List and discuss the major contradictory promises surrounding the Middle East made by the British during WWI?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• Because the Turks were allied with the Germans, the British encouraged the Arabs to revolt against the Turks.
• If the Arabs would fight for the British, the British promised to move the caliphate from Istanbul to Mecca and to name an Arab as caliph.
• The military commander in Cairo, who promised to restore the caliphate, thought he was promising the Islamic equivalent of a pope and that secular, individual Arab states would continue to exist.
• He did not understand the nature of the caliphate.
• In return for a general Arab revolt against the Turks, the British agreed to support the creation of a united, independent Arab state at the close of the war.
• The British believed this to be sound foreign policy. They believed the nebulous understanding was not a promise of support to the Arabs.
• However, the Arabs felt they had received a promise for the ancient Arab realm of Islam.
• Although the British had gained an ally at little expense, the circumstances were ripe for resentments.
• The British made other promises.
• Partially in response to the Zionist movement and partially to keep the goodwill of American Jews, the British promised the Zionists a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
• The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 promised to create the state of Israel.
• It was backed by Protestant Christians who understood neither the nature of the caliphate nor the importance of Jerusalem (al Quds to Muslims) in Islam.
• Supporters of the Balfour Declaration were unaware that their promise directly contradicted the British commander's promise in Cairo, the promise to reestablish an Arab-dominated caliphate.
• All Arab Muslims would expect the caliphate to include the three most important cities in Sunni Islam: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
• The Balfour Declaration threatened to transfer Jerusalem to the new state of Israel.
• The British also made promises to their allies.
• On the other side of the region, in ancient Persia (modern Iran), the British approached the Russians with another deal. Iran would be divided into three parts, a northern area controlled by Russia, a southern zone under British rule, and a neutral area in between.
• When the war ended in 1918, the entire Middle East was controlled by the British, French, and Russians, but it was a powder keg.
• Explicable in a time when national survival was threatened, these contradictory promises were nothing more than an extension of prewar British imperial policies.
• They did not alleviate the tensions between the Palestinian Arabs and the newly arrived Palestinian Jews.
• At the end of the war, the British created a series of Arab countries dominated by strong, traditional family groups.
• Far from representing a united Arab realm of Islam, the British division was challenged internally by rival families and externally by other Arab states.
• Each family and each of the Arab leaders wished to unite Islam under their own banner. Major states eventually emerged from this scenario: Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf States.
• Some of the new nations dreamed of a pan-Islamic region, but none was willing to let another run it.
• Other ethnic groups, like the Kurds, wanted autonomy; Christian Assyrians and Jewish settlers in Palestine also wanted independence.
• The Arabs also could not counter the continuing British influence, and neither a pan-Arabic realm nor a Jewish national state could develop under the watchful eyes of the British.
• Great Britain received permission from the League of Nations to create the Mandate of Palestine which came with a cost.
• It left neither Arab nor Jew satisfied; the Arabs believed they had received a false promise, and the Jews avidly demanded their right to a homeland.