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Balfour Declaration
The Balfour Declaration, contained within the original letter from Balfour to Rothschild
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, with two conditions
Full text
Balfour Declaration at Wikisource

The Balfour Declaration was a single parragraph in 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 basis for British support for an increased Jewish presence in the region of Palestine was linked to geopolitical calculations,^[1][a]

Early British political support was precipitated in the late 1830s and led by Lord Palmerston, following the Eastern Crisis after Muhammad Ali occupied Syria and Palestine.^[3][4] French influence as protector of the Catholic communities began to grow in the wider region, as Russian influence began to grow as protector of the Eastern Orthodox, leaving Britain without a sphere of influence.^[3] The British Foreign Office worked to encourage Jewish emigration to Palestine, exemplified by Charles Henry Churchill's 1841-42 exhortations to Moses Montefiore, the leader of the British Jewish community.^[5][b] Such efforts were premature,^[5] as 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.^[6]

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.^[4]

Early Zionism

Zionism arose in the late 19th century in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe.^[7][8] 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.^[7] 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.^[7]

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.^[9] A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization, 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.^[9] Herzl died in 1904 without the political standing that was required to carry out his agenda of a Jewish home in Palestine.^[6]

Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, later President of the World Zionist Organisation, moved from Switzerland to the UK in 1904 and met Arthur Balfour, then Prime Minister, during his 1905–06 election campaign^[10] in a session arranged by Charles Dreyfus, his Jewish constituency representative.^[11] During this meeting, Balfour asked what Weizmann's objections had been to the 1903 Uganda Scheme to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland.^[12] The scheme, which had been proposed to Herzl by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain following his trip to East Africa earlier in the year,^[13] had been subsequently voted down following Herzl's death by the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905,^[14] after two years of heated debate in the Zionist Organization.^[15]

In January 1914 Weizmann first met Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a member of the French branch of the Rothschild family and a leading proponent of the Zionist movement,^[16] in relation to a project to build a Hebrew university in Jerusalem.^[16] The Baron was not part of the World Zionist Organization, but had funded the first Jewish agricultural colonies of the first major wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine in the 1880s, and transferred them to the Jewish Colonization Association in 1899.^[17] This connection was to bear fruit later that year, when the Baron's son, James de Rothschild, requested a meeting with Weizmann on 25 November 1914, in order to enlist him and the Zionists to influence those deemed to be receptive within the British Government to their agenda of a “Jewish State” in Palestine.^[18] Through James's wife Dorothy, Weizmann was to meet Rózsika Rothschild, who introduced him to the English branch of the family – in particular her husband Charles and his older brother Walter, a zoologist and former MP.^[19] Their father, Lord Nathan Rothschild, head of the English branch of the family, had a guarded attitude towards Zionism, but he died in March 1915 and his title was inherited by Walter.^[19][20]

However, many British Jews at this time were not Zionists; prior to the Declaration only 8,000 out of Britain's 300,000 were considered Zionists.^[21]

Zionist–British Government Discussions during WWI

In July 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).^[22] On 9 November 1914, four days after Britain's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire, of which the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem – often referred to as Palestine^[23] – was a component, Zionism was first discussed at a meeting of the British Cabinet. At the meeting David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and whose law firm Lloyd George, Roberts and Co had been engaged a decade before by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland to work on the Uganda Scheme,^[24] "referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine."^[25]

Weizmann's political efforts picked up speed,^[26] and on 10 December 1914 he met with the British cabinet member Herbert Samuel, a Zionist,^[26] who believed Weizmann's demands were too modest.^[27] Two days later, Weizmann met Balfour again, for the first time since 1906.^[28]

A month later, 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".^[29] Samuel discussed a copy of his memorandum with Lord Nathan Rothschild in February 2015, a month before the latter's death.^[20] It was the first time in an official record that enlisting the support of Jews as a war measure was proposed.^[30]

