Read Palestine

Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca

Properties2
tags
aliasesCmd. 5974, McMahon-Husain Correspondence Report 1939, Report of the Committee on the McMahon-Husain Correspondence

35 min read

Summary

The report (Cmd. 5974, 16 March 1939) of the joint Arab–United Kingdom committee set up at the Conferences on Palestine to consider the McMahon–Hussein correspondence of 1915-1916, read in full: the Report itself, Annex A (Antonius’s Arab memorandum), Annex B (the Lord Chancellor’s memorandum of the United Kingdom case), Annex C (Michael McDonnell’s legal statement), Annex D (the Arab Observations, with its Lloyd George evidence that the Balfour Declaration was meant to lead to a Jewish Commonwealth once Jews became a majority), Annex E (the Lord Chancellor’s closing statement, repeating that the Arab district-phrase argument “has been shown to have greater force than has appeared hitherto” while holding the French-interests reservation undiminished), and Annexes F-J printing the Hogarth Message, the Declaration to the Seven, Allenby’s assurance to Faisal, the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918 and the June 1915 de Bunsen committee extract on Palestine (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 73-803). The committee could not agree on whether Palestine was included in the area in which Britain pledged to recognise and support Arab independence: the Arab representatives held that Palestine was in fact and in intention included, because the Sharif’s demanded area was accepted save for specified reservations in which Palestine is never mentioned and because the reservations rest only on French interests in northern Syria, while the United Kingdom representatives held that the exclusion of the portions of Syria west of the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and the general reservation for French interests, excluded Palestine (lines 153-250). The United Kingdom representatives nevertheless told the Arab representatives that the Arab contentions, especially on that district phrase, “have greater force than has appeared hitherto”, agreed that Palestine was included in the area the Sharif claimed on 14 July 1915 and would be included unless excluded later, and agreed that “the language in which its exclusion was expressed was not so specific and unmistakable as it was thought to be at the time” (lines 271-277).

What the file is

  • The UNISPAL page “McMahon-Husain correspondence - Report of Arab-UK committee - UK documentation Cmd. 5974/Non-UN document (excerpts)”, downloaded from the URL above (access basis: public-domain, as supplied). The original is the HTML page; the text copy supplied with it (about 22,136 words, lines 1-870, with line 871 the empty line after the final newline) is a plain-text rendering of that page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers. Lines 1-72 are the UN site frame. The page is headed “(excerpts)”; what, if anything, the excerpting omits from the printed Cmd. 5974 is not stated in the file (see Open questions).
  • The printed report: presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Parliament by Command of His Majesty, March 1939, London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, price 9d. net, Cmd.5974 (lines 73-115). Its Note records adoption at the Fourteenth Meeting of the Arab and United Kingdom Delegations on Friday, March 17th, 1939, and printing cost estimated at “£57 I0S.” (as printed, lines 143-149).
  • Structure (Contents, lines 117-139): the Report dated March 16th, 1939; Annex A, the Arab “Memorandum on British Pledges to the Arabs” (first meeting, February 23rd); Annex B, titled in the Contents “The McMahon-Husain Correspondence” but in its own heading and text the Lord Chancellor’s memorandum for His Majesty’s Government (second meeting, February 24th); Annex C, Michael McDonnell on legal points (February 28th); Annex D, Arab Observations (February 28th); Annex E, the Lord Chancellor’s statement (March 16th); Annex F, the Hogarth Message of January 1918; Annex G, the Declaration to the Seven of June 1918; Annex H, Sir Edmund Allenby’s assurance to the Amir Faisal of October 1918; Annex I, the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918; Annex J, extract from the de Bunsen committee report of June 1915.
  • As-printed forms in the file as supplied, confirmed in both the text copy and the HTML original: “reach.agreement” (Report para. 16), “l4th July” and “a’ proper construction” (para. 18), “corn* communication” (Annex A para. 6), “ivilaya” (Annex A para. 11), “tic reservations” (Annex A para. 17), “historic; I facts” (Annex A para. 18), “mere is no inconsistency” and “turn Out” (Grey enclosure), “Kama” for Hama (Annex A para. 10; Annex B para. 18), “desire to a new attention” (Report para. 13(e), as printed, for “draw attention”), and “White-hall” (Annex A para. 8) against “Whitehall” in the Report. Each is held as printed in the reading notes.
  • Further as-printed forms confirmed in part 2: “memoradum” (Annex B para. 42), “bad occasion” and “Gckten Rule” and “Damascu” (Annex C), “myself.to”, “dismemberment ment”, “Sarijaq pt Jerusalem” (Annex C), “Hngar’h”, “paragraph jg”, “Roy:d Commission”, “did not,mean”, “the. majority”, “Jewish Common-wealth” (Annex D), “an. Arab Federation” and “on the? same footing” (Annex E, Milner quotation), “approved of-by” (Annex F), “the Arab inhabiting” (Annex G), “l9th October” (Annex H), “Syria and, Mesopotamia” and “the. diffusion” (Annex I), and “scared places” and “paragraph II” (Annex J). Each is held as printed in the reading notes.
  • Coverage: lines 1-871 of 871, read in full in parts 1-2. Lines 805-871 are the UN site frame tail, not part of Cmd. 5974; the printed paper ends at line 803 with its printer’s mark.

