Balfour Declaration
For the document on the Dominions of the British Empire, see Balfour
Declaration of 1926.
Balfour Declaration
The original letter from Balfour to
Rothschild; the declaration
reads:
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.
Creat 2 November 1917
ed
Locat British Library
ion
Autho Walter Rothschild,
r(s) Arthur Balfour, Leo
Amery, Lord Milner
Signa Arthur James Balfour
tories
Purpo Confirming support
se from the British
government for the
establishment in
Palestine of a "national
home" for the Jewish
people, with two
conditions
The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British
government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support
for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in
Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish
population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2
November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur
Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community,
for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.
The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9 November
1917.
Immediately following their declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire
in November 1914, the British War Cabinet began to consider the
future of Palestine; within two months a memorandum was circulated
to the Cabinet by a Zionist Cabinet member, Herbert Samuel,
proposing the support of Zionist ambitions in order to enlist the
support of Jews in the wider war. A committee was established in
April 1915 by British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to determine their
policy toward the Ottoman Empire including Palestine. Asquith, who
had favoured post-war reform of the Ottoman Empire, resigned in
December 1916; his replacement David Lloyd George, favoured
partition of the Empire. The first negotiations between the British and
the Zionists took place at a conference on 7 February 1917 that
included Sir Mark Sykes and the Zionist leadership. Subsequent
discussions led to Balfour's request, on 19 June, that Rothschild and
Chaim Weizmann submit a draft of a public declaration. Further drafts
were discussed by the British Cabinet during September and October,
with input from Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews but with no
representation from the local population in Palestine.
By late 1917, in the lead up to the Balfour Declaration, the wider war
had reached a stalemate, with two of Britain's allies not fully engaged:
the United States had yet to suffer a casualty, and the Russians were
in the midst of a revolution with Bolsheviks taking over the
government. A stalemate in southern Palestine was broken by the
Battle of Beersheba on 31 October 1917. The release of the final
declaration was authorised on 31 October; the preceding Cabinet
discussion had referenced perceived propaganda benefits amongst
the worldwide Jewish community for the Allied war effort.
The opening words of the declaration represented the first public
expression of support for Zionism by a major political power. The
term "national home" had no precedent in international law, and was
intentionally vague as to whether a Jewish state was contemplated.
The intended boundaries of Palestine were not specified, and the
British government later confirmed that the words "in Palestine"
meant that the Jewish national home was not intended to cover all of
Palestine. The second half of the declaration was added to satisfy
opponents of the policy, who had claimed that it would otherwise
prejudice the position of the local population of Palestine and
encourage antisemitism worldwide by "stamping the Jews as
strangers in their native lands". The declaration called for
safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs,
who composed the vast majority of the local population, and also the
rights and political status of the Jewish communities in other
countries outside of Palestine. The British government acknowledged
in 1939 that the local population's views should have been taken into
account, and recognised in 2017 that the declaration should have
called for protection of the Palestinian Arabs' political rights.
The declaration had many long-lasting consequences. It greatly
increased popular support for Zionism within Jewish communities
worldwide, and became a core component of the British Mandate for
Palestine, the founding document of Mandatory Palestine, which later
became Israel and the Palestinian territories. As a result, it is
considered a principal cause of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian
conflict, often described as the world's most intractable conflict.
Controversy remains over a number of areas, such as whether the
declaration contradicted earlier promises the British made to the
Sharif of Mecca in the McMahon–Hussein correspondence.
