WHAT DID THE BALFOUR DECLARATION MEAN? - Jewish participation in WWI

WHAT DID THE BALFOUR DECLARATION MEAN?

In view of the cool disclaimers which were to come later, it is interesting to note what interpretation was placed on the British Government's Declaration to the Jews at the time. Whatever bearing it might have had on the commendable questions of humaneness and justice, it could hardly be regarded as a wholly benevolent gesture. Balfour himself, handsome, clever and icy, was no mere romantic. He, who had pacified Ireland with guns and was known as `Bloody Balfour' in consequence, could hardly be accused of suddenly developing a philanthropic complex in favor of Jews.

The benefits immediately accruing to the Allied cause need hardly be argued. Certainly, the tremendous number of Jewish soldiers fighting in the Armies of the Western Powers; were fired by this warm earnest of good faith. Nor can one estimate the weight of Jewish influence in neutral countries, which dropped heavily on the Allied side of the scales. Nor the enthusiastic Jewish aid given to the Allenby invasion of Palestine. Nor the stirring effect of the Jewish Legion, fighting to right the oldest wrong in history, on the imaginations of Jewry and the world. Nor the boost it gave the Allied claims when Palestine, the first conquered territory, was trumpeted to all humanity as newly liberated with the help of the Jewish British Brigade. 

Not only was the effect of this superb piece of propaganda felt in all neutral countries but it was immediate in its reaction on the morale of the Central Empires, with their stew of subject races, accelerating the cleavage then taking place between the subject nationalities and their overlords. Worthy of note, too, is the boldness with which the German Zionist Conference in Berlin adopted and cabled a Resolution "greeting with satisfaction the fact that the British Government has recognized in an official declaration the right of the Jewish people to a renewed national existence in Palestine." In fact, after the British announcement, the Central Powers did all they could to win the Zionist movement over to their side. They formulated a rival proposition, involving a chartered company with a form of self-government and the right of free immigration into Palestine; and "by the end of 1917 it was known that the Turks were willing to accept a scheme on those lines." 

Wholeheartedly the great and important body of fundamentalist Christian opinion, hating war for any proclaimed purpose, rose to the bait. Jannaway expresses this profound conviction in his book, Palestine and the World, asserting that Biblical Prophecy was being fulfilled exactly as predicted, thus placing Jehovah squarely on the side of the Western Powers.

"Indeed," says a semi-official British publication, "support of the Zionist ambitions promised much for the Allies . . . That it is in purpose a direct contract with Jewry is beyond question." 

This was acknowledged plainly by General Smuts, member of the War Cabinet, who speaking retrospectively some years later, asserted that "the Declaration was intended to rally the powerful Jewish influence for the Allied cause at the darkest hour of the War”; a statement which David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and others, emphatically reiterated.

The Declaration was unreservedly endorsed by the other Powers.

On June 4, 1917 the French Government, through its Minister, M. Cambon, formally committed itself to "the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago." Even in faraway China, Wang, Minister of Foreign Affairs, assured the Zionists that "the Nationalist Government is in full sympathy with the Jewish people in their desire to re-establish the country for themselves." 

In America, echoed by practically every official of public importance,

President Wilson wrote that "the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are agreed that in all of Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth."

In gratitude the American Jewish Congress cabled H. M. Government, on November 2, 1917, its desire that Great Britain should be given the trusteeship, "acting on behalf of such League of Nations, as may be formed, to assure the development of Palestine into a Jewish Commonwealth . . ."

In the United States Congress, members expressed general accord with "the British Declaration in favor of a Jewish State in the Holy Land." The minutes of its sessions show that this understanding had not altered by an iota five years later, when the American Congress was induced to put its seal of approval, by resolution, on the selection of Great Britain as the Mandatory for Palestine.

The utterances of the Cabinet ministers who framed the Declaration were no less emphatic. General Smuts asserted that "in generations to come you will see a great Jewish State rising there once more." Declared Lloyd George grandly ". . . Great Britain extended its mighty hand in friendship to the Jewish people to help it to regain its ancient national home and to realize its age-long aspirations." Said Lord Robert Cecil "Our wish is that Arabian countries shall be for Arabs, Armenia shall be for the Armenians and Judea for the Jews." And on another occasion he combined the whole matter in a nutshell, telling the excited Zionists: "We have given you national existence. In your hands lies your national future." Lord Balfour was no less clear. "The destruction of Judea about 1900 years ago," he asserted, "was one of the greatest historical crimes, which the Allies now endeavor to remedy."

