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The Balfour Declaration of 1917 (dated November 2, 1917) was a classified formal statement of policy by the British government stating that the British government "view with favour" the establishment in Palestine of "a national home for the Jewish people" on the conditions 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 declaration was made in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild (Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation, a private Zionist organization. The letter reflected the position of the British Cabinet, as agreed upon in a meeting on October 31, 1917. It further stated that the declaration is a sign of "sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations."

The statement was issued through the efforts of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, the principal Zionist leaders based in London but, as they had asked for the reconstitution of Palestine as “the” Jewish national home, the Declaration fell short of Zionist expectations.^[1]

Text of the declaration

Text development and differing views

The record of discussions that led up to the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarifies some details of its wording. The phrase "national home" was intentionally used instead of "state", and the British devoted some effort over the following decades, including Winston Churchill's 1922 White Paper, to denying that a state was the intention. However, in private, many British officials agreed with the interpretation of the Zionists that a state would be the eventual outcome.^[2]

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."^[3] In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing the entirety of Palestine to this purpose. Similarly, an early draft did not include the commitment that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of the non-Jewish communities. 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, who, among others, was concerned that the declaration without those changes could result in increased anti-Semitic persecution. The draft was circulated and during October the government received replies from various representatives of the Jewish community. 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.^[4]

At that time the British were busy making promises. At a war Cabinet meeting, held on 31 October 1917, Balfour suggested that a declaration favorable to Zionist aspirations would allow Great Britain "to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America"^[5] The British also dropped Balfour Declaration leaflets written in Yiddish over Germany.^[6]

Henry McMahon had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sherif of Mecca, in 1915, 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 lies to the south and wasn't explicitly mentioned. That modern-day Lebanese region of the Mediterranean coast was set aside as part of a future French Mandate. After the war, the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed. Hussein had protested that the Arabs of Beirut would greatly oppose isolation from the Arab state or states, but did not bring up the matter of the Jerusalem or Palestine. Dr. Chaim Weizmann in his autobiography Trial and Error that Palestine had been excluded from the areas that should have been Arab and independent. This interpretation was supported explicitly by the British government in the 1922 White Paper.

Lord Grey had been the Foreign Secretary during the McMahon-Hussein negotiations. Speaking in the House of Lords on the 27th March, 1923, he made it clear that, for his part, 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 the Sharif Hussein in 1915. He called for all of the secret engagements regarding Palestine to be made public.^[7] 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".^[8]

Milner as the chief author

In his posthumously published 1982 book The Anglo-American Establishment, Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley explained that the Balfour Declaration was actually drafted by Lord Alfred Milner, who was the head of the Rhodes-Milner Round Table Groups that Cecil John Rhodes called for in his will to be "Churches for the extension of the British Empire." Milner was the trustee of Rhodes' will, while both Milner and Rhodes were self-described British Race patriots. The recipient of the Balfour Declaration, Lord Rothschild, was also a close friend of Rhodes and was at an earlier time the trustee of Rhodes' will.

Negotiation

One of the main proponents of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the leading spokesman for organized Zionism in Britain. Weizmann was a chemist who had developed a process to synthesize acetone via fermentation. Acetone is required for the production of cordite, a powerful propellant explosive needed to fire ammunition without generating tell-tale smoke. Germany had cornered supplies of calcium acetate, a major source of acetone. Other pre-war processes in Britain were inadequate to meet the increased demand in World War I, and a shortage of cordite would have severely hampered Britain's war effort. Lloyd-George, then Minister for Munitions, was grateful to Weizmann and so supported his Zionist aspirations. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd George wrote of meeting Weizmann in 1916 that Weizmann

However, this version of the story of the declaration's origins has been described as "fanciful", a fair assessment considering that discussions between Weizmann and Balfour had begun at least a decade earlier. In late 1905 Balfour had requested of his Jewish constituency representative, Charles Dreyfus, that he arrange a meeting with Weizman, during which Weizman asked for official British support for Zionism, and they were to meet again on this issue in 1914.^[10]

During the first meeting between Weizmann and Balfour in 1906, Balfour asked what what Weizmann's objections were to the idea of a Jewish homeland in Uganda rather than in Palestine. According to Weizmann's memoir, the conversation went as follows:

Conflicts and Broken Treaty Commitments ( Contradictory assurances )

The Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918 pledged that Great Britain and France would "assist in the establishment of indigenous Governments and administrations in Syria and Mesopotamia by "setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations".

