The Israeli Connection is an interesting book that sheds light on the unlikely
partnership a nation struggling for survival forms. However, the author is indicting the
Israeli military establishment arguing that backing military juntas and dictators that are
gone in fortnight and change their policies on a whim is no way to create a lasting
foreign policy. Middle-East FAOs as well as other area FAO specialists should find
Beit-Hallahmi's work an interesting read.
Desert Queen, the Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to
Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach. Doubleday Books, New
York. 413 pages, 1996. $27.50.
The Janet and John Wallach are both free-lance writers who together have written
three books on the Middle-East that primarily focus the Palestinian and Israeli conflict.
Desert Queen is the biography of one of the most important shapers of modern Middle-East history who receives little attention because of her gender. Gertrude Bell like T.E.
Lawrence longed for the open expanse of the desert, of its solitude and the tribes that
made up the Arabian Peninsula. Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell began their
Arabian adventure through archeology and discovering the untouched regions of
Central Arabia called the Najd. I enjoyed the book because the Najd is where I spent
my childhood and reading the pages of the tribes of Arabia, I could easily see the faces
and wise men my grandfather used to introduce me to during our trips to the desert.
Gertrude Bell unlike Lawrence of Arabia would go on to be a prolific author and an
architect of the Arab Revolt on which T.E. Lawrence found fame executing the plans
laid out by Gertrude, Percy Cox and General Allenby during World War I.
On the outbreak of World War I and Ottoman Turkey's alliance with Germany,
people who wandered the desert, spoke Arabic and traveled extensively through Arabia
became prime of paramount military value. The Turkish Army with its bases in Syria
and Arabia threatened England's access to the Suez Canal in Egypt and her empire in
India and Eastern Asia. Gertrude after being held captive by the Bin Rashid tribe and
her interaction with fierce tribes like the Howeitat, Shammar, and Anazeh reported to
the British Consul in Constantinople that the Ottoman grip on the Arabian tribes was
loosening. She also reported that the Bin Rashids a tribe supported by the Ottomans
were self-destructing with murderous plots for power and inter-family rivalry leaving the
oldest leader of the tribe a mere seventeen years of age. The Ibn-Saud the arch-enemy of the Rashids had allied themselves with the British and tribes of Islamic
radicals taking over vast tracts of central Arabia and finally vanquishing the Rashids in
their capital of Hayil. Growing up in the region, I am familiar with the geography of
Arabia, yet my main criticism of the book is that there are no detailed maps of the
region and which areas is controlled by what tribe. It was in this atmosphere that
Gertrude along with British diplomats and military planners concocted the Arab Revolt.
Using the discontent of the tribes against the Ottoman Turks, the British through
Lawrence of Arabia where able to occupy 40 Turkish army divisions in a vain effort to
subdue Arabia. These divisions lessened the Ottoman impact to contribute to the
German and Austrian alliance against Britain and France.
After the war Gertrude Bell made many enemies within the British government as
she pressed on for Arab rights and was instrumental in carving out modern Iraq from
the remnants of the defeated Ottomans. She went on to advise, live and die in Iraq,
committing suicide in 1926 at the age of fifty-eight. She would miss the demise of the
monarchy she helped create in Baghdad, that involved a bloody military coup de'etat in
1958. Her gravesite is still in Baghdad.
What is extraordinary about Gertrude Bell is as a woman, she traveled the
treacherous deserts of Arabia, Syria and Iraq earning the reputation Daughter of the
Desert, Queen of the Desert and being named an honorary man by one tribe. The Arab
tribes accepted her as an equal and she was valuable because like T. E. Lawrence she
did not shy away from telling her superiors what she thought when it came to Middle-East affairs. Also unlike many colonial administrators and military men who had nothing
but contempt for anything not British. Gertrude Bell had a healthy respect for the local
customs and traditions of the Bedouin, Druze and Turks that allowed her to observe
their strengths and weaknesses. Bell's description of the desert as quiet, unlike the
mountains or forests of Europe is right on the mark.
1999, Foreign Area Officer Association
Springfield,
Virginia
Maintained by LTC Steve
Gotowicki.
http://www.faoa.org
