One unfortunate missive from Arthur Balfour. How big of him to declare Palestine for the Jews as long as the Arab Palestinians were OK about it

It said all things to all men; but, gave preference to wealthy Lord Rothschild, a banker and an important figure in the British Jewish community, who Arthur would have been foolish to upset.  Yet, the Arabs were helping us to defeat the Ottoman Empire with the help of Lawrence of Arabia.  The Arabs would just have to put up with the disappointment of the British Empire giving preference to our man, Lord Rothschild.  The Jews in Palestine were a small minority at the time.

In November 1917, to win the war, it was important to keep the Jewish Americans, in particular, on board.

Britain, said Arthur, will give Palestine to the Jews as their homeland as long as the existing Arab communities are not prejudiced or disadvantaged in any way. But they were the very ones whose homeland it already is - and had been for centuries. Nearly two thousand years in fact after the Romans left. Along with many other rulers of empires who came and went, like the Brits who were driven out by Jewish terrorism in 1948!

How cheeky for us Brits to tell the Jews it is all theirs. Who are we to think so arrogantly that, as the biggest empire in the world, we can decide such matters?  And we hadn't even won the war!

The Wikipedia view is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#:~:text=The%20Balfour%20Declaration%20was%20a,a%20small%20minority%20Jewish%20population.

"Early British political support for an increased Jewish presence in the region of Palestine was based upon geopolitical calculations.^[1][i] This support began in the early 1840s^[3] and was led by Lord Palmerston, following the occupation of Syria and Palestine by separatist Ottoman governor Muhammad Ali of Egypt.^[4][5]"

"The British government acknowledged in 1939 that the local population's wishes and interests should have been taken into account, and recognised in 1917 that the declaration should have called for the 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. It indirectly led to the emergence of the State of Israel and 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."

"The year 1916 marked four centuries since Palestine had become part of the Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire.^[39] For most of this period, the Jewish population represented a small minority, approximately 3% of the total, with Muslims representing the largest segment of the population, and Christians the second.^{[40][41][42][ix]"}

This is the Aljazeera view: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/11/2/more-than-a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-explained

By Zena Al Tahhan on 2 Nov 2018

EXTRACT:

The document was controversial for several reasons.

Firstly, it was, in the words of the late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, “made by a European power … about a non-European territory … in a flat disregard of both the presence and wishes of the native majority resident in that territory”.

In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.

Secondly, the declaration was one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British.

When it was released, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence.

The British also promised the French, in a separate treaty known as 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be split between the two colonial powers after the war.

The declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence.

Finally, the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law – that of a “national home”.

The use of the vague term “national home” for the Jewish people, as opposed to “state”, left the meaning open to interpretation.

Earlier drafts of the document used the phrase “the reconstitution of Palestine as a Jewish State”, but that was later changed. 

Published On 2 Nov 2018