fbpx
 
Home / News, Videos & Publications / News / Social Sciences & Humanities /

British Intelligence in the Middle East

British Intelligence in the Middle East

September 22, 2015

Social Sciences & Humanities

TLV1 — Prof. Meir Zamir, a Middle East scholar at BGU’s Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy, recently spoke with TLV1 radio about his new book.

Published by Routledge, The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948 examines how intelligence, especially covert political action and clandestine diplomacy, played a key role in Britain’s Middle East policy.

meir-zamir-bookIn the interview, Prof. Zamir discusses how small groups of political renegades attempted to subvert official British government policy in order to preserve a British presence in the Middle East, mainly by provoking an Arab revolt on the newly formed State of Israel.

Prof. Zamir was able to write this book after uncovering previously secret documents in France’s archives, detailing Britain’s clandestine plans.

“We can now, with the help of the Syrian and British documents [found in] the French intelligence report, which was following all of this, we can actually establish the whole process of the British intelligence conspiracy from July 1947 to May 1948,” Prof. Zamir says.

It was David Ben-Gurion himself who suspected elements in the British government were not being completely forthright about their intentions, and this, Zamir explains, went a long way in finally curtailing their plans.

“If you try to find out why the British conspiracy didn’t work out, it’s because Ben-Gurion and some close associates were very much aware,” he says.

Listen to the full podcast on the TLV1 website >>