Allenby Captures Jerusalem
General Edmund Allenby's Egyptian Expeditionary Force launched the Third Battle of Gaza (October–November 1917), breaching the Ottoman defensive lines and sweeping north through Palestine. Jerusalem fell on 9 December 1917 when the Ottoman mayor rode out on a donkey to surrender the city to British sergeants — it was reportedly too significant a city to be received by an ordinary soldier. Allenby himself entered Jerusalem on foot on 11 December, in deliberate contrast to the Kaiser's ostentatious mounted entry in 1898. The capture ended four centuries of Ottoman rule in the Holy City and was hailed across the Allied world as a Christmas gift of enormous symbolic importance. It gave Britain practical control over Palestine just weeks after the Balfour Declaration had committed Britain to facilitating a "national home for the Jewish people" there. The contradictory wartime promises to Jewish Zionists, Arab nationalists, and through the Sykes-Picot Agreement to France would shape Middle Eastern politics for the rest of the twentieth century.
- Year: 1917 CE
- Category: Military
