During the First World War, British officials made overlapping and ambiguous commitments concerning Ottoman territories. The Hussein-McMahon correspondence encouraged Arab expectations of independence, while the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement divided spheres of influence and the Balfour Declaration supported a Jewish national home in Palestine. Their incompatibilities shaped later conflict.

The promises became enduring subjects in Arabic and Palestinian literature about betrayal, partition and exile. Later poets including Mahmoud Darwish wrote within a political landscape created partly by these documents and by the competing meanings assigned to their carefully chosen words.