The authors wish to acknowledge two factual mistakes that appear in the article^{Reference Rettig, Friedman and Spanier1} and should be corrected. They also wish to point out some phrases that should be reworded to avoid misinterpretations of the article’s general arguments.

1. 1. The following sentence contains a factual mistake: ‘Western Sahara, which was annexed by Morocco in 1976 following the withdrawal of Portugal…’ (page 26). In fact, it was Spain who withdrew from Western Sahara, and not Portugal. This mistake was created during the revision process. The original sentence was longer and contained two separate cases. The full sentence was meant to be: ‘Western Sahara, which was annexed by Morocco in 1976 following the withdrawal of Spain, and East Timor, which was annexed by Indonesia following the withdrawal of Portugal.’ However, the middle of the sentence (which appears in italics) was accidentally cut during one of our editing rounds, creating a factual mistake that needs to be corrected.

2. 2. Factually, the State of Palestine is the signatory to UNCLOS (page 18). This should be corrected. Although the title may not infer the status of ‘Palestine’ (see the authors’ reflection paper for more detail), the authors believe that this is still an important correction to make.

3. 3. Footnote 86 is not worded correctly and should be rephrased. It makes it appear as if the population of Gaza and the West Bank are referred to as two separate people. This was not the intention of the footnote. It references the idea that Gaza has a separate legal status than the West Bank as it relates to the law of the sea, not that the people of Gaza are separate. The authors’ argument was that the political situation may affect the application of the right to self-determination of the two entities, and thus the second part of the footnote should be clarified accordingly.

4. 4. The authors wish to correct some phrases that they acknowledge may have been problematic and open to misinterpretation. This includes the sentence ‘…this analysis does not give preference to either model’ (page 15). This sentence was meant to acknowledge that the authors cannot determine which of the four political models described in the article is more likely to take place in real life, and so the article needed to address all of them. It was not meant to be interpreted as a statement that all models are equally legal or valid. Similarly, the authors wish to reword other phrases that do not emphasize clearly enough that the article views annexation as illegal, especially under the fourth model presented in pages 26–27. In hindsight, the authors would have added another sentence to the article’s introduction clarifying the illegality of annexation, to the effect that ‘this article does not endorse the possibility of annexation presented in Model 4, which is an illegal act that goes against international law.’ Finally, the authors would have also reworded the title and abstract of the article to emphasize the previously mentioned points and avoid the unfortunate misinterpretation of their intents.