Sykes-Picot and the Golan

By Zalman Shoval, ISRAEL HAYOM

Just under a century ago, on May 16, 1916, France and the United Kingdom signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which shaped the borders of our region and to a certain extent helped lead to the fulfillment of the Zionist vision. France and the U.K. were driven by their geopolitical interests, but other factors played a role as well, including the ambitions of Arab nationalists, for whom the expected benefits of helping the French and British in World War I against the Germans and Turks did not pan out.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement determined that the areas that would become the future states of Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan would fall under British control, while France would get the areas that would later become Syria and Lebanon (and also a small part of Turkey).

Mark Sykes, the British negotiator, was a Christian Zionist who viewed the establishment of a Jewish entity in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland as a historic, moral and religious directive. He also believed that political support of Jews from around the world, particularly in the U.S., could help Britain achieve victory over Germany. He thought a Jewish national home in Palestine would naturally serve British interests in the region after the war. These views were shared by Zionist movement leader Chaim Weizmann, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement had a considerable influence on the formulation of the Balfour Declaration, issued in 1917.

The original Sykes-Picot Agreement was approved and expanded upon at the San Remo conference in 1920. British pressure led to this approval also covering the Balfour Declaration, but the matter of final borders was not determined, due to the consequences for the Golan Heights. At the end of World War I, the Zionist movement claimed territory up to the Litani River (in current-day Lebanon) and the area where the sources of the Jordan River are located. Originally, the Upper Galilee region was supposed to fall under French control, but in 1924 the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine was expanded northward, largely due to the establishment of the Jewish settlements of Metulla, Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi in what is now known as the Galilee panhandle. However, the Litani River, the sources of the Jordan River, Mount Hermon, most of the Golan Heights (up to 10 meters from the Sea of Galilee shoreline) and the Banias River remained under French control (and later became part of Syria).

This situation lasted until the Six-Day War in 1967, when the status of the Golan Heights was restored to what it was supposed to have been according to the original agreement.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement is today a sensitive matter, not only because of the future of the Golan Heights, but due to the fact that most of the countries whose borders were artificially delineated by the agreement have collapsed into pieces along tribal and religious lines. What is going on in these countries now and in the coming years will have a huge impact on the region, Europe and perhaps even America. From our perspective in Israel, the greatest impact will be on our security.