League of Nations Establishes Mandate for Palestine.

At the conclusion of World War I, the victorious Allies met in Paris in 1919 to decide the fate of the defeated Central Powers. The year before, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had proclaimed in his Fourteen Points that the principle of self-determination would be used to determine future territorial boundaries, including for Arabic peoples under Ottoman rule. Great Britain had further encouraged nationalist hopes during the war by enticing ՙAlī ibn Ḥusayn, grand sharif of Mecca and king of the Hijaz, to lead a revolt against the Turks. However, in 1916, Britain had also negotiated with France to divide Ottoman territories in the Middle East into spheres of influence. Furthermore, Britain had publicly suggested that it would look favorably on the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration (1917) . The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 established both the League of Nations and a mandatory system by which the major world powers were to oversee the political development toward independence of formerly subjugated peoples.