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The British Foreign Ministry promises to work toward a Jewish national home in Palestine with no harm to non-Jewish populations or to Jews living elsewhere who might want to support a Jewish home.

View this article in: Spanish|Hebrew|Portuguese|Italian|Polish|GermanNovember 2, 1917 Hurewitz, J.C. The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics, A Documentary Record . 2nd, Revised and Enlarged ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. 106. Print. Vol. 2 of British-French Supremacy. Background to the Declaration The Balfour Declaration was the Jewish charter that Herzl failed to obtain from the Ottoman sultan 20 years earlier. The terms of the Declaration were included in the preamble of the Palestine Mandate’s Articles (1922) and given international sanction and political legitimacy by the newly formed League of Nations. Many historians of Zionism and Israel view the Declaration as part of political progression – from Herzl’s Jewish State (1896) to the Articles of the Mandate (1922) to U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947). which called for the creation of separate Arab and Jewish states in Palestine – that ultimately culminated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence (1948). Those interested in delegitimizing Israel argue that the Balfour Declaration, and therefore anything based upon its validity, like the Palestine Mandate or the State of Israel, is null and void. This was the official position of most of the Arab world well into the 1990s. Issuance of the Declaration made Zionist adherents euphoric. Recognition of their will to establish a homeland meant that the Zionist movement had received permission, first from a great power, England, and then from the League of Nations, to fulfill the Zionist objective of establishing a territorial base for expressing Jewish identity and asserting the right of Jews to re-establish themselves on the land that G-d had promised the Jewish people. For some 40,000 Jews who had immigrated to Palestine and purchased land to build settlements from the 1880s to 1917, the Declaration’s issuance confirmed that their ideological and physical choice to return to the land of their forefathers was just. For Jews worldwide, who had for centuries lived on the margins as a minority in sometimes extraordinary hostile environments, constantly subject to the whims of rulers, protection from a great power was a major political break with the Jewish past. The Declaration’s 102 words were a permission statement to build a national home, while calling for the protection of the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population. For Jews who were non-Zionists or anti-Zionists, the Declaration caused at the very least worry, if not profound consternation. Would non-Zionist Jews in Britain be labeled as disloyal citizens because their co-religionists were so enthusiastic about having a homeland elsewhere? These Jews who opposed Zionism believed in Jewish equality or emancipation in the countries where they lived, not in a national home for Jews. These Jews weren’t sufficiently organized, and their reasoning failed to bring them much immediate or long term notice. A Jewish national home in Palestine supported by Great Britain fit conveniently with larger British strategic interests in the Middle East. Before, during, and after World War I, British strategic interests included the establishment of a “land bridge” from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean in order to insure British economic and political influence and control from India to Egypt. For the British, the Declaration was one of many building blocks that asserted British influence and territorial control over the Middle East, connecting Britain’s Arab allies, clients, kings, and tribal leaders into a desired geo-political network of influence across the region. This strategy included agreements with Arab tribal leaders in Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Afghanistan, and the Arabian Peninsula. Securing Palestine as geographic buffer for British presence in Egypt and protection of the Suez Canal was necessary from Britain’s viewpoint. Thus, Zionist and British interests dovetailed into a workable and functioning symbiosis. For the Arabs living in Palestine, particularly among the politically engaged notable landed elites, the Declaration posed several problems. By establishing mandates for the Arab regions of the now defunct Ottoman Empire, the French and British brought some measure of administrative efficiency to regions dominated by a few powerful families. Second, sanctioned Zionist development meant the British were not focused on establishing local Arab elite control over politics. So dismayed were local Arab elites in the major towns of Palestine that they decided ultimately not to officially recognize the British Mandate. Instead, the political leadership boycotted official participation with the British. The Balfour Declaration’s contents and intents were considered abhorrent to Arab sensibilities. Despite public anger at the Declaration and its inclusion in the Mandate’s configuration, local Arabs did participate in some boards, commissions, advisory councils, and investigations that assessed public policy i...

Balfour Declaration, 1917 | CIE