The story of the British Empire's arrival to the Middle-East, and how it complicated the region by helping create the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While British troops fought Ottoman armies in the Middle East, Britain committed itself to two contradictory goals: establishing both a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab kingdom in Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, all in the interests of furthering its imperial ambitions in the region. Simultaneously Britain and France secretly divided up the Middle East into spheres of influence in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.