'Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration' - the Band

In an idle moment between cocktail parties in the Arab capital where they

served, a British and French diplomat were chatting recently about their

respective countries’ legacies in the Middle East: why not commemorate them

with a new rock band? And they could call it Sykes-Picot and the Balfour

Declaration.

It was just a joke. These first world war agreements cooked up in London and

Paris in the dying days of the Ottoman empire paved the way for new Arab

nation states, the creation of Israel and the continuing plight of the Palestinians.

And if their memory has faded in the west as their centenaries approach, they

are still widely blamed for the problems of the region at an unusually violent and

troubled time.

“This is history that the Arab peoples will never forget because they see it as

directly relevant to problems they face today,” argues Oxford University’s

Eugene Rogan, author of several influential works on modern Middle Eastern

history.

Ian Black, The Guardian