Section by section

  • Title page, Contents and Note by the Secretary of State for the Colonies (lines 73-149): bibliographic facts as in What the file is. The Report was adopted on March 17th, 1939, the day after its date.
  • The Report (lines 153-296): Set up at the Sixth Meeting at St. James’s Palace on 15 February 1939 to consider the correspondence between Henry McMahon, His Majesty’s High Commissioner in Cairo, and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, afterwards King Husain of the Hejaz, and to report to the Conference (para. 1). Arab members: General Nuri al-Said, Prime Minister of Iraq, replaced after two meetings by Sayyid Taufiq al-Suwaidy; Abdul-Rahman Bey Azzam, Egyptian Minister in Baghdad and Jedda; Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi and Musa al-‘Alami, Palestine Delegates; George Antonius, Palestine Delegate and Secretary-General, with adviser Michael McDonnell, formerly Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Palestine. United Kingdom members: Lord Maugham, Lord High Chancellor of England; Sir Grattan Bushe, Legal Adviser, Colonial Office; Mr. H.L. Baggallay, First Secretary, Foreign Office; adviser Mr. J. Heyworth-Dunne, Senior Lecturer in Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London; Secretary Mr. J. R. Colville, Foreign Office (para. 2). Four meetings at the House of Lords: 23 and 24 February, 28 February and 16 March 1939 (para. 3). The Lord Chancellor stated he sat not as a judge but only to expound and advocate His Majesty’s Government’s views (para. 4). Translation corrections suggested by Antonius and agreed by Heyworth-Dunne were considered; the Arab members held the corrected English still not the best possible rendering but free from actual error on anything essential; the changes appear in Command 5957, presented 3 March 1939 (para. 5; see Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916). The annex sequence is as in What the file is (paras. 6-10).
  • The Report — the Arab case summarised (para. 12, lines 195-235): Palestine was in fact and in intention included by both parties. British statesmen had already opposed the French claim so far as it related to Palestine and admitted it only for northern Syria, and McMahon’s 24 October 1915 reservation must be read in that light; McMahon throughout bases exclusion on French interests and his geographical descriptions point to the northern Syrian coast. The Sharif’s area was accepted in toto save reservations; Palestine is not in them, and McMahon specified every exception he meant (the northern coast, the Mesopotamian provinces), the onus of exclusion lying on him. District cannot mean vilayet: the contention that the districts included the whole Vilayet of Syria is untenable. Even if Palestine had been excluded, only the French claim could justify it, and France ultimately renounced her claim to Palestine, so the plea has lost its force.
  • The Report — the United Kingdom case summarised (para. 13, lines 237-250 and following in the next range’s overlap): Palestine’s special position (Holy Land of three religions, non-Arab religious institutions, British interests by Egypt and the Suez Canal; not a purely Arab country); the west-of-the-districts exclusion covered southern Syria — portions of the former vilayet of Beirut and the former independent Sanjaq of Jerusalem, now Palestine — in a band from the Cilician border to the Gulf of ‘Aqaba; and separately the French-interests reservation applied to all territory France claimed on 24 October 1915, including Palestine then treated as part of Syria, and continued even if France later abandoned her claim, which the representatives deny, citing the Sykes–Picot agreement and France’s League of Nations voice. As intention evidence, admitted to have no legal weight on construction, McMahon’s 1937 statement — “it was not intended by me in giving the pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised” — and Gilbert Clayton’s 1923 statement that inclusion was never intended and that the introductory words were thought, perhaps erroneously, clearly to cover exclusion are quoted.
  • The Report — Arab answers, United Kingdom reply, and outcome (paras. 14-22, lines 251-296): The Arab answers: guarantees for the Holy Places and for British co-operation were expressly stipulated, and McMahon’s inserting a Holy Places stipulation proves he had Palestine in mind; the district contention is answered in Annex A and Michael McDonnell’s statement (with the footnote ”* In the Arabic text: Bilad al-Sham”); the French reservation does not cover the whole of Syria; McMahon’s stated intention is of no consequence because the pledge was His Majesty’s Government’s, not his — what matters is what he actually said; if intention counts it is Edward Grey’s, who in the House of Lords on 27 March 1923 entertained serious doubts about the British interpretation. The United Kingdom reply: the French-interests contention remained unaffected; Grey’s 1923 words were used in debate without the Balfour Declaration before him. The parties were unable to agree (para. 16). The United Kingdom concessions in paras. 17-18 are as in the Summary. On the later statements (para. 19: the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, the Hogarth message, the Declaration to the Seven, Allenby’s assurances, and the Anglo-French Declaration, dated there to the 7th November, 1918), the Committee expressed no opinion on interpretation, but held it evident that His Majesty’s Government “were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine” and that the statements must be taken into account in estimating the responsibilities incurred towards those inhabitants on any interpretation (para. 22). The report is signed T. Suwaidy, A.-R. Azzam, Auni Abdul-Hady, Musa Alami, G.Antonius (as printed), Maugham, Grattan Bushe and Lacy Baggallay, 16 March 1939.
