Balfour Declaration

Balfour Declaration
Balfour and the Declaration
Created	2 Nov 1917
Location	British Library
Author(s)	Walter Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, Leo Amery, Lord Milner
Signatories	Arthur James Balfour
Purpose	Confirming support from the British government for the establishment in Palestine of a "national home" for the Jewish people
Full text
Balfour Declaration at Wikisource

The Balfour Declaration was a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It read:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The text of the letter was published in the press one week later, on 9 November 1917. The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into both the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, and the Mandate for Palestine. The original document is kept at the British Library.

The Sharif of Mecca Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi and other Arab leaders considered the Declaration a violation of previous agreements made in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence. Palestine is not explicitly mentioned in the correspondence, and territories which were not purely Arab were excluded by McMahon and Hussein, although historically Palestine had always formed part of Syria. The Arabs, taking Palestine to be overwhelmingly Arab, claimed the declaration was in contrast to the letters, which promised the Arab independence movement control of the Middle East territories "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" in exchange for revolting against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The British claimed that the McMahon letters did not apply to Palestine, therefore the Declaration could not be a violation of the previous agreement. The issuance of the Declaration had many long lasting consequences, and was a key moment in the lead-up to the Arab–Israeli conflict, often referred to as the world's "most intractable conflict".

Background

The background of British support for an increased Jewish presence in Palestine, though idealistically embedded in 19th-century evangelical Christian feelings that the country should play a role in the Advent of the Millennium and Christ's Second Coming, was primarily linked to geopolitical calculations. Early British political support was precipitated in the 1830s and 1840s as a result of the Eastern Crisis after Muhammad Ali occupied Syria and Palestine. Zionism was not to emerge within the world's Jewish communities until the last decades of the century, spearheaded by the efforts of Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, whose efforts to gain international support for his ideas were not to succeed in his lifetime.

With the geopolitical shakeup occasioned by the outbreak of World War I, the earlier calculations, that had lapsed for some time, led to a renewal of strategic assessments and political bargaining regarding the Middle and Far East.

Early Zionism

Further information: Zionism and Christian Zionism

Zionism arose in the late 19th century in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. Romantic nationalism in 19th century Central and Eastern Europe had helped to set off the Haskalah or "Jewish Enlightenment", creating a split in the Jewish community between those who saw Judaism as their religion, and those who saw it as their ethnicity or nation. The 1881–84 Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire encouraged the growth of the latter identity, resulting in the formation of the Hovevei Zion pioneer organizations and the publication of Leon Pinsker's Autoemancipation.

In 1896 Herzl published Der Judenstaat ("The Jews' State" or "The State of the Jews"), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing antisemitism, was the establishment of a state for the Jews. This marked the emergence of political Zionism. A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization (ZO), which at its first congress called for "the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Proposed measures to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organisation of Jews in the diaspora, the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain those necessary governmental grants. Herzl died in 1904 without the political standing that was required to carry out his agenda of a Jewish home in Palestine.

Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, later President of the World Zionist Organisation, began living in the UK in 1904 and met Balfour during his 1905–06 election campaign in a session arranged by Charles Dreyfus, his Jewish constituency representative.

During the first meeting between Weizmann and Balfour in 1906, Balfour asked what Weizmann's objections were to the 1903 Uganda Scheme. The scheme, which had been proposed to Herzl by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain following his trip to East Africa earlier in the year, had been subsequently voted down following Herzl's death by the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, after two years of heated debate in the Zionist Organization. According to Weizmann's memoir, the conversation went as follows:

"Mr. Balfour, supposing I was to offer you Paris instead of London, would you take it?" He sat up, looked at me, and answered: "But Dr. Weizmann, we have London." "That is true," I said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh." He ... said two things which I remember vividly. The first was: "Are there many Jews who think like you?" I answered: "I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves." ... To this he said: "If that is so you will one day be a force." Shortly before I withdrew, Balfour said: "It is curious. The Jews I meet are quite different." I answered: "Mr. Balfour, you meet the wrong kind of Jews".

World War I

Further information: Timeline of World War I

In 1914, war broke out in Europe between the Triple Entente (Britain, France and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and later that year, the Ottoman Empire).

