Scholars have begun to explore the role of intelligence officers and diplomats in the struggles for independence and state formation in the early 20th century and during important episodes in the Cold War. However, the bulk of existing accounts focus primarily on American and European narratives and records. By drawing on underutilized multilingual archival sources in Arabic, English, French, and Hebrew, the panel offers a new perspective on the relationships that a handful of intelligence officers built with local actors at critical junctures between World War I and the beginning of the Cold War.
By tracing how information was exchanged between intelligence officers and local political actors, this panel sheds light on untold stories in the history of the modern Middle East and North Africa. These tales allow for a novel understanding of both the tension and harmony between intelligence officials and diplomats in the field, as well as among intelligence officials, diplomats, and local political actors. Importantly, by giving voice to local political actors, the panel provides a much more comprehensive account of the history of the modern Middle East, that is often left untold in state-centric narratives.
Paper one investigates the attempted sale of the Western Wall by Cemal Pasha in 1915, explaining why Pasha made this offer to Zionist leaders. The paper will also address the secretive correspondence between Zionist leaders in the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and America. By shedding light on evidence in the Central Zionist Archives, this paper explains why this important juncture in the Zionist historiography has not received attention.
Paper two examines how the administration of waqf endowments in the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon evolved as a site of production of state surveillance capacity, and the role of a francophone Syrian Jewish agent in managing the relationship between local Muslim and Christian leaders and the French waqf administration.
Paper three focuses on how two American intelligence officers created back channels with political actors in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to end the Lebanese Civil War of 1958. Drawing on untapped intelligence and diplomatic records in Arabic, English, and French, this paper sheds light on an untold story of diplomacy and war during the Lebanese civil war weeks before American intervention in July 1958.
The political crisis and later turned armed insurrection in Lebanon in 1958 is still one of the most significant episodes in the history of modern Lebanon. While scholars have focused on the American intervention in Lebanon in mid-July 1958 and how this event paved the way for ending the civil war, there is little scholarship on attempts by American intelligence officers and diplomats to bring an end to the civil war weeks before American intervention. Drawing on untapped intelligence and diplomatic records in Arabic, English, and French, this paper sheds light on how two American intelligence officers created back channels with political actors in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon to end the Lebanese Civil War of 1958. Recently declassified records reveal that these back channels had an impact on diplomatic relations between Egypt, the United States, and Lebanon. This paper argues for a novel understanding of the Lebanon Crisis of 1958 through the lens of key intelligence officers, intelligence agencies, and recently declassified records. By bringing in new memoirs and interviews with participants in the events of 1958 in Lebanon, this paper will also explain why a handful of officials in the pro-Western Chamoun regime in Lebanon rejected the political settlement that was offered by American intelligence officers and their Egyptian counterparts.
On the 17th November 1915 Arthur Ruppin, head of the Zionist Office in Jaffa, wrote to Richard Lichtheim, the representative of the Zionist Executive in Istanbul, telling him that Cemal Pasha, the military governor of Syria and Palestine, made a quite irresistible offer to sell the area in front of the Western Wall in order to dismantle the nearly 30 houses owned by Moroccans and create a space ‘reserved for the prayers of the Jewish people and the rest could be turned into a public garden.’ Since the mid-19th century wealthy European Jews tried to purchase the same area from the Ottomans but to no avail. The reasons for a denial were different but things did not change even under the British. With the establishment of the Mandate for Palestine and the support given to the Jews with the Balfour Declaration, Zionist leaders were expecting to be able to turn the area of the Wailing Wall into an open space in order to highlight the sacredness of the sites for the Jews. The British, however, wary of the potential for conflict between Arabs and Jews over this site, turned down Zionist offers. Obviously after the riots occurred in 1929 any possibility to acquire the Western Wall or to convert the Maghrebi quarter into a plaza was postponed. While history unfolded, plans were only postponed and if the war of 1948 was certainly seen as a setback as the Old City was in Jordanian hands, the war of 1967 gave the Jews, by now Israelis, the chance to execute a plan had been in the making for a long time.
This paper will discuss the offer made by Cemal Pasha – addressing also the reasons for this offer - through the intensive correspondence between a number of Zionist leaders based in the Ottoman Empire, Germany and America and the possible reasons for their refusal. More importantly the paper will address the question of secrecy as the individuals involved took an oath not to ever discuss this business. As a result the only evidence available was in a neglected file at the Central Zionist Archives. This paper will briefly offer a literature review suggesting that this event had been discarded by traditional scholars as the refusal could have been a source of embarrassment, division among Zionists and it could have challenged the linear Zionist historical narrative.
The 1920-1946 French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon facilitated the expansion and development of existing and novel state powers and capacities in the territory under its authority. Historians have increasingly emphasized the role of the Mandate state administration in centralizing provision of public goods and social services and the development of police and military power. Less attention has been paid to role of local institutions, particularly waqf, as a site of the production of state capacity related to surveillance and human intelligence gathering.
This paper examines the understudied role of pious endowment property - waqf - as a key site for the production of sophisticated state capacities related to surveillance and intelligence gathering through the lens of Jamil Sasson, a Damascene Jew employed in the French Mandate administration’s Contrôle des Wakfs.
A more fulsome account of the Mandate is impossible without careful consideration of the working lives and personal contexts of the people who worked in its administration. The Mandate employee personnel files contain the sort of granular and unconventional information ranging from performance reviews to travel reimbursement requests that provides intimate and revealing glimpses into working life in the Mandate administration. These insights illuminate the ways that state surveillance functioned beyond the formal police and security services, the extent to which French rule was built and sustained through negotiation and participation with local individuals and institutions at all levels, and the vital role of local interlocutors (other than Christians and Muslims) played.