  • Annex A — Antonius, “Memorandum on British Pledges to the Arabs”, 23 February 1939 (lines 297-365, paras. 1-20): Historical background: France’s pre-War claim to special rights in Syria on a break-up of the Ottoman Empire, recognised to a large extent by Grey’s declaration made public in the French Senate on 21 December 1912; “Syria” then denoted the whole between the Taurus Mountains and the Sinai Peninsula — part of the Vilayet of Aleppo, the Vilayet of Bairut (as printed), the Vilayet of Syria, the Sanjaq of the Lebanon and the Sanjaq of Jerusalem — including what was later detached as the mandated territory of Palestine (paras. 1-3). Against that, Lord Kitchener’s circle sought to detach southern Syria as far north as Haifa and Acre under British influence; Newcombe’s 1913 Sinai survey confirmed southern Syria to Haifa, Acre and the Gulf of ‘Aqaba as an indispensable British asset; Kitchener pressed resistance to the French claim to the whole of Syria on the India Office and Government of India; and the committee set up in March 1915 reported in June 1915 in favour of detaching southern Syria from French influence (paras. 4-7). So when the correspondence began, differentiation of northern from southern Syria was already British policy, McMahon throughout tied exclusion to French interests alone (his 14 December 1915 note naming “the Vilayets of Aleppo and Bairut”), and the Sharif understood only the Lebanon and its seaboard to be reserved; southern Syria could not be reserved because Britain wanted it within Arab independence, i.e. future British influence (para. 8). Text: McMahon never defines the area, he accepts the Sharif’s frontiers save reservations, and Palestine, southern Syria, the Sanjaq of Jerusalem or any corresponding division is nowhere mentioned in them (para. 9). Wilaya: in Arabic the word means province, region or district without administrative connotation, and the Arabic text’s wilaya of Mersin, Alexandretta, Damascus, Homs and “Kama” (as printed) never existed as Ottoman divisions; the Cairo notes were translated from an English original using “district”, as the 1922 White Paper and the Palestine Royal Commission Report show, and district should be restored (paras. 10-11). Winston Churchill’s 1922 district-equals-vilayet argument fails: there was one Vilayet of Syria with Damascus as capital and no Vilayets of Homs or Hama, so districts are the regions adjacent to the four cities and the reservation is the coast roughly from Sidon to Alexandretta west of their line (paras. 12-13). McMahon’s 14 December note names only Aleppo and Bairut; had he meant Palestine he would have added the Sanjaq of Jerusalem, and the fact that he did not goes to confirm, in Annex A’s conclusion, that the only portions it was proposed to reserve for France were the coastal regions of northern Syria (para. 14). If Britain ended the war free to act in a reserved portion, the reservation lost its force, and Palestine must remain in the Arab area (para. 15), a point reinforced by the Arabic version’s words “in them both”, absent from the official English text of the 14 December note: the force of those three words, Annex A holds, is to show McMahon had only the two vilayets in mind and could not have been thinking of a third province outside them (para. 15). McMahon’s 1937 Times letter is answered as in the Report, with the addition that if intentions are to be taken into account it would be necessary to search the Foreign Office files for evidence of the Secretary of State’s intentions (para. 16). The Sharif’s own notes of 5 November 1915 (“their maritime coasts”) and 1 January 1916 (“the northern parts and their coastal regions”; “Beirut and its coastal regions which we will overlook for the moment on account of France”) and McMahon’s note of 30 January 1916 (“the northern regions”) all confine the reservations to the north (para. 17). The Sharif protested at once on the Balfour Declaration, and in the light of his actions McMahon’s declaration that he had every reason to believe the contrary loses its force and indeed appears meaningless (para. 18). Wartime proclamations bearing the Sharif’s and the British Command’s messages, Arab Revolt recruiting offices in Palestine, and British officers’ understanding through 1916-1917 that Palestine was destined for the post-war Arab territory are given as conduct evidence (para. 19). The confidentially communicated English text contains translation errors affecting the meaning; revision before publication is urged (para. 20). Signed G. Antonius.
  • Enclosure in Annex A (lines 367-387): extracts from Grey’s and Lord Buckmaster’s House of Lords speeches of 27 March 1923. Grey urges official publication of all the engagements: “If they turn Out to be inconsistent” (as printed) honour requires frank admission; “pretending that mere is no inconsistency” (as printed) cannot redeem honour; the Balfour Declaration promised a Zionist home without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of Palestine’s population, a Zionist home “undoubtedly means or implies a Zionist Government over the district in which the home is placed”, and if 93 per cent. of Palestine’s population are Arabs such a government cannot be established without prejudice to their civil rights; all pledges should be set side by side and the fair thing considered. Buckmaster: the documents show not casual inconsistency but a deliberate pledge given and abandoned; King Hussein was assured the excluded area was the line north from Damascus through named places and the rest should be theirs; “We certainly meant what we said in 1915. We did not do what we said in 1918.”
