I think Balfour did not help but it was an ambivalent, all things to all men document that meant that the promise of a homeland was contradicted or, certainly, made very difficult by the safeguards for the Palestinians in the second half of the declaration.
Balfour was about the Judeo-Christian nations wanting the Zionists/Jews on their side in the 1 WW and, of course, the closeness between Jews and Christians sharing their Scriptures. Yet, under T E Lawrence, the Arabs were fighting on our side but were then very badly let down by the West from 1919. From then on, we showed increasing partiality towards the Jews at the expense of the Muslims/Arabs. That unequal treatment and prejudice/apartheid has worsened ever since to, now full scale regional war between the Jews/Christians and the Muslims/Arabs. What a mess! What a disgrace for religion/faith.
One tragedy was the Christian/European persecution and then full-scale 30s/40s genocide of the Jews, leading those who could get out, for some, to flee to Palestine. Population pressures intensified over the years to 1948, which did not help assimilation and peaceful co-existence of the two.
The sale of land by Arabs to the Jews also was unfortunate but then the Zionists would have taken the land anyway as was later the case. Always, coercion, force, violence, warfare in obvious contradiction to the Way of Jesus!
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