The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and the Zionist entity of Israel should be no surprise to any
student of British imperialism.
The problem is the study of British
imperialism has very few students.
Indeed, one can peruse any
undergraduate or post-graduate British university prospectus and rarely
find a module in a Politics degree on the British Empire let alone a
dedicated degree or Masters degree. Of course if the European led
imperialist carnage in the four years between 1914 – 1918 tickles your
cerebral cells then it’s not too difficult to find an appropriate institution to
teach this subject, but if you would like to delve into how and why the
British Empire waged war on mankind for almost four hundred years
you’re practically on your own in this endeavour. One must admit, that
from the British establishment’s perspective, this is a formidable and
remarkable achievement.

In late 2014, according to the American journal, “Foreign Affairs”,
the Saudi petroleum Minister, Ali al-Naimi is reported to have said
“His Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model for good relations
between Saudi Arabia and other states and the Jewish state is no
exception.” Recently, Abdullah’s successor, King Salman expressed
similar concerns to those of Israel’s to the growing agreement between
the United States and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme. This led
some to report that Israel and KSA presented a “united front”
in their opposition to the nuclear deal. This was not the first time
the Zionists and Saudis have found themselves in the same corner in
dealing with a perceived common foe. In North Yemen in the 1960’s, the
Saudis were financing a British imperialist led mercenary army campaign
against revolutionary republicans who had assumed authority after
overthrowing the authoritarian, Imam. Gamal Abdul-Nasser’s Egypt
militarily backed the republicans, while the British induced the Saudis
to finance and arm the remaining remnants of the Imam’s supporters.
Furthermore, the British organised the Israelis to drop arms for the British proxies in North Yemen, 14 times.
The British, in effect, militarily but covertly, brought the Zionists
and Saudis together in 1960’s North Yemen against their common foe.

However, one must go back to the 1920’s to fully
appreciate the origins of this informal and indirect alliance between
Saudi Arabia and the Zionist entity. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire by
British imperialism in World War One, left three distinct authorities
in the Arabian peninsula: Sharif of Hijaz: Hussain bin Ali of Hijaz (in
the west), Ibn Rashid of Ha’il (in the north) and Emir Ibn Saud of Najd
(in the east) and his religiously fanatical followers, the Wahhabis.

Ibn Saud had entered the war early in January 1915
on the side of the British, but was quickly defeated and his British
handler, William Shakespear was killed by the Ottoman Empire’s ally Ibn
Rashid. This defeat greatly hampered Ibn Saud’s utility to the Empire
and left him militarily hamstrung for a year.[1] The Sharif contributed
the most to the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by switching allegiances and
leading the so-called ‘Arab Revolt’ in June 1916 which removed the
Turkish presence from Arabia. He was convinced to totally alter his
position because the British had strongly led him to believe, via
correspondence with Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in
Egypt, that a unified Arab country from Gaza to the Persian Gulf will be
established with the defeat of the Turks. The letters exchanged between
Sharif Hussain and Henry McMahon are known as the McMahon-Hussain
Correspondence.

Understandably, the Sharif as soon as the war ended
wanted to hold the British to their war time promises, or what he
perceived to be their war time promises, as expressed in the
aforementioned correspondence. The British, on the other hand, wanted
the Sharif to accept the Empire’s new reality which was a division of
the Arab world between them and the French (Sykes-Picot agreement) and
the implementation of the Balfour Declaration,
which guaranteed ‘a national for the Jewish people’ in Palestine by
colonisation with European Jews. This new reality was contained in the
British written, Anglo-Hijaz Treaty, which the Sharif was profoundly
averse to signing.[2] After all, the revolt of 1916 against the Turks
was dubbed the ‘Arab Revolt’ not the ‘Hijazi Revolt’.

Actually, the Sharif let it be known that he will
never sell out Palestine to the Empire’s Balfour Declaration; he will
never acquiescence to the establishment of Zionism in Palestine or
accept the new random borders drawn across Arabia by British and French
imperialists. For their part the British began referring to him as an
‘obstructionist’, a ‘nuisance’ and of having a ‘recalcitrant’ attitude.

The British let it be known to the Sharif that they
were prepared to take drastic measures to bring about his approval of
the new reality regardless of the service that he had rendered them
during the War. After the Cairo Conference in March 1921, where the new
Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill met with all the British operatives
in the Middle East, T.E. Lawrence (i.e. of Arabia) was dispatched to
meet the Sharif to bribe and bully him to accept Britain’s Zionist
colonial project in Palestine. Initially, Lawrence and the Empire
offered 80,000 rupees.[3] The Sharif rejected it outright. Lawrence then
offered him an annual payment of £100,000.[4] The Sharif refused to
compromise and sell Palestine to British Zionism.

