{"id":47366,"date":"2019-07-22T07:01:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T12:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47366"},"modified":"2019-07-22T07:01:07","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T12:01:07","slug":"what-the-latest-secret-government-file-tells-us-about-uk-middle-east-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47366","title":{"rendered":"What the latest secret government file tells us about UK Middle East policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What the latest secret government file tells us about UK Middle East policy<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"What<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0British government is\u00a0refusing\u00a0<\/a>to release a 1941 file on Palestine, as it might \u201cundermine the security\u201d of Britain and its citizens. Why would a 78-year-old document be seen as so sensitive in 2019?\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One plausible reason is that it could embarrass the British government in its relations with Israel and Iraq<\/a>, and may concern a long but hidden theme in British foreign policy: creating false pretexts for military intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Colonial Office document, at the National Archives in London, was uncovered by journalist Tom Suarez<\/a> and concerns the \u201cactivities of the Grand Mufti [Haj Amin al-Husseini] of Jerusalem\u201d in 1940-41.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the assassination of Lewis Andrews, British district commissioner for Galilee, in September 1937, the British Government\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0al-Husseini from his post as president of the Supreme Muslim Council and decided to arrest all members of the Arab Higher Committee, including Husseini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He took refuge in the Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), fled to Jaffa and then Lebanon, and ended up in Iraq, where he played a role in the Iraqi national anti-British movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spent the Second World War moving between Berlin and Rome and took part in the propaganda war against Britain and France through Arabic radio broadcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A plan \u2018to clip the mufti\u2019s wings\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 1941, nationalist army officers known as the Golden Square staged a coup in Iraq, overthrowing the pro-British regime, and signalled they were prepared to work with German and Italian intelligence. In response, the British embarked on a military campaign and eventually crushed the coup leaders two months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Suarez discovered in the files that the British were already wanting such a \u201cmilitary occupation of Iraq\u201d by November 1940 \u2013 well before the Golden Square coup gave them a pretext for doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What the latest secret government file tells us about UK Middle East policy The\u00a0British government is\u00a0refusing\u00a0to release a 1941 file on Palestine, as it might \u201cundermine the security\u201d of Britain and its citizens. Why would a 78-year-old document be seen as so sensitive in 2019?\u00a0 One plausible reason is that it could embarrass the British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[22654,522,20389,2080],"class_list":["post-47366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-mark-curtis","tag-middle-east","tag-true-publica","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47367,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47366\/revisions\/47367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}