US President Woodrow Wilson rejected all secret agreements between allies and encouraged open diplomacy and ideas of self-determination. On November 22, 1917, Leon Trotsky sent a note to the petrograd ambassadors that “contained proposals for a ceasefire and democratic peace without annexation and without compensation based on the principle of nation independence and their right to determine the nature of their own development.” [68] Peace negotiations with the four-year Alliance – Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey – began a month later in Brest-Litovsk. On behalf of the Quadrennial Alliance, Count Czernin replied on 25 December that “the question of the nationality of national groups that do not have the independence of the state should be constitutionally resolved by any state and its peoples independently” and that “the right of minorities is an essential part of the constitutional right of peoples to self-determination”. [69] After the Constantinople Agreement, the French turned to the British to develop their reciprocal desiderata on 8 April 1915, and the British set up the De Bunsen Committee to examine British options. [45] Zionism was not taken into account in the June 1915 Committee report,[46] which concluded that in the event of division or zone of influence, there must be a British sphere of influence that included Palestine, while accepting that there be relevant French and Russian interests, as well as Islamic interests, in Jerusalem and in the holy places. [47] [48] The agreement was first directly used as the basis for the 1918 Anglo-French modus vivendi, which provided a framework for the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in the Levant. More generally, it was to lead indirectly to the subsequent partition of the Ottoman Empire after the Ottoman defeat of 1918. Shortly after the war, French Palestine and Mosul ceded to the British. Warrants in the Levant and Mesopotamia were awarded at the San Remo conference in April 1920, according to the Sykes-Picot framework; The British mandate for Palestine ran until 1948, the British mandate for Mesopotamia was to be replaced by a similar treaty with compulsory Iraq, and the French mandate for Syria and Lebanon lasted until 1946. The anatolic parts of the agreement were attributed by the Treaty of Sevres of August 1920; But these ambitions were thwarted by the Turkish War of Independence of 1919-23 and the Subsequent Treaty of Lausanne. Under the agreement, France should exercise direct control over cilicia, the coastal strip of Syria, Lebanon and most of Galilee, up to the line that stretches from northern Acre to the northwest corner of Lake Galilee (“blue zone”).
To the east, in the Syrian hinterland, an Arab state (“Area A”) should be created under the protection of France.