When financial bribery failed to persuade the
Sharif, Lawrence threatened him with an Ibn Saud takeover. Lawrence
claimed that “politically and militarily, the survival of Hijaz as a
viable independent Hashemite kingdom was wholly dependent on the
political will of Britain, who had the means to protect and maintain his
rule in the region.” [5] In between negotiating with the Sharif,
Lawrence made the time to visit other leaders in the Arabian peninsula
and informed them that they if they don’t tow the British line and avoid
entering into an alliance with the Sharif, the Empire will unleash Ibn
Saud and his Wahhabis who after all is at Britain’s ‘beck and call’.[6]

Simultaneously, after the Conference, Churchill
travelled to Jerusalem and met with the Sharif’s son, Abdullah, who had
been made the ruler, “Emir”, of a new territory called “Transjordan.”
Churchill informed Abdullah that he should persuade “his father to
accept the Palestine mandate and sign a treaty to such effect,” if not
“the British would unleash Ibn Saud against Hijaz.”[7] In the meantime
the British were planning to unleash Ibn Saud on the ruler of Ha’il, Ibn
Rashid.

Ibn Rashid had rejected all overtures from the
British Empire made to him via Ibn Saud, to be another of its
puppets.[8] More so, Ibn Rashid expanded his territory north to the new
mandated Palestinian border as well as to the borders of Iraq in the
summer of 1920. The British became concerned that an alliance maybe
brewing between Ibn Rashid who controlled the northern part of the
peninsula and the Sharif who controlled the western part. More so, the
Empire wanted the land routes between the Palestinian ports on the
Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf under the rule of a friendly
party. At the Cairo Conference, Churchill agreed with an imperial
officer, Sir Percy Cox that “Ibn Saud should be ‘given the opportunity
to occupy Hail.’”[9] By the end of 1920, the British were showering Ibn
Saud with “a monthly ‘grant’ of £10,000 in gold, on top of his monthly
subsidy. He also received abundant arms supplies, totalling more than
10,000 rifles, in addition to the critical siege and four field guns”
with British-Indian instructors.[10] Finally, in September 1921, the
British unleashed Ibn Saud on Ha’il which officially surrendered in
November 1921. It was after this victory the British bestowed a new
title on Ibn Saud. He was no longer to be “Emir of Najd and Chief of its
Tribes” but “Sultan of Najd and its Dependencies”. Ha’il had dissolved
into a dependency of the Empire’s Sultan of Najd.

If the Empire thought that the Sharif, with Ibn Saud
now on his border and armed to the teeth by the British, would finally
become more amenable to the division of Arabia and the British Zionist
colonial project in Palestine they were short lived. A new round of
talks between Abdulla’s son, acting on behalf of his father in
Transjordan and the Empire resulted in a draft treaty accepting Zionism.
When it was delivered to the Sharif with an accompanying letter from
his son requesting that he “accept reality”, he didn’t even bother to
read the treaty and instead composed a draft treaty himself rejecting
the new divisions of Arabia as well as the Balfour Declaration and sent
it to London to be ratified![11]

Ever since 1919 the British had gradually decreased
Hussain’s subsidy to the extent that by the early 1920’s they had
suspended it, while at the same time continued subsidising Ibn Saud
right through the early 1920’s.[12] After a further three rounds of
negotiations in Amman and London, it dawned on the Empire that Hussain
will never relinquish Palestine to Great Britain’s Zionist project or
accept the new divisions in Arab lands.[13]In March 1923, the British
informed Ibn Saud that it will cease his subsidy but not without
awarding him an advance ‘grant’ of £50,000 upfront, which amounted to a
year’s subsidy.[14]

In March 1924, a year after the British awarded the
‘grant’ to Ibn Saud, the Empire announced that it had terminated all
discussions with Sharif Hussain to reach an agreement.[15] Within weeks
the forces of Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers began to administer
what the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon called the “final kick”
to Sharif Hussain and attacked Hijazi territory.[16] By September 1924,
Ibn Saud had overrun the summer capital of Sharif Hussain, Ta’if. The
Empire then wrote to Sharif’s sons, who had been awarded kingdoms in
Iraq and Transjordan not to provide any assistance to their besieged
father or in diplomatic terms they were informed “to give no countenance
to interference in the Hedjaz”.[17] In Ta’if, Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis
committed their customary massacres, slaughtering women and children as
well as going into mosques and killing traditional Islamic scholars.[18]
They captured the holiest place in Islam, Mecca, in mid-October 1924.
Sharif Hussain was forced to abdicate and went to exile to the Hijazi
port of Akaba. He was replaced as monarch by his son Ali who made Jeddah
his governmental base. As Ibn Saud moved to lay siege to the rest of
Hijaz, the British found the time to begin incorporating the northern
Hijazi port of Akaba into Transjordan. Fearing that Sharif Hussain may
use Akaba as a base to rally Arabs against the Empire’s Ibn Saud, the
Empire let it be known that in no uncertain terms that he must leave
Akaba or Ibn Saud will attack the port. For his part, Sharif Hussain
responded that he had,

Sharif Hussain was forced out of Akaba, a port he
had liberated from the Ottoman Empire during the ‘Arab Revolt’, on the
18th June 1925 on HMS Cornflower.

