During the First World War, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, entered into a secret correspondence with Hussein ibn Ali, the Sharif of Mecca. On behalf of Asquith’s government, McMahon promised the Sharif an independent Arab state after the war, if he would ally with Britain and launch a revolt against the Ottomans. Two years later, Lloyd George’s government declared that the region of Palestine would be for the global Jewish community. Britain abandoned its earlier pledge to the Sharif, and successive governments dismissed calls for publication of the McMahon–Hussein correspondence on the grounds that it would be ‘detrimental to the public interest’.
Britain and pro-Zionist historians claim that Palestine was never guaranteed to the Sharif, but here Peter Shambrook demonstrates conclusively that it was. Through a comprehensive analysis of official records and private papers, he details the events surrounding the decision to withhold publication of the correspondence, reveals how officials increasingly came to doubt the integrity of that policy, and exposes as a whitewash the 1939 Anglo-Arab Report issued in the wake of discussions on the correspondence with an Arab delegation. Since then, no government has investigated the matter, and there has been no official acknowledgement of the truth, which Shambrook lays bare – along with its devastating consequences.