Many further discussions followed, including the initial meetings in 1915-16 between Lloyd George, who had been appointed Minister of Munitions in May 1915, and Weizmann, a leading Zionist who was also a scientific advisor to the Lloyd George's Ministry of Munitions.^[31] Lloyd George was Prime Minister at the time of the Balfour Declaration, and was ultimately responsible for it.^[32] 17 years later in his War Memoirs Lloyd George described these meetings as being the "fount and origin" of the Declaration.^[33] Lloyd George's claim has been rejected by historians.^[c]

Other British commitments during WWI

In late 1915 the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Henry McMahon, exchanged ten letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo", in exchange for Hussein launching a revolt against the Ottoman Empire.^[37][d] In the decades after the war the extent of this coastal exclusion was hotly disputed,^[39] since Palestine lay to the southwest of Damascus and wasn't explicitly mentioned.^[37] The British Government's interpretation of the what had been "intended" and the resulting nature of the contradictions evolved over the subsequent years—from 1916 until at least the end of 1918 the Foreign Office had considered Palestine to have been included in the area of Arab independence committed to Hussein,^[39][e] whereas the opposite view was stated publicly in the 1922 Churchill White Paper (the British Government's first formal statement of policy on Palestine),^[39][f] and by the time of the 1939 committee set up to consider the correspondence, it avoided taking a position on the matter altogether.^[39]

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, which Balfour described later as a "wholly new method" for carving up the area, after the 1915 agreement "seems to have been forgotten".^[42] This secret agreement was primarily negotiated in early 1916 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.^[43] 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.^[44][45] It divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalisation of Palestine,^[44][45] proposing that the form of the Palestine administration would be confirmed after consultation with both Russia and Hussein.^[44] Three months prior to the agreement of the memorandum, Sykes has been approached with a plan by Samuel in the form of a memorandum which Sykes thought prudent to commit to memory.^[46] Sykes commented to Samuel on the boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum, noting that with the exclusion of Hebron and the "East of the Jordan" there would be less to discuss with the Muslim community.^[47]

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.^[45] 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.^[45] 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".^[48] 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."^[45][49]

Motivation

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.^[50]

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,^[51] before decisively turning in favour of the Allies from July 1918 onwards.^[51] Although the US had declared war on Germany in the spring of 1917, they would not suffer their first casualties until 2 November 1917,^[52] by which point President Wilson would still be hoping to avoid the dispatch of large contingents of troops into the war.^[53] 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.^[54] In the Middle Eastern theatre, there had been an ongoing stalemate in Southern Palestine since April 1917,^[55] and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign would not make any substantial progress until 31 October 1917.^[56]

War Cabinet discussions

In early 1917, Sykes began looking to begin negotiations Zionist leaders, and despite having previously built a relationship with leading British Zionist Moses Gaster, began looking to meet other more radical Zionist leaders.^[57] He was introduced to Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow at the end of January 1917.^[g] On 7 February 1917, official negotiations began between Sykes and the Zionist leaders.^[58] This created a new dynamic for Weizmann – having previously been a lobbyist, he was now a partner to the government.^[57]

By 13 June 1917, it was acknowledged within the Foreign Office that the three most relevant politicians - the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Robert Cecil - were all in favour of supporting the Zionist movement.^[h] On 19 June, Balfour met with Lord Rothschild and Weizmann, and asked them to submit a formula for a declaration.^[60]

Following receipt of Lord Rothschild's 18 July draft declaration by the Foreign Office, the matter was brought to the Cabinet for formal consideration.^[50] In order to aid the discussions, the Cabinet Secretariat solicited interministerial clarification as well as the views of President Woodrow Wilson, and in October, formal submissions from six Zionist leaders and three non-Zionist Jews.^[50]

