Jerusalem: The Biography

A silence followed. Salad, chicken mayonnaise and foie gras sandwiches hung in our wet mouths unmunched while we turned to Allenby and gaped. His face grew red, he swallowed, his chin coming forward (in the way we loved) whilst he said grimly: ‘The only authority is that of the Commander-in-Chief – MYSELF!’

Lawrence flew black to join Faisal and the Sherifian Camel Corps. The French and Italians were allowed to share guard duties at the Sepulchre, but the Church was, as always, locked and unlocked by its hereditary Nusseibeh.^* Allenby placed Indian Muslim troops on guard at the Temple Mount.

After an audience with King George V in London, the white-suited Weizmann arrived in the Holy City with his Zionist Commission, assisted by Vladimir Jabotinsky, a bombastic nationalist and sophisticated intellectual from Odessa where he had organized a Jewish militia to resist pogroms. Allenby’s advance stalled just north of Jerusalem. The Ottomans were by no means finished in Palestine, and it took him almost a year to muster his forces to relaunch his offensive, so Jerusalem was a front-line city, crowded with British and colonial troops preparing for the big push. Jabotinsky and Major James de Rothschild helped recruit a Jewish Legion to serve with them, while the Sherifians, under Lawrence and Prince Faisal, keenly awaited the opportunity to capture Damascus – and spoil French ambitions.

Jerusalem was tawdry and freezing; its population had shrunk by 30,000 since 1914 to around 55,000; many were still dying of hunger and malaria, tormented by venereal diseases (the city was patrolled by 500 teenaged Jewish prostitutes); there were 3,000 Jewish orphans. Weizmann, not unlike Lawrence, was astonished by the squalor: ‘anything done to desecrate and defile the sacred has been done. It’s impossible to imagine so much falsehood and blasphemy.’ But, like Montefiore and Rothschild before him, he now twice tried to buy the Western Wall for £70,000 from the mufti. The money would pay for the rehousing of the Maghrebi Quarter. The Maghrebis were interested but the Husseinis prevented any deal.

Jerusalem’s deputy police chief, the assistant provost marshal, newly appointed by Allenby, was a great-nephew of Montefiore who would have been appointed chief if he had not been Jewish. ‘There is a great prevalence of venereal disease in the Jerusalem Area,’ reported Major Geoffrey Sebag-Montefiore, who deployed guards around the Holy Places. He raided bawdy houses, which were usually full of Australian soldiers, and had to waste much of his time investigating cases where soldiers were accused of sleeping with local girls. ‘The brothels in Jerusalem are still giving considerable trouble,’ he informed Allenby in June 1918. He moved them into an allotted area, the Wazzah, which made policing easier. In October he wrote, ‘there’s been trouble keeping Australians out of brothels. A squadron now provide a picquet [patrol] for the Wazzah.’ Major Sebag-Montefiore’s reports usually read: ‘Venereal Disease is rampant. Otherwise nothing of note to report.’

Among the cafés at the Jaffa Gate, Arabs and Jews debated the future of Palestine: there was a capacious breadth of opinions on both sides. On the Jewish side, this extended from the ultra-Orthodox who despised sacrilegious Zionism, via those who envisaged Jewish colonies fully integrated across an Arab-ruled Middle East, to extreme nationalists who wanted an armed Hebrew state ruling a submissive Arab minority. Arab opinion varied from nationalists and Islamicist fundamentalists who wanted Jewish immigrants expelled, to democratic liberals who welcomed Jewish aid in building an Arab state. Arab intellectuals discussed whether Palestine was part of Syria or Egypt. During the war, a young Jerusalemite called Ihsan Turjman wrote that ‘The Egyptian Khedive should be joint king of Palestine and the Hejaz,’ yet Khalil Sakakini noted that ‘the idea of joining Palestine to Syria is spreading powerfully’. Ragheb Nashashibi founded the Literary Society, demanding union with Syria; the Husseinis set up the Arab Club. Both were hostile to the Balfour Declaration.

On 20 December 1917, Sir Ronald Storrs arrived as military governor of Jerusalem – or, as he put it, ‘the equivalent of Pontius Pilate’.¹⁴

ORIENTAL STORRS: BENEFICENT DESPOT