Mcmahon Agreement

The agreement was never implemented. At the same conference, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing asked Dr. Weizmann whether the Jewish National Home meant the establishment of an autonomous Jewish government. The head of the Zionist delegation had denied. Lansing was a member of the U.S. Peace Commission in Paris in 1919; He said that the system of mandates was a tool created by the great powers to hide their sharing of the spoils of war under the color of international law. If the territories had been ceded directly, the value of the former German and Ottoman territories would have been used to offset the Allies` claims for war reparations. He also stated that Jan Smuts was the author of the original concept.

[p] The agreement was discovered in December 1917; it was published by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution and showed that countries planned to divide and occupy parts of the promised Arab country. Hussein contented himself with two spurious telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, who had replaced McMahon as Egypt`s high commissioner, assuring him that Britain`s obligations to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot agreement was not a formal treaty. [37] After the publication of the Sykes-Picot agreement by the Russian government, McMahon resigned. [38] In July 1915, Hussein seized the opportunity to send a letter to McMahon setting out the conditions under which he would consider a partnership with the British. Hussein, who claimed to represent all Arabs, was effectively seeking the independence of all the Arabic-speaking countries east of Egypt. McMahon, however, insisted that some areas that fell within the French sphere of influence, such as the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and the lands west of Damascus (Homs, Hama and Aleppo – i.e. modern Lebanon), would not be included, and stressed that British interests in Baghdad and Basra would require special attention. Hussein disagreed with the exception of the territories claimed by France, stipulating that certain rules should govern British activities in Baghdad and Basra, conditions that McMahon did not accept. In the end, the questions were suspended for further discussion. In the end, the very ambiguous correspondence was by no means a formal treaty, and disagreements on several points have still not been resolved. His Majesty`s Government has always considered Palestine to be excluded by these reservations and continues to regard it as excluded from the scope of its obligation.

This is clear from the fact that the honourable. The honourable Member points out that the following year they concluded an agreement with the French and Russian Governments under which Palestine was to receive special treatment. it would not be in the public interest to publish one or all of the documents that included the long, inconclusive correspondence with the Sheriff of Mecca in 1915-16. [128] The contradictions arising from this strategy are most evident in the famous letter sent to Husayn on October 25, 1915. McMahon seems to have deliberately chosen vague wording and changed the punctuation of key phrases to give Husayn the impression that Britain is free to recognize Arab independence within forbidden borders. Under pressure from the State Department, McMahon proposed an amorphous deal with the Sharif that abandoned most of its territorial claims while excluding what is now southern Iraq and parts of the Syrian coast. The calculated nature of the enterprise is evidenced by McMahon`s confused claim that the two cities of Mersin and Alexandretta, as well as the parts of Syria west of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, are not Arab and should be excluded from the Arab state. Crucial to Husayn`s subsequent accusations of greed and to his own sense of betrayal by the British, according to any reasonable interpretation of the geography of Arabic-speaking coastal Syria, the excluded territories could not include Palestine or Lebanon, both of which were the subject of competing claims by the Zionist movement and the French. The Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France was negotiated from the end of November 1915 until its agreement in principle on 3 January 1916. The French government became aware of the United Kingdom`s correspondence with Hussein in December 1915, but did not know that formal commitments had been made. [36] There was much disagreement over whether this promise included Palestine. The area promised to the Arabs in McMahon`s letter of October 1915 excluded only the area west of a line from Damascus to northern Aleppo.

Palestine, far to the south, was implicitly included. The Arabic translation Hussein received showed that we are free to make these promises without regard for France. The British later denied that Palestine was included in the promise and refused to publish the correspondence until 1939. The confusion resulted from a small sentence in the correspondence between McMahon and Hussein. Lands that “cannot be described as purely Arab” have been excluded from the deal – as far as the British are concerned. Hussein and many Arabs considered Palestine to be “purely Arab.” The British saw Palestine differently because the Turks, although masters of Palestine, had allowed other religious groups to Jerusalem – hence their belief that Palestine “cannot be called purely Arab.” In 1917, the United Kingdom issued the Balfour Declaration, in which it promised to support the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. [40] The declaration and correspondence, as well as the Sykes-Picot agreement, are often considered together by historians because they may be incompatible, particularly with regard to the disposition of Palestine. [41] According to Albert Hourani, founder of the Middle East Centre at St Antony`s College, Oxford; “The dispute over the interpretation of these agreements is impossible to conclude because they should involve more than one interpretation.” [42] In late 1918, Hussein`s son, Faisal, moved to Damascus and began to establish an administration there that he believed was consistent with his father`s understanding of the British. .