ABSTRACT
Like many of the core problems of the Middle East, the genesis of the Arab-Israeli confl ict can be traced to the period during and immediately following the First World War. In 1917, the British government declared its “sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations” and its favourable attitude to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in the now infamous Balfour Declaration. The preceding year, the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement had established spheres of infl uence for the great powers over former Ottoman territories in the Middle East. Britain’s infl uence/control over Mesopotamia, Transjordan and Palestine was formally codifi ed in the San Remo Agreement and approved by the League of Nations in July 1922. At the time, the population of Palestine was approximately 80 per cent Muslim, 11 per cent Jewish and 9 per cent Christian.
