The Empire’s Double Cross: How Britain’s Broken Promises Lit the Fires in Israel and Burma
When today’s headlines show rockets over Gaza or displaced villagers fleeing Burma’s ethnic states, the immediate focus is on those doing the fighting. But if we step back a century, another player emerges—long gone from the battlefield, but whose decisions set both conflicts in motion: Britain. In Palestine and Burma (Myanmar), Britain used the same playbook—promise the same land to different peoples to secure wartime advantage, then walk away, leaving generations to deal with the fallout.
1. Palestine: A Homeland Promised Twice
Before World War I, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915–16, Britain entered into the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, promising Arab independence—including Palestine—in exchange for an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule.
But while making that pledge, Britain was secretly negotiating the Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) with France, dividing much of the Middle East into spheres of influence. Then, in 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Israel.
The result was a collision course: two peoples, each believing they had Britain’s word. In the decades that followed, Jewish people returning back to Israel grew—driven by persecution in Europe—while Palestinian Arabs felt betrayed and displaced. By 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted; Arab leaders rejected the plan, seeing it as unjust. War erupted in 1948 after Israel declared independence, and the conflict has persisted ever since.
2. Burma: The Karen’s Forgotten Deal
While Britain was planting the seeds of the Middle East conflict, it was setting up a similar tragedy in Southeast Asia. The Karen, a distinct ethnic group in Burma, had their own culture, governance, and homeland long before British colonization. During World War II, they fought loyally alongside British and Allied forces—particularly in the Burma Campaign—against Japanese forces and Burmese nationalists aligned with Japan.
British officers gave the Karen verbal assurances that after the war, they would have their own homeland, sometimes referred to as “Kawthoolei.” But as independence neared, Britain struck deals with Burmese nationalist leaders that favored a unified Burma under Burman control—over all ethnic lands, including the Karen territory.
When Burma became independent in 1948, those promises evaporated. Feeling betrayed, the Karen National Union led by President Saw Baw YOU Gyi launched an armed resistance in 1949. What followed was one of the world’s longest-running civil wars, marked by forced displacement, scorched-earth campaigns, and a decades-long humanitarian crisis along the Thai–Burma border.
In both Palestine and Burma, Britain followed the same formula:
Promise autonomy or independence to secure one group’s loyalty.
Promise the same territory to another group to strengthen strategic alliances.
Withdraw when imperial interests are served, leaving irreconcilable promises behind.
The result was decades—now over a century—of mistrust, armed conflict, and displacement.
5. Why This Matters Now
The conflicts in Gaza and Burma’s ethnic states are often framed as ancient disputes or inevitable clashes. In reality, they are partly the product of calculated imperial policies. Until the colonial origins are openly acknowledged, the global community risks treating the symptoms while ignoring the cause.
Conclusion
The Palestinian farmer watching his olive grove demolished and the Karen villager fleeing a military raid are separated by thousands of miles, but they share a common history: both were promised a homeland by Britain and denied it. The empire’s double cross has outlived the empire itself, etched into borders, wars, and the lives of those still fighting for what they were told was theirs.
References
Britannica. (2025, July). Husayn–McMahon correspondence. In Britannica.
The Guardian. (2017, October 17). The contested centenary of Britain’s ‘calamitous promise’.
IWM. (n.d.). Why did Britain promise Palestine to Arabs and Zionists?
Wikipedia. (2025, August 8). McMahon–Hussein correspondence.
New Yorker. (2017, November 2). The Balfour Declaration Century.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Balfour Declaration.
Wiley Online Library. (2020). Garbagni, G. Imagining Kawthoolei: Strategies of petitioning for Karen..., Nations and Nationalism.
Kawthoolei Institute. (n.d.). A childhood place not yet exist.
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Karen conflict.
Southeast Asia Globe. (n.d.). Out of sight: The Karen WWII soldiers forgotten by the British.
Hansard. (1998). Burma and Karen refugees – UK Parliament.
