San Remo: The Middle East’s Most Important Treaty You Never Heard Of

You’ve probably heard of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 or the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947. But chances are you haven’t heard of The Treaty of San Remo, created in 1920 which radically transformed the Middle East and sowed the seeds of conflict that reverberate to this very day.

A year and half after the end of World War I, the victorious Allied Powers convened at a villa in northern Italy to decide the fate of the defeated Ottoman Empire and redraw the map of the Middle East, which had been part of that empire. The result of this conference was The Treaty of San Remo which was signed on April 24, 1920.

The Treaty of San Remo redrew the map of the region, creating several new nation states, and also sowed the seeds of long-standing geopolitical conflicts. The decision to grant Britain the mandate over Palestine, in particular, had profound consequences.

The Background

At the heart of the Treaty was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied Powers, including Britain, France, Italy, and Japan (with American diplomats present as observers), convened to discuss the post-war division of the Ottoman territories. The outcome of this conference shaped the political boundaries of the Middle East and laid the foundation for the establishment of many of the nation-states, with the League of Nations overseeing the mandates entrusted to specific European powers.

After the resolution on 25 April 1920, standing outside Villa Devachan, from left to right: Japan’s Matsui, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, Earl Curzon, French diplomat Philippe Berthelot, Prime Minister Millerand, Vittorio Scialoja, Italian Prime Minister Nitti

The British Empire emerged from World War I as a major player in the Middle East, and the Treaty of San Remo solidified its influence in the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of1916, a secret understanding between Britain and France, had already outlined their intentions for the post-Ottoman division of the region. The San Remo conference brought these plans into the public domain and legitimized the British control over Palestine.

One of the most notable outcomes of the treaty was the establishment of the mandate system, which granted certain territories to the control of mandatory powers – Great Britain and France. The League of Nations, the international organization formed after World War I, entrusted Britain and France with the administration of various territories in the Middle East. These mandates laid the groundwork for the creation of several modern states: Iraq gained independence from the British mandate system in 1932 and the French mandate led to the creation of Lebanon in 1943 and Syria in 1946.

In hindsight, it’s clear that the biggest weakness of the mandate system was that the artificial creation of these modern Middle Eastern states was largely based on the political, economic and historical interests of European colonial powers. It did not take into consideration the past history of the region or the religious, tribal or territorial realities of the indigenous populations. The terrible situation that we see today in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq is, in many ways, the direct by-product of the short-sighted decisions made by these European powers 100 years ago.

The British Mandate in Palestine

The British and French may not have done the best job in creating the new Arab states that came into existence post World War I, but they basically followed and fulfilled the decisions made at San Remo. One of its key provisions of the treaty was also the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But that isn’t what happened. It was the consequence of deliberate policies and decisions made by the British government, which will be explained further in this article, that led to Great Britian’s failure to fulfill their obligations, leading to enduring adverse consequences for the establishment of a Jewish state.

The Treaty of San Remo incorporated the principles of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which had expressed British support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine toward the end of World War I. The League of Nations granted Britain the mandate to oversee the administration of Palestine and to implement the provisions of the Balfour Declaration.

Despite the explicit endorsement of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the British Mandate administration failed in this task, largely due to the desire to appease the much larger Arab population of the Middle East. The implementation of policies that hindered Jewish immigration and settlement contradicted the spirit of the mandate. Restrictions on land purchases by Jews and the introduction of quotas for Jewish immigrants limited both the size and development of a thriving Jewish community in Palestine and put the Jews who were there at great risk.

A significant factor contributing to the failure of the British to establish a Jewish state was the creation of Trans-Jordan (present-day Jordan) in 1921. Originally intended as part of the British Mandate for Palestine, Trans-Jordan, which comprised a whopping 73% of the original territory on the East Bank of the Jordan that was earmarked solely for the Jewish state, was carved out and placed under the rule of Emir Abdullah, the brother of Hussein the Hashemite Sharif (ruler) of Mecca. This decision marked a dramatic departure from the commitment to the establishment of a Jewish homeland, as it reduced the territory available for Jewish settlement down to one quarter of the original land set aside at San Remo. The remaining 27% of the territory, on the West Bank of the Jordan, was to be further divided amongst the Jewish and Arab residence of the area, leaving less than 15% of what was originally set aside at San Remo for a tiny Jewish state.

This was not the only British attempt to sabotage their treaty obligations. On the eve of the start of World War II, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939. This British foreign policy statement limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to a mere 75,000 over five years and then called for a complete cessation of all Jewish immigration after five years. The timing couldn’t have been worse. At a time when Jewish refugees desperately sought refuge from the horrors of Nazi persecution and most of the countries of the world had slammed their doors shut, they couldn’t even seek refuge in their historic homeland.

Delegates at the San Remo Conference

Throughout the war, and even after the Holocaust, the British continued their policy of blocking immigration, intercepting boat-loads of refugees and preventing them from entering Palestine. This policy led to the deaths of countless numbers of Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis and also severely compromised the demographic balance in the region and hindered the development of a self-sufficient Jewish state. If not for world pressure and the sympathy generated by the murder of six million Jews, who knows if a Jewish state would have ever come into existence.

The San Remo Conference created the most significant and transformative treaty in the history of the modern Middle East. If the British had fulfilled their obligations, as they and the French had done elsewhere, the history of Israel and Middle East would have likely been very different.