A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948

The untold history of the French-British rivalry that shaped the Middle East, from Lawrence of Arabia to the violent birth of Israel. It was the middle of World War I. Two men—one, a visionary British politician (Mark Sykes), the other, a veteran French diplomat (François Georges-Picot)—secretly agreed to divide the Middle East. Britain would have “mandates” in newly created Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq; France in Lebanon and Syria. For the next thirty years, this divide would make uneasy neighbors of two great powers and irreparably shape the Middle East. James Barr combs recently declassified French and British government archives and unearths a shocking secret war and its powerful effect on the local Arabs and Jews.