The Frenchman elected Picot to the post of French High Commissioner for the soon-to-be-occupied territory of Syria and Palestine. The British appointed Sykes chief political officer of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. On April 3, 1917, Sykes met with Lloyd George, Curzon, and Hankey to accept his instructions in this regard, namely to keep the Frenchman on his side and at the same time to lobby for British Palestine. First Sykes in early May, then Picot and Sykes traveled together to the Hejaz later in May to discuss the deal with Faisal and Hussein. [55]:166 Hussein was persuaded to accept a formula according to which the French in Syria would follow the same policy as the British in Baghdad; as Hussein believed that Baghdad would be part of the Arab state, this had finally satisfied him. Subsequent reports from participants expressed doubts about the exact nature of the discussions and the extent to which Hussein had really been informed of Sykes-Picot`s conditions. [61] The agreement thus helped shape the contours of modern nation-states in a region where there were none before. Since this is essentially an agreement between two colonialist powers outside the region, this would have devastating effects. Under the agreement, France was to exercise direct control over Cilicia, the coastal strip of Syria, Lebanon and most of the Galilee to the line that extends north of Acre to the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee (“Blue Zone”). In the east, in the Syrian hinterland, an Arab state was to be created under French protection (“Zone A”).
Britain was to exercise control over southern Mesopotamia (“red zone”) as well as the area around Acre Haifa Bay in the Mediterranean, with the right to build a railway from there to Baghdad. The area east of the Jordan River and the Negev Desert, south of the line from Gaza to the Dead Sea, has been assigned to an Arab state under British protection (“Area B”). The “blue zone” of southern France, which includes the Sandjak of Jerusalem and extends southward to the line that roughly runs from Gaza to the Dead Sea, should be under international administration (“Brown Zone”). Meanwhile, at the end of May, the stalemate between the French and the British over the disposition of the armed forces continued, the French continued to push for the replacement of British troops by French troops in Syria against the backdrop of disputes over precise geographical boundaries of the same, and in general the relationship suffered; After the meeting on the 21st, Lloyd George had written to Clemenceau and terminated the Long Bérenger oil deal (a revised version of which had been agreed at the end of April), claiming to have known nothing about it and did not want it to become a problem, while Clemenceau claimed that this had not been the subject of a dispute. There were also discussions about what was and was not agreed at the private meeting between Clemenceau and Lloyd George in December last year. [96] [97] At the Peace Conference, held on September 18, the United Kingdom, on January 30, the Big Four (initially a “Council of Ten,” consisting of two delegates from Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) agreed on January 30 on the outline of a mandate system (comprising three levels of mandate) that would later become Article 22 of the League Pact. The Big Four would later decide which communities, under what conditions, and which were mandatory. In the Treaty of Constantinople of March 18, 1915, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sasonov wrote to the French and British ambassadors after the start of naval operations in the run-up to the Gallipoli campaign, claiming Constantinople and the Dardanelles. In a series of diplomatic exchanges over five weeks, the UK and France agreed under their own demands for a greater sphere of influence in Iran in the case of the UK and an annexation of Syria (including Palestine) and Cilicia for France. Both the British and French claims were agreed, with all parties also agreeing that the exact administration of the Holy Places should remain for a later solution.
[18] Without the Russian revolutions of 1917, Constantinople and the strait could have been given to Russia after the Allied victory. This agreement and the Sykes-Picot agreement were complementary, as France and Britain first had to satisfy Russia in order to complete the division of the Middle East. [19] On the 18th. Faisal arrived in London in September and the next day he had long meetings with Lloyd George, who explained the aide-memoire and the British position. Lloyd George explained that he was “in the position of a man who had inherited two types of obligations, those to King Hussein and those to the French,” Faisal noted that the agreement “appeared to be based on the 1916 agreement between the British and the French.” Clemenceau, who responded in reference to the aide-memoire, refused to move to Syria, saying the matter should be left to the French to negotiate directly with Faisal. Many sources claim that Sykes-Picot was in conflict with the Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 1915-1916 and that the publication of the agreement in November 1917 caused the resignation of Sir Henry McMahon. [107] There were several differences, the most obvious being Iraq in the British Red Zone and less obvious the idea that British and French advisers would have control of the area destined for an Arab state. .