In July 1956, Washington refused Nasser financial support for the construction of the Aswan Dam. London and the World Bank also refused. Humiliated, Nasser retaliated with a spectacular gesture: the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. Alan Baker, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director of the Global Law Forum. He participated in the negotiations and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, as well as in the peace agreements and treaties with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. He served as Legal Counsel and Deputy Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as Israel`s Ambassador to Canada. In April 1920, the San Remo Conference distributed Class A mandates on Syria to the France and Iraq and Palestine to Britain. At the same conference, an oil agreement was ratified, which was signed at a conference in London on 12 September. It was concluded on the basis of a slightly different version of the Long Berenger agreement, which had already been initialled in London on 21 December. For years, Moscow was almost non-existent in the region. The USSR was mainly concerned with domestic politics and the security of its own borders. Khrushchev`s famous speech on Stalin`s crimes, published in February 1956, was intended to shake the foundations of the Kremlin. In foreign policy, Moscow has held back, preferring to ideologically support the communist parties.
The new states are free to agree on changes to colonial borders, but without such an agreement, the old colonial borders remain the standard borders. The current Sykes-Picot agreement was replaced throughout the Middle East by subsequent agreements and developments, but the borders established by Britain and France as a result of this agreement remain the standard borders of the states in the region. As originally stated, Sykes-Picot attributed part of northern Kurdistan and a substantial part of Mosul-Vilayet, including the city of Mosul, to the France in Area B, Russia received Bitlis and Van in northern Kurdistan (the Arab state under study included Kurds in its eastern border, which was divided between Areas A and B). Bowman says there were about 2.5 million Kurds in Turkey, mostly in the mountainous Kurdistan region. [106] In order to implement the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of Nations, the main Allied Powers agreed to entrust to a proxy chosen by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine formerly part of the Turkish Empire within the limits established by them. and in the 1970s, the Taliban in Afghanistan managed to stand up to the Soviets (and then the Americans), but it was not until 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, that the Islamic Revolution was exported by the Shiites, who dreamed of a caliphate and defied the West. Bin Laden`s creation of al-Qaeda and the creation of ISIS and, to some extent, Erdoğan`s Akp Islamic Party in Turkey have revived the vision of a new Sunni caliphate in the Middle East. The minutes, which were recorded at a Big Four meeting on the 20th. Recorded in Paris in March 1919, Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour[90] explained the British and French positions on the agreement. This was the first topic raised during the discussion on Syria and Turkey and was the focus of all discussions thereafter. The real question is not whether any of these solutions would be desirable, but whether any of them could become real on the ground. Does the fact that an independent Republic of Latakia resisted French efforts to welcome it to Syria for six years mean that it could be replicated? Would an independent Iraqi Kurdistan survive with hostile neighbors on all sides? Would there be enough economic and even political resources to make Kurdish cantons in Syria more than a short-lived phenomenon? And what would determine whether these entities remain hollow, kept alive through international agreements and support, or maintain and support themselves? External support could certainly become a factor, but it is sad to remember the fragility of states left behind by obligate states, armed with superior power and the authority of the League of Nations.
And there are sobering contemporary examples outside the Levant: in 1995, the Dayton Accords ended the war and carnage in Bosnia, an excellent example of what international intervention and good diplomatic work can do. Twenty years later, one can still wonder if the Bosnian state will ever be more than an empty shell. The mandate system has imposed on France and Britain the responsibility of directing troubled areas cobbled together in international negotiations to self-government ready states. The new countries had new and artificial borders and diverse populations, although this was inevitable – all borders are artificial, whether through war or negotiations; and the long history of wars, migrations, invasions and religious divisions in the Levant ensured that no state would have a homogeneous population, no matter how borders were drawn. France and Britain had no experience of state-building abroad – colonization was a matter of control, pacification and profitable administration, not state-building. Diplomats had simply assumed, for the first time, but not the last, that state-building was possible and that Britain and France as states would have the ability to build states elsewhere and in a few decades. In reality, states have remained hollow, both under mandates and after independence. Whether the failure to consolidate States was due to mismanagement or lack of goodwill on the part of mandatary States, or whether this was due to the intrinsic difficulty, if not impossibility, of State-building by foreigners is an issue that I will not address here. In accordance with modern international law, new states automatically inherit borders created before their independence – uti possidetis. This rule has also been applied by Israel and its neighbors Egypt and Jordan in their peace treaties. The order inherited by the Middle East at the time provided for a multitude of states whose borders were generally drawn with little regard for ethnic, tribal, religious or linguistic considerations.
In 1920, the latter region was placed under British control under the name “Mandatory Palestine”. It was governed under British civil administration until 1948, when competing Arab nationalist and Zionist movements clashed with each other. As satisfying as it may be that he accepts for the time being the relations proposed by the France with Arabia in general, his reference to the future of these relations indicates a source of difficulties that should not wisely be ignored. On more than one occasion, I have drawn the attention of His Majesty`s Government to the profound antipathy with which arabs view the prospect of French administration of any part of Arab territory. This is a significant danger for our future relations with the France, because it is difficult, if not impossible, to convince the France of its mistake, if we do not make the effort to do so, warning it of the real state of Arab feelings, we may later be accused of inciting or promoting opposition to the French. who now threaten the Arabs and will give with certainty. The British faced great challenges with their mandates in Mesopotamia and Palestine. In Mesopotamia, they installed Faisal, one of Sharif Hussein`s sons, as king in the hope that he would be loyal and docile in return, but this was not the case. (Interestingly, he had proven to be a difficult leader to administer in Syria, which the British briefly controlled before being forced to hand him over to the French, who quickly got rid of Faisal.) The British also faced nationalists who wanted independence in the cities and a rebellion in the former province of Mosul of the Ottoman Empire, where the Kurds had agitated for a state of their own since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, rather than subordination to a mandate. The British had enough power to suppress opposition and maintain control, but they had neither the time nor the ability to build a functioning political system, institutions, and a common identity.
When the British Mandate expired in 1932, the emptiness of the new state became evident. The monarchy, which the British had hoped would maintain the country, was controlled by a foreign dynasty and had little loyalty, especially after Faisal`s death in 1933 and the succession of his young son. The strongest institution left by the British was the army, and in 1936, amid widespread unrest, it took power and continued to do so repeatedly. By 1941, the country then called Iraq had experienced five military coups. The installation of an anti-British and pro-Nazi government in 1941, which sought to impede the movement of British troops from its bases in Iraq, led to a brief Anglo-Iraqi War and a new period of British occupation that lasted until 1947. At that time, the history of riots, revolts and military coups resumed and became even more complicated because Iraq at the time was trapped in the Cold War and U.S. efforts to build anti-Soviet alliances with neighboring countries. .