On August 3, The New York Times published a column by Mark Landler, the paper’s London bureau chief. In addition to the United Kingdom, he also covers American foreign policy in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. A true imperialist journalist.
The column, titled “Pact That Looms Over European Moves to Recognize a Palestinian State,” was devoted to a 1916 “secret treaty” – the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Great Britain. In it, Landler suggests it “seeded a legacy of strife in the Middle East.” While he does include the comments of two academics, the column serves Landler’s outlook.
Landler and Middle East history have had a bumpy relationship. As the CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis) website notes, Landler relates – in a Times podcast from April 11, 2019, where he discusses Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory – that “Israel since its founding in the 1940s” was existing on “occupied” land that, while it is “the ancestral homeland for the Jewish people,” it “was land that was actually also claimed by the Palestinians.”
“Occupied” in the 1940s, yes – but that was due to the colonialist military campaigns of the Arabian Muslims who conquered the area of the Jewish national home that had become Palestine under the earlier Roman and Byzantine empires beginning with the Hasmonean civil war in 63 BCE. Indeed, the territory was “claimed,” but not quite by “Palestinians.” Until the 1920s, the Arabs of the area self-defined as “Southern Syrians.”
The local Arabs rioted unsuccessfully in 1920 for Faisal I to remain king of Syria (he was instead expelled as a result of the Franco-Syrian War and became king of Iraq). Their demand was that the intended Jewish national home not be separated from Syria. They even informed the 1919 King-Crane Commission of their desire not to be detached from Greater Syria.
Occupation of the land
More importantly, Landler was using the term “occupation” in an anachronistic fashion, attaching to it the now current implication that somehow the Land of Israel, or more specifically, the regions of Judea and Samaria (known today as the West Bank), are not part of the Jewish historic homeland.
Indeed, that would appear to be the reason he chose to resurrect that 109-year old formulation of post-World War I aspirations, smearing Israel’s existence as just another colonialist spin-off. In that 2019 podcast, Landler bemoans the lack of “a separate state for the Palestinians,” one where they would “live in peace with their neighbors, the Israelis.”
Unsurprisingly, he pointed to but one guilty party. The difficulty, he explained, was that, “because through wars and other conquests, the Israelis began to occupy more and more of the land that would form the basis for a Palestinian state.”
Escaping his attention were the murderous riots and pogroms throughout the almost three-decade Mandate period (1920-48), the rejection of two partition plans in 1937 and 1947, the 1948 war the Arabs launched, the Fedayeen terror of the early 1950s and the terror of the Fatah/PLO from 1965. But now, he recalls the Sykes-Picot Agreement – why?
Well, it was “secret.” It summarized European colonial powers carving up the Levantine territories of the Ottoman Empire into spheres of control. It has been described as “an enduring example of Western imperial arrogance – a cynical exercise in drawing borders.” Moreover, since many Arabs view it as “a great betrayal” and a “subterfuge,” it must, by definition, have been bad.
Recognition of a Palestinian state
Landler enlisted Eugene L. Rogan, a professor of modern Middle East history who lectures at Oxford University. The podcaster had him say that now recognizing “a Palestinian state does Israel a favor by opening the way” to “a form of cohabitation that is sustainable.” He thus ignores the history of the Arabs of Palestine refusing to accept any Jewish statehood, as well as their official propaganda line that Zionism is colonialist and therefore illegal.
For example, even Article 8 of the modified second 1968 PLO Charter promotes the twinning of “the forces of Zionism and of imperialism.” Furthermore, Article 15 terms “the liberation of Palestine” as “repel[ling] the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.” Article 22 defines Zionism as “associated with international imperialism and antagonistic… to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods.” Zionism, as per Article 23, is “an illegitimate movement.” If history is relevant, why is all this ignored?
Rogan, quoting the Balfour Declaration’s proviso that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” posits that Britain’s willingness to recognize a state of Palestine is “that it’s time to make good on the second half of that promise.” But the term “Arabs” is absent from that document’s promise, and for good reason.
After all, a la Rogan, the British government is “using history as a legitimating factor.” If only we Jews also had the right to use history to legitimize our claims. Interestingly, Palestine, as a defined geopolitical unit, does not appear on the map nor even in the text of Sykes-Picot.
The region then known as Palestine was smaller than the later Mandatory Palestine area as defined by the League of Nations. Moreover, it was to fall under an “international administration” according to the agreement.
In any case, by 1917, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was dissolving into a dead letter. It was superseded by the Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Peace Conference decisions, and the 1922 League of Nations Palestine Mandate decision, granting the Jewish homeland international legal recognition.
If artificial borders are a cause for concern, the creation of what would become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a classic example of the colonialist mindset that, with no historical justification, exists today as a vestige of Sykes-Picot. The colonialism of that period is not quite over on the “East Bank” of the Jordan River – nor, it seems, on the pages of The New York Times.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.