This year it will be 100 years ago that France and Britain signed the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement by which the territory of the Ottoman Empire was carved up into French and British zones of Control and Influence (text on my website nr. GL 11. (Under Global Law). Russia joined later; Lenin thereafter published and denounced the agreement. Whatever may have been the French and British intentions, the Eastern question and the Middle-East are still on top of the international agenda with respect to conflicts, crises, wars, suffering and refugees. They are likely to remain on that agenda for many years to come. As Henry J. Barkay wrote (article attached): it will be the longest war in modern times. A few provisional conclusions may be drawn:
1. Middle-East Borders are unlikely to remain where they were drawn after the First and the Second World Wars.
2. International interventions have invariably been disastrous, from the 1916 agreement all the way up to current bombings by "the coalition" and the Russians on Syrian and Iraqi territories.
3. The danger to Israel's survival as a Jewish State is growing worse.
4. The future of the Middle-East will not be determined by the self-determination of peoples but by the interplay of the four principal powers - Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Saudi-Arabia - in the area.