James Barr > Quotes

“It was the struggle between Britain and France for the mastery of the Middle East that led the two countries to carve up the Ottoman Empire with the Sykes-Picot agreement, and it was their dissatisfaction over the outcome of this deal that led the British, fatefully, to proclaim their support for Zionist ambitions in the Balfour Declaration. And so the Jews’ right to a country of their own became dangerously associated with a cynical imperial maneuver that was originally designed to outwit the French.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948

“The wrangling between Britain and the Free French throughout the war years had a further, far-reaching consequence when de Gaulle returned to power in 1958. As president of France it was he who infamously vetoed Harold Macmillan’s application to join the Common Market. In tracing exactly why de Gaulle said Non, it is, surprisingly, to the hot and noisy cities of Beirut and Damascus that we should look. The general’s experience of British machinations in both places profoundly shaped his reluctance to allow his wartime rivals to join his European club. It is a tale from which neither country emerges with much credit.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“When Husni Zaim seized power from Shukri al-Quwatli on 30 March 1949, Syria's economy was a parlous state and its army had been beaten the previous November by the Israelis. Zaim knew that he needed to take action on both fronts fast. After overthrowing al-Quwatli bloodlessly, he set out to open peace talks with the Israelis and mend relations with the French via a currency agreement and an arms deal that would pave the way for renewed French influence in the former mandate. But Zaim's reign did not last long. One hundred and thirty-seven days after he had taken power, on 14 August he too was overthrown and executed.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

“In his crucial letter of 24 October 1915 McMahon had used an ambiguous phrase that hinged on the absence of a comma to make it look as if he accepted Husein’s exorbitant demands, when in fact he was preserving Britain’s room for manoeuvre with the French. For five years the British believed that he had successfully done so, until, to the horror of those present at the December 1920 meeting, it was revealed that this sleight of hand had then been lost in the Arabic translation. As one official, who was present, put it: In the Arabic version sent to King Husain this is so translated as to make it appear that Gt Britain is free to act without detriment to France in the whole of the limits mentioned. This passage of course had been our sheet anchor: it enabled us to tell the French that we had reserved their rights, and the Arabs that there were regions in which they wd have eventually to come to terms with the French. It is extremely awkward to have this piece of solid ground cut from under our feet. I think that HMG will probably jump at the opportunity of making a sort of amende by sending Feisal to Mesopotamia.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“The Frenchman explained how, when he had been trying to escape northwards and the front wheel of his car had parted company from its axle, the choice had been very simple. ‘We became Free French at once!’18”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

“For the first half of 1941 Spears remained a forceful advocate for the Free French leader, but his attitude changed sharply when he visited Damascus after the Vichy French surrender and had an argument with de Gaulle over the future administration of the Levant. “Do you think I am interested in England’s winning the war? I am not—I am interested only in France’s victory,” de Gaulle said provocatively.9 “They are the same,” retorted Spears. “Not at all,” replied de Gaulle. “Even I was taken aback,” Spears admitted as he noted down the disconcerting conversation”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948

“When the British Empire sank beneath the waves of history,’ the high commissioner told him, ‘it would leave behind only two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression, “Fuck off”.’12”
― James Barr, Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

“From Cairo, Casey’s successor as minister of state, Lord Moyne, argued that both these failings were unwise. ‘Opinion in these countries can hardly fail to draw a comparison with the prompt and stern action taken against the Arabs after the assassination of Mr Andrews in 1937,’ he said.27 A few days later, after he had failed to stir up London, he sent a further telegram. To demonstrate his fears, this time he quoted from a speech just given by David Ben-Gurion, in which the Jewish Agency executive’s chairman stated: ‘We shall migrate to Palestine in order to constitute a majority here. If there be need – we shall take by force; if the country be too small – we shall expand the boundaries.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

“Including the Free French in the invasion force proved to be a grave mistake, because it made the conflict internecine. To the Vichy French, the Gaullists were ‘the Devil incarnate, the scapegoats for all the anger, resentment and weakness which had been lurking in the dark places of their consciences for a year’, a Free French officer believed.24 Wherever they were involved, the fighting was especially vicious. In the village of Khirbe in southern Lebanon a Free French officer was shot by Vichy forces in the back as he was returning to his own front line, having failed to persuade his countrymen to surrender. When, in another incident, a Free French officer on a motorcycle drew up beside a Vichy counterpart and invited him to join him against their common German enemy, the Vichy man drew his pistol and shot him dead. In a memoir, Jumbo Wilson called the invasion a ‘most unpleasant campaign’.25”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Our period of occupation did the country little permanent good, for all the selfless work of many devoted Englishmen and so many good intentions.”
― James Barr, Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

“Collective punishment generated support for the rebels where previously it had not existed, and turned what had been disjointed banditry into a general insurgency.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“The hanging of the twenty-three-year-old Schlomo Yousef on 29 June led to outrage because he was the first Jew to be executed by the British in Palestine, and because, until that point, the British had condoned Jewish efforts to defend themselves using their defence organisation, the Haganah.2 The execution triggered a wave of revenge attacks by the Irgun Zvai Leumi,3 a right-wing faction of the Haganah, of which Yousef had been a member.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“years: that when dealing with the British, violence worked.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“As Churchill later put it, ‘if there had not been a General Spears there might never have been a General de Gaulle’.8 The unfamiliar”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Only the appointment of yet another prime minister, who declared that he would not pursue membership of the pact, bought an uneasy calm.”
― James Barr, Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

