Hejaz, Kingdom of

Hussein launches a revolt of Arabs in the Hejaz against the Ottoman state on June 5, 1916, although the Hussein-McMahon correspondence is not legally binding on either side, and ...

...declaring himself "King of the Arabs" on October 2, Hussein performs the ceremony of the bai'a, the traditional Arab custom in which the investiture is accompanied by a formal declaration of allegiance, although the Allies recognize him only as king of the Hijaz, a tide rejected by most peninsular Arabs.
 
Britain provides supplies and money for the Arab forces led by Abdullah and Faisal.

British military advisers also are detailed from Cairo to assist the Arab army that the brothers are organizing.

Of these advisers, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) is to become the best known.

The British maintain two hundred and fifty thousand troops in Egypt even after the evacuation from Gallipoli.

A major source of worry to the British is the danger of a Turkish threat from Palestine across the Sinai Desert to the Suez Canal.

That danger wanes, however, when Hussein's initially unpromising revolt is developed by the personal enterprise of British military strategist colonel T. E. Lawrence into a revolt infecting the whole Arabian hinterland of Palestine and Syria and threatening to sever the Turks' vital Hejaz railway.

Palestinian Arab nationalists had worked for a Greater Syria under Faisal.

The British military occupation authority in Palestine, fearing an Arab rebellion, publishes an Anglo-French Joint Declaration, issued after the armistice with Turkey in November 1918, which calls for self-determination for the indigenous people of the region.

At the war's end, the future of Palestine is problematic.

Great Britain, which had set up a military administration in Palestine after the capture of Jerusalem, is faced with the problem of having to secure international sanction for the continued occupation of the country in a manner consistent with its ambiguous, seemingly conflicting wartime commitments.

At the same time, Abdullah is organizing resistance against the French in Syria, arousing both French ire and British consternation.

Assembling a motley force of about two thousand tribesmen, he moves north from Mecca, halting in Amman in March 1920.

In October the British high commissioner for Palestine calls a meeting of East Bank sheikhs at As Salt to discuss the future of the region, whose security is threatened by the incursion of Wahhabi sectarians (adherents of a puritanical Muslim sect who stress the unity of God) from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula. 

It becomes clear to the British that Abdullah, who remains in Amman, could be accepted as a ruler by the Bedouin tribes and in that way be dissuaded from involving himself in Syria.

The Allies had organized the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration after the armistice to provide an interim government for Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.

The General Syrian Congress had convened in Damascus in July 1919 and called for Allied recognition of an independent Syria, including Palestine, with Faisal as its king.

When no action is taken on the proposal, the congress unilaterally proclaims Syria independent and confirms Faisal as king in March 1920.

Iraqi representatives similarly announce their country's independence as a monarchy under Abdullah.

The League of Nations Council rejects both pronouncements, and in April the San Remo Conference decides on enforcing the Allied mandates in the Middle East.

French troops occupy Damascus in July, and Faisal is served with a French ultimatum to withdraw from Syria.

He goes into exile, but the next year will be installed by the British as king of Iraq.

Bedouin attacks in northern Palestine force the French at a fort near Metulla to retreat on January 4, 1920.

The one hundred and twenty members of the settlement here are forced to flee to Sidon, where they will board a ship to Haifa.

The British had withdrawn from Syria (exclusive of Palestine) by the end of 1919, but the French had not yet entered (except in Lebanon) and Faisal had not been explicitly repudiated by Britain.

On March 20, 1920, delegates from Palestine attend a general Syrian congress at Damascus, which passes a resolution rejecting the Balfour Declaration and elects Faisal king of a united Syria, which includes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Transjordan.

This resolution echoes one passed earlier in Jerusalem, in February 1919, by the first Palestinian Arab conference of Muslim-Christian associations, which had been founded by Palestinian Arab leaders to oppose Zionist activities.

Faisal's ouster leads to further rioting in Jaffa as a large number of Palestinian Arabs who had been with Faisal return to Palestine to fight against the establishment of a Jewish nation.

The end of Faisal's Greater Syria experiment and the application of the mandate system, which artificially carves up the Arab East into new nation-states, will have a profound effect on the future of the region in general and Palestine in particular.

The mandate system creates an identity crisis among Arab nationalists that will lead to the growth of competing nationalisms: Arab versus Islamic versus the more parochial nationalisms of the newly created states.

It will also creates a serious legitimacy problem for the new Arab elites, whose authority ultimately rests with their European benefactors.

The combination of narrowly based leadership and the emergence of competing nationalisms will stymie the Arab response to the Zionist challenge in Palestine.

Abdullah, Faisal's brother, arrives in Ma'an in November with two thousand armed supporters intent on gathering together tribes to attack the French.