Following Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, Weizmann's efforts picked up speed. On 10 December 1914 he met with the British cabinet member Herbert Samuel, a Zionist, who believed Weizmann's demands were too modest. Two days later, Weizmann met Balfour again, for the first time since 1906.

A month later, Herbert Samuel circulated a memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine to his cabinet colleagues. The memorandum stated that "I am assured that the solution of the problem of Palestine which would be much the most welcome to the leaders and supporters of the Zionist movement throughout the world would be the annexation of the country to the British Empire". It was the first time in an official record that enlisting the support of Jews as a war measure was proposed.

Many further discussions followed, including a meeting between Lloyd-George and Weizmann in 1916, of which Lloyd-George described in his War Memoirs that Weizmann: "... explained his aspirations as to the repatriation of the Jews to the sacred land they had made famous. That was the fount and origin of the famous declaration about the National Home for the Jews in Palestine... As soon as I became Prime Minister I talked the whole matter over with Mr Balfour, who was then Foreign Secretary."

Other British commitments

Main articles: McMahon–Hussein Correspondence and Sykes–Picot Agreement

1918 British Government map entitled "Map illustrating Territorial Negotiations between H.M.G. and King Hussein", referring to the 1915 correspondence with Hussein

In 1915 the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Henry McMahon, had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". Palestine lay to the southwest of Damascus and wasn't explicitly mentioned. After the war the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed.

Lord Grey had been the Foreign Secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations. Speaking in the House of Lords on 27 March 1923, he made it clear that he entertained serious doubts as to the validity of the British government's interpretation of the pledges which he, as foreign secretary, had caused to be given to Hussein in 1915. He called for all of the secret engagements regarding Palestine to be made public. Many of the relevant documents in the National Archives were later declassified and published. Among them were the minutes of a Cabinet Eastern Committee meeting, chaired by Lord Curzon, which was held on 5 December 1918. Balfour was in attendance. The minutes revealed that in laying out the government's position Curzon had explained that: "Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future." Palestine is not explicitly mentioned in the correspondence, and territories which were not purely Arab were excluded by McMahon and Hussein, although historically Palestine had always formed part of Syria. The Arabs, taking Palestine to be overwhelmingly Arab, claimed the declaration was in contrast to the letters, which promised the Arab independence movement control of the Middle East territories "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" in exchange for revolting against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The British claimed that the McMahon letters did not apply to Palestine, therefore the Declaration could not be a violation of the previous agreement.

The interpretation of the British Government regarding the 1915 correspondence with Hussein changed between 1918 and 1922. The left hand page is from CAB 24/68/86, November 1918, whilst the right hand page is from the Churchill White Paper of June 1922

On the basis of McMahon's assurances, the Arab Revolt began on 5 June 1916. However, in May 1916 the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Russia had also secretly concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement, a secret agreement which was primarily negotiated between Mark Sykes, a British MP who had grown from his seat on the 1915 De Bunsen Committee to have a significant influence on British policy in the region including initiating the creation of the Arab Bureau, and François Georges-Picot, a French diplomat and former consul-general in Beirut. It defined their proposed spheres of influence and control in Western Asia should the Triple Entente succeed in defeating the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalisation of Palestine, and that the form of the Palestine administration would be confirmed after consultation with both Russia and Hussein. Three months prior to the agreement of the memorandum, Sykes has been approached with a plan by Herbert Samuel in the form of a memorandum which Sykes thought prudent to commit to memory. Sykes commented to Samuel on the boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum, noting that the exclusion of Hebron and the "East of the Jordan" there would be less to discuss with the Muslim community.

Sykes-Picot Agreement Map, showing Palestine under "international administration". It was an enclosure in Paul Cambon's letter to Sir Edward Grey, 9 May 1916.

Hussein learned of the agreement when it was leaked by the new Soviet government in December 1917, but was satisfied by two disingenuous telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner of Egypt, assuring him that the British government's commitments to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not a formal treaty. Following the publication of the Declaration the British had dispatched Commander David George Hogarth to see Hussein in January 1918 bearing the message that the "political and economic freedom" of the Palestinian population was not in question. Hogarth reported that Hussein "would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Great Britain". Continuing Arab disquiet over Allied intentions also led during 1918 to the British Declaration to the Seven and the Anglo-French Declaration, the latter promising "the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations."

