To further its geopolitical ambitions, the UK entered into two duplicitous (if you do not know the meaning of the word - look it up) treaties/agreements. One was the May 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement and the other the November 1917 Balfour Declaration.
In a 2002 interview with The New Statesman, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw observed "A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past. ... The Balfour Declaration and the contradictory assurances (based upon the Sykes–Picot principles) which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis—again, an interesting history for us but not an entirely honourable one."
Before we get into the documents themselves it is important to understand the geographical area and the culture of the area to which they applied. At the time the documents were issued there was no Israel. The culture at that time was entirely Muslim and Christian and the warring forces were almost entirely Muslim so it is important to understand the split in the Muslim culture from its beginning upto and including the present time.
The great division in Islam took place immediately after the death of Muhammad in 632 C.E.
Ali ibn Abi Talib, referred to simply as Ali, was a cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. Ali was the first male to accept Islam. Those who considered him as The Prophets Successor referred to him as the Imam and became known as Shiites. Most Muslims in Iran (who are Persians), and many in Iraq and Syria are Shiites. Ali, to create unity and maintain peace, accepted Abu Bakr as being the Caliph (the real or nominal leader). However, to this day only the Spiritual leader of the Shiites (such as in Iran) is considered an Imam, while for Sunnis an Imam is simply anyone who leads prayer.
Sunnis derive from the Caliphate established under the father-in-law of Muhammad, Abdullah ibn Abi Qhuhafah. Abdullah was the first Muslim to declare outside of Muhammad's family and afterwards Abdullah's daughter married the Prophet. Abdullah was known by the nickname Abu Bakr, and thus the first Caliph was known as Caliph Abu Bakr. Sunnis consider Ali the fourth and final of the Rashidun (rightly guided Caliphs), while Shi`is regard `Ali as the first Imam after Muhammad. Shiites consider Ali and his descendants the rightful successors to Muhammad, and all the Imams are descendants of Muhammad. This Imam/Caliph controversy, refined in many details, split the Muslim community into the Sunni and Shiite branches.
While between Christian Catholicism (with its Orthodox branches) and Protestantism, and even between hundreds of different Protestant sects, there was much infighting where Christians were attacked and slaughtered by other Christians, the division between Shiites and Sunnis and their many sects, was even more bitter. Muhammad provided Jihad to unify the warring Arab Clans, which had always settled disputes through war, requiring all under penalty of death to unify and submit to Islam. He made exception for Christians and Jews as 'monotheists of the Book'.
While Sunni is by far the prominent sect of Islam, both Shiite and Sunni spread their sects through Jihad, the latter as far as into France until the decisive battle of Tours (in 732). Islam spread as far China, Southeast Asia, India and Africa so that today it is the predominant religion in 22 countries where, continuing unto this day, one sect often battles against another. Various and sometimes competing Caliphs established various Empires, one of the greatest and the last being the Ottoman Empire. Its dissolution still left Islam as the predominant religion in the residual political entities, although comprised of numerous warring factions.
While Muhammad provided tolerance for the 'People of the Book', currently most all of Islam is intolerant of Jews and Christians, and even more so of Buddhists and Hindus, whom they consider to be polytheists.
The current Muslim culture remains divided into the main Shiite Persian (found mainly in Iran and as a majority in Iraq, Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Yemen) comprising about 40% of the population of the Middle East but only 10% of the world Muslim population. The Arab Sunnis dominate the rest of 22 Muslim nations in the world, and one particular sect, the Sunni Wahhabis (started in the 1700s), have become the dominant force (although comprising until now only about 20% of the Sunni population), controlling through the Saudi Royal Family, Saudi Arabia which is the location of Mecca and the point of pilgrimage.
The Wahhabis may be described as "orthodox", "ultraconservative", "austere", "fundamentalist", "puritanical". The philosophy/theology of the current Caliph Abu Bakr and the Islamic State is an extreme offshoot, insistent upon total conversion of all others, with many additional behavioural requirements in addition to the full implementation of Sharia Law, and the destruction of all 'idols' which may detract from monotheism. This latter has resulted in the destruction of 95% of the ancient Mosques and holy sites in areas under Wahhabi control, so it is not only the Buddhist, Hindu, Shiite sites that are targeted. The current Caliph Abu Bakr is even more fanatical about this and wishes to destroy the Kaaba itself in Mecca. This has certainly struck enimity between himself and the Royal Family of Saud.
The current Caliph Abu Bakr of the Islamic State is the self proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, more formally called Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, but formerly called Abu Du'a, no matter whatever his mother may have called him. He took the name Abu Bakr, so as to identify with the first Caliph of Islam.
The Islamic State has suddenly appeared from what was briefly known as ISIS (and more briefly as ISIL), the movement for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant the last S in ISIS being "Sham" which in Arabic means Levant). ISIS had previously transmorphed as some combination of Al Qaeda groups (the term Al Qaeda meaning "the base" which actually was just a database (from which it gets its name) of clans co-opted by the CIA. What goes around comes around, if you can follow all that, or in short form we can simply say - the CIA created/instigated the Islamic State.
