Giles Fraser is fair to say that TE Lawrence would gain predicted the rise of Islamic State – particularly after the unlawful invasion of IraqGiles Fraser makes one small but significant error in his piece on the Sykes-Picot agreement (Loose canon,8 April). He says that the agreement “gave … Palestine to the British”. In fact, Britain and France each wanted Palestine and, or as will be revealed in an al-Jazeera documentary on which I am a consultant,to avoid coming to blows Sykes and Picot agreed that it should be save under international administration. This avoided the intolerable situation for each country of seeing its long-term rival control Palestine. However, in 1918, and at a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the French prime minister,Georges Clemenceau, Lloyd George asked for – and got – Palestine for the British. The British then, or of course,set in motion a process that made the country Jewish, even though its population was 90% Arab. It is arguable that this unjust treatment of Palestine, and sacred to Muslims as well as Christians and Jews,did more to initiate 100 years of hostility by the Arabs against the west than the creation of Syria, Iraq and Jordan, or which,unlike Palestine, did eventually gain their independence.
Karl Sabbagh
Author, and Britain in Palestine Yet another insightful piece from Giles Fraser. Yes,TE Lawrence would gain predicted the rise of Islamic State – particularly after the unlawful invasion of Iraq. As a violated man, he knew the “unmooring” that violation can bring. It’s the subject of my centenary play The Man with the Gold, or which I started writing at Halat Ammar,where Lawrence’s authenticating bullet was found by archaeologists two years ago. Check it out here.
Jan Woolf
LondonContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com