British newspapers were as one in their mighty paean of approval.

Without exception they spoke of "the new Jewish State which is to be formed under the suzerainty of a Christian Power.”

Across the water, the American newspapers echoed these remarks in the same expansive detail. A representative editorial of the time explains: "The Zionists are that group of Jews who wish to found a Jewish Republic in Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital.

. . The British cabinet has pronounced in favor of Zionism."

Jewish participation in WWI

Actually the Jewish share in the victory was significant, well justifying in value received the solemn bargain made with world Jewry to reconstitute the Land of Israel as a living factor among the nations.

In the neutral countries the Allied cause, associated everywhere in the Jewish mind with justice and equity, was given invaluable support. Jews fought in the armies of the entire Western Powers. Over a hundred thousand Jewish soldiers were killed in action. In the British Empire itself, out of a total community of 425,000 Jews, 50,000 were in uniform. In true Maccabean spirit they earned more than their share of honors and decorations on the battlefield. One of them was the heroic Sir John Monash, leader of the Australians.

Behind the lines, the Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman was the genius directing the Admiralty Chemical Laboratories. According to Lloyd George, he "absolutely saved the British army at a critical moment" by devising a substitute for exhausted English supplies of acetone, used in making the basic material in gunpowder.

Among others, Sir Alfred Stern invented the tank, which saved the Western Powers from annihilation during the latter part of the fighting. Solomon J. Solomon created the idea of camouflage, allowing harassed Allied shipping to run the U-boat blockade. Everywhere Jewish brains, money, valor and enthusiasm were placed wholeheartedly at the service of the Allies.

In Palestine itself, as a result of their commitment to the Western Powers, Jews were tortured, executed and deported. When the final truce came; fully half of them were dead or had fled abroad.

In 1915 Jewish Palestinian refugees in Egypt had organized the Zion Mule Corps under the leadership of dashing Captain Trumpledor, a one-armed veteran of the Russo-Japanese War. Colonel Patterson, the British officer who led these men in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, declared: "I have been in the army a long time, but I never saw anything like the way those Zionists picked up the art of soldiery." For the first time since Roman days, the Zion Mule Corps fought under the proudly floating Jewish ensign, the blue and white Mogen David (Shield of David).

In the meanwhile a brilliant young Russian writer, Vladimir Jabotinsky, had been scurrying around in an attempt to organize a legion of Jewish volunteers from the Diaspora countries to fight directly under the Jewish flag. With rare insight he pointed out that words and promises were soon forgotten and that the most enduring Jewish title to the Holy Land would come from a direct investment of Jewish blood under a Jewish flag.

The influential capitalist Jews were aghast. They put pressure on the British War Office to stop this little impassioned Zionist with the under slung jaw who they believed was jeopardizing their position in the gentile world with his lunatic nonsense.

But the British needed this Jewish regiment for publicity purposes: they had made themselves the champion of the oldest betrayed nationality in existence, impressive to the Poles, Czechs, Armenians, etc., who had been listening to the noble assurances of the Western Powers with their tongues in their cheeks. The War Office consequently overrode the objections of the anti-Zionists and allowed Jabotinsky to form The Jewish Regiment.

As the protest of the scared English Jews became louder, the regiment's name was changed to The Judeans, official sub-title for the 38th Royal Fusiliers. Following hard on its heels followed another Jewish battalion, the 39th Fusiliers.

London was groggy with excitement. The official propagandists did not miss this glamorous opportunity to exploit the sheer romance of the historic occasion. At a giant mass meeting seeing the Jewish warriors off, the Hon. G. N. Barnes, M.P., spoke fulsomely in the name of His Majesty the King. He eulogized the Jewish soldiers as "fellow fighters for freedom," and assured his listeners that "the British Government proclaimed its policy of Zionism because it believes that Zionism is identified with the policy and aims for which good men and women are struggling everywhere.”

In Palestine: The Judeans were joined by Colonel Patterson's seasoned campaigners, the Zion Mule Corps. The Jewish national anthem rang in their ears as they marched, and over their heads waved the Jewish flag.

Wildly enthusiastic, the able-bodied Jews in the conquered territory enlisted. With an appreciation almost reverential the British Peace Handbook No. 6o announced that "the most important event which has taken place . . . since our occupation, has been the recruiting of the Palestine Jews, whatever their national States, into the British Army . . . Practically the whole available Jewish youth of the Colonies . . . came forward for voluntary enlistment in the Jewish Battalions.”

