The Arabs were victorious, but Britain’s promises to Sharif Hussein expired even before the conflict ended. Britain and France preemptively divvied up the captured Ottoman lands into British and French protectorates under the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. After the war, the maps were redrawn to create entirely new states, including the kingdoms of Iraq and Syria and, on the narrow strip of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, a Jewish homeland that would later become Israel.
