How did World War I shape Jewish and Palestinian Arab hopes for self-determination in Palestine?

World War I significantly shaped the competing national aspirations of Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities through a series of contradictory British commitments that fueled long-term conflict.12

Conflicting British Promises

During the war, the British government made incompatible pledges to secure strategic interests against the Ottoman Empire:

• Arab Hopes: Through the Hussein-McMahon correspondence (1915–16), the British encouraged an Arab Revolt by promising support for an independent Arab state. Palestinian Arabs believed this included Palestine, leading them to expect self-determination following the war.342
• Zionist Hopes: The Balfour Declaration (1917) expressed British support for a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This energized the Zionist movement, which viewed the declaration as a foundational step toward statehood.12
• Imperial Interests: Simultaneously, the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) planned to divide the region into British and French spheres of influence, undermining both Arab and Zionist visions of independence.153

Post-War Reality

The postwar settlement, formalized at the Conference of San Remo in 1920, placed Palestine under a British mandate. This dashed Arab hopes for a unified, independent state—an event many Palestinians termed ‘ām al-nakbah (the "year of the catastrophe")—and institutionalized the tension between the growing Jewish national home and the indigenous Arab population.62