  • Annex B — the Lord Chancellor’s memorandum (lines 389-436, opening to para. 19, incomplete): All United Kingdom Governments since 1915 have held McMahon intended to leave Palestine outside Arab independence and that the correspondence cannot be read otherwise (para. 3). Surrounding circumstances (paras. 5-12): Palestine as the principal Holy Land of Christians and Jews and second only to the Hejaz for Moslems; Palestine not exclusively Arab — “Some towns, such as Bethlehem, were almost purely Christian”, Bethlehem in 1912 having only 300 Moslems out of 11,000 inhabitants, and Nazareth 10,000 Christians of different religions out of 15,000, the majority Arabs by race but with a large residue of foreign Christian interests; Britain could not hand Palestine to another independent Moslem Power without guarantees for the Christian and Jewish Holy Places at least as full as in Ottoman times, and the absence of any guarantee discussion shows McMahon never supposed Palestine included; Haifa’s port and the Suez Canal required guarantees against use of Palestinian territory for attacks on Egypt; France’s 1915 claim to influence over wide, undefined Middle East areas must have been known to the Sharif; and Britain, with the Turks unbeaten and France, Russia and Italy to consider, could not pledge herself into end-of-war difficulties. The pledge’s words must be read with Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi’s concurrent Cairo discussions (paras. 13-15): al-Faruqi, though not an accredited representative or plenipotentiary, was well informed, put the Arab claims at their lowest in saying the Arabs would fight for the districts of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus in the widest sense and for the whole Mediterranean hinterland from the Cilician border to the Gulf of Aqaba, and the phrase in McMahon’s letter was adapted from al-Faruqi’s words; al-Faruqi also thought the Arabs might accept a general reservation for Britain’s allies. Circumstances are relevant both to probable intentions and to legal interpretation (para. 16). The Government’s case rests on a specific geographical reservation and a general reservation (para. 17): on the first, “portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Kama, Homs and Aleppo” (as printed in Annex B) embraced all of Syria, including Palestine, west of inter alia the “Vilayet of Syria” (para. 18); there were no Vilayets of Homs or Hama, but Damascus and Aleppo were vilayet capitals, the Damascus reference alone sufficed, and Homs and Hama were named because al-Faruqi had named them and to keep the intervening territory in Arab rule — “Obviously no reference was intended to non-existent Vilayets.” (para. 19, breaking off at line 436; continued below).
  • Annex B continued (lines 437-491, paras. 20-44): “Vilayet of Syria” was the official name of Damascus’s vilayet, but “Syria” was already used geographically for an area including Beirut, Jerusalem, the Lebanon and part of Aleppo (para. 20). A small-districts reading would push the non-Arab territory east almost to Damascus and over much of Transjordan and the Hejaz Railway (para. 21); on the Government reading the Arab area would not reach the Mediterranean, though the letter did not say so (paras. 22-24). The 14 December reference to Aleppo and Beirut only was a reply to the Sharif’s 5 November point (para. 25); his silence on Palestine can equally show he accepted special treatment (para. 26); his “northern parts” could mean the whole coast (para. 27). The Lord Chancellor concedes the 24 October passage “was clear or well-expressed” — it was not — and rests on al-Faruqi’s wide sense covering the hinterland to the Gulf of ‘Aqaba (paras. 28-29). The general reservation is “perfectly clear” and is fixed as at 24 October 1915, later changes being irrelevant (paras. 30-32); France then claimed the littoral to the Egyptian border and east to Damascus, modified only in spring 1916 towards Sykes-Picot (para. 33). The Sharif’s 1 January 1916 deferral of “Beirut and its coasts” provisionally reserved nearly half of Palestine, to just north of Jaffa (para. 36). Sykes, sympathetic to the Arabs, must have believed the reservations justified Sykes-Picot; Palestine there was to be international, with the Sharif consulted (paras. 37-39). Britain has substantially carried out a promise that was only to recognise, support, advise and assist (paras. 40-41); Balfour would not have made his Declaration had he thought Palestine included, and it expressly safeguards Arab civil and religious rights (para. 42); breach of faith is repudiated “very strongly” (para. 43); the Mandate, approved by some fifty-two nations, cannot be ignored (para. 44).
  • Annex C — Michael McDonnell on legal points, 28 February 1939 (lines 493-606): McDonnell first saw the 24 October letter in the 1937 Royal Commission Report (p.18) and the whole correspondence in Antonius’s The Arab Awakening (1938). The Sharif’s 14 July 1915 demand included Palestine, Aden alone excluded; a Palestine reservation, if intended, would have been made as Aden’s was. What McMahon (The Times, 23 July 1937) and Clayton (12 April 1923, to Samuel) say they intended is “a matter of no consequence whatever” — the offer was the Government’s, McMahon a “conduit pipe”, Clayton a drafter — on Halsbury’s dictum in Hilder v. Dexter [1902] A.C. p.477. Under Wensleydale’s Golden Rule (“Gckten Rule” as printed) the ordinary sense of the district phrase, read with the Royal Commission’s Map No. 1 and Antonius’s map (opposite p.248), does not bear Churchill’s 1922 vilayet reading: none of Damascus, Homs, Hama or Aleppo is east of Palestine, nothing is said of Hauran and Maan west of which Palestine lies, and there was no Vilayet of Damascus, Homs or Hama (Antonius pp.177-178). Of the letter’s six “districts”, only Aleppo named a vilayet, and west of it was the sea; “district” in every case is the town’s neighbourhood (Lindley in In re Birks (1900) 1 Ch. p.418). The Sharif himself used the Arabic term generally (Mersin and Adana; “their western Maritime coasts”). McMahon’s sole stated reason — “they cannot be said to be purely Arab” — fits Latakia, Tripoli and the Lebanon (Alawis, Druzes, Maronites) exactly, while Palestine was at least 95 per cent. Arab; not one word of the Holy Land’s worldwide importance appears in the correspondence, and exclusion “by a side wind” through France “will not hold water”. His reading of the Sharif’s notes of 5 November 1915 (Antonius p.421), McMahon’s of 14 December (p.423), the Sharif’s of 1 January 1916 (p.425) and McMahon’s of 30 January 1916 (p.426) finds every communication confining reservation to the north, the Sharif’s protest for Christian Arab rights aimed at the Lebanon Maronites; he adds that it is “very significant” that the Sharif’s 1 January paragraph names France alone as a Power concession to which is out of the question, “Precisely the same” holding for the only relevant remark in McMahon’s final note, and that the British communications gave as reasons for exclusion “none of the religious and historic grounds which were applicable to the Holy Land”, only political grounds applicable to the northern parts of Syria. Circumstances may modify language only where its ordinary sense is absurd or inconsistent (Blackburn in River Wear Commissioners v. Adamson (1877) 2 A.C. p.763; Wightman in Lewis v. Nicholson (1852) 18 Q.B. p.512; Selborne in Caledonian Railway (1881) 6 A.C. p.121). The Government has shifted ground three times: 1922 the Damascus district alone; before the Royal Commission (Cmd. 5479, pp.19-20) the French claims; now exclusion sub silentio, incompatible with both.
