Israel/Palestine

The outline of today’s Middle East is largely a factor of World War I, the destruction of the long-standing Ottoman Empire, and the Paris Peace Conference held in 1919 by the Allied Powers. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire allied with Germany and Austro-Hungary against the Allied Powers due to increasing German pressure and the Turkish nationalist desire to expand the Turkish Empire. Instead, by 1918, the entire Ottoman Empire was destroyed as a result of the Allied Powers’ victory and the vast body of land was to be divided and distributed in accordance with British desire. However, by the time of the Paris Peace Conference, the British had already promised the land to three different recipients on three different occasions. The Sykes-Picot Accord (1916) was a small side meeting in which the British promised to divide up the conquered land between themselves and the French. In 1917, the British then turned around and promised the Jews a national homeland in the area now known as Palestine. The third and final negotiation the British made, called the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, was with Arab leader Sharif Hussein in which the British pledged their help and support in the creation of an Arab state once the war came to an end. These three promises inevitably came back to haunt the British when it came time to actually divide the land and all three groups (French, Jews, and Arabs) waited expectantly for their promises to be fulfilled.
Syria and Lebanon were given to the French, and the British had control over Palestine and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq and Kuwait). Originally the plan between the British and newly formed League of Nations was to enact the Palestine Mandate which would allow a homeland for the Jews, but this plan went poorly because it caused a massive uproar from already existent Arabs in the land of Palestine. Eventually, despite a proposal of a possible two-state nation in Palestine, the Jews claimed Israel and have held their claim on it ever since. Despite the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East’s general refusal to recognize Israel as its own state, the outline and borders of the Middle East created by the British have remained largely intact.