Gertrude Bell and the loss of Greater Syria. Posted in a tread on Huffington Post.

There is a fascinating book called Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, by Georgina Howell.  The book describes Ms. Bells driven goal of creating what is present day Iraq.  At the time there was competition among the British office in India, the Faisal camp, the Hashemite camp, the Mosul/Baghdad faction wanting to join Syria and finally the Cairo branch of the British foreign office and the Zionists all positioning for a final control or influence of the region.  Playing them all against each other Ms Bell almost single handily created Iraq out of shear will.   Intrigues were many and countless careers ruined in opposing Ms Bell.  For a very short time at least two Hashemite brothers were installed as Kings of Iraq and Syria respectfully.  But as you point out French and British intrigue doomed both to failure.  What is most revealing to me in the biography however was, as again both you and I have stated, the Arabs of the region at the time just assumed that with the banishment of the Ottomans that the entire Arab world would be as one.  It must also be mentioned here that at the time the Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Christians, Druze and Jews lived in relative peace throughout the entire Levant and had done so for centuries.   The only division within the Arab world was between the House of Saud and the Hashemites.  As until this time the Hashemites had controlled Mecca and Medina the Sauds did not have the respect nor long term good will of much of the Levant.  The Saudi family driving the Hashemites from Mecca and Medina pretty much sealed the fate of the Saudi's not ruling the entire Arabia/Levant.  Over the course of the next 25 years the UK, France and Zionists worked very hard to even further divide and control the peoples of the Levant.  I again feel that the one true solution to the region is to wind back the clock (to go forward) to the time when the idea of a Greater Syria or perhaps Syriaq now was the overwhelming view of what the Arabs in the Levant had been dreaming for for centuries.