  • Annex D — Arab Observations, 27 February 1939 (lines 608-676): The Lord Chancellor’s Holy Places argument rests on misapprehension: the Treaty of Berlin (1878) already stipulated their safety and free access, binding any successor; British advice and officials were themselves a guarantee; and McMahon’s 24 October note itself stipulates “Great Britain will guarantee the Holy Places against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability” — inserting it “is surely conclusive proof that he had Palestine in mind” (paras. 6-9). On Haifa, the Sharif proposed a British-Arab military alliance and McMahon stipulated exclusively British European advisers (para. 10). On France, desiring is not the point — trying is: the steps were the 24 October silence on Palestine, the post-despath invitation to France to abandon her Palestine claim, Sykes-Picot internationalisation in 1916, and the end-of-war request for a British Mandate, the sequence 1915-1919 attaining the object (paras. 11-13, citing Annex J). Sykes-Picot was a breach of faith, Palestine having been included; Britain kept the Sharif in ignorance for eighteen months and then misled him in two messages (para. 14). On the Balfour Declaration, Lloyd George’s Royal Commission evidence (Cmd. 5479, Chapter II para. 20) is quoted: a Jewish State was not to be set up immediately, but “when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile … become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth” — the Declaration was “to serve as a cloak” for a Jewish majority and State, while Hogarth assured Husain the opposite (paras. 15-16). No charge of bad faith had been made; Grey’s 1923 advice — pledges side by side, the fair thing done — is urged on the Government (paras. 17-19). Signed G. Antonius.
  • Annex E — the Lord Chancellor’s closing statement, 16 March 1939 (lines 678-717): The Arab district-phrase point “has been shown to have greater force than has appeared hitherto”, though Palestine can still be regarded as covered (para. 3); the French-interests reservation is undiminished (para. 4); the deliberate-scheme contention is “unsupported by any evidence”, and advance commitments to a third party would have hindered, not helped, restricting France (para. 5); the reservation applied to all territory, including Palestine, to which French claims extended (para. 6). His argument was never exclusion merely because Palestine was not mentioned; it is fair construction with the circumstances (paras. 7-9). Milner’s Lords speech of 27 June 1923 is quoted: “Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the? same footing as the other Arab countries” (para. 10). Article LXII of the Treaty of Berlin expressly reserved France’s rights (paras. 11-12). “Holy Places” in the correspondence “meant and was taken to mean the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina”; even if it covered Palestine’s, protecting them implied no rights in them (para. 13). On Grey, no modification: Grey spoke in debate without the Declaration’s terms before him (para. 15).
  • Annex F — the Hogarth Message, January 1918 (lines 719-743): the Entente are determined the Arab race shall have full opportunity of forming a nation again; for Palestine “no people shall be subject to another”, but its shrines, Wakfs and Holy Places require “a special regime … approved of-by the world” (as printed), the Mosque of Omar a Moslem concern alone; and, Jewish opinion favouring a return, Britain is determined that “in so far as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this ideal”.
  • Annex G — the Declaration to the Seven, June 1918 (lines 745-768): four categories of area; for areas free before the war and areas emancipated by the Arabs themselves, Britain recognises “the complete and sovereign independence of the Arab inhabiting these areas” (as printed); for Allied-occupied areas, future government “should be based upon the principle of the consent of the governed”, as in the proclamations issued respectively by the General Officers Commanding in Chief on the taking of Baghdad and Jerusalem, a policy which “has and will continue to have the support of His Majesty’s Government”; for areas still under Turkish control, the oppressed peoples should obtain freedom and independence.
  • Annex H — Allenby’s assurance to the Amir Faisal, reported 19 October 1918 (lines 771-777): military administration measures are purely provisional and cannot prejudice the final settlement by the peace conference, at which the Arabs would have a representative; military governors are precluded from political affairs; “the Allies were in honour bound to endeavour to reach a settlement in accordance with the wishes of the peoples concerned”.
  • Annex I — the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, headed November 7, 1918 in the annex itself (lines 779-789): the Allied object is “the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks” and national governments “deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigenous populations” in Syria and Mesopotamia and the territories being liberated, with no institutions imposed.
  • Annex J — extract from the report of a committee presided over by Sir Maurice de Bunsen, June 1915 (lines 791-801): on Palestine, included in the British sphere in both schemes, “they see no reason why the scared places of Palestine” (as printed) “should not be dealt with as a separate question”; the committee assumed the French claim will be rejected but held it idle for Britain to claim Palestine’s retention: “Palestine must be recognised as a country whose destiny must be the subject of special negotiations, in which both belligerents and neutrals are alike interested.”

