The Recovery Of Palestine 1917

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.

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.

On 31st October 1917, as the day's light faded, the Australian Light Horse charged against their enemy. Eight hundred men and horses galloped four miles across open country, towards the artillery, rifles and machine guns of the Turks occupying the seemingly unassailable town of Beersheba. What happened in the next hour changed the course of history. This brave battle and the extraordinary adventures that led to it are brought vividly to life by Australia's greatest storyteller, Peter FitzSimons. It is an epic tale of farm boys, drovers, bank clerks, dentists, poets and scoundrels transported to fight a war half a world away, and is full of incredible characters: from Major Banjo Paterson to Lawrence of Arabia; the brilliant writer Trooper Ion Idriess and the humble General Harry Chauvel; the tearaway Test fast bowler 'Tibby' Cotter and the infamous warhorse, Bill the Bastard. All have their part to play in the enthralling, sprawling drama of the Australian Light Horse. Theirs was a war fought in an ancient land with modern weapons; where the men of the Light Horse were trained in sight of the pyramids, drank in the brothels of Cairo and fought through lands known to them only as names from the Bible. The Last Charge of the Australian Light Horse traces the hard path of the Light Horse from the bleakest of starts - being deprived of their horses and fighting at Gallipoli in the tragic Battle of the Nek - to triumph and glory in the desert. Revealing the feats of the Australians who built the legend, it is a brilliantly told tale of courage, resilience and derring-do from Australia's favourite storyteller.

In 1915–18, ANZAC and Ottoman soldiers clashed on numerous battlefields, from Gallipoli to Jerusalem. This illustrated study investigates the two sides' fighting men. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915–16 pitched the Australian and New Zealand volunteers known as the ANZACs into a series of desperate battles with the Ottoman soldiers defending their homeland. In August 1915, the bitter struggle for the high ground known as Chunuk Bair saw the peak change hands as the Allies sought to overcome the stalemate that set in following the landings in April. The ANZACs also played a key part in the battle of Lone Pine, intended to divert Ottoman attention away from the bid to seize Chunuk Bair. The Gallipoli campaign ended in Allied evacuation in the opening days of 1916. Thereafter, many ANZAC units remained in the Middle East and played a decisive role in the Allies' hard-fought advance through Palestine that finally forced the Turks to the peace table. The fateful battle of Beersheba in October 1917 pitted Australian mounted infantry against Ottoman foot soldiers as the Allies moved on Jerusalem. In this book, noted military historian Si Sheppard examines the fighting men on both sides who fought at Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair and Beersheba. The authoritative text is supported by specially commissioned artwork and mapping plus carefully chosen archive photographs.

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 Balfour Declaration was one of the most important events in the history of the Jewish people prior to the Holocaust, signaling the beginning of a new era of self-determination in the reconstituted Jewish homeland. This book provides an all-inclusive understanding of the complex geopolitical elements that shaped the facts on the ground in the Middle East. Analyzing the chain of events that led to the Balfour Declaration through a uniquely holistic approach, it demonstrates how the national interests of the nations involved in the World War I theater intersected with those of the Jewish nation in the final phase of its long march towards political sovereignty. Like the multiple parts of precision clockwork, each element, regardless of shape or size, played an essential part in the functioning of the whole, while the absence of one of them would have altered the outcome of the entire process. The text is bound to be of interest to specialists and researchers wanting insights into the historic, international and psycho-sociological processes that have been changing the Middle East throughout recent decades. It will also serve as an important academic source, or even a textbook, for university courses about the history of Israel and the Middle East.

Recent conflict in the Middle East has caused some observers to ask if Muslims and Christians can ever coexist. History suggests that relations between those two groups are not predetermined, but are the product of particular social and political circumstances. This book examines Muslim-Christian relations during an earlier period of political and social upheaval, and explores the process of establishing new forms of national and religious identification. Palestine's Arab Christian minority actively engaged with the Palestinian nationalist movement throughout the period of British rule (1917-1948). Relations between Muslim and Christian Arabs were sometimes strained, yet in Palestine, as in other parts of the world, communalism became a specific response to political circumstances. While Arab Christians first adopted an Arab nationalist identity, a series of outside pressures - including British policies, the rise of a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims, and an increase in Islamic identification among some Arabs - led Christians to adhere to more politicized religious groupings by the 1940s. Yet despite that shift Christians remained fully nationalist, insisting that they could be both Arab and Christian.

Palestine is a region that is located in Western Asia, situated between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Palestine has been an important center of human civilization for thousands of years, with civilizations like the Canaanites, Israelites, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottoman Empire having all had a presence in this area. In modern times, the region has been the subject of intense conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, with both sides claiming it as their rightful homeland. The history of Palestine is complex and multifaceted, with conflicting narratives and interpretations of events. The ongoing struggle for control of the territory remains a major issue in the Middle East and the world at large.