This is one of the roots of the Middle East conflict: the British offered Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca Arab self governance if they would revolt against the Ottomans -- and gave them help in the person of T.E. Lawrence. Then agreed with their French buddies (Sykes-Picot) on how they will split up the region. The Syrian civil war can easily be traced back to this agreement. Then, to crown this all, the British issued the Balfour Declaration where they promised Palestine to the Zionist movement.
That said that Israeli-Arab conflict is just a drop in the sea of middle eastern conflicts, if you could remove Israel today with a press of switch it's not like the entire region would magically re-align itself and become peaceful.
Iraq and Iran didn't go into a war because of Israel, Saddam didn't invade Kuwait because of Israel, Lebanon didn't had a bloody civil war because of Israel, Iraq and Turkey haven't bombed the Kurds into submission for 60 years because of Israel, Iran and the Gulf states are not currently at a brink of war because of Israel, and ISIS for sure isn't there because of Israel.
Like it or not Israel is more of a stabilizing force in the Middle east these days than a disruptive one, Jordan and Egypt are functional more or less due to their tenuous but peaceful relations and continuous cooperation with Israel, the Gulf States have been trading with Israel for decades now and their relations are becoming more and more public with Israel going as far as opening an "unofficial diplomatic office" in the UAE
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/world/middleeast/israel-to...
The overall sentiment of the many middle class and higher educated Arabs is that their leaders should be more "like" Israel rather than continue to blame Israel for everything under the sun.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not pretty but lets put it into perspective over the past ~70 years the total casualties amount to less than 30,000 at about 3 to 1 ratio, even if we go as far as over 150 years and include the pogroms and the Arab revolts of the 19th century we still arrive at about 100-110,000 casualties with about the same ratio of 3 to 1.
If put this into perspective the Syrian civil war has had more casualties than the entire Jewish/Israeli-Arab conflict since the middle of the 19th century, and the casualties of Aleppo alone amount to more deaths than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Israel's inception.
Go read Lawrence's book, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom!
If it were only a travelogue, it would be worth reading. But it's also the personal story of a low ranking man saw the solution to the impossible, and got nations and cultures working together to bring down an empire. The book has more derring-do and adventure than could fit into a summer blockbuster. And everything seen through with, Lawrence's quiet, reflective, selfless, "strange" personality.
Amazon sold me the Kindle version for $0.99 but doesn't show a matched narration for $3.50. They want to charge me $9.95 and https://www.amazon.com/gp/audible/matchmaker doesn't bring up an option.
The headline is a tad hyperbolic. Notably, there was one area where Lawrence proooobably was, uh, stretching the truth (for good reason): he insisted that the Arabs had sneaked some ninja division into taking Damascus "first." This account isn't shared by anyone else and would imply these Arabs took the city, then retreated, then came back later or something.
Why would Lawrence fudge here? Well, this will seem very quaint to modern eyes, but apparently there was a bias toward "whoever did the work gets the spoils" back then. If the British army took Damascus then it was theirs to distribute as they saw fit, if it was a combined British/Arab force then it'd be a little different. This is ludicrous since there's a unified commander-in-chief who is British who can pick whichever army they like to have the honor of entering the city first. Anyway, Lawrence was exaggerating the date where the Arab troops arrived to try and get them some of the glory & responsibility afterward, since he was considerably more pro-Arab independence than some of the other Brits.
It's a silly issue since the Turks had basically lost regardless and who cares which army enters first, of course.
Less than you'd think; it was a non-standard gauge railroad that didn't go anywhere the Sa'udis cared about -- they needed railways connecting their ports to the interior, so spending the money on a Madinah to Jordan line didn't make sense. KSA has invested a massive amount of money on rail lines, but the north-south track is a recent development. Plus, Land Rovers don't care if you have to go over a few kilometers of damaged road, and fuel is unsurprisingly cheap. And if you don't want to drive, there's a lot of airports.
Those are just the most obvious evidence they chose to highlight in a brief article.
If they examined dozens of sites and found physical evidence that fully supports Lawrence's accounts, and no evidence that is inconsistent with those accounts, that's pretty persuasive. After all if Lawrence made his accounts up, you'd expect it wouldn't take long to find discrepancies between his inventions and the real geography of the locations and physical evidence.
I watched a documentary about Lawrence and some journalists visiting some of the sites including the Hallat Ammar attack. In the book Lawrence describes the attack being launched from a ridge (IIRC) 100m from the railway line. They found the ridge, but the railway line was 300m away, too far to be in effective rifle range. But then examining the site more carefully, they found that while the modern railway line was 300m away, the old WW1 era line had become buried with sand and was actually about 100m from the ridge.
It's been a very long time since I read SPOW. It's not always an easy read, but full of character and wonderfully evocative. Lawrence clearly loved and appreciated Arab culture. He gave accounts of their camp fire stories and humour for example, but didn't flinch from describing and discussing some of the uncomfortable aspects of the customs and behaviour he encountered.
"Professor Nicholas Saunders said: "The bullet we found came from a Colt automatic pistol, the type of gun known to be carried by Lawrence and almost certainly not used by any of the ambush's other participants."
Most likely, yes. An excerpt from a letter by his brother Frank:
"The Colt is a lovely pistol. The more I examine it the more I like it. There is a vast gulf between it and the ordinary revolver.
If you want anything in connection with it which you don’t want to write for I could get it for you. They keep two weights of bullets, I think 200 and 230 grains. The lighter weight has considerably higher velocity and penetrating power, though I suppose less shock."
>This would indicate that both Frank and T. E. had Colt automatics that used the 200 or 230 grain bullets. In 1914 this would have been the .45 caliber Model 1911. (The British also used the Colt 1911 in .455 caliber, but this chambering was not introduced until 1915.)