Motivation for the Declaration

Progress of the War in late 1917

The decision to release the declaration was taken by the British War Cabinet on 31 October 1917. This followed discussion at four War Cabinet meetings (including the 31 October meeting) over the space of the previous two months.

During the discussions, the wider war was in a period of stalemate. On the Western Front the tide would first turn in favour of the Central Powers in spring 1918, before decisively turning in favour of the Allies from July 1918 onwards. Although the US had declared war on Germany in the spring of 1917, they would not suffer their first casualties until 2 November 1917, by which point President Wilson would still be hoping to avoid the dispatch of large contingents of troops into the war. The Russian forces were known to be distracted by the ongoing Russian Revolution and the growing support for the Bolshevik faction, but Alexander Kerensky's Russian Republic had remained in the war, and would only withdraw after the final stage in the revolution on 7 November 1917. In the Middle Eastern theatre, there had been an ongoing stalemate in Southern Palestine since April 1917, and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign would not make any substantial progress until 31 October 1917.

War Cabinet discussions

Ahead of the American entry into World War I, it became clear that Woodrow Wilson and his advisors were in favor of Zionism. Six months before the Declaration, this front page article from the Charlotte Observer notes the announcement that Balfour and Wilson had "informally discussed" the project.

British War Cabinet Minutes approving the release of the Declaration, 31 October 1917

In order to aid the discussions, the Cabinet Secretariat solicited interministerial clarification as well as the views of President Woodrow Wilson, six Zionist leaders and three non-Zionist Jews. Excerpts from the minutes of these four meetings provide a description of the primary factors that the War Cabinet had considered:

• 3 September 1917: "With reference to a suggestion that the matter might be postponed, [Balfour] pointed out that this was a question on which the Foreign Office had been very strongly pressed for a long time past. There was a very strong and enthusiastic organisation, more particularly in the United States, who were zealous in this matter, and his belief was that it would be of most substantial assistance to the Allies to have the earnestness and enthusiasm of these people enlisted on our side. To do nothing was to risk a direct breach with them, and it was necessary to face this situation."
• 4 October 1917: "...[Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement. This Movement, though opposed by a number of wealthy Jews in this country, had behind it the support of a majority of Jews, at all events in Russia and America, and possibly in other countries... Mr. Balfour then read a very sympathetic declaration by the French Government which had been conveyed to the Zionists, and he stated that he knew that President Wilson was extremely favourable to the Movement."
• 25 October 1917: "...the Secretary mentioned that he was being pressed by the Foreign Office to bring forward the question of Zionism, an early settlement of which was regarded as of great importance."
• 31 October 1917: "[Balfour] stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made. The vast majority of Jews in Russia and America, as, indeed, all over the world, now appeared to be favourable to Zionism. If we could make a declaration favourable to such an ideal, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America."

The geopolitical calculations behind the decision to release the declaration were debated and discussed in the following years.

Lloyd George listed nine factors motivating his decision as Prime Minister to release the declaration, including the view that a Jewish presence in Palestine would strengthen Britain's position on the Suez Canal and reinforce the route to Great Britain's imperial dominion in India.

Weizmann had argued that one consequence of such a public commitment by Great Britain, making the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, one of the Allies' war aims, was that it would have three effects: it would swing Russia to maintain pressure on Germany's Eastern Front, since Jews had been prominent in the March Revolution of 1917. It would rally the large Jewish community in the United States to press for greater funding for the American war effort, underway since April of that year; and, lastly, that it would undermine German Jewish support for Kaiser Wilhelm II. Some historians argue that British government's decision reflected what James Gelvin calls 'patrician anti-Semitism' in the overestimation of Jewish power in both the United States and Russia. Issuing the Balfour Declaration was considered to strongly appeal to two of Woodrow Wilson's closest advisors, who were avid Zionists.

The cabinet believed that expressing support would appeal to Jews in Germany and America, and help the war effort; they also hoped to encourage support from the large Jewish population in Russia.

American Zionism was still in its relative infancy; in 1914 the Zionist Federation had a small budget of c.$5,000 and only 12,000 members, despite an American Jewish population of three million. However, the Zionist organizations had recently succeeded in a show of force within the American Jewish community in arranging a Jewish congress to debate the Jewish problem as a whole. This impacted British and French government estimates of the balance of power within the American Jewish public.

