A new book that will be published in Israel claims that former Syrian Prime Minister Jamil Mardam Bey, who served in office in the 1930s and 1940s, was in fact a “double agent” working for France, Britain and Israel.
Author and Israeli researcher, Meir Zamir revealed that Mardam Bey had provided Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion with “information” and warned him that “Britain was planning to thwart the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.”
Zamir’s book, “The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948,” is due to be published in December. Israel’s Haaretz has released excerpts of the book.
Syrian historians in Damascus questioned the timing of the publication of the book and its citation of “Syrian documents”. They also criticized it for “misinterpretation of Mardam Bey’s position in regional alliances during the early 20th Century.”
Zamir is an expert in intelligence affairs and Syrian history. He has garnered attention for reviewing history from the lens of intelligence agencies. He has, since 2010, been publishing research on the role of French intelligence in planting spies in the Syrian government in 1944. He also claimed that Britain succeeded in 1941 in recruiting a large number of Syrian and Lebanese nationalists under the banner of French mandate.
Many of these figures have been commemorated with streets and squares in Syria, said Zamir. They include former Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, who served in office in the 1940s, Mardam Bey, who served as premier for two terms, and former Lebanese Prime Minister Riad al-Solh, who was in office in the 1940s and 1950s.
Zamir said the figures were recruited in exchange for financial rewards or were being extorted. Many agreed to cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies because they believed the West will emerge victorious in World War II. They also believed that Britain would back their personal ambition to rise to power.
Zamir said that the British demanded that the agents agree that their countries come under British or Hashemite rule, and oppose, even if covertly, the French mandate. Britain indeed fulfilled its pledges, but the agents did not, and they reneged on their agreement to its rule.
The Palestinian cause at the time was seen as a “secondary” issue, while the British and French vied for power in the post-WWII Middle East.
“In the summer of 1945, no one was more hated by French officials in Syria and Lebanon than Jamil Mardam Bey,” wrote Zamir in excerpts published by Haaretz. “Intelligence information obtained by France revealed that Mardam Bey, the prime minister of Syria under the French mandate there, had been recruited by Brig. Iltyd Nicholl Clayton, head of MI6 in the Middle East, and by Nuri Sa'id, the Iraqi prime minister.”
“Mardam Bey had also reportedly agreed to a plan whereby Syria, after the expulsion of France from its mandated territories, would unite with Iraq and with Transjordan under the Hashemite family, and Britain – which controlled those two countries – would enjoy hegemony in Damascus as well. For Mardam’s part in what was called the ‘Greater Syria’ plan, he received handsome sums and was promised that he would rule in Syria, under the Hashemite monarch.”
“What happened was that the French decided to exploit the situation for their own purposes and began to blackmail Mardam Bey. They threatened to publish the documents in their possession and to leak the information to his political foes. Mardam Bey ultimately resigned in August 1945 after consulting with his British handlers, but they did not know that he had capitulated to blackmail and had become a double agent,” said Zamir.
“In that period, with the future of the region hanging in the balance, Mardam Bey provided the French with valuable information about the intentions of the British military and intelligence services in the Middle East.”
“But the story doesn’t end there. Research in French and Israeli archives, together with a perusal of Syrian government documents, now shows that the Syrian prime minister was actually handled by a Zionist intelligence agent together with the French. (…) It all began in October 1945, when the French encountered a new problem. Mardam Bey had been appointed Syria’s ambassador to Egypt and its envoy to the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, but the French had a hard time utilizing him there without arousing suspicion. The solution was to recruit Eliahu Sasson for the mission of relaying the information provided by Mardam Bey.”
“Sasson, who was then the head of the Arab division of the Jewish Agency’s political department, had been appointed by Agency head Ben-Gurion in February 1945 to coordinate cooperation with French intelligence. The Syrian-born Sasson knew Mardam Bey and had met with him in 1937, when the latter had served an earlier term as prime minister. The French, who were well acquainted with Sasson and thought highly of his operational capabilities, began to collaborate with him in handling Mardam Bey.”
“The documents show that on November 12, 1945, Sasson met with Mardam Bey in Cairo; he did so again six days later, when Mardam Bey visited Jerusalem as head of an Arab League delegation to arrange Palestinian representation in the League. Following these encounters, Ben-Gurion met with Sasson, and in a diary entry of November 22, related details of the Jewish Agency official’s conversations with Mardam. This is one of the few occasions when Mardam can be identified directly as an intelligence source of Ben-Gurion’s. In the years that followed, both French intelligence and Sasson concealed by various means the fact that Mardam was the source of information, in order not to expose him.
“From July 1945, Ben-Gurion had prepared for the possibility of an attack by the Arab states should the Jewish state declare its independence. But the information from Mardam Bey turned the spotlight elsewhere. Ben-Gurion learned that the immediate threat to the establishment of the Jewish state lay not in an attack by Arab armies, but rather in the plan of British military commanders and intelligence agencies in the Middle East to thwart that development by various other means. These included declaring the Haganah militia a terrorist organization and disarming it, and implementing the Greater Syria plan, under which a limited Jewish entity would be created in Mandatory Palestine, but not an independent state. It was apparently also Mardam Bey who revealed the fact that British intelligence had recruited an agent who was operating in the Jewish Agency and conveying to his superiors information about the discussions being held by the Agency’s leadership, including copies of the minutes of its most secret meetings,” said Zamir.
“According to the information passed on by Mardam Bey, the Arab rulers who were fearful of Soviet intervention had decided to assist the British in the event of an all-out war in the Middle East between the Soviet Union and the West, while London’s policy was to play for time in order to rehabilitate its economy and set relations with the United States on a solid footing. As to the Palestinian question, in deliberations of the Arab League council concern was expressed that ongoing Jewish immigration to Palestine would allow the Haganah to field an army of an estimated 80,000 troops and that ‘we will never be able to match them in preparation and organization, even if the English help us.’ Accordingly, the Arab leaders wanted the British Army to remain in Palestine.
“(…) On July 14, 1946, the British government was compelled to declare that it did not support the Greater Syria project. Nevertheless, the British military and secret services in the Middle East continued their efforts to establish a Hashemite Greater Syria as part of a regional defense alliance against the Soviet threat.”
“The events that occurred in 1946 confirmed the accuracy of the information conveyed by Mardam Bey about British military intentions in Palestine. To begin with, in May of that year Brig. Iltyd Clayton initiated a meeting of the heads of the Arab states at the Inshas Palace in Cairo. The conference’s resolutions asserted for the first time that Zionism constituted a danger not only to the Palestinians but to all the Arab states. A second meeting of the Arab League council was held in June in Bloudan, near Damascus. Some of its resolutions, which were secret, stated that the danger existed of a military confrontation with the Zionist movement, and in that case the Arab states would be duty-bound to assist their Palestinian brethren with money, arms and manpower.”
“Mardam Bey was present at the Bloudan discussions, as was Sasson, who returned thereafter to Jerusalem with the information about the secret resolutions,” said Zamir.
