NONE of the lands considered in this book were really settled at the end of 1920. It took perhaps another five years for the whole region to become more or less peaceful – and then a huge rebellion in Syria shook the French regime to its foundations. By then Egypt had reached a certain equilibrium, thanks to concessions suggested in the special mission headed by Lord Milner, and High Commissioner Viscount Allenby's insistence that they be implemented. A long tour by Winston Churchill in 1921 promoted local concessions and produced a more or less settled Palestine, though continued British favour towards Zionism predictably produced a major Arab rebellion in the 1930s. This was followed, after Hitler's War, by Zionist terrorism which an exhausted British government decided was not worth fighting. The British pulled out in 1948, finally making use of the mandate by ‘handing it back’ to the United Nations as the League's successor. This of course was followed by several more wars, revolutions, coups d'etat, and conquests. By then the British-French argument over Syria had also been resolved by a new British conquest of the Vichy regime in 1941, followed by British insistence that Syria and Lebanon be recognized as independent states.

By 1948, therefore, all these states were independent, and by 1952 even Egypt had at last rid itself of British forces. But none of these states was left with a stable government regime. Instead they had over-powerful armies, traditions of military coups d'etat and profound (and usually justified) suspicions about the interests and purposes of their neighbours.