Harry St. John Philby’s Palestinian Plans 1920–1944

Abstract

In the 20th century, one of the perpetual, unresolved problems of Arab leaders in the Middle East is the Palestinian question. Despite fine rhetoric they are constantly confronted that to this day they have not been able to establish Arab unity on the Palestinian question, or at least achieve that they be seen as equal negotiating partners by the Western powers. Between 1920 and 1940, Harry St. John Philby, a renowned British Arabist, explorer and historian of Arabia, and later an adviser to Ibn Saud, also made an attempt to resolve the issue.1 There are at least as many legends about Philby as there is about Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence, the leader of the Arab uprising,2 and later the confidant of the Emir Feisal ibn Hussein.3 There are also opinions that in the 1930s, Philby circumvented the Iraqi Petroleum Company against the American Socal, persuading Ibn Saud to grant a concession not to the British but to the American oil company, helping to trigger a reorganization of great-power relations in the Middle East.4 Contemporary British diplomats and officials, however, said he was just a careerist rogue. The purpose of my study is to explore the section of Philby’s activities in the Middle East on Palestine and to present the initial Judeo-Arab diplomatic settlement aspirations.