British intelligence and the role of Abbas Effendi

Plans were also made for the handling of agents during the advance. Alexander Aaronsohn in Advanced Intelligence prepared a list of potential agents in Zichron Ya'akov and in nearby Arab villages whom he believed could be recruited once the EEF arrived and sent forward to obtain real-time information. Aaronsohn also made a second list of Jews and Arabs who might assist in counterespionage missions, and a third which named suspects to be detained and houses billeting enemy headquarters considered worth searching. He also singled out several Bahai notables in Haifa and in Zahla, Lebanon, including the leader of the Bahais, 'Abbas Effendi, who would be willing to collaborate with the arriving British. He even received a password from a local Bahai which could serve as a 'useful introduction'.*

*CAB 314: 115B, GS, memo, App. 11 to 'Report and Appendices of an Enquiry by the Standing Sub-Committee of the CID with the Responsibility of the Navy and the Army for the Defence of the Suez Canal', 2 June 1910; WO 106/212: Hoskins to WO, 2 June 1910; WO 106/211: GS, Army of Occupation, Major A. Solly-Flood probably to DMI (Cairo), 22 Aug. 1910.

(Yigal Sheffy, British Military Intelligence in the Palestine Campaign, 1914–1918, Routledge (1998))