Key passages

  • “There is no room for doubt that Palestine was in fact and in intention included by both parties to the McMahon-Husain Correspondence in the area of Arab independence.” (lines 195-200, Report para. 12(a), summarising the Arab case)
  • “the language in which its exclusion was expressed was not so specific and unmistakable as it was thought to be at the time” (lines 271-277, Report para. 18, the United Kingdom representatives agreeing)
  • “were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine” (lines 283-290, Report para. 22)
  • “I can bear out the statement that it was never the intention that Palestine should be included in the general pledge given to the Sharif” (lines 243-250, Report para. 13(e), quoting Gilbert Clayton, 1923)
  • “We certainly meant what we said in 1915. We did not do what we said in 1918.” (lines 381-387, Enclosure in Annex A, quoting Lord Buckmaster, 1923)
  • “Obviously no reference was intended to non-existent Vilayets.” (lines 429-436, Annex B para. 19)
  • “a provisional acceptance of a reservation of nearly half of Palestine” (lines 465-471, Annex B para. 36, on the Sharif’s 1 January 1916 deferral of Beirut and its coasts)
  • “is an argument that will not hold water” (lines 551-557, Annex C, McDonnell on exclusion of Palestine through the French-interests reference)
  • “Great Britain will guarantee the Holy Places against all external aggression and will recognise their inviolability” (lines 635-641, Annex D para. 7, quoting McMahon’s note of 24 October 1915)
  • “then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth” (lines 661-665, Annex D para. 16, quoting Lloyd George’s evidence to the Palestine Royal Commission)
  • “Palestine can never be regarded as a country on the? same footing as the other Arab countries” (lines 699-705, Annex E para. 10, quoting Lord Milner, 27 June 1923)
  • “in so far as is compatible with the freedom of the existing population both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this ideal” (lines 733-739, Annex F, the Hogarth Message on Jewish return to Palestine)
  • “should be based upon the principle of the consent of the governed” (lines 757-763, Annex G, the Declaration to the Seven on Allied-occupied areas)
  • “the Allies were in honour bound to endeavour to reach a settlement in accordance with the wishes of the peoples concerned” (lines 773-777, Annex H, Allenby’s assurance to Faisal)
  • “the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks” (lines 781-785, Annex I, the Anglo-French Declaration)
  • “Palestine must be recognised as a country whose destiny must be the subject of special negotiations, in which both belligerents and neutrals are alike interested.” (lines 795-801, Annex J, the de Bunsen committee extract)

