Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah have been in London the past few days. On Thursday, they visited the British Library where they viewed the original Balfour Declaration.
That 1917 document – a letter from Britain's foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, a leader in the international Zionist movement – conveyed the message that Britain viewed with favour "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…" This was the first recognition by a Great Power of Zionist aims.
Britain would go on to rule Mandate Palestine following the First World War, leading up to what was expected to be the division of the territory into an Arab State and a Jewish State. The Brits departed on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the 1948-49 Arab-Israel War.
France was the Mandate Power in the territory of Greater Syria to the North of Palestine during roughly the same period of the post-Ottoman era. In this case, things unfolded somewhat differently and the territory has been paying a price ever since.
In the archives of the French Foreign Ministry, there is an important historic document that goes to the heart of the Syrian situation – a 1936 letter to the French prime minister, Leon Blum, from the leaders of the Alawite community (then part of a distinct Alawi territory not included within Syria proper).
In this letter, signed by (among others) Suleiman al-Assad, the grandfather of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Alawi leaders pleaded with France not to include them in the soon-to-be-established state of Syria.
For 16 years, the Alawites, situated in the mountains and coastal area near Latakia, had been kept separate from the rest of Syria to protect them from religious persecution by the area's more dominant Sunni Muslims. Druze and Kurds also had been kept separated as the French initially divided the mandate territory and granted local autonomy to different demographic regions.
By 1936, however, France looked to the end of the mandate and wanted to leave the area as one united Syrian nation that would include groups that are different from one another, as in Europe at that time. The Alawi leaders argued against the idea strenuously.
"The Alawite nation refuses to be annexed to Muslim Syria, because the Islamic religion is thought of as the official religion of the country, and the Alawite nation is thought of as heretical by the Islamic religion," their letter to the French prime minister said. "Therefore we ask you to consider the dreadful and terrible fate that awaits the Alawites if they are forced to be annexed to Syria, when it will be free from the oversight of the Mandate, and it will be in their power to implement the laws that stem from its religion."
The letter went on to say that "If the Mandate is cancelled, the danger of death and destruction will be a threat upon the minorities in Syria, even if the cancellation will decree freedom of thought and freedom of religion."
The French chose not to heed the warning and the rest is history. The state created in 1943 was an amalgam of all groups. The Alawites were persecuted by the majority Sunni population until 1966 when, through the Alawites' rise through the ranks of the military and the Baath party, this minority group, representing perhaps 10 per cent of the population, began to take command of the country.
Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar, director of the nascent Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam at Bar Ilan University, notes the Alawites "have ruled the Muslims since 1966 with a cruel and bloodthirsty iron fist, because they knew well what would happen if the Muslims ruled over them."
And this, he argues, is the crux of Syria's problem. "As a mix of different ethnic groups, Syria has proven to be dysfunctional," he said in an interview last week. No group wants to be ruled by the others, and there are no real protections for minorities from the tyranny of the majority.
"The only solution," he said, "is to divide the country again" along homogeneous tribal lines. "Otherwise, the conflict will never end."
Since 1966, many Alawites have felt comfortable living in the main cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama, but their traditionally safe homeland is in the Ansariyya Mountains east of Latakia. That is where the Alawi territory of 1920-36 was located and it is to there the Alawites are expected to flee should Mr. a-Assad ever fall from power.
Dr. Kedar notes that is also where a great deal of arms and materiel have recently been stored, and to which Russia recently deployed additional troops and armoured vehicles.
The Druze, too, in southern Syria, have always wanted independence. Like the Alawi faith, the Druze religious practices are looked on as heretical by Sunnis. And Druze have sought refuge in the southern Mountain of the Druze, a volcanic region covered with enormous boulders, and in the Golan Heights in the Southwest, now occupied by Israel.
In 1925, France sought to bring the Druze into the Syrian tent. The response was a bloody rebellion that lasted several months. To this day, a statue of the leader of that rebellion, Sultan Basha al-Atrash, on horseback with sword in hand, is found in the central square of every Druze town.
The French pulled back from their initial plan and waited until 1936 to attach the autonomous Druze area to the rest of Syria.
Syria's Kurds, representing about 9 per cent of the population, traditionally hail from the Hasaka region of the north and the northeast, adjacent to Kurdish communities in neighbouring Turkey and Iraq.
Many have moved over the years into Syria's major cities, but a high proportion of Kurds have been refused Syrian citizenship and lack the right to health services and educational facilities.
During the fighting in the current civil war, Kurds have succeeded in establishing secure zones in their traditional homeland area and cling to the belief that they will be separate from Syria in the future.
There is no way these three groups – Alawites, Druze and Kurds – should be forced back into a monolithic Syria, argues Dr. Kedar, especially one run by the majority Sunni Muslims.
It brings to mind the situation in Yugoslavia after the rule of the strongman Tito and the breakup of the country that followed years of fighting. Perhaps it's not such a bad idea for Syria, too.