The distinguished service rendered by these Jewish regiments is indelibly written in the records. Said General Bartholomew "For the Turks the end of the War was dependent upon maintenance of the Jordan front against Allenby and on this decisive sector of the front not the Arab Army fought, but the Jewish Legion." It was the Jews, who took the fords of the Jordan, thus opening the way for the passage of the British Army and contributing in great measure to the brilliant victory at Damascus.

This was amply confirmed by General Chaytor, leader of the Australian and New Zealand cavalry and Commander-in-Chief of all troops in the Jordan Valley, who emphasized publicly "the facts of the heroic struggle made by the 38th and 39th Fusilier Battalions," who had marched on to conquer Transjordan and had thus contributed heavily to the victory over the Fourth Turkish Army.

Of fully as great importance was the voluntary intelligence service rendered by the celebrated Nili Society all over the Holy Land. Organized by the scientist Alexander Aronson, its daring exploits were largely instrumental in the success of Allenby's campaign. Far from giving the invaders any help, the Palestine Arabs were, as we shall see, either apathetic or directly hostile.

Spiritedly the Jewish Palestinian volunteers addressed themselves to Colonel Patterson when he landed with his Jewish boys: "We are convinced that Britain's victory is ours and our victory Britain's. This war and Balfour's declaration have made us a sister nation of England. We hope to convince by our fighting that the soul of the Maccabee’s has not dried up and that we know how to countersign Balfour's declaration with our own blood."

They had every reason to feel `convinced.' In April 1917 the British War Department had issued a statement on War Aims in the Near East in which it was proclaimed that "Palestine was to be recognized as the Jewish National Home . . . The Jewish population present and future throughout Palestine is to possess and enjoy full national, political and civic rights. . .

The Suzerain Government shall grant full and free rights of immigration into Palestine to Jews of all countries . . . The Suzerain Government shall grant a charter to a Jewish Company for the colonization and development of Palestine, the Company to have the power to acquire and take over any concessions for works of a public character . . . and the rights of preemption of Crown lands or other lands not held in private or religious ownership, and such other powers and privileges as are usual in Charters or statutes of similar colonizing bodies." These statements were simultaneously reduced by the Allied war propagandists to brief slogans and exploited to the fullest advantage everywhere.

Addressing the first Conference of Jews in the liberated area, Major W. Ormsby-Gore, later as Colonial Secretary to suffer a serious case of amnesia, orated for His Majesty's Government as follows

"Mr. Balfour has made a historic declaration with regard to the Zionists: that he wishes to see created and built up in Palestine a National Home for the Jewish People. What do we understand by this? We mean that those Jews who voluntarily come to live in Palestine, should live in Palestine as Jewish nationalists . . . You are bound together in Palestine by the need of re-building up a Jewish nation in all its various aspects, a national center for Jewry all over the world to look at." 

The marching Jews listened. The great dream which had inspired the Jewish mind for so many long centuries, seemed about to be realized. They believed Britain's word implicitly. But future events in Palestine anti-Semitic British Administration of the Mandate had undermined all the promises written or verbal, thus the British were inciting the Arabs against the Jews in Palestine; by a traitorous British administration of which its treacherous actions reverberates until today as the major cause of the Arab Israeli Conflict which continues to our present time in the twenty first century and beyond.

The 39th Royal Fusiliers arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1918 where they joined British soldiers already fighting north of Jaffa. In September, they participated in the Battle of Megiddo, and it was during that month they were tasked with fording the Jordan River, along with the 38th, in one of the final battles on the Ottoman Front. After that, some Jewish Legionnaires served as guards of enemy combatants until the fighting in Palestine was finally over.

The following individuals from St Louis are reported to have enlisted in the Jewish Legion:

B. Arnoltz, Aaron L. Aronow, Ben Axelbaum,Jake Axelbaum, Hyman Baltzman, Hyman Bamholtz, Aaron J. Bashkow, Morris Aaron Bashkow, Benjamin Berger, Abraham Broun, Ben Cohen, Jacob S Cohen (the first recruit from STL), Julius Corman, Jack Cron, Morris Edelman, Harry Edlin, Edward Eisen, Leon Epstein, Manuel Essman, Henry Feigenbaum, M. Fierson, Louis Friedman, C. H. Galpern, Elias Ginsberg, Jake Gishes, Morris Glassman, Morris Goldberg, Julius Gruenkel, H. Halperin, Isaac Hoffman, Nathan Hurwitz, Meyer Ikin, Morris Jick, Samuel Kashenover, Julius Kerman, S. Kersman/Kerman, B. Klaimon, Jacob Koplar, Woolf Korabelnik, Sidney Kron, Abraham Levin, Abraham Moinester, Isaac Moinester, Morris Pearson, Arthur Rabinovitz, Israel Rosen, Ben Roth, Nehemia Rubin, Abe Schneider, Sam Schuchman, Morris B. Seligsohn, Morris Sheiman, Sam Smolensky, Benjamin J.  Solkoff, Louis Sosna, Charles Spelky, Isaac Turvoitz, Aaron Washkoff, Dave Weiss, Edward Wining, Harry Wolfson, Hyman M. Zuckerman, David Zukerman, and Abraham S. Zubov.

