BBC - Blogs - Adam Curtis - SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME:
In 1915, at the height of the First World War, Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt made an agreement with the Emir of Mecca. It said that if the Arabs helped the British overthrow the Turks who ruled Palestine - then the British would in return give the Arabs independence. Lawrence of Arabia - TE Lawrence - was one of the British agents sent to help organise the Arab Revolt.
But two years later later the British Foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, promised the Zionist movement that a permanent Jewish homeland would be set up in Palestine. Zionism was in many ways a utopian movement. It had been invented by Theodor Herzl in the 1890s, and he believed that a Jewish state would not just rescue Jews from persecution, but it would also transform them. The state of Israel would be a new kind of environment which would turn its people into stronger and better kinds of human beings.
The British didn't care about that kind of thing. They were desperate to get America into the war on their side - and one of the reasons for the Balfour declaration was to curry favour with the Zionists and their supporters in America.