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2 Blair's well-trodden road
to Damascus By Ronan Thomas
LONDON - Former British prime minister
Tony Blair has just begun his new role as Middle
East envoy for the Quartet group - the United
States, the United Nations, the European Union and
Russia - seeking to broker peace between Israel
and Palestine. From the fractured situation in
Gaza to the wider issues of land rights in the
West Bank, Israeli security guarantees and the
bolstering of Palestinian capabilities, his will
be an ambitious appeal to a largely skeptical
audience. As ever in the Middle
East,
the road ahead will be pitted with obstacles,
historical and emotional.
Ninety years
ago, another Briton took a more hands-on approach
to the Middle East. Gaza, former Palestine and
Syria were in turmoil, at the hands of one of
Britain's finest generals. The legacy he
bequeathed for the Middle East was profound.
Waging a lightning campaign from October 1917 to
November 1918, based on mechanization and
mobility, he in effect extinguished 600 years of
Ottoman Turkish rule from Gaza to Damascus. Even
today, from Beirut to Tel Aviv, street names and a
crucial land crossing between Jordan and Israel
still recall his achievements. His name: General
Edmund Allenby (1861-1936). While his maverick
subordinate T E Lawrence was leading the Arab
Revolt, in 1917 General Allenby's aims were larger
- the fall of the Ottoman Empire itself.
From the first, Allenby had built a
formidable military reputation, identified early
on by General Herbert Kitchener as a rising star.
His abilities were first evident as a cavalry
commander in the Boer War (1899-1902). Tall and
powerfully built, his flashes of temper and
obsession with detail became legendary in the
British Army prior to World War I. Ripe for
caricature, he was nevertheless one of Britain's
most able generals, then or since. Nicknamed "The
Bull" by subordinates, he inspired respect and
fear in equal measure. Each time he left his
headquarters, nervous junior officers telegraphed
each other the Morse letters BBL ("Bloody Bull
Loose").
With the outbreak of World War I
in August 1914, Allenby went straight to the
western front. After battle experience in Flanders
and on the Somme in 1916, he took command of the
British 3rd Army, planning and executing the major
offensive at Arras in April 1917. The offensive
achieved mixed success and Allenby's performance
was criticized by army commander Sir Douglas Haig.
In turn, Allenby's supporters argued that his
tactics were sound. Whatever the doubts, London
eventually concluded that he was an ideal choice
to take charge of the deteriorating situation in
the Middle East. Allenby was destined for the
campaign against the Turks in Palestine.
Assuming command of the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force in Cairo in June 1917, his
robust command style reaped early benefits. He
ordered the relocation of British General
Headquarters from Cairo to Rafah, hard by the
British forward positions facing Gaza. He visited
every unit under his command, rapidly gaining the
confidence of all ranks in the process.
Allenby's strategic remit in the Middle
East - set for him by prime minister David Lloyd
George - was challenging: nothing less than the
capture of Jerusalem and the removal of Turkey as
a viable German ally in Palestine. By mid-1917,
the British situation in the Middle East was
critical. Costly failures at Gallipoli in 1915 and
Kut, Mesopotamia, in 1916 had stymied early
British victory. Turkish forces with German
commanders were proving a successful combination.
T E Lawrence's 1917 Arab Revolt, with irregular
cavalry and saboteurs disrupting Turkish lines of
communication, was an irritant but no more to
Constantinople and Berlin. Even Lawrence's
inspired capture of the Red Sea port of Aqaba was
little more than a sideshow.
Allenby
quickly assessed the situation. He ordered
preparations for a massive assault toward
Jerusalem via Gaza and Beersheba, with the aim of
driving the Turks back northward, out of Palestine
and Syria altogether. After the slow progress made
in Mesopotamia throughout 1916 and 1917, he wanted
a decisive British victory in the Middle East. He
believed he was the man destined in history to
achieve it.
From Gaza to Armageddon The first target was Gaza. Allenby was well
aware of Gaza's status in history as the gateway
to Palestine. At Rafah he pored over historical
studies: the defeat of the Philistines by the
Chaldean Babylonians in 604 BC; Crusader victories
and setbacks between 1099 and 1270; the campaigns
of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. Then he planned the
offensive in detail with a gimlet eye.
The
plan envisaged an initial probing, diversionary
attack on Turkish defenses along the coast to Gaza
and beyond. This would be followed by a full-scale
mobile assault, including tanks and air power, on
Beersheba, 50 kilometers to the southeast. It was
a truly innovative approach. Like other British
generals with grueling experience of the western
front by late 1917, Allenby favored a war of
movement. With Gaza taken, Lawrence's peerless
Arab cavalry would launch pinprick raids to hamper
Turkish logistics and communications as they
retreated. Finally, the plan called for a classic
battle of envelopment and annihilation. Mobile
forces of the Desert Mounted Corps would race
round the Turkish flank to surround them as they
fell back further into Palestine.
It was a
plan strikingly similar to the whirlwind assault
carried out by US General Norman Schwarzkopf
against the Iraqi Army during Operation Desert
Storm in 1991. And deception was key to Allenby's
plan. The Turks were allowed to discover fake
plans of attack weeks in advance.
On
October 31, 1917, the offensive began. After an
artillery bombardment, the British XX and XXI
Infantry Corps advanced along the coast toward
Gaza. At the same moment, an entire division of
Australian cavalry (supported by an incredible
30,000 camels) advanced at night across the desert
to Beersheba. A sharp machine-gun battle occurred,
but the Australians captured Beersheba - and its
water supply - intact.
The attack was
fully integrated. Mobile Royal Horse Artillery
units shelled the retreating Turks with
18-pounders; Royal Engineer units used
trench-bridging equipment to cross Turkish
defensive lines; Royal Signals units tapped into
the Turks' own telegraph network and used it
against them. Like today's reconnaissance
helicopters, motorcycle dispatch riders growled
between the advancing infantry and cavalry
echelons, observing and carrying order changes.
Biplanes from the Royal Flying Corps buzzed
overhead harrying the Turks as their general
retreat began. Heavy artillery pounded isolated
groups of the enemy east of Gaza. The Ottoman Army
had little answer to the mechanized onslaught.
Communications between the Turkish
commanders and their German counterparts - led by
General Erich von Falkenhayn - faltered and then
collapsed. By November 9, 1917, Allenby's
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