the Husseinis and other scions joined them. Meanwhile the Zionist leaders encouraged their new immigrants to create ‘Jewish towns, particularly in Jerusalem, the head of the nation’, and they now bought the land for the future Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. This alarmed the Families – even though the Husseinis and other landowners such as the Sursocks of Lebanon were all quietly selling land to the Zionists.

Ruhi Khalidi, French-speaking intellectual and now deputy speaker of the Parliament in Istanbul, was an Ottoman liberal, not an Arab nationalist. But he carefully studied Zionism, even writing a book about it, and decided that it was a threat. In Parliament, he tried to ban any Jewish land purchases in Palestine. The richest scion of the Families, Ragheb al-Nashashibi, an elegant playboy, ran for Parliament too, promising, ‘I’ll dedicate all my energies to removing the danger awaiting us from Zionism.’ The editor of Filastin

warned, ‘If this state of affairs continues, the Zionists will gain mastery over our country.’^*

On 23 January 1913, a thirty-one-year-old Young Turk officer, Ismail Enver, a veteran of the 1908 Revolution who had made his name fighting the Italians in Libya, burst into the Sublime Porte, shot the war minister and seized power. He and two comrades, Mehmet Talaat and Ahmet Jemal, formed the triumvirate of the Three Pashas. Enver won a small victory in the Second Balkan War which convinced him he was the Turkish Napoleon, destined to restore the empire. In 1914, he emerged as Ottoman strongman and war minister – and even married the sultan’s niece. The Three Pashas believed that only the Turkization of the empire could stop the final rot. Their programme anticipated Fascism and the Holocaust in its barbarity, racism and warmongering.

On 28 June 1914, Serbian terrorists assassinated the Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Great Powers staggered then stampeded into the First World War. Enver Pasha was eager to fight, pushing for a German alliance to provide the necessary military and financial backing. Kaiser Wilhelm, remembering his trip to the East, backed the Ottoman alliance. Enver appointed himself vice-generalissimo under his puppet sultan and entered the war by bombarding Russian ports from his newly supplied German battleships.

On 11 November, Sultan Mehmet V Rashid declared war on Britain, France and Russia – and in Jerusalem jihad was proclaimed in al-Aqsa. At first there was some enthusiasm for war. When the commander of the Ottoman troops in Palestine, the Bavarian general Baron Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, arrived, the Jews of Jerusalem welcomed his units with a triumphal arch. The Germans assumed protection of the Jews from the British. Meanwhile Jerusalem awaited the arrival of her new master.⁷