Jewish Defense Organizations: The NILI Spy Ring - Early 1900

NILI was a secret, pro-British spying organization, which operated under Turkish rule in Palestine during World War I, under the leadership of the world-renowned agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn. NILI is an acronym for the Hebrew phrase “Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaker,”meaning The Eternal One of Israel will not lie (Samuel I 15:29), which served as its password.

Aaronsohn’s family was part of the early settlement of Zikhron Ya’akov, which was first established in the 1880’s. Aaronsohn had achieved wide acclaim for discovering a weather-resistant form of primitive wheat. With the support from an American-Jewish organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Aaron established an experimental agricultural station at Atlit, a small coastal village next to the Carmel Mountains, where he conducted research on dry farming.

With the outbreak of World War I, so too came the deportation of Jewish residents by the Turks, among various other oppressive measures, mounting famine, and the news of Turkish slaughter of masses of Armenians. Aaronsohn and his siblings were prompted to act. They hoped to aid the British to invade Palestine from their base in Egypt, ease the burden of suffering upon the local Jewish population, and inform the world of the Turkish oppression of local Jews, all in the hopes of advancing the Zionist cause for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Aaron’s agricultural research provided the cover for him and his co-conspirators to move freely about the country, under the guise of organizing campaigns against locust infestation. The British intitially rebuffed the group’s overtures. It was only in late 1916, when Aaron crossed Turkish lines and the Sinai to reach Cairo, did he convinve the British the value of his Jewish spy ring.

For most of 1917, Aaron remained in Cairo as a liaison, while his sister Sarah, brother Alexander, close friend Avshalom Feinberg, and Joseph Lishansky formed the core of the spy organization. More than 20 others also participated in the group.

The spies communicated by signal lights with a small British frigate anchored off the Atlit coast every two weeks. The spies switched to homing pigeons after the frigate eventually stopped coming, and it was by this method that NILI was able to provide the new regional British commander, General Edmund Allenby, with information about Beersheba and the Negev desert, in preparation for a surprise British attack inland. Details on weather patterns, Turkish fortifications and troop movements, railroads, desert routes, and water-sources location were all among the information the NILI spies were able to pass on to the British.

In September 1917, one of the homing pigeons, bearing a coded message, landed on the house of the Turkish governor in Caesarea. Intense searches and persecutions followed, and by the fall of 1917, the members of NILI organization had all been virtually rounded up.

One by one, the group began to be discovered and captured, some giving the others up under the stress of torture. Avshalom Feinberg had earlier been shot by a Bedouin trying to cross through Sinai to Egypt. One of the group, Na’aman Belkind, was captured by the Turks, along with Joseph Lishansky, and the prisoners were incarcerated in Damascus. Lishansky and Belkind were sentenced to death, and Lishansky was hanged in the public square.

Turkish soldiers also surrounded the moshav Zikhron Ya’akov and arrested numerous people, including Aaronsohn’s sister, Sarah, who committed suicide after four days of torture. She surrendered to spare her aging father sure torture by the Turks.

In October 1917, the British army, with the help of the Australian cavalry, surprised the Turks with their raid on Beersheba, and opened the way into Central Palestine. Jerusalem surrendered in December, and 400 years of Ottoman rule came to an end. The conquest of Beersheba would have been almost impossible without the massive amount of information provided by the NILI spies.

Aaron, NILI’s founder and leader, remained in Cairo. He survived the war and became active in the campaign to increase British and Zionist relations after the Balfour Declaration was written in November 1917. He died in a plane crash in May 1919, on his way from London to the Paris Peace Conference.

