Actually, there's more to this than simply naivety. For some reason, although the British were tasked with overseeing the Jews being reinstated in the Land of Israel (they were the only people who had had a formal nation there previously), the colonial powers placed there were opposed to the Jews settling there, so it was the British who created Islamic opposition and allowed many Arabs into the country, mostly under illegal terms. They were given free rein by the British to fight the Jews who, according to the global power at the time, were the only people with legal status to live and rule a nation.

Britain was behind the original push to return the Jews to The Land of Israel well before 1917, largely because of the Zionist Catholicism that governed Britain at the time - it came not from a desire to help the Jews but a desire to get them out of British territory.

I say "them" but I mean "us" since my paternal grandparents and great grandparents and were among the British Jews of the time. My maternal grandparents and great grandparents were already living in the Land of Israel.