1917: World War One. The intense battles on the Western Front in France have reached a stalemate. Russia is in the midst of civil war and about to withdraw from the Allied effort. Meanwhile, the British Army has made progress battling the Ottoman Turks up the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula, from the Suez Canal in Egypt to Gaza in Palestine. The objective: to capture Jerusalem.
In March 1917, the British offensive is halted at Gaza. Another attempt to take the city in April proves to be a catastrophic failure with huge casualties. The advance stalls.
Elsewhere in Arabia, Captain T.E. Lawrence makes valuable progress for the British working with local Arab leaders who have been promised an independent Arab state after the war.
They have already been betrayed.
Under the Sykes–Picot Agreement, the British and the French have already secretly arranged to divide the Arabian Peninsula between themselves after the war. What’s more, Zionist leaders both in London and in the NILI Spy Network in Jerusalem have been promised British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland after the war.
Overextended in their promises and on the brink of facing the full weight of the German army on the Western Front, the Allies are on the brink of collapse. Then hope comes in April 1917 when the United States enters the war on the Allied side.
But mobilizing the American troops will take time. The Germans and Ottomans know that they must strike, and strike hard … and they have only a limited window of time in which to do it.