Armistice of Saint Jean d ' Acre The Armistice of Saint Jean d ' Acre ( also known as the Convention of Acre ) concluded the Syria - Lebanon Campaign of World War II . It was an armistice signed between Allied forces in the Middle East under the command of British General Henry Maitland Wilson , and Vichy France forces in Syria and Lebanon , under the command of General Henri Dentz , Commander in Chief of the Army of the Levant ( " Armée du Levant " ) and as High Commissioner of the Levant . The Armistice of Saint Jean d ' Acre was signed on 14 July 1941 . Description . Having lost control of the Northern Desert and the Euphrates Province and being threatened with the imminent loss of Beirut , General Dentz decided to ask for an armistice . On the evening of the 11 July , British Lieutenant - General Claude Auchinleck , Commander - in - Chief of the Middle East Command , received a wireless message from Dentz proposing the suspension of hostilities six hours later , at midnight . General Dentz declared himself ready to engage in talks on the basis of a memorandum presented to him that morning by the United States Consul at Beirut on behalf of the British Government . But Dentz made the reservation that he was empowered by the French Government to treat only with the British representatives to the exclusion of those of the Free French . The proposals presented by General Dentz were considered at once by the Middle East War Council . The council took into account the opinion of the American Consul at Beirut that Dentz was entirely insincere and might be playing for time in the hope of a last minute rescue by the Germans . Accordingly , his conditions were rejected by the British and he was called on to send his plenipotentaries to the British outpost on the Beirut — Haifa Road at or before 0900 hours on the 12 July . Failure to do this would lead to the resumption of hostilities at that hour . On 12 July , the Vichy second in command , Lieutenant - General Joseph - Antoine - Sylvain - Raoul de Verdillac attended the talks . He went all the way from Syria to Acre in the British Mandate of Palestine and was escorted by a convoy of Australian high commanding officers . General de Verdillac represented the Army of the Levant for the Armistice talks instead of his superior commander , General Dentz . The 21 July 1941 issue of Time Magazine indicates that General Dentz sent General de Verdillac to the talks because de Verdillac was more pro - British and less anti - De Gaulle than Dentz . At 2200 hours on 12 July , the Armistice of Saint Jean d ' Acre was initialled . The Allied forces were represented by General Wilson , by Air Commodore L . O . Brown , Royal Air Force , by Captain J . A . V . Morse , Royal Navy , and by Free French General Georges Catroux . The Vichy French were represented by General de Verdillac . The Armistice talks ( The first between Great Britain and France since Napoleon ' s days ) were held in the officers mess of " Sidney Smith Barracks " , on the outskirts of the city of Acre , On this site was founded Bustan HaGalil , an Israeli agricultural settlement . Despite the generosity of the British terms , representatives of Vichy made a brief show of refusing them , then dumped the whole mess into General Dentz ' s lap . On July 14 General Henri Fernand Dentz , Vichy ' s High Commissioner to the Levant States , signed Syria and Lebanon away to the conquering British and to the Free French Forces . The date seemed to mock General Denz for it was Bastille Day , despite that fact , he signed and signed his full name . When General De Verdillac uncapped his pen to add his signature , all the lights in the room suddenly fused out , and so in order to complete the ceremony a dispatch rider ' s motorbike was brought from outside into the room to light the place with its head lamp .