opposed Britain’s plans to issue the declaration but relented after an appeal to the
White House by Louis Brandeis, one of the country’s most prominent Jewish leaders
and an active Zionist whom Wilson had appointed to the Supreme Court in 1916.
Although the Balfour Declaration was never intended as an unconditional endorse-
ment of Jewish aspirations in Palestine, Zionist leaders embraced it as the single most
important step to date toward the advancement of their cause. Many Arab leaders were
correspondingly angry, viewing the declaration as retreat from what they viewed as
British pledges to support an Arab state that included Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration ironically had little impact in the one area that had been
uppermost in the minds of some British leaders. Lloyd George and some of his col-
leagues had hoped that issuing the declaration would reassure Jews in Russia and
encourage them to use their perceived influence to keep Russia in the war against Ger-
many. In the event, Lenin’s new communist government quickly withdrew Russia from
the conflict. The longer-term impact of the Balfour Declaration was that it commit-
ted the British government to supporting Zionist claims on Palestine during postwar
peace negotiations in Paris. When President Wilson publicly embraced the declaration
in 1918, the United States became committed to that goal as well. The essence of the
Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the 1922 League of Nations mandate that
ratified British control of Palestine (League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, p. 27).
Subsequent British governments often appeared ambivalent in their commitment
to Zionism, in part because of the inherent contradiction in the Balfour Declaration
of encouraging Jews to move to a land already inhabited by others. Some of this
ambivalence was reflected in the government’s June 1922 White Paper, the next sig-
nificant statement on the matter, issued by Winston S. Churchill, the colonial secre-
tary. The White Paper sought to assure the Arabs of Palestine that “Jewish national-
ity” would not be imposed on them. Even so, the Balfour Declaration pointed the
way toward a policy that led not only to a Jewish “national home” in Palestine but to
the creation three decades later of the State of Israel.
Following is a copy of the Balfour Declaration, issued in a letter dated November 2, 1917,
from British foreign secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour to Lionel Walter Lord Rothschild
of the Zionist Federation.
DOCUMENT
Balfour Declaration
NOVEMBER2, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Govern-
ment, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has
been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
24 FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST