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 and 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.[1]