In addition, the British intended to preempt the expected French pressure for an international administration.

David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister at the time of the Balfour Declaration, told the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 that the Declaration was made "due to propagandist reasons." Citing the position of the Allied and Associated Powers in the ongoing war, Lloyd George shared this conclusion. In his Memoirs, published in 1939, Lloyd George further elucidated his position.

Drafting

Lord Balfour's desk, in the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, in Tel Aviv

Authors and evolution of the draft

Under the new Conservative government which took power in October 1922, attempts were made to identify the background to the drafting. In December 1922, Sir John Evelyn Shuckburgh of the new Middle East department of the Foreign Office discovered that the correspondence prior to the declaration was not available in the Colonial Office, 'although Foreign Office papers were understood to have been lengthy and to have covered a considerable period'. A Foreign Office note in a Cabinet Paper from January 1923 stated that:

little is known of how the policy represented by the Declaration was first given form. Four, or perhaps five men were chiefly concerned in the labour – the Earl of Balfour, the late Sir Mark Sykes, and Messrs. Weizmann and Sokolow, with perhaps Lord Rothschild as a figure in the background. Negotiations seem to have been mainly oral and by means of private notes and memoranda of which only the scantiest records seem to be available.

Declassification of Government archives have allowed modern scholarship to piece together the choreography of the drafting of the declaration. In his widely cited 1961 book, Leonard Stein published four previous drafts of the declaration. Stein illustrated the evolution of the drafting from the original proposal by the Zionist Organization, followed by various iterations. Subsequent authors have debated as to who the "primary author" really was. In his posthumously published 1981 book The Anglo-American Establishment, Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley explained his view that the primary author of the declaration was Alfred, Lord Milner, and more recently, William D. Rubinstein, Professor of Modern History at Aberystwyth University, Wales, wrote that Conservative politician and pro-Zionist Leo Amery, as Assistant Secretary to the British war cabinet in 1917, should be considered the main author of the Declaration.

Draft	Text	Changes
Lord Rothschild draft 18 July 1917	1. His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people. 2. His Majesty's Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisation.
Balfour draft August 1917	His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.	1. His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people. and 2. His Majesty's Government will use its their best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Organisation may desire to lay before them.
Milner draft August 1917	His Majesty's Government accepts the principle that every opportunity should be afforded for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist organisations may desire to lay before them.	His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of every opportunity should be afforded for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine and will use their its best endeavours to secure facilitate the achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist Ooorganisations may desire to lay before them.
Milner-Amery draft 4 October 1917	His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish race, and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed in any other country by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality.	His Majesty's Government accepts the principle that every opportunity should be afforded for views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine race, and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object and will be ready to consider any suggestions on the subject which the Zionist organisations may desire to lay before them , it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed in any other country by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality.
Final draft	His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.	His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish race, and will use its their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality.

Jewish national home vs. Jewish state

Further information: Homeland for the Jewish people

"This is a very carefully worded document and but for the somewhat vague phrase "A National Home for the Jewish People" might be considered sufficiently unalarming... But the vagueness of the phrase cited has been a cause of trouble from the commencement. Various persons in high positions have used language of the loosest kind calculated to convey a very different impression to the more moderate interpretation which can be put upon the words. President Wilson brushed away all doubts as to what was intended from his point of view when, in March 1919, he said to the Jewish leaders in America, "I am moreover persuaded that the allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth." The late President Roosevelt declared that one of the Allies peace conditions should be that "Palestine must be made a Jewish State." Mr. Winston Churchill has spoken of a "Jewish State" and Mr. Bonar Law has talked in Parliament of "restoring Palestine to the Jews"."

Report of the Palin Commission, August 1920

The phrase "national home" was intentionally used instead of "state" because of opposition to the Zionist program within the British Cabinet, although the chief architects of the Declaration considered that a Jewish State would emerge in time. The term "national home" was intentionally ambiguous. For example, the phrase 'national homeland' had no legal value or precedent in international law, so its meaning was thus unclear when compared to other terms such as 'state'. The choice of stating such a homeland would be found 'in Palestine' rather than 'of Palestine' was also no accident.

