Not surprisingly, the King-Crane Commission concluded that Arabs everywhere opposed the involvement of Britain and France in their affairs. It recommanded separate constitutional monarchies for Irak and undivided Syria-a Syria that is,  which included Lebanon and Palestine. It also called for limits on Zionism, predicting the goals of the Jews could not be realized "except by force of arms." As a fallback, he said, the Arabs preferred an American to a European mandate, limited to twenty years*

Though the report probably assessed Arab opinion fairly, by the time the conference received it, Wilson was no longer among the participants. He has returned home in 1919 for a speaking tour in behalf of the League of Nations, during which he suffered a paralyzing stroke. Without his  presence, America's influence in the peace deliberations all but vanished.

Faisal, meanwhile, had gone back to Damascus to find his own role seriously undermined. Fiery nationalists, after decades cowering beneath the Turks, has emerged as the dominant force in the country. Damascus, moreover, had become a new, secular Mecca, to which radicals flocked from all over the Arab world. They argued that, unless the conference granted Syria full independence, the Arabs must one again rise up in revolt.

To these nationalists, Faisal, whatever his services to the Arab Revolt, was an outsider, a desert prince ruling in a relatively modern, secularized milieu. Faisal, seeking to mollify them, announced national elections, they produced an assembly in which the radicals dominated. The assembly proceeded to pass fervid resolutions declaring Syrian and Iraqi independence, rejecting all mandates, repudiating both Sykes-Picot and Balfour. Its ardor, coming just as the great powers were finishing the Germans agenda and turning to the Ottoman territories, dramatized the chasm between the Middele East and Paris. If any prospect of compromise between Europe and the Arabs ever existed, the assembly in Damascus shut it off.

At this point Britain, weakened by economic crisis, called home its army in Syria. No longer able to bear the costs of the force, the withdrawal left Faisal alone to face the French. Retreating from intransigeance, Faisal hinted that he might accept a loose mandate that would allow him to remain king. But militants in both Paris and Damascus, at opposing poles, rejected reconciliation. In early 1920, France without British protest, landed troops in Lebanon, conveying its intention of pressing its rule over Syria deep into the interior.

Meanwhile, British and French negotiators formally met to settle the Middle East's fate. First in London, then in San Remo, Italy, they deliberated over both Turkey itself and the Arabs provinces. No reference was made barely a ripple on Western consciousness; filed with Sykes-Picot and Balfour, King-Crane only added to the evidence in the Arab's historical memory of the West's bad faith. In August 1920, the great powers signed a treaty on the Middle East in Sèvres, a Paris suburb. The Ottoman sultan, coerced by the British force that still occupied Constantinople, endorsed it in the name of the vanquished Turks. But by then, events had superseded the diplomatic process, and it was soon apparent that the treaty of Sèvres was doomed.

 *"Storm from the East  The struggle between the Arab World and The Chrisitan West" Milton Viorst.  Chapter III Disillusion 1919-1939, page54-55. A modern Library  Chronicles Book The Modern Library New York, 2007.