220 • 13 THE ROOTS OF ARAB BITTERNESSshaykhs to speed Iraq toward independence. Ironically, Iraq, once among
the poorest areas of the Ottoman Empire, became in 1932 the first state to
graduate from its mandate status.
What would become of Abdallah, who had planned to rule in Baghdad?
After Faysal was ousted from Damascus in 1920, Abdallah gathered about
500 tribal Arabs, occupied Amman, and threatened to raid the French in
Syria. Although he could not have expelled them, the British wanted to
keep him quiet. Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill met Abdallah in
Jerusalem and persuaded him to accept—temporarily—the part of Pales¬
tine that lay east of the Jordan River, until the French should leave Syria.
This provisional deal was opposed by the Zionists, who wanted all of
Palestine as defined by the 1920 peace treaties to be open to Jewish settle¬
ment and eventual statehood. France feared that Abdallah's new principal¬
ity would become a staging area for Hashimite raids on Syria. No one
expected this Emirate of Transjordan to last long, but it did. While the
western part of the Palestine mandate seethed with Jewish-Arab strife,
Transjordan became an oasis of tranquil politics and economic develop¬
ment. The sad story of Britain's mandate in the rest of Palestine must be
saved for Chapter 16.
CONCLUSION AND SUMMARYThe Arabs had been roused from centuries of political lethargy, first by
American teachers and missionaries, then by the revolution of the Young
Turks, and finally by the blandishments of Britain and France during
World War I. They recalled their ancient greatness and longed to recover
it. From the West they learned about rights and freedoms, democratic gov¬
ernments, and national self-determination. Led by descendants of the
Prophet Muhammad, a few Arabs had dared to rebel against the greatest
Muslim state left in the world, the Ottoman Empire. In its place they
hoped to set up one or more states that would have the same sovereign
rights as all other independent countries. They helped the British and
French defeat the Ottoman Turks in World War I, but later on the Allies
failed to keep the pledges they had made to the Arabs. In the lands of the
Fertile Crescent, where Arabs were clearly in the majority, where they
hoped to form independent states, where some day the Arab nation might
revive its former power and glory, the victorious Allies set up mandates
that were mere colonies in disguise. Even if Britain and France governed
their mandates well, promoting education and economic development,