Explication of the wording has been sought in the correspondence leading to the final version of the declaration. Following discussion of the initial draft the Cabinet Secretary, Mark Sykes, met with the Zionist negotiators to clarify their aims. His official report back to the Cabinet categorically stated that the Zionists did not want "to set up a Jewish Republic or any other form of state in Palestine or in any part of Palestine." but rather preferred some form of protectorate as provided in the Palestine Mandate. In approving the Balfour Declaration, Leopold Amery, one of the Secretaries to the British War Cabinet of 1917–18, testified under oath to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in January 1946 from his personal knowledge that:

The phrase "the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people" was intended and understood by all concerned to mean at the time of the Balfour Declaration that Palestine would ultimately become a "Jewish Commonwealth" or a "Jewish State", if only Jews came and settled there in sufficient numbers.

David Lloyd George, who was Prime Minister at the time of the Declaration, told the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 that it was intended that Palestine may become a Jewish Commonwealth if and when Jews "had become a definite majority of the inhabitants":

The idea was, and this was the interpretation put upon it at the time, that a Jewish State was not to be set up immediately by the Peace Treaty without reference to the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants. On the other hand, it was contemplated that when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea of a national home and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth.

Both the Zionist Organization and the British government devoted efforts to denying that a state was the intention over the following decades, including in Winston Churchill's 1922 White Paper. However, in private, many British officials agreed with the interpretation of the Zionists that a state would be established when a Jewish majority was achieved; in particular, at a private meeting on 22 July 1922 at Balfour's home, both Balfour and Lloyd-George admitted that an eventual Jewish state had always been their intention.

Scope of the National Home "In Palestine"

With respect to the scope of the Jewish National Home, the initial draft of the declaration, contained in a letter sent by Rothschild to Balfour, referred to the principle "that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people." In the final text, following Lord Milner's amendment, the word that was replaced with in.

This text avoided committing the entirety of Palestine to the Jewish National Home, resulting in controversy in future years over the intended scope. This was subsequently clarified by the 1922 Churchill White Paper, which wrote that "the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded 'in Palestine.'"

Civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine

The Declaration's protection against prejudicing the civil and religious rights of non-Jews proved to be untenable. The British Mandate for Palestine was confirmed in 1922 as the vehicle for delivering the promises of the Declaration. Fifteen years later, the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission report, the first official proposal for partition of the region, referred to the requirements as "contradictory obligations" and to the wider situation that had arisen in Palestine that the "disease is so deep-rooted that, in our firm conviction, the only hope of a cure lies in a surgical operation". It had proven impossible for the British to pacify the two communities in Palestine by using different messages for different audiences.

This obligation was commonly compared against the commitment to the Jewish community, and a variety of terms were used to refer to these two obligations as a pair. The term "twofold duty" was used by the Permanent Mandates Commission in 1924, the phrase "double undertaking" was used by Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald in his April 1930 House of Commons speech, the Passfield white paper and his 1931 letter to Chaim Weizmann, and the 1937 Peel Commission used the term "dual obligation",

A particularly heated component of this debate was whether these two obligations had "equal weight". Balfour stated that the British had no intention of consulting the existing population of Palestine, and the results of the American King–Crane Commission consultation was suppressed for three years until it was leaked in 1922. Balfour acknowledged that this was inconsistent with the principle of self-determination, as later set out in President Wilson's Fourteen points, writing in 1919 that Palestine was an exceptional case in which "we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination."

Rights and political status of Jews in other countries

The original drafts of Rothschild, Balfour and Milner did not include the commitment that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of the non-Jewish communities in other countries outside of Palestine. These changes came about partly as the result of the urgings of Edwin Samuel Montagu, an influential anti-Zionist Jew and Secretary of State for India. Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet, voiced his opposition by declaring:

The policy of His Majesty's Government is anti-Semitic in result and will prove a rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country of the world.

Lord Rothschild took exception to the new proviso on the basis that it presupposed the possibility of a danger to non-Zionists, which he denied.

Reaction to the Declaration

See also: Balfour Day

The text of the letter was published in the press one week after it was signed, on 9 November 1917.

Zionist reaction

Balfour Declaration as published in The Times, 9 November 1917

The publication of the intent galvanized Zionism, which finally had obtained an official charter. It was first published in newspapers on 9 November, and leaflets were circulated throughout Jewish communities. These leaflets were airdropped over Jewish communities in Germany, Austria as well as the Pale of Settlement which had been given to the Central Powers following the Russian withdrawal.

