Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Did the Saudis agree to creating Israel?

So it would seem. I have been reading the World War II diaries of Oliver Harvey, a fairly obscure British diplomat. On Nov. 1, 1941, he wrote that "Weizmann had seen [St. John] Philby, Ibn Saud’s man and a converted Moslem, who had said he believed Ibn Saud would be willing to give Palestine to ...

via Wikimedia
via Wikimedia
via Wikimedia

So it would seem. I have been reading the World War II diaries of Oliver Harvey, a fairly obscure British diplomat. On Nov. 1, 1941, he wrote that "Weizmann had seen [St. John] Philby, Ibn Saud's man and a converted Moslem, who had said he believed Ibn Saud would be willing to give Palestine to the Jews provided that the Jews financed it and H.M.G. [His Majesty's Government -- i.e., the British] backed him."  

So it would seem. I have been reading the World War II diaries of Oliver Harvey, a fairly obscure British diplomat. On Nov. 1, 1941, he wrote that "Weizmann had seen [St. John] Philby, Ibn Saud’s man and a converted Moslem, who had said he believed Ibn Saud would be willing to give Palestine to the Jews provided that the Jews financed it and H.M.G. [His Majesty’s Government — i.e., the British] backed him."  

The notion was that somehow this would be part of a larger Arab federation of Palestine, Jordan and Arabia. I don’t see how they planned to make that work.

Anyway, this all was news to me.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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