As Zionism was a movement to create a nation state for Jewish people, Arab Nationalism was, "the idea that the Arabs are a people linked by special bonds of language and history, religion, and that their political organization should in some way reflect this reality, and still has force throughout the Arab-speaking world." [2] Mainly, Arab Nationalism was an opposition movement in the Ottoman Empire as Arabs increasingly believed they should have greater self-rule. During World War I, the discontent with the Ottoman Empire popularized the notion of independence propagated by Arab nationalists. "The movement made progress before 1914, but it remained a minority movement until 1918, when the Arab revolt, the British agreement with Sherif Hussein, and the British defeat of the Ottomans left the dominant faction of the Syrian and Iraqi Arab notables with no alternatives to Arabism." [3] In the next two years, Sherif Hussein and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner for Egypt, agreed that Hussein would become the ruler of Arab lands formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire if he helped the British war effort. However, McMahon excluded certain sections of land from that which was promised to Hussein. .
British influence in the Middle East would demonstrate in three essential agreements in the Hussein-McMahon agreement, the Sykes-Picot agreement, and the Balfour Declaration throughout World War I. The Hussein-McMahon agreement in October 1915 was a promise from the British that Palestine land would be given to Arabs after World War I in exchange for the Arabs help to fight against the Central Powers. "The Hussein-McMahon correspondence shows clearly that in negotiating with Britain, the Sharif consciously adopted the language and terms of nationalism. In a sense, he chose an idiom that was especially comprehensible to European sensibilities.