British officials asked President Wilson for his views on the matter on two occasions – first on September 3, when he replied the time was not ripe, and later on October 6, when he agreed with the release of the Declaration. ^[61] For a month during April and May 1917, Balfour was in the United States on the Balfour Mission, and spent significant time discussing Zionism with Wilson's advisor and leading Zionist Louis Brandeis.^[62] Historian Frank W. Brecher says Wilson's "deep Christian sentiment" led him to seek "a direct governing role in the Near East in the name of peace, democracy and, especially, Christianity." In 1922, Congress officially endorsed American support through passage of the Lodge-Fish Resolution.^[63][61] On the other hand, pro-Palestinian historians have argued that Wilson (and Congress) ignored democratic values in favour of "biblical romanticism" when they endorsed the Declaration. These historians point to a pro-Zionist lobby, which was active at a time when the small number of unorganized Arab Americans were not heard. At the same time, the State Department opposed the endorsement.^[64]

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."^[65]
• 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."^[66]
• 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."^[67]
• 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."^[68]

The geopolitical calculations behind the decision to release the declaration were debated and discussed in the following years.^[69] The cabinet believed that expressing support would appeal to Jews in Germany and particularly America – given two of Woodrow Wilson's closest advisors were know to be avid Zionists;^[70][71][72] they also hoped to encourage support from the large Jewish population in Russia.^[73] 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.^[69] In addition, the British intended to preempt the expected French pressure for an international administration.^[74][75]

In terms of British politics, the Declaration resulted from the coming into power of the Lloyd George and his cabinet, which had replaced the Asquith led-cabinet in December 1916, and who had favoured a post-war partition of the Ottoman Empire in contrast to Asquith who favoured reform.^[57][76]

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.^[77]

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.^[78] 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.^[79] This impacted British and French government estimates of the balance of power within the American Jewish public.^[79]

Lloyd George listed nine factors motivating his decision as Prime Minister to release the declaration,^[69] 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.^[69] Lloyd George told the Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 that the Declaration was made "due to propagandist reasons... In particular Jewish sympathy would confirm the support of American Jewry, and would make it more difficult for Germany to reduce her military commitments and improve her economic position on the eastern front".^[80] In his Memoirs, published in 1939, Lloyd George further elucidated his position.^[81]

Drafting

Authors and evolution of the draft

Lloyd George and Balfour remained in government until the collapse of the coalition in October 1922.^[82] Under the new Conservative government, attempts were made to identify the background to the drafting.^[83] A Cabinet memorandum was produced in January 1923 asserting that the primary authors were Balfour, Sykes, Weizmann and Sokolow, with "perhaps Lord Rothschild as a figure in the background", and that "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."^[i]

In subsequent decades, declassification of Government archives allowed scholars 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.^[85] 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,^[86] 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.^[87]

The Declaration

The agreed version of the Declaration, which contains just 67 words,^[90] was sent in a short letter from Balfour to Walter Rothschild, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, on 2 November 1917.^[69] It promised to support "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", with two safeguards with respect to "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", and "the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."^[69]

Jewish national home vs. Jewish state

The phrase "national home" was intentionally used instead of "state" because of opposition to the Zionist program within the British Cabinet,^[69] although the chief architects of the Declaration considered that a Jewish State would emerge in time.^[92] The term "national home" was intentionally ambiguous.^[93] For example, the phrase 'national homeland' had no legal value or precedent in international law,^[69] so its meaning was thus unclear when compared to other terms such as 'state'.^[69]

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."^[94] but rather preferred some form of protectorate as provided in the Palestine Mandate.^[94] 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.^[95]

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.^[80]

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.^[j] 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;^[96] 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.^[97][98]

Scope of the National Home "In Palestine"

The choice of stating such a homeland would be found 'in Palestine' rather than 'of Palestine' was also no accident.^[69] 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."^[99] In the final text, following Lord Milner's amendment, the word "reconstituted" was removed and the word that was replaced with in.^[100][101]

This text thereby avoided committing the entirety of Palestine to the Jewish National Home, resulting in controversy in future years over the intended scope.^[100][88] 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.'"^[102]

Civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine

The Declaration's first safeguard referred to protecting the civil and religious rights of non-Jews in Palestine. The "non-Jews" constituted 90% of the population of Palestine;^[91] Ronald Storrs, Britain's Military Governor of Jerusalem between 1917 and 1920, described that this community had observed that they had been "not so much as named, either as Arabs, Moslems or Christians, but were lumped together under the negative and humiliating definition of 'Non-Jewish Communities' and relegated to subordinate provisos".^[104][105] It was also noted that there was no reference to protecting the "political status" or political rights of these communicates, as there was in the subsequent safeguard relating to Jews in other countries.^[104][105]

This protection was frequently 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,^[106] the phrase "double undertaking" was used by Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald in his April 1930 House of Commons speech,^[107] the Passfield white paper and his 1931 letter to Chaim Weizmann, whilst the 1937 Peel Commission used the term "dual obligation".^[108] A particularly heated question was whether these two obligations had "equal weight", and in 1930 this equal status was confirmed by the Permanent Mandates Commission and by the British Government in the Passfield white paper.^[k]

Despite the principle of self-determination being declared on numerous subsequent occasions – President Wilson's January 1918 Fourteen points, McMahon's Declaration to the Seven in June 1918, the November 1918 Anglo-French Declaration, and the June 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations which established the mandate system^[l] – Balfour stated in February 1919 that Palestine was considered an exceptional case in which "we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination."^[113] In an August 1919 memo Balfour further explained that the British had no intention of consulting the existing population of Palestine,^[114][42] and the results of the then ongoing American King–Crane Commission of Enquiry consultation of the local population were subsequently suppressed for three years until the report was leaked in 1922.^[115] Balfour acknowledged the inconsistencies in the same memorandum:

What I have never been able to understand is how [our policy] can be harmonised with the [Anglo-French] declaration, the Covenant, or the instructions to the Commission of Enquiry... In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.^[114][116]

The obligation proved to be untenable,^[117] having been put into effect via the British Mandate for Palestine which was confirmed in 1922 as the vehicle for delivering the promises of the Declaration.^[118] Fifteen years after the Mandate was confirmed, the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission report, the first official proposal for partition of the region, referred to the requirements as "contradictory obligations"^[119][120] and with respect to the wider situation that had arisen in Palestine noted that the "disease is so deep-rooted that, in our firm conviction, the only hope of a cure lies in a surgical operation".^[121] The continuing intercommunal conflict had proven to the British that it was impossible for them to pacify the two communities in Palestine by using different messages for different audiences.^[117][m]

A 1939 British Government committee led by the Lord Chancellor, Frederic Maugham, concluded that the government had not been "free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine".^[123]

In April 2017, the British Minister of State, Baroness Anelay, stated during a debate regarding the upcoming centenary of the Declaration that the government acknowledged deficiencies in the Declaration's protections of the "non-Jewish communities";^[124] the Foreign Office subsequently repeated the statement in response to a petition on the UK Parliament petitions website which had called for an official apology for the Declaration:

We recognise that the Declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination.^[124][125]

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.^[126]

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.^[127]

Reaction

The text of the letter was published in the press one week after it was signed, on 9 November 1917.^[128]

Zionist reaction

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.^[129]

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.^[130]

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.^[79] 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.^[131]

In August 1919, Balfour approved Weizmann's request to name the first post-war settlement in Mandatory Palestine, "Balfouria", in his honor.^[132][133] It was intended to be a model settlement for future American Jewish activity in Palestine.^[134]

Hebert Samuel, the Zionist MP whose 1915 memorandum had framed the start of discussions in the British Cabinet, was asked by Lloyd George on 24 April 1920 to act as the first civil governor of British Palestine, replacing the previous military administration which had ruled the area since the war.^[135] Shortly after beginning the role in July 1920, he gave a reading at the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which according to his memoirs, led the congregation of older settlers to feel that the "fulfilment of ancient prophecy might at last be at hand".(Samuel 1945, p. 176)^[136]

