No such hope currently exists for the Middle East, whose contemporary political borders were largely established by Britain and France during WWI, when the diplomats Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot negotiated the division of the Ottoman Empire. Likewise, the creation of Israel harks back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, whereby the subsequent British mandatory power in Palestine supported the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.
中东则不存在这样的希望。当代中东的政治边界大体由英国和法国在一战期间划定，双方外交官赛克斯（Mark Sykes）和皮科（François Georges-Picot）商议了分割奥斯曼帝国的计划。类似地，以色列的建立可以追溯到1917年巴尔福宣言（Balfour Declaration），后来巴勒斯坦英国托管政权据此支持为犹太人建立一个国家。