“writing his own orders was ‘a good way of ensuring that my instructions are satisfactory’.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Syria was milked of its more profitable resources,’ believed Lawrence’s wartime comrade W. F. Stirling, who noted that the country’s profitable utilities and monopolies were all French-owned and that what infrastructure existed was built ‘for strategic purposes and not for public benefit’.15 And corruption was pervasive: it was not long before one British diplomat reported that French officials were ‘expecting liberal presents for services rendered by them’.16 As even Catroux commented, ‘we were in the Orient where nothing comes for free’.17”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“By then tensions were rising in Palestine. Almost exactly twenty-five years earlier, in the hope of creating what it called ‘a buffer Jewish state’ to guard the eastern approaches to the Suez Canal and keep the French at bay, the British government of the day had issued the Balfour Declaration, named after the then foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour. This pledged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine so long as it did not impinge on the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities there. It helped Britain secure the mandate to rule Palestine in 1920.”
― James Barr, Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East

“in so far as England is free to act without detriment to the interests of her present Allies’,”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“between 1936 and 1939 about five thousand Arab men were killed and ten thousand more wounded. By the end of the uprising, 10 per cent of the adult male Palestinian Arab population had been killed or wounded, imprisoned or sent into exile.11”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“After the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, he wrote, Husein could be ‘a hereditary spiritual Pope with no temporal power’, dependent on the British for income and protection and a proxy to spread British influence in the Middle East.8”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

“Now that death was the punishment for being caught in possession of a gun, 'cordon and search' operations restarted in earnest when the British army surged into northern Palestine in May 1938. While one force surrounded a village, another would go in to hunt for suspects and their weapons. This task was 'thoroughly nauseating, both physically and mentally', wrote one soldier, during a search in which five Arabs were killed...
British soldiers arrested those suspected of assisting the insurgents, and dynamited or bulldozed their homes. Collective punishments were imposed on villages where individual culprits could not be singled out. Arthur Lane went to one village suspected of assisting the rebellion with another soldier to demand a fine from the mukhtar. After the headman slammed his front door in Lane's face, and then his irate wife emerged brandishing a wooden spoon to chase Lane's colleague away, Lane tersely remembered what happened what happened next: 'We burned her house down.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East

“short and scruffy Lawrence – eight years his junior, and just five feet six inches tall – and dismissed his support for Arab aspirations. ‘Complete independence means . . . Poverty and chaos,’ he later scoffed. ‘Let him consider this as he hopes for the people he is fighting for.’2”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“This speedy retreat left Georges-Picot under the impression that ‘What the British want, is only to deceive the Arabs.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Not only did the Germans’ proximity to Egypt postpone elections in Lebanon and Syria indefinitely, but his own troops, under (‘Bloody English’) Koenig, had performed impressively in the battle for Tobruk. Without their tenacious defence of the southern extremity of the British line at Bir Hakim, Rommel would have reached Tobruk faster than he had, and British losses consequently would have been even greater than they were.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Like many security measures, the fence was primarily a theatrical device, as useful for its ‘moral effect’, as Tegart put it, as for its ability to keep the gangs at bay, and the veteran policeman did not for a minute think it would solve the problem.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Implicit in Britain’s decision to back the Arabs was a simple calculation. Whereas – as in the previous world war – the Arabs were dangerously unaligned, Hitler’s clear hatred left the Jews without a choice. ‘The Jews?’ the British ambassador to Egypt asked rhetorically. ‘Let us be practical. They are anybody’s game these days. But we need not desert them. They have waited 2,000 years for their “home”. They can well afford to wait a bit until we are better able to help them get their last pound of flesh . . . We have not done badly by them so far and they should be made to realise that crying for the moon won’t get them anywhere – especially if we are the only friends they have left in the world.’19”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

“advocated that the French ‘discreetly associate ourselves with the Arabs’ efforts to gain their freedom . . . to prevent their success turning against Christian powers with Muslim possessions’. De Margerie’s advice”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“Desperate to stop an ‘open revival of the Jew v. Arab conflict in Palestine’, Casey and his colleagues came up with a new idea.6 This was to win the Arabs’ acceptance of the Jewish presence by compensating them with an Arab federation, for which the British government had promised its support in 1941. Seemingly oblivious to the growing opposition to Britain’s presence in the Middle East, they believed that such a federation might form the outer of two zones – the Jews would form the inner – that would protect Britain’s position astride the Suez Canal, after the war, like the concentric rings around the bull’s-eye on a target.”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East

“British soldiers arrested those suspected of assisting the insurgents, and dynamited or bulldozed their homes. Collective punishments were imposed on villages where individual culprits could not be singled”
― James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the struggle that shaped the Middle East