Years later, when Israel conquered the Sinai during the Six Day War, an elderly Bedouin led an IDF officer to a spot known locally as Kabir Yehudi (the Jew’s grave), where one lone date palm grew. There the remains of Avshalom Feinberg were exhumed and identified; the tree had evidently sprouted from a date seed that was in his pocket. Nearly 50 years after he was shot in the Sinai, Feinberg’s bones were laid to rest in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

A museum dedicated to NILI was recently opened in the old center of Zikhron Ya’akov. On display are hundreds of photos, original letters, explanations and dioramas which explain the story of the Jewish spy ring during World War I.

http://www.nili-museum.org.il/nili-centenary/

Nili Centenary

Nili: acronym for "Netzach Israel Lo Yishaker" – The Eternity of Israel will not deceive (Samuel I, 15:29 Dreamers and warriors, bearers of the rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.

The underground Nili network was established in 1915 and operated in Eretz Israel during WWI. Its objectives were:

To assist the British effort to conquer Eretz Israel by gathering information.

To support the Jewish Yishuv in Eretz Israel in a time of famine and disease.

To draw world attention to what was happening in Eretz Israel.

To fulfill the dream of establishing a Jewish State in Eretz Israel.

Nili was founded and led by agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn from Zikhron Ya'akov, joined by his sister Sarah and brother Alexander, as well as Avshalom Feinberg from Hadera, brothers Na'aman and Eitan Belkind from Rishon LeZion, Yosef Lishansky from Metula and dozens of others.

The organization operated from Athlit, where Aaron's Agricultural Experiment Station was located. British forces sailed regularly between Egypt and Athlit – the British warship Managam frequently came ashore at Athlit to collect the information gathered by Nili members. Information was also passed on via homing pigeon.

In the spring of 1917 rumors about the espionage organization circulated around the Yishuv. A number of events led to the exposure of the organization in September 1917: a British coin was found in the market in Ramleh, a homing pigeon failed to complete its mission and landed in the governor's yard in Caesarea and Na'aman Belkind was arrested by Turkish authorities.

Following these events, the Turks began a campaign of threats and terror against the Jewish Yishuv in order to apprehend Nili members. Many were in fact caught and tortured. Sarah Aaronsohn committed suicide after undergoing severe torture. Na'aman Belkind and Yosef Lishansky were executed in Damascus.

The bravery and heroism of the men and women of Nili helped the British enter Eretz Israel and end the Ottoman rule.

Beit Aaronsohn Museum Nili.

Letter to the Editor: Former acquiescence of Arab League to Palestine Partition Recalled - 1948 - Posted by YJ Draiman

Letter to the Editor:  Former acquiescence of Arab League to Palestine Partition Recalled

 

“To the Editor of the New York Times:  The current rumor of peace talks between the government of Israel and the Arab states make it pertinent to recall that the Arab League has not always opposed the creation or existence of a Jewish state.  During the last few years, the League and its components have been so adamant and reiterate in their demand for Arab rule over all of Palestine that the public has likely forgotten, if it ever knew, how recent is this obstinacy. 

In the fall of 1945, Azzam Bey, the secretary general and guiding mind of the Arab League, declared that the League was prepared to consider ‘most carefully’ the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state.  His Declaration, however, must be viewed in it’s proper setting in order to appreciate it’s significance, to understand why it was subsequently consigned to oblivion and to extract from it some glimmer of hope for the future. 

After the British government announced and enforced it’s White Paper policy of 1939 – a policy which aimed to hold Jewish immigration and land purchases – the Arab states felt assured that the Jews would be ‘frozen’ as a permanent minority in Palestine.  Therefore, in serene confidence, of British support, they froze solid their own opposition to any proposal except the conversion of that country into an Arab state. 

But in December, 1944, their serenity was troubled.  That month the annual convention of the British Labor Party adopted a Palestine plank which could well prove to be a rift in the lute; for it proposed a mass immigration of Jews in order to enable them to become a majority, the conversion of all Palestine into a Jewish state and to transfer of Arab Palestinians to other Arab lands. 

Still, as long as the British Labor Party remained out of power, the Arab states could safely remain obdurate.  In February of 1945, they rejected out of hand the rumored Churchill-Roosevelt project for a partition.  In March, the Arab League was formally established and during the next three months it maintained this intransigent position at the San Francisco conference, which gave birth to the United Nations. 

However, in July the threatened rift between British and Arab policy toward Palestine assumed the promise and prospect of becoming a reality.  The British Labor Party was swept into power by an overwhelming majority.  It seemed evident that anything the Labor Party had proposed to do would be done.  One thing which the Labor Party had proposed to do, in which the Arab League could not ignore was to turn all of Palestine into a Jewish state. 

