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Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration was a 1917 letter in which Britain expressed support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It aimed to gain Jewish support for World War I allies and give Britain control over Palestine. While controversial, it influenced post-war events and the establishment of Israel in 1948.

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Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration was a 1917 letter in which Britain expressed support for establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It aimed to gain Jewish support for World War I allies and give Britain control over Palestine. While controversial, it influenced post-war events and the establishment of Israel in 1948.

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Home / Topics / Middle Eastern History / Balfour Declaration

Balfour Declaration
BY: HISTORY.COM EDITORS
UPDATED: AUGUST 21, 2018 | ORIGINAL: DECEMBER 14, 2017

Table of Contents

1. Zionism

2. David Lloyd George

3. Anti-Zionist Movement

4. Baron Rothschild

5. Legacy of the Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration was a letter written by British Foreign Secretary


Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild, in which he expressed the
British government’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The
long-term effects of the Balfour Declaration, and the British
government’s involvement in Palestinian affairs, are felt even today.

Zionism
Britain’s acknowledgement and support of Zionism, and Zionism’s focus on
establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine, emerged from growing concerns about
the direction of World War I.
By mid-1917, Britain and France were mired in a virtual stalemate with Germany on
the Western Front, while efforts to defeat Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula had
failed spectacularly.

On the Eastern Front, the fate of one ally, Russia, was uncertain: The Russian
Revolution in March had toppled Czar Nicholas II, and the Russian government was
struggling against widespread opposition to the country’s disintegrating war effort
against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Although the United States had just entered the war on the Allied side, a sizable
infusion of American troops was not scheduled to arrive on the continent until the
following year.

David Lloyd George


Against this troubling backdrop, the government of Prime Minister David Lloyd
George—elected in December 1916—made the decision to publicly support
Zionism, a movement led in Britain by Chaim Weizmann, a Russian Jew who had
settled in Manchester, England.

The motives behind this decision were various: First, a genuine belief in the
righteousness of the Zionist cause was held by Lloyd George and many other
influential leaders. Additionally, Britain’s leaders hoped that a formal declaration in
favor of Zionism would help gain Jewish support for the Allies in neutral countries,
in the United States and especially in Russia, where the anti-Semitic czarist
government had just been overthrown with the help of Russia’s Jewish population.

Finally, despite Britain’s earlier agreement with France dividing influence in the
region after the presumed defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Lloyd George had come
to see British dominance in Palestine—a land bridge between the crucial territories
of India and Egypt—as an essential post-war goal.

The establishment of a Zionist state there—under British protection—would


accomplish this goal, while also following the Allied aim of self-determination for
smaller nations.

Anti-Zionist Movement
Over the course of 1917, however, a vigorous anti-Zionist movement within
Parliament held up the progress of the planned declaration.
Led by Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India and one of the first Jews to serve
in the cabinet, the anti-Zionists feared that British-sponsored Zionism would
threaten the status of Jews who had settled in various European and American
cities and also encourage anti-Semitic violence in the countries battling Britain in
the war, especially within the Ottoman Empire.

This opposition was overruled, however, and after soliciting—with varying degrees
of success—the approval of France, the United States and Italy (including the
Vatican), Lloyd George’s government went ahead with its plan.

Baron Rothschild
On November 2, Balfour sent a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild—scion of the
Rothschild family, a prominent Zionist and a friend of Chaim Weizmann—stating
that: “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 existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country.”

By the time the statement was published in British and international newspapers
one week later, one of its major objectives had been rendered obsolete: Vladimir
Lenin and the Bolsheviks had gained power in Russia, and one of their first actions
was to call for an immediate armistice.

Russia was out of the war, and no amount of persuasion from Zionist Jews—who,
despite Britain’s belief to the contrary, had relatively little influence in Russia—
could reverse the outcome.

Legacy of the Balfour Declaration


The influence of the Balfour Declaration on the course of post-war events was
immediate: According to the “mandate” system created by the Treaty of Versailles
of 1919, Britain was entrusted with the temporary administration of Palestine, with
the understanding that it would work on behalf of both its Jewish and Arab
inhabitants.

Many Arabs, in Palestine and elsewhere, were outraged by their failure to receive
the nationhood and self-government they had been led to expect in return for their
participation in the war against Turkey. In the years after World War I, the Jewish
population in Palestine increased dramatically, along with the instances of Jewish-
Arab violence.

The area’s instability led Britain to delay making a decision on Palestine’s future.
But in the aftermath of World War II and the terrors of the Holocaust, growing
international support for Zionism led to the official declaration in 1948 of the nation
of Israel.

BY: HISTORY.COM EDITORS

HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and
informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the
HISTORY.com team. Articles with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline have been written
or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt
Mullen and Christian Zapata.

Citation Information
Article Title Balfour Declaration

Author History.com Editors

Website Name HISTORY

URL https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/balfour-declaration

Date Accessed March 17, 2024

Publisher A&E Television Networks

Last Updated August 21, 2018

Original Published Date December 14, 2017

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