The Battle For Palestine 1917

The story of Allied victory in the Holy Land, far from the carnage of the Western Front but a crucial, morale-boosting success under the aggressive and forward-thinking General Allenby. Three battles for the control of the key fortress-city of Gaza took place in 1917 between the `British' force [with units from across the Empire, most notably the ANZACs] and the Turks. The Allies were repulsed twice but on theirthird attempt, under the newly-appointed General Allenby, a veteran of the Western Front where he was a vocal critic of Haig's command, finally penetrated Turkish lines, captured southern Palestine and, as instructed by Lloyd George, took Jerusalem in time for Christmas, ending 400 years of Ottoman occupation. This third battle, similar in many ways to the contemporaneous fighting in France, is at the heart of this account, with consideration of intelligence, espionage, air-warfare, and diplomatic and political elements, not to mention the logistical and medical aspects of the campaign, particularly water. The generally overlooked Turkish defence, in the face of vastly superior numbers, is also assessed. Far from laying out and executing a pre-ordained plan, Allenby, who is probably still best remembered as T. E. Lawrence's commanding officer in Arabia, was flexible and adaptable, responding to developmentsas they occurred. JOHN D. GRAINGER is the author of numerous books on military history, ranging from the Roman period to the twentieth century.

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

The Palestine Campaign of the First World War exhibited a fighting style that brought with it various challenges in mission command. While General Allenby, commanding the Allied Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), gained several victories in the early stages of the campaign, he did not comprehensively defeat the Turkish forces in Palestine. He drove them away from their defensive line, but they escaped, avoided destruction, and retreated north to re-establish a defense and engage the EEF at later date. This thesis argues that General Allenby did not achieve the great successes at the battles of Beersheba, Gaza, Sheria, and the pursuit of Turkish forces that ended with Allenby’s capture of Jerusalem. Instead, Allenby had to learn how to succeed in Palestine to finally destroy the armies of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine at the battle of Megiddo in September 1918. The research in this study highlights the mission command challenges in Allenby’s early campaigns and how he learned to overcome them and adapt his tactics to achieve complete victory at the battle of Megiddo. This thesis will use the tenets of mission command, consisting preparation, combined arms, prioritization of resources, and communication, to examine General Allenby’s Palestine campaign. Mission command, both a function of war and a philosophy of leadership comprises one of the key facets of military thought that leaders must consider in order to achieve complete victory.

The Palestine Campaign has become one of the most glorified military campaigns of the twentieth century. The last campaign fought by the Ottoman Army, and thus the last act of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire, the Palestine Campaign saw the British Army under General Allenby conquer the Holy Land, forcing the Turkish army back into Europe. Meanwhile the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement ensured the British and French would continue to influence the Middle East for the next 60 years. This front saw some of the most influential stories of the Great War, from T.E. Lawrence's Arab army in the desert, to General Allenby entering Jerusalem on foot in 1917. Palestine and World War I shows how the events of the Great War have left a lasting legacy in the Middle East.

By mid-1917, with the world war going badly on all fronts, and casualties burgeoning, Prime Minister David Lloyd George met with General Edmund Allenby, fresh from France. Lloyd George wanted “Jerusalem for Christmas” as a holiday “present” for the increasingly disillusioned British people. Its seizure would also eliminate the Ottomans, who had inflicted the dismaying disaster at the Dardanelles, as a factor in the war. As Allenby departed, the PM handed him George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land, remarking that it was a better guide to reaching Jerusalem than anything “in the pigeon holes of the War Office”. Having been raised on the Bible, Allenby, as this narrative illustrates, did indeed exploit it. He would also have unanticipated expertise from an unknown and unmilitary officer, T. E. Lawrence, who turned his Arabian “sideshow” into campaigns distracting the Turks and their German military leadership. The desert war would be hard-fought, but, that December, after centuries in Muslim hands and with its sacred sites intact, Jerusalem fell.

A recreation of British rule in Palestine, from the winter of 1917, when battle-scarred troops in flimsy desert kit clambered through mountain mists to Jerusalem, to the spring of 1948 and the last High Commissioner's apologetic departure. In between that time, Jewish minority strengthened.

In the fourth year of the Great War, the growing military, political, social and economic costs hit all existing belligerents while as yet uncommitted states joined the global conflict. 1917: Beyond the Western Front amply illustrates the crucial significance of this pivotal year.

Relates how the British, aided by Arab insurgents and the French, defeated the Turks, although not without difficulty, and captured northern Palestine and most of Syria. This book charts the continuing war between Britain and France on the one side and the Turkish Empire on the other following the British capture of Jerusalem in 1917. It outlines how the British prepared for their advance, bringing in Indian and Australian troops; how the Turks were defeated at the great Battle of Megiddo in September 1918; and how Damascus fell, the Australians and the Arab army, which had harassed the Turks in the desert, arriving almostsimultaneously. It goes on to relate how the French arrived, late, to take over territory allocated to them in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1915, territory which included both Syria and Lebanon; how influenza had a severely detrimental impact on the allied advance; and how the Turks regrouped, successfully, north of Aleppo, and prevented further allied advance. The book also discusses the peace negotiations which followed the armistice, examining how nationalist aspirations were thwarted, how the French imperial grip on Syria was gradually strengthened, and how the Arab leader, Faisal, ousted from Syria, was provided with a kingdom by the British in Iraq. At a time when new turmoil in Syria is again in the headlines, this study provides exceptionally timely information on how Syria was fought over and shaped as rule over the country by the Turkish Empire was ended. John D. Grainger is the authorof numerous books for a variety of publishers, including five previously published books for Boydell and Brewer, including The Battle for Palestine, 1917 and Dictionary of British Naval Battles.