The explanation of all these intrigues becomes complicated, but you have not heard a tenth of them. Nay, not a hundredth. None, not even the players, have a grasp of all the inter-relatedness. Such complex and unintended outcomes are not new, which leads one to pondering questions about human intentions versus Divine Destiny. That mystery belongs to God alone.
Although recognized as states, neither Iraq nor Syria have ever truly been, but rather have always been a conglomeration of internal warring clans that gladly destroy each other unless suppressed/oppressed by a ruling strong man such as Saddam Hussein for Iraq, or Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, the present president of Syria. The boundaries on the maps were simply geographically based divisions, drawn by the British and the French, without regard to clan loyalties. The Islamic State is not actually a state, although it may well wish to become one. It is really just a conglomeration of clans that have pledged allegiance to the current Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, very often because of the simple expediency of do that or die.
The UK National Archives CAB/24/143, Eastern Report, No. XVIII, May 31, 1917 states: "Damascus ... is the one possible capital for an Arab State, which could command the obedience of the other Arabian Emirs."
Caliph Abu Bakr knows this. All the Arab Leaders know this, and thus oppose it and its proposer. Caliph Abu Bakr has declared that he will make Damascus (the capitol of Syria) his seat, but in order to do that he will have to subdue all the warring clans, and he chose to do that by eliminating one of them as an example. The chieftains and elders of other clans pleaded to him to relent and have mercy on that clan (which had said that it would now submit), but the Caliph replied that it was too late and had all of them killed - men, women and children. Others are now likely to submit because they know what is in store for them otherwise, since it is by no means in their nature to combine to resist him.
Many other factors enter in, such as US and Saudi interests in placing through a pipeline to Europe and that Syria has the only warm water port available to the Russians who have allied with the Iranians, the latter wishing to defend a Shiite derivative there.
The Caliph undoubtedly knows:
Isaiah 17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Isaiah 17:2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
It is a part of his view that the Mahdi (expected in Islam with the return of Christ) requires Jihad in Syria before He will return and so for the eventual victory of Islam, he is saying, "Bring it on", even though it means the destruction of Damascus.
Let us now examine briefly the May 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement. The negotiators of this agreement were "the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and Briton Sir Mark Sykes. The Russian Tsarist government was a minor party to the Sykes–Picot agreement, and when, following the Russian Revolution of October 1917, the Bolsheviks exposed the agreement, "the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed and the Turks delighted." (Peter Mansfield, The British Empire magazine, no. 75, Time-Life Books, 1973). What explanation there was for the Turkish delight is incomprehensible, unless it was that it revealed the perfidious duplicity of the signers.
The purpose of the agreement was to divide up the geographic spoils of the war, i.e. the Ottoman Empire outside the Arabian peninsula into areas of future British and French control or influence using as their puppets certain Arab players under the Damascus Protocol. There was no room left in this for Israel.
Britain, through the League of Nations, was allocated control (The British Mandate) of areas roughly comprising the coastal strip between the sea and River Jordan, Jordan, southern Iraq, and a small area including the ports of Haifa and Acre, the latter with the Mosul oil pipeline - now defunct, but Mosul being very much in the news today. France was allocated control of south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Russia was to get Istanbul, the Turkish Straits and the Ottoman Armenian vilayets.
It is the 1916 Sykes–Picot boundary/border between Syria and Iraq which the Islamic State has erased (literally bulldozed) in 2014 (within a couple of weeks after the one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Armageddon). This phenomenal event has set the whole hornet's nest active, and so has become the current focus of our interest.
The Balfour Declaration was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
It stated:
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
In clarification Balfour tried to explain away Sykes-Picot by saying
"that the other allies had implicitly rejected the Sykes–Picot agreement by adopting the system of mandates...also stated that the Allies were committed to Zionism and had no intention of honoring their promises to the Arabs."
One way or the other - it was apparent that either the Arabs or the Jews were going to get their shoe laces tied and were going to trip over themselves. It remained for Destiny to show on which side it stood/stands. Today, Israel stands but there are many, even Ultra-orthodox Jews, who don't believe it should now exist because they think the Messiah must come first. The ultra-Orthodox Jews, and for that matter all practicing the Jewish religion, do not believe that He has come the first time.
The initial support and funding from Rothschild was needed for the British war aspirations. There is a dictum that says follow the money, and there is no question that the House of Rothschild is the moving force behind the 14 banks of the US Federal Reserve, the City of London, the BIS, the Gold Market and most every other Western monetary point, and many that are not Western. It was not the first or last time for the Rothschilds to fund a war, one side or the other - or both sides for that matter. All that has nothing to do with the thesis here or the fictitious/fallacious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but Divine Destiny remains our quest here.
The Caliph also has his very definite idea about the destiny of Israel and Jerusalem. In his view the first is to be elminated and the second to be administered soley by the Islamic State. This all seems very possible to him and his followers. The thesis here, of course, is that something very different rests with the Divine Will and as Divine History has shown, Divine Destiny will deliver.