At this juncture – after the British Labor party assumed office and before the new Labor government had announced its Palestine policy – the Arab League bethought itself that half of a loaf is better then crumbs.  Accordingly, on October 5, 1945, Azzam Bey published in an Egyptian newspaper, Le Progress Egyptian the following statement:

‘If you could assure me that the handling of Palestine to the Jews would mean peace everywhere, I should give them all of it.  Such a solution would involve constant conflicts like those which developed in Ireland.  But if a partition of the country is likely to effect a solution and put an end to the present disturbed situation, let us study such a possibility carefully.’

To emphasize this willingness to compromise on the basis of Jewish self-rule in part of Palestine, Azzam Bey is quoted (in the Tel-Aviv newspaper Haaretz) as saying on October 24^th: ‘the Arabs prepared to make far-reaching concessions toward the gratification of the Jewish desire to see Palestine established as a spiritual or even material homeland.’

As it turned out, the Arab League need not have worried into concessions for fear of a change in Britain’s pro-Arab policy.  Mr. Bevin’s long awaited statement on Palestine appeared November 13^th.  This statement made it clear that the British government would perpetuate the throttling the Jewish immigration by limiting it to 1500 a month, and would postpone an ultimate decision on Palestine’s fate through the familiar dilatory device of a commission of inquiry – of which there had already been seventeen. 

From that date the Arab League, and its member states, relapsed into intransigence. 

But neither the conciliatory proposal of the Arabs nor the circumstances of its immergence and disappearance can be expunged from the record.  From these circumstances, it would not be unreasonable to assume that if the British government saw it fit to change its present attitude toward an already portioned Palestine and thereby recognize the State of Israel, the Arab League would – without damaging its prestige – revert to its former acquiescence. 

As in the summer of 1945 and ever since, the key to a peaceful solution of the Palestine conflict hangs on an office wall in Number 10 Downing Street.”

New York Times – Marvin Lowenthal, September 6, 1948.  

Turks, Arabs Welcomed the Balfour Declaration "A Jewish National Home," 100 Years On by Efraim Karsh

Turks, Arabs Welcomed the Balfour Declaration
"A Jewish National Home," 100 Years On

by Efraim Karsh
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2018

To mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, contained in a letter dated from the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild dated November 2, 1917, we're pleased to release in advance the following article by Middle East Quarterly editor Efraim Karsh from the Winter 2018 issue of Middle East Quarterly. In it, he argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict evolved in spite of the Balfour Declaration, not because of it.

World War I allies incorporated the Balfour Declaration into the Turkish Peace Treaty signed at the French town of Sèvres in August 1920.

"100 years have passed since the notorious Balfour Declaration, by which Britain gave, without any right, authority or consent from anyone, the land of Palestine to another people. This paved the road for the Nakba of Palestinian people and their dispossession and displacement from their land."[1]
So Mahmmoud Abbas claimed at last year's annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in what constitutes the standard Arab-Palestinian indictment of the November 1917 British government's pledge to facilitate "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" providing that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
It is an emotionally gripping claim, but it is also the inverse of truth. For one thing, Britain did consult its main war allies, notably U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, before issuing the declaration, which was quickly endorsed by the contemporary international community, including the leaders of the nascent pan-Arab movement. Furthermore, the declaration was used as a model by the Ottoman Empire for its own official communiqué.

The Balfour Declaration was used as a model by the Ottoman Empire for its own official communiqué.

For another thing, it was not the Balfour Declaration that paved the road to the displacement of many Palestinians but its rejection by the extremist Palestinian Arab leadership headed by the Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin Husseini—this against the wishes of ordinary Palestinian Arabs who preferred to coexist with their Jewish neighbors and take advantage of opportunities created by the evolving Jewish national enterprise. Had this leadership not ignored the wishes of its subjects, and the will of the international community for that matter, there would have been no nakba.

The Historical Context

The end of World War I saw the ideal of national self-determination becoming the organizing principle of the international system as the victorious powers carved territorial states from the collapsed Ottoman, German, Habsburg, and Russian empires. This was done through a newly devised mandates system that placed the Afro-Asiatic territories of the defunct empires (the European lands were given immediate independence) under the control of respective mandatory powers, beholden to a new world organization—the League of Nations—which were charged with steering them from tutelage to independence.[2]
This sea change is commonly associated with Woodrow Wilson's famous fourteen points, announced in an address to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918. In fact, it was the much-maligned May 1916 Anglo-French-Russian agreement on the partition of the Ottoman Empire (or the Sykes-Picot agreement as it is generally known) that blazed this new trail by providing for "an independent Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States ... under the suzerainty of an Arab chief."[3]

Hashemite emir Faisal I (right) and Chaim Weizmann (wearing Arab headdress) in 1918 in Transjordan. Later, Faisal stated, "No true Arab can be suspicious or afraid of Jewish nationalism."

