Jerusalem: The Biography

Montagu and Montefiore delayed the Declaration but Weizmann fought back and conquered the drawing-rooms and country houses of Jewish grandees and English aristocrats as he had the cabinet-rooms of Whitehall. He won the support of the twenty-year-old Dolly de Rothschild who introduced him to the Astors and Cecils. At one dinner-party, the Marchioness of Crewe was heard telling Lord Robert Cecil, ‘We all in this house are Weizmannites.’ The support of Walter, Lord Rothschild, uncrowned king of British Jewry, helped Weizmann to defeat his Jewish opponents. In Cabinet, Lloyd George and Balfour got their way. ‘I have asked Ld Rothschild and Professor Weizmann to submit a formula,’ minuted Balfour, putting Sykes in charge of the negotiations.

The French and then the Americans gave their approval, making way for the decision at the end of October: on the very day that General Allenby captured Beersheba, Sykes came out and spotted Weizmann waiting nervously in the anteroom of the Cabinet Office. ‘Dr Weizmann,’ cried Sykes, ‘it’s a boy.’

On 9 November, Balfour issued his Declaration, addressed to Lord Rothschild, which proclaimed: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.’ Britain was later accused by the Arabs of cynical betrayal – simultaneously promising Palestine to the sherif, the Zionists and the French, perfidy that became part of the mythology of the Great Arab Revolt. It was certainly cynical but the promises to the Arabs and the Jews were both the result of short-term, ill-considered and urgent political expediency in wartime and neither would have been proffered in other circumstances. Sykes cheerfully insisted ‘we’re pledged to Zionism, Armenian liberation and Arabian independence’, yet there were serious contradictions: Syria was specifically promised both to the Arabs and the French. As we saw, Palestine and Jerusalem had not been mentioned in the letters to the sherif nor was the city promised to the Jews. Sykes–Picot specified an international city and the Zionists agreed: ‘we wanted the Holy Places internationalised,’ wrote Weizmann.

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The Declaration was designed to detach Russian Jews from Bolshevism but the very night before it was published, Lenin seized power in St Petersburg. Had Lenin moved a few days earlier, the Balfour Declaration may never have been issued. Ironically, Zionism, propelled by the energy of Russian Jews – from Weizmann in Whitehall to Ben-Gurion in Jerusalem – and Christian sympathy for their plight, was now cut off from Russian Jewry until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Declaration should really be named for Lloyd George, not Balfour. It was he who had already decided that Britain had to possess Palestine – ‘oh, we must grab that!’ he said – and this was the precondition for any Jewish homeland. He was not going to share it with France or anyone else but Jerusalem was his ultimate prize. As Allenby broke into Palestine, Lloyd George flamboyantly demanded the capture of Jerusalem ‘as a Christmas present for the British nation’.¹²

THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT

1917–1919

THE MAYOR’S ATTEMPT TO SURRENDER

Allenby took Gaza on 7 November 1917; Jaffa fell on the 16th. There were desperate scenes in Jerusalem. Jemal the Slaughterman, ruling his provinces from Damascus, threatened a Götterdämmerung in Jerusalem. First he ordered the deportation of all Christian priests. Christian buildings, including St Saviour’s Monastery, were dynamited. The patriarchs were sent to Damascus but Colonel von Papen, a Catholic, rescued the Latin patriarch and kept him in Nazareth. Jemal hanged two Jewish spies in Damascus, then he announced the deportation of all Jerusalem’s Jews: there would no Jews left alive to welcome the British. ‘We’re in a time of anti-Semitic mania,’ Count Ballobar noted in his diary before rushing to Field Marshal von Falkenhayn to complain. The Germans, now in control of Jerusalem, were dismayed. Jemal’s anti-Semitic threats were ‘insane’, believed General Kress, who intervened at the highest level to save the Jews. It was Jemal’s last involvement in Jerusalem.^*

On 25 November, Allenby took Nabi Samuel just outside the Holy City. The Germans were unsure what to do. ‘I begged Falkenhayn to evacuate Jerusalem – the city had no strategic value’, recalled Papen, ‘before it came under direct attack for which we’d be blamed.’ He imagined the headlines: ‘HUNS BLAMED FOR RAZING HOLY CITY!’ ‘I lost Verdun,’ cried Falkenhayn, ‘and now you ask me to evacuate the city which is the cynosure of the world’s attention. Impossible!’ Papen rang his ambassador in Constantinople, who promised to talk to Enver.