"The First World War came to the Middle East when the Ottoman Empire aligned with Germany against the British in October 1914. The British Government worried that access to India and its oil supply would be cut off if the Ottomans blocked the Suez Canal. They decided to search for new allies in the Middle East in hopes of creating a revolt against the Ottomans. With promises of Arab independence, the British attracted the Grand Sharif of the Hajaz 1, Husayn ibn Ali 2, who aspired to become king of an independent Arab kingdom in the Middle East.
In 1915, Husayn's son, Faisal, negotiated the borders of this future kingdom with other Arab leaders (called "the Damascus Protocol"3) along the lines of current Ottoman dominion of the Middle East. Arab leaders believed that the British accepted the Protocol in a letter from the British High Commissioner of Egypt later that year.4 Based on this acceptance, Sharif Husayn and his sons led the Great Arab Revolt of 1916, throwing the region into widespread turmoil. The British supported the revolt through Thomas Edward Lawrence, more famously known as “Lawrence of Arabia”, who passionately endorsed the promise of Arab self-rule. The revolt lasted until Damascus fell in late 1918, which wrought an end to Ottoman rule in the Middle East.
Throughout the Great Arab Revolt, the Arab world had pledged its support wholeheartedly behind the British as a trusted ally, bolstered by President Woodrow Wilson's promises that a determination of sovereignty must always give equal weight to the desires of a country's population. Yet, unbeknownst to the Arabs, Britain and France had entered into secret negotiations during this time to carve up the Ottoman Empire for themselves once it fell. In May 1916, these two countries reached the Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the region into their spheres of influence and direct control. When this agreement became permanent under the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Arab world resented deeply the betrayal by the West. Moreover, with the pronouncement of the Balfour Declaration6 recognizing a Jewish homeland within Palestine, Arabs felt yet again that they had been given hollow assurances for self rule. This betrayal by the West became the foundation for future mistrust of promises made by western governments."
allianceforsecurity.org
]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal-Weizmann_Agreement |