The Balfour Declaration sought to modify this agreement by substituting a Jewish national home for the international administration to which Palestine was to be subjected. While the French resented the change for fear of losing influence over Christianity's holy sites, they eventually relented and joined their war allies in incorporating the declaration into the Turkish Peace Treaty signed at the French town of Sèvres in August 1920.[4] Two years later, on July 24, 1922, the League of Nations appointed Britain the mandatory for Palestine with the explicit goal of "placing the country under such political, administrative, and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home" as stipulated by the Balfour Declaration.[5] A week later, the U.S. Congress endorsed the declaration in a joint resolution, amplifying this move during World War II with several resolutions and declarations supporting unrestricted Jewish immigration and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.[6]
In other words, within five years of its issuance, the Balfour Declaration had come to reflect the will of the international community as represented by a major official resolution by the newly established world organization (the U.N. predecessor). And this was not only in the "practical" sense of supporting the creation of a Jewish national home but in the deeper sense of recognizing "the historical connexion [sic] of the Jewish people with Palestine and ... the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country."[7]
Even the Ottoman Empire, head of the world's Muslim community, seemed to have acknowledged the right of the Jews to collective revival in their ancestral homeland. On August 12, 1918, Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha, one of the triumvirs who had run the empire since 1913, issued an official communiqué expressing "sympathies for the establishment of a religious and national Jewish center in Palestine by well-organized immigration and colonization" and offering to promote this enterprise "by all means" provided it "does not affect the rights of the non-Jewish population."[8]
Largely modeled on the Balfour Declaration and formulated in a similar process of lengthy discussions with prominent Jewish leaders, Talaat's proclamation came too late to have real significance—two-and-a-half months after its issuance, the Ottomans surrendered to the Allies—and was apparently designed to improve the Muslim empire's bargaining position in the looming postwar peace talks. Yet its issuance was nothing short of extraordinary given the violent Ottoman reaction to anything that smacked of national self-determination, from the Greek war of independence in the 1820s, to the Balkan wars of the 1870s, to the Armenian genocide of World War I. Indeed, only a year before the declaration, the Jewish community in Palestine (or the Yishuv) faced a real risk of extinction from the Ottomans for the very same reason, only to be saved through intervention by Germany, Istanbul's senior war ally.

Arabs Embrace the Declaration

Emir Faisal. Talaat was hardly the only regional potentate to accept the Jewish right to national revival. The leaders of the nascent pan-Arab movement were perfectly amenable to endorsing the Balfour Declaration so long as this seemed to be conducive to their ambitions. And none more so than the Hashemite emirs Faisal and Abdullah who, together with their father, the Sharif of Mecca Hussein ibn Ali, perpetrated the "Great Arab War" against the Ottoman Empire. They were, as it happened, generously rewarded for their endeavors in the form of vast territories several times the size of the British Isles. Yet since these spectacular gains (which comprise the current states of Iraq, Jordan, and parts of Saudi Arabia) only served to whet their appetite, the emirs continued to pursue their imperial ambitions under the pan-Arab guise.

The Hashemite emirs continued to pursue their imperial ambitions under the pan-Arab guise.