In the ongoing Sinai and Palestine Campaign, both Gaza and Jaffa fell within several days. Once under British military occupation, large transfers of funds were possible, and a major effort began to drain the marshy land of the Valley of Jezreel, whose redemption as the breadbasket of Palestine became the priority of the Third Aliyah settlers, mainly from Eastern Europe.

The declaration spurred an unintended and extraordinary increase in adherents of American Zionism; in 1914 the 200 American Zionist societies comprised a total of 7,500 members, which grew to 30,000 members in 600 societies in 1918 and 149,000 members in 1919. Whilst the British had considered that the Declaration reflected a previously established dominance of the Zionist position in Jewish thought, it was the Declaration itself which was subsequently responsible for Zionism's legitimacy and leadership.

In August 1919, Balfour approved Weizmann's request to name the first post-war settlement in Mandatory Palestine, "Balfouria", in his honor. It was intended to be a model settlement for future American Jewish activity in Palestine.

From 1918 until World War II, Jews in Mandatory Palestine celebrated Balfour Day as an annual national holiday on 2 November. The celebrations included ceremonies in schools and other public institutions and festive articles in the Hebrew press.

Arab opposition

The most popular Palestinian Arab newspaper, Filastin (La Palestine), published a four-page editorial addressed to Lord Balfour in March 1925.

The local Christian and Muslim community of Palestine, who constituted almost 90% of the population, strongly opposed the Declaration. As described by the Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said in 1979, it was made "(a) by a European power, (b) about a non-European territory, (c) in a flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory, and (d) it took the form of a promise about this same territory to another foreign group."

According to the 1919 King-Crane Commission: "No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist programme could be carried out except by force of arms." A delegation of the Muslim-Christian Association, headed by Musa al-Husayni, expressed public disapproval on 3 November 1918, one day after the Zionist Commission parade marking the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. They handed a petition signed by more than 100 notables to Ronald Storrs, the OETA military governor:

We have noticed yesterday a large crowd of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They pretend with open voice that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is now a national home for them... We Arabs, Muslim and Christian, have always sympathized profoundly with the persecuted Jews and their misfortunes in other countries... but there is wide difference between such sympathy and the acceptance of such a nation...ruling over us and disposing of our affairs.

The group also protested the carrying of new "white and blue banners with two inverted triangles in the middle", drawing the attention of the British authorities to the serious consequences of any political implications in raising the banners.

Balfour's stance was seen as a betrayal of British understandings with Arabs. Later that month, on the first anniversary of the occupation of Jaffa by the British, the Muslim-Christian Association sent a lengthy memorandum and petition to the military governor protesting once more any formation of a Jewish state.

Response by Central Powers

Immediately following the publication of the declaration, it was met with tactical responses from the Central Powers. Two weeks following the Declaration, Ottokar Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, gave an interview to Arthur Hantke, President of the Zionist Federation of Germany, promising that his Government would influence the Turks once the war was over. On 12 December, the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha, gave an interview to German newspaper the Vossische Zeitung, which was published on 31 December and subsequently released in the German Jewish periodical Jüdische Rundschau on 4 January 1918, in which he referred to the Declaration as "une blague" (a deception) and promised that under Ottoman rule "all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to find their fulfilment" subject to the absorptive capacity of the country. This Turkish statement was endorsed by the German Foreign Office on 5 January 1918. A German-Jewish Society was formed to advocate for further progress on 8 January 1918: Vereinigung jüdischer Organisationen Deutschlands zur Wahrung der Rechte der Juden des Ostens (V.J.O.D.).

Evolution of British opinion

"It is said that the effect of the Balfour Declaration was to leave the Moslems and Christians dumbfounded... It is impossible to minimise the bitterness of the awakening. They considered that they were to be handed over to an oppression which they hated far more than the Turk's and were aghast at the thought of this domination... Prominent people openly talk of betrayal and that England has sold the country and received the price... Towards the Administration [the Zionists] adopted the attitude of "We want the Jewish State and we won't wait", and they did not hesitate to avail themselves of every means open to them in this country and abroad to force the hand of an Administration bound to respect the "Status Quo" and to commit it, and thereby future Administrations, to a policy not contemplated in the Balfour Declaration... What more natural than that [the Moslems and Christians] should fail to realise the immense difficulties the Administration was and is labouring under and come to the conclusion that the openly published demands of the Jews were to be granted and the guarantees in the Declaration were to become but a dead letter?"

