The Declaration to the Seven is notable as the first British pronouncement to the Arabs advancing the principle of national self-determination.[5] Although the British sought to secure their position by adopting the Wilsonian doctrine of Woodrow Wilson, neither Britain nor France was prepared to implement their promises to the Arabs nor to abdicate the position won by victory over the Ottoman Empire.[6]
The document was not widely publicised. The Declaration may explain the action of General Edmund Allenby, who ordered a halt to the advance after the rout of Turkish forces outside Damascus and allowed the city to be captured by Arab forces in September 1918 after the Battle of Megiddo acting on instructions from London, thus bolstering the Arab claim to the independence of Syria whilst simultaneously undermining the French claims to the territory under the terms of the Sykes–Picot Agreement.[5]
^Choueiri, Youssef M. (2000). Arab nationalism, a history: nation and state in the Arab world. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub. p. 149. ISBN0-631-21729-0.
^Friedman, Isaiah (2000). Palestine: A Twice-Promised Land? Vol. 1: The British, the Arabs, and Zionism, 1915-1920. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A: Transaction Publishers. pp. 195–197. ISBN1-56000-391-X.
^ abParis, Timothy J. (2003). Britain, the Hashemites, and Arab Rule, 1920-1925: the Sherifian solution. London: Frank Cass. p. 50. ISBN0-7146-5451-5.
^Holt, P. M.; Ann Katherine Swynford Lambton; Bernard Lewis (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 392. ISBN0-521-29135-6.