Ibn Saud had begun his siege of Jeddah in January
1925 and the city finally surrendered in December 1925 bringing to an
end over 1000 years of rule by the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants. The
British officially recognised Ibn Saud as the new King of Hijaz in
February 1926 with other European powers following suit within weeks.
The new unified Wahhabi state was rebranded by the Empire in 1932 as the
“Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” (KSA). A certain George Rendel, an officer
working at the Middle East desk at the Foreign Office in London, claimed
credit for the new name.

On the propaganda level, the British served the
Wahhabi takeover of Hijaz on three fronts. Firstly, they portrayed and
argued that Ibn Saud’s invasion of Hijaz was motivated by religious
fanaticism rather than by British imperialism’s geo-political
considerations.[20] This deception is propounded to this day, most
recently in Adam Curtis’s acclaimed BBC “Bitter Lake”
documentary, whereby he states that the “fierce intolerant vision of
wahhabism” drove the “beduins” to create Saudi Arabia.[21] Secondly, the
British portrayed Ibn Saud’s Wahhabi fanatics as a benign and
misunderstood force who only wanted to bring Islam back to its purest
form.[22] To this day, these Islamist jihadis are portrayed in the most
benign manner when their armed insurrections is supported by Britain and
the West such as 1980’s Afghanistan or in today’s Syria, where they are
referred to in the western media as “moderate rebels.”
Thirdly, British historians portray Ibn Saud as an independent force
and not as a British instrument used to horn away anyone perceived to be
surplus to imperial requirements. For example, Professor Eugene Rogan’s
recent study on the history on Arabs claims that “Ibn Saud had no
interest in fighting” the Ottoman Empire. This is far from accurate as
Ibn Saud joined the war in 1915. He further disingenuously claims that
Ibn Saud was only interested in advancing “his own objectives” which
fortuitously always dovetailed with those of the British Empire.[23]

In conclusion, one of the most overlooked aspects of
the Balfour Declaration is the British Empire’s commitment to “use
their best endeavours to facilitate” the creation of “a national home
for the Jewish people”. Obviously, many nations in the world today were
created by the Empire but what makes Saudi Arabia’s borders distinctive
is that its northern and north-eastern borders are the product of the
Empire facilitating the creation of Israel. At the very least the
dissolution of the two Arab sheikhdoms of Ha’il and Hijaz by Ibn Saud’s
Wahhabis is based in their leaders’ rejection to facilitate the British
Empire’s Zionist project in Palestine.

Therefore, it is very clear that the British
Empire’s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the
geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia. There is further irony in
the fact that the two holiest sites in Islam are today governed by the
Saudi clan and Wahhabi teachings because the Empire was laying the
foundations for Zionism in Palestine in the 1920s. Contemporaneously, it
is no surprise that both Israel and Saudi Arabia
are keen in militarily intervening on the side of “moderate rebels”
i.e. jihadis, in the current war on Syria, a country which covertly and
overtly rejects the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

As the United States, the ‘successor’ to the British
Empire in defending western interests in the Middle East, is perceived
to be growing more hesitant in engaging militarily in the Middle East,
there is an inevitability that the two nations rooted in the Empire’s
Balfour Declaration, Israel and Saudi Arabia, would develop a more overt
alliance to defend their common interests.

Notes

[1] Gary Troeller, “The Birth of Saudi Arabia” (London: Frank Cass, 1976) pg.91.

[2] Askar H. al-Enazy, “ The Creation of Saudi
Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927” (London:
Routledge, 2010), pg. 105-106.

[3] ibid., pg. 109.

[4] ibid., pg.111.

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid.

[7] ibid., pg 107.

[8] ibid., pg. 45-46 and pg.101-102.

[9] ibid., pg.104.

[10] ibid.

[11] ibid., pg. 113.

[12] ibid., pg.110 and Troeller, op. cit., pg.166.

[13] al-Enazy op cit., pg.112-125.

[14] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg.120.

[15] ibid., pg.129.

[16] ibid., pg. 106 and Troeller op. cit., 152.

[17] al-Enazy, op. cit., pg. 136 and Troeller op. cit., pg.219.

[18] David Howarth, “The Desert King: The Life of
Ibn Saud” (London: Quartet Books, 1980), pg. 133 and Randall Baker,
“King Husain and the Kingdom of Hejaz” (Cambridge: The Oleander Press,
1979), pg.201-202.

[19] Quoted in al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 144.

[20] ibid., pg. 138 and Troeller op. cit., pg. 216.

[21]In the original full length BBC iPlayer version this segment begins towards the end at 2 hrs 12 minutes 24 seconds.

[22] al-Enazy op. cit., pg. 153.

[23] Eugene Rogan, “The Arabs: A History”, (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pg.220.