Report of the Palin Commission, August 1920

In October 1919, Lord Curzon succeeded Balfour as Foreign Secretary. Curzon had opposed the Declaration prior to its publication and therefore determined to pursue a policy in line with its "narrower and more prudent rather than the wider interpretation". Following Bonar Law's appointment as Prime Minister in late 1922, Curzon wrote to Bonar Law that he regarded the Balfour Declaration as "the worst" of Britain's Middle East commitments and "a striking contradiction of our publicly declared principles." Curzon had been a member of the 1917 Cabinet which approved the declaration, and according to Sir David Gilmour, Curzon had been "the only senior figure in the British government at the time who foresaw that its policy would lead to decades of Arab–Jewish hostility".

In August 1920, the report of the Palin Commission, the first in a long line of Commissions of Inquiry on the question of Palestine during the Mandate period, noted that "The Balfour Declaration... is undoubtedly the starting point of the whole trouble". The conclusion of the report mentioned the Balfour Declaration three times, stating that "the causes of the alienation and exasperation of the feelings of the population of Palestine" included:

• Inability to reconcile the Allies' declared policy of self-determination with the Balfour Declaration, giving rise to a sense of betrayal and intense anxiety for their future;
• Misapprehension of the true meaning of the Balfour Declaration and forgetfulness of the guarantees determined therein, due to the loose rhetoric of politicians and the exaggerated statements and writings of interested persons, chiefly Zionists; and
• Zionist indiscretion and aggression, since the Balfour Declaration aggravating such fears.

British public and government opinion became increasingly less favourable to the commitment that had been made to Zionist policy. In February 1922, Winston Churchill telegraphed Herbert Samuel asking for cuts in expenditure and noting:

In both Houses of Parliament there is growing movement of hostility, against Zionist policy in Palestine, which will be stimulated by recent Northcliffe articles. I do not attach undue importance to this movement, but it is increasingly difficult to meet the argument that it is unfair to ask the British taxpayer, already overwhelmed with taxation, to bear the cost of imposing on Palestine an unpopular policy.

Following the issuance of the Churchill White Paper in June 1922, the House of Lords rejected a Palestine Mandate which incorporated the Balfour Declaration by 60 votes to 25, following a motion issued by Lord Islington. The vote proved to be solely symbolic as it was subsequently overruled by a vote in the House of Commons following a variety of promises made by Churchill.

Longer-term impact

The declaration had two indirect consequences, the emergence of a Jewish state and a chronic state of conflict between Arabs and Jews throughout the Middle East. Starting in 1920, the Intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine broke out, which widened into the regional Arab–Israeli conflict, often referred to as the world's "most intractable conflict". The Arab-Israeli conflict in a wider sense ran primarily from 1948–73 but extended in a more limited manner to 2006, and finally became the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the ongoing local conflict which also began in 1948 and whose primary phase began following the 1964 foundation of the PLO. Britain's involvement in this became one of the most controversial parts of its Empire's history, and damaged its reputation in the Middle East for generations.

Jonathan Schneer's 2010 study concluded that because the buildup to the declaration was characterized by "contradictions, deceptions, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking", the declaration sowed dragon's teeth and "produced a murderous harvest, and we go on harvesting even today." The foundational stone for modern Israel had been laid, but the prediction that this would lay the groundwork for harmonious Arab-Jewish cooperation proved to be wishful thinking.

The implementation of the declaration fed a disenchantment among the Arabs that alienated them from the British administrators in Mandatory Palestine. Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has argued that following the Balfour Declaration there ensued "what amounts to a hundred years of war against the Palestinian people."

See also

• Proposals for a Jewish state
• British Mandate for Palestine (legal instrument)

Bibliography

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External links

• Balfour Declaration lexicon entry Knesset website Template:En icon
• Happy Birthday Balfour Declaration- 91 Years Later- Jerusalem Post
• Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 26 May 2005, "The birth of modern Israel: A scrap of paper that changed history"
• Theodore Herzl and Rev. William Hechler and the Zionist Beginnings
• Brandeis, Wilson and the Reverend who changed history, Jerry Klinger