Balfour Declaration

Balfour Declaration
Balfour and the Declaration
Created	2 Nov 1917
Signatories	Arthur James Balfour
Purpose	Confirming support from the British government for the establishment in Palestine of a "national home" for the Jewish people

The Balfour Declaration was a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. It read:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours 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.

The text of the letter was published in the press one week later, on 9 November 1917. The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into both the Sèvres peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, and the Mandate for Palestine. The original document is kept at the British Library.

The Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi and other Arab leaders considered the Declaration a violation of previous agreements made in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence. Palestine is not explicitly mentioned in the correspondence, and territories which were not purely Arab were excluded by McMahon and Hussein, although historically Palestine had always formed part of Syria. The Arabs, taking Palestine to be overwhelmingly Arab, claimed the declaration was in contrast to the letters, which promised the Arab independence movement control of the Middle East territories "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" in exchange for revolting against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The British claimed that the McMahon letters did not apply to Palestine, therefore the Declaration could not be a violation of the previous agreement. The issuance of the Declaration had many long lasting consequences, and was a key moment in the lead-up to the Arab–Israeli conflict, often referred to as the world's "most intractable conflict".