In this timeline's Great War, Germany adopted a purely defensive posture in the west (no invasion of Belgium and France) and focused all efforts in the East. Although Britain still entered the war as a member of the Entente, far fewer British troops were committed to the land war in Europe, with most British efforts consisting of the naval blockade and war in the colonies, including in the Ottoman Arab territories. France bled itself white in numerous repeated offensives against entrenched German forcese while Russia collapsed in 1916. There was no single peace treaty that ended the war. A peace treaty was signed between Germany, France, Britain in late 1916 that was essentially a return to prewar conditions in the west. Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy signed a peace treaty in 1917 that transferred German-speaking Italian territories in the north to Austria. In the east, Germany "liberated" Poland, the Baltics, Finland, and the Ukraine from Russia, and established these as nominally independent states under German protection in a 1916 Treaty with the Provisional governemnt of the Russian Republic. Britain suceeded in wresting Ottomon territories away from Turkish rule and established several quasi-independent protectorates in Iraq, Syria, Trans-Jordan, and also Egypt.
German/British rivalry continued after the war, with the near east being the principal area of rivalry.
In this world Britain sought to strengthen its strategic hold on the former Ottomon Arab states by sponsoring them...which also meant actively discouraging the Zionist movement. Imperial Germany, however, found itself attempting to pacify and control ethnic conflict in its new east European puppet states and saw the Zionist movement as way to eliminate at least one source of ethnic coinflict by promoting the emmigration of large numbers of Ashkenazi Jews in Poland and the Ukraine. This policy was also promoted to create a pro-German enclave in Palestine to counter British gains in the near east. In 1937, the large German-sponsored zionist community in Palestine reacted to British attempts to forcefully limit further jewish immigration by declaring its independence as the state of Israel, leading to the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1938-1939, in which Germany (and to a lesser extent the US) assisted the Israelis while Britain (and to a lesser extent Italy) assisted the Arab states. The war ended in late 1939 with an Israeli victory. Yiddish, not Hebrew, became the official language of this Israel.
