THE ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINIAN FLAG
The Gaza-friendly demonstrators on US university campuses and around the world cluster around people carrying the “Palestine flag”…
Do they know the origin of the flag?
It was designed by Sir Mark Sykes, a British Foreign Office official who was the lead architect of Britain’s WWI policy regarding the Ottoman Empire. In 1917 Sykes wanted a flag to symbolize a variant of Arab nationalism that would further official British interests (Flag of the Arab Revolt). These interests were a) maintain shipping and communications with India, b) frustrate French imperial ambitions in the Middle East and c) allow for an oil pipeline to be built between British controlled fields around Kirkuk, Iraq.
Sykes was an overconfident amateur, however he was a minor aristocrat (a baronet), so he got attention and power he didn’t deserve. He never figured how to integrate his half-thought- out schemes with the British commitment to a Jewish state in Palestine. He died of influenza in Paris in 1919.
Sykes is remembered in history as the British name on the British-French “Sykes-Picot Agreement” for dividing up the Middle East. It was a stupid plan that crumbled away. Many, if not most, people who ponder the Middle East think the “Sykes-Picot” screw-up explains all the region’s subsequent problems over the last century (For example, A Line in the Sand by James Barr).
Well, it sure didn’t help. By the way, Sykes’ descendants include twin sisters who are Upper East Side New York socialite/fashionista/author/journalist rich moms - Plum and Lucy Sykes
OK. Across Central Park and up twenty blocks are the progressive-kid-Gaza-sympathetic-Reform-Jewish demonstrators with the flags.
Sykes’ flag design was an unexpected hit over the years with Palestinian nationalists and their allies. But why do they care so much about a relic of British Imperial black propaganda?
Just asking.
Amazing that these two buffoons, Sykes & Picot, could create so much mischief.
Could you let me know the source that Henry Sykes designed the flag?....other sources state it was much later although it looks very similar to the Hashemite/Ali Hussein flag used in the 1916 Arab revolt. Thanks