I bought Barr's book and I painfully am reading it. It is long, detailed, and complicated. It tells the seventy years of English (and French) conflict in the Middle East to divide the Turkish possessions after WWI. The English intelligence officer, the faintly feminine T.E. Lawrence created the Arab national movement (paying off lots of gold) which twenty years later the Brits had to put down (more gold and 100,000 "rations" = soldiers). They still subsidize the Kingdom of Jordan, to keep Lawrence's promise of a kingdom for Faisal and Abdullah.
It is rather surprising the difficulties of the British (and French) armies in eliminating irregular Arab forces in Syria, Lebanon, and of course Palestine. Israel, once established, fought against the same forces and, apparently without too much effort, Ariel Sharon (*) conquered Beirut in two days and we ruled South Lebanon for a decade. I don't know the secret but we are different.
(*) and moi. I was there.
Commenter TIM in Amazon resumes: None of the actors come out of this well. The squabbling, fading empires of France and Britain are at the heart of it all, both obsessed with maintaining their place in the world at the expense of the Arabs. The Arabs themselves come across as bumbling and incompetent, except for perhaps the Druze and Bedu, but they are all riven by petty infighting that allows the "great powers" to maintain control of their lands. The Zionists come later to the story as ruthless killers and extremists - founding a country, etc.