From 1918 until World War II, Jews in Mandatory Palestine celebrated Balfour Day as an annual national holiday on 2 November.^[137] The celebrations included ceremonies in schools and other public institutions and festive articles in the Hebrew press.^[137]

Arab opposition

The local Christian and Muslim community of Palestine, who constituted almost 90% of the population, strongly opposed the Declaration.^[91] As described by the Palestinian-American philosopher Edward Said in 1979, it was perceived as being 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."^[138]

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."^[139] 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.^[140] 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.^[141]

The group also protested the carrying of new "white and blue banners with two inverted triangles in the middle",^[142] drawing the attention of the British authorities to the serious consequences of any political implications in raising the banners.^[142] 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.^[143]

In the broader Arab world, the Declaration was seen as a betrayal of the British wartime understandings with the Arabs.^[77] The Sharif of Mecca and other Arab leaders considered the Declaration a violation of a previous commitment made in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence in exchange for launching the Arab Revolt.^[77]

Response by Central Powers

Immediately following the publication of the declaration, it was met with tactical responses from the Central Powers.^[144] 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.^[145] On 12 December, the Ottoman Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha, gave an interview to German newspaper the Vossische Zeitung,^[145] which was published on 31 December and subsequently released in the German Jewish periodical Jüdische Rundschau on 4 January 1918,^[146][145] in which he referred to the Declaration as "une blague"^[145] (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.^[145] This Turkish statement was endorsed by the German Foreign Office on 5 January 1918.^[145] A German-Jewish Society was formed to advocate for further progress on 8 January 1918, named the Union of German Jewish Organizations for the Protection of the Rights of the Jews of the East (VJOD).^[n][147]

Following the war, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed by the Ottoman Empire on 10 August 1920.^[148] The treaty dissolved the Ottoman Empire, requiring Turkey to renounce sovereignty over much of the Middle East.^[148] Article 95 of the treaty incorporated the terms Balfour Declaration with respect to "the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers".^[148]

Evolution of British opinion

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".^[149] 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."^[150] 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".^[151]

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,^[152] 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;^[153]
• 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;^[153] and
• Zionist indiscretion and aggression, since the Balfour Declaration aggravating such fears.^[153]

British public and government opinion became increasingly less favourable to the commitment that had been made to Zionist policy. In February 1922, Churchill telegraphed Samuel, who by then had been appointed High Commissioner for Palestine, 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.^[o] 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.^[155]

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.^[156][157] The vote proved to be only symbolic as it was subsequently overruled by a vote in the House of Commons following a tactical pivot and variety of promises made by Churchill.^{[156][158][159]} The wording of the Declaration was thus incorporated into the British Mandate for Palestine, a legal instrument which created Mandatory Palestine for the explicit purpose of putting the Declaration into effect.^[160] Unlike the Declaration itself, the Mandate was legally binding on the British Government.^[160]

Long-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.^[77] 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".^{[161][162][163]} The Arab-Israeli conflict in a wider sense ran primarily from 1948–73, but continues today, mainly in the form of the more localized Israeli–Palestinian conflict. 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.^[92]

According to Elizabeth Monroe, "measured by British interests alone, [the Declaration was] one of the greatest mistakes in [its] imperial history."^[164]

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."^[165][166] 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.^[167]

The implementation of the declaration fed a disenchantment among the Arabs that alienated them from the British administrators in Mandatory Palestine.^[77] 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."^[168]

The document

The document was presented to the British Museum in 1924 by Walter Rothschild; today it is held in the British Library, which separated from the British Museum in 1973, as Additional Manuscripts number 41178.^[169] Between October 1987 to May 1988 it was lent outside the UK, being displayed in Israel's Knesset.^[170] The Israeli government are currently in negotiations to arrange a second loan in 2018, with plans to display the document in Independence Hall.^[170]

See also

• Proposals for a Jewish state
• British Mandate for Palestine (legal instrument)
• Diplomatic history of World War I

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Specialized works

General histories

Works by involved parties