INTRODUCTION

THE EXCHANGE OF LETTERS BETWEEN

Hussein Ibn Ali, the Sherif of Mecca

and Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Cairo

(July 14, 1915 to January 25, 1916)

The letters included in this menu selection represent the understanding that was established between the Arabs and the British with regard to Arab support of the British war against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

The Arabs have always turned to these letters as the basis for their understanding that in exchange for an Arab uprising in support of the British war effort, they would be given their independence. The British emphasized that the Arabs would be given their independence from the Ottoman Turks and that with British help after the war would establish their own pro-British governments.

On the other hand, the Zionists and their sympathizers have always downplayed the importance of these letters, always focusing on one letter in the entire exchange as evidence that there were restrictions on what areas freed from Ottoman control would become independent Arab countries.

That letter is the letter from McMahon to Sherif Hussein dated Oct. 24, 1915 that was later made public by the London Times in 1937 when the Arabs charged that the British had made one promise to the Arabs under the McMahon/Hussein correspondence between July 1915 and Jan. 1916, but had all along planned to break those promises under secret discussions between the British and the French in the Sykes Picot agreement signed in May 1916 several months later.

The Oct. 24, 1915 letter between Commissioner McMahon and Sherif Hussein is often reproduced as evidence that Palestine was excluded from the British promise to the Arabs. (Note the book "The Arab Israeli Reader,"  edited by Walter Laqueur, whose interpretations are pro-Zionist and anti-Palestinian. Laqueur cites this letter but excludes the other letters which justify the Arab Palestinian claim from inclusion in his book.)

However, when you read the entire collection of letters and examine carefully the Oct. 24, 1915 letter, you find that the British are clearly trying to exclude The Lebanon from the promise of Arab independence not Palestine. Lebanon was a creation of the French and, under the Sykes Picot agreement which had begun during the correspondence of between McMahon and Sherif Hussein, was to become part of a French controlled political entity.

Laqueur and others erroneously insist that the restrictions included Palestine. When the issue became of critical importance to the Palestinian Arabs who were seeking rightful independence, and protection from European Jewish immigration into Palestine and the 1917 promises of the Balfour Declaration, pro-Zionists (including Laqueur) have twisted the one correspondence they recognize--that of Oct. 24, 1915 between McMahon and Sherif Hussein--as evidence that the Arabs never had a rightful claim to British support for independence in Palestine.

The letters included in this menu are:

July 14, 1915 (Sherif Hussein to McMahon)

August 30, 1915, (McMahon to Sherif Hussein)

September 9, 1915 (Sherif Hussein to McMahon

October 24, 1915 (McMahon to Hussein)

November 5, 1915 (Sherif Hussein to McMahon)

December 14, 1915 (McMahon to Sherif Hussein)

January 1, 1916 (Sherif Hussein to McMahon)