“Provisional observations”; Sykes-Picot Joint Memorandum, 3 January 1916[25] The May 1916 agreement negotiated in May 1916, negotiated by Sir Mark Sykes (1879-1919) and François Georges-Picot (1870-1951), painted the fertile crescent red (for the British sphere of influence) and blue (French sphere). For many Arabs, “Sykes-Picot” remains today the slogan of secret diplomacy and ruthless realpolitik linked to colonial ambition. But in its original form, the map of the Fertile Crescent, provided for by “Sykes-Picot”, was distinctly different from the system of colonial states, created in St. Remo (1920) and ratified in Lausanne (1923). Mosul and Palestine (French and international in the original agreement) have now gone to Britain, whose armies, allies and colonial auxiliaries had led most of the struggle against the Ottomans and whose troops occupied Syria and Mesopotamia at the end of the war. Recent historical work asserts that it is these territorial displacements and the unintended consequences they have had for Anglo-French relations that would have the most important long-term consequences on the history of the Levant. Picot had made disproportionate gains over the real balance of forces in the Levant, a fact that the British took advantage of to recover most of the concessions made by Sykes after the war. After Russia was abducted by the revolution, it was no longer necessary to obtain a buffer that protected Mesopotamia from Anatolia. Mosul was then attached to the new mandate of the British League of Nations in Iraq. In Palestine, the Balfour Declaration was used to replace the international regime agreed with Picot with a purely British mandate.

In eastern Galilee, the borders of the new Palestinian mandate were then moved north to the Jordan springs and to Yarmuk to embrace the Samakh Triangle. These forced concessions rekindled French resentment and eventually prompted the French authorities in Damascus to refuse cooperation with British troops contested in Palestine during the 1936-1939 Palestinian revolt. After World War II, France`s continued hostility led them to retaliate against Britain`s support for Syrian and Lebanese independence by supporting Jewish terrorist groups in Palestine. Their attacks played a crucial role in forcing the British to accept the partition of the Palestinian mandate, with disastrous consequences for their image in the Arab world. A generation after the agreement undermined the unintended consequences of Britain`s imperial mandate of Sykes-Picot in the Fertile Crescent. At a meeting in a railway car in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne on 19 April 1917, a provisional agreement was reached between British and French Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Alexandre Ribot, as well as Italian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Paolo Boselli and Sidney Sonnino, to settle the Italian interest in the Ottoman Empire, in particular Article 9 of the Treaty of London. [38] The agreement was necessary by the Allies to secure the position of the Italian armed forces in the Middle East. Colonel Edouard Brémond was sent to Saudi Arabia in September 1916 as head of the French military mission to the Arabs. According to Cairo, Brémond was anxious to contain the revolt so that the Arabs would not threaten French interests in Syria.