38 No. 75 JUSTICE It has been suggested that in correspondence from 1915 between Sir Arthur Henry McMahon, Britain’s High Commissioner in Cairo, and Sharif Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca, the High Commissioner irrevocably promised Palestine to the Arabs and thus nullified the subsequent Balfour Declaration, the Terms of the Mandate, and all subsequent international binding instruments concerning the territory of Palestine.159 However, it was the British position following the correspondence, which was affirmed on a number of occasions, that the letters did not promise the territory west of the Jordan river, including the West Bank, for Arab independence. Indeed, the letters did not explicitly promise that territory to the Arabs and the Sharif did not request it explicitly. McMahon himself, in a written response to a request for clarification, stated that his intent was “to exclude Palestine from independent Arabia.” This understanding was confirmed in a British White Paper of 1922 issued by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, on 3 June 1922,160 which affirmed the Balfour Declaration and confirmed the British government’s ongoing position regarding the areas that the pledge excluded, stating that the “whole of Palestine west of the Jordan was thus excluded from Sir H. McMahon’s pledge.” This position was reaffirmed in a further British White Paper in 1939: “the whole of Palestine west of Jordan was excluded from Sir Henry McMahon’s pledge, and they therefore cannot agree that the McMahon correspondence forms a just basis for the claim that Palestine should be converted into an Arab state.”161 159. The correspondence concerns the willingness of the Sharif to mount a revolt against the Turks in exchange for British assurances of Arab independence, and in this regard, discusses the borders of future Arab autonomous states. 160. PALESTINE: CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE PALESTINE ARAB DELEGATION AND THE ZIONIST ORGANIZATION (1922), (also known as the ‘British White Paper of June 1922’ or the ‘Churchill White Paper’) https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_ century/brwh1922.asp. 161. PALESTINE: STATEMENT OF POLICY 5 (1939) (also known as the ‘British White Paper of 1939’ or the ‘MacDonald White Paper’), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp; For additional British statements regarding this correspondence, and detailed linguistic and legal analysis of the correspondence and support of the British position, see STEVEN E. ZIPPERSTEIN, LAW AND THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT: THE TRIALS OF PALESTINE, 36-45 (Routledge, 2020).
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