You might have learnt at school that the Treaty of Versailles ended World War I. It did settle the immediate peace terms between the US, Britain, France and Germany, but there were more than half a dozen other treaties and conferences dealing with the debris of the empires which collapsed in 1918.

Most complicated were the arrangements for the former lands of the Ottoman empire, initially allocated by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. That provoked a nationalist backlash in Turkey and disputes continued until the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Meanwhile, even before the war ended, the British and French were busily implementing their secret Sykes-Picot agreement to divvy up the Arab lands of the empire.

When the British army defeated the Ottoman Turks in Palestine at the battle of Beersheba in October 1917, the British hastened to take control as per the agreement.

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However, it wasn’t simply a matter of preventing the establishment of an independent Arab........

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