A Concise History of the Middle East

278 • 16 THE CONTEST FOR PALESTINE

Zionism from reading the Bible. Weizmann also won the backing of the

foreign secretary, Lord Balfour. It was he who informed British Zionists of

the cabinet's decision to support their cause in a letter that became known

as the Balfour Declaration. The letter stated:

His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of

a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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

the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political

status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Since this declaration has come to be seen as the founding document of
political Zionism, it deserves our careful scrutiny. It does not say that
Britain would turn Palestine into a Jewish state. In fact, it does not specify
what would be the borders of Palestine, which the British were then in the
process of taking from the Turks. The British government promised only to
work for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Moreover, it
pledged not to harm the civil and religious (but not political) rights of
Palestine's "existing non-Jewish communities"—namely, the 93 percent
of its inhabitants, Muslim and Christian, who spoke Arabic and dreaded
being cut off from other Arabs as second-class citizens within a Jewish na¬
tional home. Both Britain and the Zionist movement would have to find a
way to assuage these people's fears and to guarantee their rights. They never
did. Here, in short, is what Arabs see as the nub of the contest for Palestine.
Even now its toughest issue is to define and uphold the legitimate rights of
the Palestinians.
The Balfour Declaration also had to take into account the fears of Jews
who chose to remain outside Palestine and who would not want to lose
the rights and status they had won in such liberal democracies as England,
France, and the US. Up to the rise of Hitler, Zionism had the backing of
only a minority of these Jews. What the Balfour Declaration seemed to en¬
sure was that the British government would control Palestine after the war
with a commitment to build the Jewish national home there. Let us see
what really happened.

The British Occupation

When World War I ended, Britain's Egyptian Expeditionary Force and
Faysal's Arab army jointly occupied the area that would become Palestine.
The British set up in Jerusalem a provisional military government that