◊ When the Ottoman Empire was defeated by an Arab uprising and the British forces after the Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1918, the Arab population did not get what it wanted. Islamic activists of more recent times have described it as an Anglo-French betrayal. British and French governments concluded a secret treaty (the Sykes–Picot Agreement) to partition the Middle East between them. The British in 1917 announced the Balfour Declaration promised the international Zionist movement their support in re-creating the historic Jewish homeland in Palestine.
When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon established control and re-arranged the Middle East to suit themselves.
Syria became a French protectorate as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the “Kingdom of Iraq” and one of Sharif Hussein’s sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own.
Britain was granted a Mandate for Palestine on 25 April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and, on 24 July 1922, this mandate was approved by the League of Nations. Palestine became the “British Mandate of Palestine” and was placed under direct British administration. The Jewish population of Palestine which numbered less than 8 percent in 1918 was given free rein to immigrate, buy land from absentee landlords, set up a shadow government in waiting and establish the nucleus of a state under the protection of the British Army which suppressed a Palestinian revolt in 1936. The Territory East of the Jordan River was added to the British Mandate by the Transjordan Memorandum, which was a British memorandum passed by the Council of the League of Nations on 16 September 1922. Most of the Arabian peninsula fell to another British ally, Ibn Saud. Saud created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
