Sykes-Picot Plan for Palestine May 1916

The Sykes-Picot Agreement secretly planned for the division of the Ottoman Empire between Britain and France upon an entente victory in World War I. It also allocated territory to Russia, whose role was to observe the negotiations. The three powers would take shared responsibility for Palestine and its important holy sites and two separate spheres of influence were designated for Britain and France, whilst Russia took territory near its own border. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the details of the Sykes-Picot Agreement leaked and were published in the Manchester Guardian on 26 November 1917. The details of the agreement, which went against previous commitments the British had made to the Arabs, caused widespread scandal, the geopolitical ramifications of which are still felt to this day. The revolution in Russia resulted in an annulment of its territorial allocations under the agreement, with Italy being promised parts of Anatolia upon its entry into the war against Germany.