Evidence the work relies on

  • The McMahon–Hussein correspondence itself, in the corrected English text of Command 5957, as the primary text both sides construe (Report para. 5).
  • The parties’ own committee memoranda: Antonius’s memorandum of 23 February 1939 (Annex A), the Lord Chancellor’s memorandum (Annex B), McDonnell’s statement and the Arab Observations (Annexes C and D, read in part 2), and the Lord Chancellor’s closing statement (Annex E, part 2).
  • Statements of intention on record: McMahon in The Times, 23 July 1937, and Clayton in 1923, quoted by the United Kingdom representatives (Report para. 13(e)); Grey’s and Buckmaster’s House of Lords speeches of 27 March 1923, appended by the Arab side (Enclosure in Annex A).
  • Historical background as each side presents it: Grey’s 1912 declaration on the French claim to Syria, Kitchener’s pre-war southern-Syria policy, Newcombe’s 1913 Sinai survey and the June 1915 committee report (Annex A paras. 2-7); al-Faruqi’s autumn 1915 Cairo discussions (Annex B paras. 13-15).
  • Later wartime statements listed in Report para. 19 — the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, the Hogarth message, the Declaration to the Seven, Allenby’s assurances and the Anglo-French Declaration (Annexes F-I, read in part 2) — and, in Annex A para. 19, British proclamations and recruiting in Palestine in 1916-1917.
  • Population figures as the Lord Chancellor gives them for 1912: Bethlehem 300 Moslems of 11,000 inhabitants; Nazareth 10,000 Christians of 15,000 (Annex B para. 6); and, in Grey’s speech as quoted, 93 per cent. Arabs in Palestine (Enclosure in Annex A). McDonnell in Annex C gives a different figure for the correspondence period, at least 95 per cent. Arab in Palestine; both stand as their speakers give them.
  • Legal authorities as McDonnell cites them in Annex C: Halsbury in Hilder v. Dexter [1902] A.C. p.477; Wensleydale’s Golden Rule; Lindley in In re Birks (1900) 1 Ch. p.418; Blackburn in River Wear Commissioners v. Adamson (1877) 2 A.C. p.763; Wightman in Lewis v. Nicholson (1852) 18 Q.B. p.512; Selborne in Caledonian Railway and North British Railway (1881) 6 A.C. p.121; and the Royal Commission’s Map No. 1 and its Report pp.19-20 (Cmd. 5479).
  • The texts printed in Annexes F-J: the Hogarth Message as Hogarth was instructed to deliver it (January 1918), the Declaration to the Seven (June 1918), Allenby’s report of 19 October 1918 of his assurance to Faisal, the Anglo-French Declaration (headed 7 November 1918 in Annex I), and the Palestine extract of the June 1915 de Bunsen committee report.
  • Lloyd George’s evidence to the Palestine Royal Commission, quoted in Annex D para. 16 from Cmd. 5479, Chapter II para. 20, on the Balfour Declaration’s contemplated Jewish Commonwealth; and Milner’s House of Lords speech of 27 June 1923, quoted in Annex E para. 10.
  • The Treaty of Berlin (1878), relied on by the Arab representatives (its Holy Places provisions; Annex D paras. 6-7) and by the Lord Chancellor (Article LXII’s reservation of France’s rights; Annex E paras. 11-12).

Analysis

The work is an agreed record of a disagreement, not a judgment: the Lord Chancellor sat, by the Report’s own account, not as a judge but to expound and advocate His Majesty’s Government’s views (para. 4), the Arab side answered with a memorandum, a legal statement by a former Chief Justice of Palestine, and observations, and the Report records both cases and the points of agreement without deciding between them. Its method is construction of a written instrument: the United Kingdom case reads the 24 October 1915 letter with its surrounding circumstances and rests in the end less on the district phrase than on the general French-interests reservation fixed as at October 1915; the Arab case, as McDonnell frames it, applies the ordinary-meaning rule and treats circumstances and later statements of intention as admissible only where the language is ambiguous. The two concessions the Report does record are one-directional: the United Kingdom representatives agreed the Arab district-phrase contentions have greater force than had appeared and that the exclusion’s language was not so specific and unmistakable as thought at the time, a concession Annex E repeats, while maintaining the French reservation undiminished; no corresponding Arab concession is recorded. On the later wartime statements the committee’s only joint holding is the para. 22 proposition that His Majesty’s Government were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of its inhabitants. The file’s limits are its own: it is headed “(excerpts)”, its text as supplied carries the as-printed slips recorded in What the file is, its internal dates conflict at the points held under Open questions, and the arguments’ factual premises (French claims in 1915, the de Bunsen committee, Lloyd George’s evidence) are presented by the side relying on them, not independently evidenced in the file.

