237 The United Kingdom in the Middle East
34.2.2: The United Kingdom in the Middle East
During the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, the British promised the international Zionist movement their support in recreating the historic Jewish homeland in Palestine via the Balfour declaration, a move that created much political conflict, still present today.
Learning Objective
Demonstrate how British interests in the Middle East affected the development of the region
Key Points
- After secret talks and agreements leading up to and during World War I, at the end of the war the Allies founded the League of Nations, which divided the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence and legal mandates.
- The Sykes-Picot Agreement, one of the major secret agreements during the war, allocated to Britain control of the coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan, Jordan, southern Iraq, and an additional small area that included the ports of Haifa and Acre to allow access to the Mediterranean.
- The explicit aims of the British and the other allies, was “the complete and final liberation of the peopls who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks.”
- Key to these discussions, especially for the British, was the fate of Palestine and the Jewish people.
- During World War I, Britain produced three contrasting statements regarding its ambitions for Palestine, which created conflict at the time and ever since.
- Mandatory Palestine became the resulting political entity, under the rule of Britain until 1948.
Key Terms
- Balfour Declaration
- A letter dated November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It stated British support for “a national home for the Jewish people…”
- League of Nations
- An intergovernmental organization founded on January 10, 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other issues in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.
- Zionism
- The national movement of the Jewish people that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Palestine, Canaan, or the Holy Land). It emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. Soon after this, most leaders of the