Balfour resigned as Foreign Secretary following the Versailles Conference in 1919, but continued in the Cabinet as Lord President of the Council. In a memorandum addressed to the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, he stated that the Balfour Declaration contradicted the letters of the covenant (referring to the League Covenant) the Anglo-French Declaration, and the instructions of the King-Crane Commission. All of the other engagements contained pledges that the Arab populations could establish national governments of their own choosing according to the principle of self-determination.

Controversy behind Declaration

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

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'." The 'most comprehensive explanation' of the origin of the Balfour Declaration the Foreign Office was able to provide was contained in a small 'unofficial' note of Jan 1923 affirming that:

Arab opposition

The Arabs sensed danger in November 1918 at the parade marking the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The Muslim-Christian Association protested the carrying of new 'white and blue banners with two inverted triangles in the middle'. They drew the attention of the authorities to the serious consequences of any political implications in raising the banners.^[15]

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 the Zionist intrusion.^[16]

References

^ Balfour Declaration. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 12, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
^ Mansfield, Peter (1992). The Arabs. London: Penguin Books, 176-77.
^ Stein, Leonard (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Schuster, 470.
^ Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 13
^ Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 16
^ 90th Anniversary Of Balfour Declaration
^ Report of a Committee Set Up To Consider Certain Correspondence Between Sir Henry McMahon and The Sharif of Mecca
^ cited in Palestine Papers, 1917-1922, Doreen Ingrams, page 48 from the UK Archive files PRO CAB 27/24.
^ Quigley, Carroll (1981). The Anglo-American Establishment. New York: Books in Focus, 169. ISBN 0945001010.
^ Harry Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900-1950, Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0714652210. pp.50-51.
^ Weizmann, Trial and Error, p.111, as quoted in W. Lacquer, The History of Zionism", 2003, ISBN 1860649327. p.188
^ Edward Said (1992). Question of Palestine. Vintage Books Edition, 16. ISBN 0679739882. , Doreen Ingrams (1973). Palestine Papers 1917-1922. George Braziller Edition, 73. ISBN 0807606480. Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1931, First series Vol 4. page 345 memorandum from Lord Balfour to Lord Curzon, August 11, 1919, and quoted by The Origin of the Palestine-Israeli Conflict 2nd Edition, 2002, Jews for Justice. Verified 24 Oct 2007.
^ CO 733/18, Churchill to Samuel, Telegram, Private and Personal, 25 February 1922. Cited Huneidi, Sahar "A Broken Trust, Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians" 2001, ISBN 1-86064-172-5, p.57.
^ Full text of note included CO 733/58, Secret Cabinet Paper CP 60 (23), 'Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, January 1923. FO unofficial note added 'little referring to the Balfour Declaration among such papers as have been preserved'. Shuckburgh's memo asserts that 'as the official records are silent, it can only be assumed that such discussions as had taken place were of an informal and private character'.]<ref>http://books.google.com/books?id=sY27UmuT6-4C&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=co+%22733+58%22+secret+cabinet+paper+cp+60&source=web&ots=cudKSJZW-n&sig=iDIviioqWIqE41CINYsHkdime4w</li> <li id="cite_note-14">'''[[#cite_ref-14|^]]''' Zu'aytir, Akram, Watha'iq al-haraka a-wataniyya al-filastiniyya (1918-1939), ed. Bayan Nuwayhid al-Hut. Beirut 1948. Papers, p. 5. Cited by Huneidi, Sahar "A Broken Trust, Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians". ISBN 1-86064-172-5 p.32.</li> <li id="cite_note-15">'''[[#cite_ref-15|^]]''' 'Petition from the Moslem-Christian Association in Jaffa, to the Military Governor, on the occasion of the First Anniversary of British Entry into Jaffa', 16 November 1918, Zu'aytir papers pp. 7-8. Cited by Huneidi p.32.</li></ol></ref>

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