How it relates to other sources

  • It is the companion paper to Correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, July 1915–March 1916 (Cmd. 5957): the committee considered the correspondence in the corrected English text that paper prints (Report para. 5), and its question — whether Palestine was in the McMahon pledge — is the question that paper raises by printing a correspondence in which Palestine is never named.
  • Its Annex J extract and Annex A paras. 4-7 both concern British deliberation in 1915 on detaching southern Syria/Palestine from the French claim; whether the unnamed committee of Annex A para. 7 is the de Bunsen committee of Annex J is not stated in this file and is held under Open questions.
  • The later statements it prints and weighs — the Hogarth Message, the Declaration to the Seven, Allenby’s assurance and the Anglo-French Declaration of 1918 — are the same documents other sources in this wiki treat as wartime pledges to the Arabs; here they are held, jointly, to show the Government was not free to dispose of Palestine without regard to its inhabitants’ wishes and interests (para. 22), without any agreed interpretation of any one of them.
  • Lloyd George’s evidence as quoted in Annex D — the Balfour Declaration contemplating a Jewish Commonwealth on a Jewish majority — stands beside Grey’s 1923 account in the Enclosure to Annex A; both are presented by the Arab side, and the Lord Chancellor answers Grey (Annex E para. 15) but the file records no United Kingdom answer to the Lloyd George quotation.

People, organizations, places and events

Henry McMahon, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, George Antonius, Michael McDonnell, Lord Maugham, Edward Grey, Gilbert Clayton, Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi, Nuri al-Said, Musa al-‘Alami, Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill, Edmund Allenby, De Bunsen Committee Report (June 1915), Britain, France, Syria, Lebanon, Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Haifa, Acre, Bethlehem, Nazareth, 1939 London Round Table Conference

Concepts

McMahon–Hussein correspondence, Balfour Declaration, Sykes–Picot agreement, Hogarth Message, Declaration to the Seven, Anglo-French Declaration of 1918, Holy Places, Wilaya, Arab Khalifate

Open questions

  • The file is headed “(excerpts)” and the printed Cmd. 5974 is not in the file: what, if anything, the UNISPAL excerpting omits, and whether the as-printed forms recorded in What the file is are the printed paper’s own or the excerpt transcription’s, cannot be settled from this file. Both the text copy and the HTML original give the same forms.
  • Dates conflict inside the file: the Arab memoranda of the third meeting are dated to the meeting of 28 February 1939 (Contents; Report para. 8) but McDonnell’s statement and the Observations are dated 27 February 1939 in Report para. 14 and in the Annex C/D framing; and the Anglo-French Declaration is dated November 9th, 1918 in the Contents (Annex I) but “the 7th November, 1918” in Report para. 19. Both dates in each pair are held as printed.
  • The district phrase is quoted with different word orders in the file: “districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo” (Report para. 12(f) and elsewhere) and “districts of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo” (Report para. 17); Annex B para. 18 prints “Damascus, Kama, Homs and Aleppo”. No single order is imposed here.
  • Annex B is titled “The McMahon-Husain Correspondence” in the Contents, but its text is the Lord Chancellor’s memorandum of the United Kingdom case; whether that Contents title is the printed paper’s own is held open on the same basis as the other as-printed forms.
  • Whether the Conferences on Palestine of this report are the conference Kanafani calls the 1939 London Round Table Conference is not stated in this file; the two pages are linked, and the question is held here.
  • Annex A para. 7 records a committee set up in March 1915, at Kitchener’s instigation, which reported in June 1915 in favour of detaching southern Syria from French influence, without naming it. Annex J, read in part 2, is an extract from the June 1915 report of a committee presided over by Sir Maurice de Bunsen, and Annex D para. 11 relies on that extract for the British desire to withdraw Palestine from French claims; but this file nowhere states that the Annex A committee and the de Bunsen committee are the same body, so the identification is held open.
  • The Anglo-French Declaration date: Annex I’s own heading (line 783) gives November 7, 1918, as Report para. 19 does; the Contents date of November 9th, 1918 stands against both, and all are held as printed.
  • The Palestine Royal Commission Report is cited as “Cmd. 5479, 1937” in Annex C’s footnote (line 605) and as “Cmd. 5479, 1939” in Annex D para. 16’s footnote (line 663). Both years are held as printed.
  • The Sharif’s reply to McMahon’s 24 October 1915 letter is dated 5 November 1915 in Annex B para. 25, Annex C’s quotation heading and the correspondence itself, but McDonnell in Annex C also dates the Sharif’s reply using the Arabic term to “the 15th November, 1915, (Antonius page 421, Note I)” (line 543). Both dates are held as printed in this file.
  • Palestine’s Arab share is given as 93 per cent. by Grey (Enclosure in Annex A, of Palestine’s population) and as at least 95 per cent. by McDonnell (Annex C, at the time of the correspondence). The figures are different speakers’ figures for, on their face, different reference points; neither is reconciled in the file.

Coverage

lines 1-871 of 871, read in full in parts 1-2

Graph View

Backlinks