King-Crane Commission - Woodrow Wilson

I 1919 var spørsmålet om hva som skulle skje med områdene i Midt-Østen etter at ottomanene vars slått i 1. verdenskrig et viktig tema.
Man hadde både Balfour-erklæringen og Sykes-Picot-avtalen, og MacMahon-Hussein-korrespondansen.

USA's president Woorow Wilson ville vite hva "de innfødte" mente.
Han ville ha en egen kommisjon for formålet, helst en "Anglo-Fransk".
Men dette ville ikke England og Frankrike, og Wilson satte ned sin egen amerikanske kommisjon
"King-Crane-kommisjonen"

"Britannica" skriver om dette, se Kilde.

"King–Crane Commission, commission appointed at the request of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to determine the attitudes of the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine toward the post-World War I settlement of their territories. The commission, formed when attempts at creating an Anglo-French group failed, was headed by Oberlin (Ohio) College president Henry C. King and Chicago businessman Charles R. Crane. Touring Syria and Palestine between June 10 and July 21, 1919, and soliciting petitions from local inhabitants, the commission found that a vast majority of Arabs favoured an independent Syria, free of any French mandate, and that, of about 1,875 petitions received, 72 percent were hostile to the Zionist plan for a Jewish national home in Palestine. Such findings, coupled with Zionist talk of dispossession of the Arabs, led the commission to advise a serious modification of the Zionist immigration program in Palestine."

Richars Drake, professor i historie ved universitetet i Montana, har denne oppsummeringen om rapporten og den skjebne i sin artikkel fra 10. mai 2014, se Kilde:

"The tragedy of the King-Crane Report lies not in the failure to implement its recommendations, which doubtless contained debatable points, but in taking no notice of the document at all. It remains the best historical source available for understanding Arab concerns about the Middle East in 1919. We live today with the consequences of having ignored the Arabs at that fateful moment."

 

Professor Drakes artikkel må leses av den som vil forstå Israel-Palestina-konflikten.

Skudeneshavn  23. april 2024

 

Jan Marton Jensen

Kilde:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%E2%80%93Crane_Commission 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/King-Crane-Commission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon%E2%80%93Hussein_Correspondence

10. mai 2014
Professor Richard Drake
https://www.wrmea.org/2014-june-july/the-hope-and-ultimate-tragedy-of-the-1919-king-crane-report.html