A Jewish National Home
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Few twentieth-century documents concerning the Middle East have had consequences
as momentous as a brief statement issued in a 1917 letter by the British government.
Universally referred to as the Balfour Declaration, it put Britain on record as favoring
a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Much of the credit for the Balfour Declaration goes to Chaim Weizmann, a Rus-
sian-born Jew who settled in Britain in 1904 and became one of the country’s most
active and influential advocates of the Zionist movement, which aspired to resettle Jews
in Palestine. President of the World Zionist Organization and a chemist who devel-
oped a process used in the manufacture of munitions, Weizmann had a remarkable
ability to develop friendships with people in high places, among them Lord Arthur
James Balfour, the British foreign secretary in the last years of World War I. By 1917
Weizmann, along with other Zionist leaders in Britain, had convinced Balfour, Prime
Minister David Lloyd George, and other senior officials that Jewish support could be
vital to the Entente Allies in the war, which was then stalemated. Hoping to gain Jew-
ish backing, the government agreed to endorse the Zionist cause.
The government’s decision proved to be controversial, even among some Jewish
leaders. Not all Jews were Zionists, and some Jewish leaders feared that the designa-
tion of Palestine as thenational home for the Jews would lead to pressure on Jews in
Europe to leave their home states and move there. Edwin Montagu, the sole Jew in
the British cabinet, stood among those who resisted Zionism for this reason. Other
British officials opposed endorsing it for different reasons, some arguing, for example,
that Britain siding with the Jews would cause trouble in what was certain to become
a conflict with the Arabs already living in Palestine.
After considerable debate over wording, the war cabinet on October 31, 1917,
approved a declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was then
incorporated into a letter dated November 2, signed by Balfour, and addressed to
Lionel Walter Lord Rothschild, the president of the British Zionist Federation. The
text of Balfour’s letter was not made public until November 7, by coincidence the
same day that Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks seized power in Russia.
The British government’s internal debates had resulted in a carefully worded dec-
laration that took into account some of the concerns expressed by Montagu and oth-
ers. The declaration referred to a Jewish “national home” in Palestine, reflecting ter-
minology the Zionists preferred with the intent of allaying fears about a Jewish state.
The declaration also said the Jewish national home would be “in” Palestine, a formu-
lation suggesting that the Jews might not occupy all of that ill-defined territory. In
addition, the declaration made vague statements about protecting the rights of Arabs
in Palestine and of Jews in other countries.
Before issuing the declaration, the British government sought to secure an endorse-
ment from the United States, which had entered the war six months earlier. Accord-
ing to most accounts, the administration of President Woodrow Wilson initially
FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST 23