Even during the revolt, Faisal began toying with the idea of establishing his own Syrian empire, independent of his father's prospective regional empire. In late 1917 and early 1918, he went so far as to negotiate this option with key members of the Ottoman leadership behind the backs of his father and his British allies. As his terms were rejected by Istanbul, Faisal tried to gain great-power endorsement for his imperial dream, and it was here that his interests seemed to converge with that of the Zionist movement.
On June 4, 1918, Faisal met Chaim Weizmann, the Russia-born, Manchester-based rising head of the Zionist movement. The two struck up an immediate rapport, and the emir readily acknowledged "the necessity for cooperation between Jews and Arabs" and "the possibility of Jewish claims to territory in Palestine." Yet he refused to discuss Palestine's future until such a time "when Arab affairs were more consolidated."[9]
When they met again six months later, Faisal was prepared to take his general affinity a major step further. By now, he had established a foothold in Syria under the protective wing of Sir Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which had driven the Ottoman forces from the Levant. The emir hoped to expand this opening into a full-fledged empire with U.S. backing and support. Were the Zionists to help swing American public opinion behind his cause, he was "quite sure that he and his followers would be able to explain to the Arabs that the advent of the Jews into Palestine was for the good of the country, and that the legitimate interests of the Arab peasants would in no way be interfered with."[10]
"It [i]s curious there should be friction between Jews and Arabs in Palestine," Faisal told Weizmann after hearing his exposition of Zionist aims. "There was no friction in any other country where Jews lived together with Arabs. He was convinced that the trouble was promoted by intrigues. He did not think for a moment that there was any scarcity of land in Palestine. The population would always have enough, especially if the country were developed."[11] Faisal reiterated this benevolent observation at a dinner held on his behalf by Lord Rothschild, to whom Balfour sent the letter containing his famous declaration. "No true Arab can be suspicious or afraid of Jewish nationalism," Faisal stated, "and what better intermediary could we find anywhere in the world more suitable than you? For you have all the knowledge of Europe, and are our cousins by blood."[12]
On January 3, 1919, shortly before giving evidence to the Paris peace conference, Faisal signed an agreement with Weizmann supporting the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine in accordance with the Balfour Declaration and pledging the adoption of all necessary measures "to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale." In a letter to a prominent American Zionist a couple of months later, Faisal amplified this pledge:

We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement ... and we regard [the Zionist demands] as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.[13]

For several months, the emir seemed to be working to this end. So much so that in April 1919, Weizmann maintained that "between the Arab leaders, as represented by Faisal, and ourselves, there is complete understanding, and therefore complete accord" and that Faisal "has undertaken to exercise all his influence towards having his estimate of the Zionist cause and the Zionist proposals as 'moderate and proper' shared by his following." Nearly six months later, Weizmann still considered Faisal a staunch ally who fully understood the immense potential of Arab-Zionist cooperation. "He is ready to take Jewish advisers and is willing, even anxious, to have Zionist support in the development and even administration of the Damascus region," he wrote to Balfour in September 1919. "We, of course, would be willing to make a very great effort to help Faisal, as it would help us very much towards establishing good relations with the Arabs both in Palestine and Syria."[14]
This upbeat prognosis failed to consider the instrumental nature of Faisal's behavior. When his efforts to gain international recognition for his imperial dream came to naught, the emir quickly changed tack and reneged on his historic agreement with the Zionist movement. On March 8, 1920, he was crowned by his supporters as King Faisal I of Syria "within its natural boundaries, including Palestine," and the newly installed monarch had no intention of allowing the Jewish national movement to wrest away any part of his kingdom. The coronation was thus followed by riots in Palestine as rumors spread regarding the country's imminent annexation to Syria. These culminated in early April 1920 in a pogrom in Jerusalem in which five Jews were murdered and more than two hundred were wounded. "[I]n spite of his momentary success, obtained also partly by British gold—[Faisal] is in the long run a broken reed," a disillusioned Weizmann wrote his colleagues.[15]
Emir Abdullah. This disillusionment did not prevent the Zionist leaders from pinning their hopes on Abdullah, who resented his marginalization by his younger brother and resolved to win his own "Greater Syrian" empire. Like Faisal, the emir viewed Zionism as an influential and affluent movement that could help both rally great-power support behind his imperial dream and bankroll its implementation. In the words of his protégé and Transjordan's prime minister, Samir Rifai: "The enlarged Transjordan State with the support of Jewish economy would become the most influential State in the Arab Middle East."[16]

Emir Abdullah made his first overture in autumn 1921, indicating his readiness to recognize the Balfour Declaration.

Abdullah made his first overture to the Zionist movement in the autumn of 1921, indicating his readiness to recognize the Balfour Declaration and to allow Jewish settlement in Transjordan, which he had come to rule several months earlier, provided the Jews agreed to be incorporated into a unified kingdom under his headship. In the meantime, he had a small favor to ask. The £3,500 monthly subsidy from his father was paid through the Zionist-owned Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jerusalem. Would the bank be prepared to advance him £7,000 to be repaid by the remittance from his father? The bank's evasive reply did little to deter the emir. In November 1922, he traveled to London, where at a secret meeting with Weizmann and a number of Zionist officials, he reiterated his proposal and asked that they use their good offices with the French government, which by then had expelled Faisal from Damascus, to secure him the Syrian throne.[17]
Egypt. Neither were the Hashemites the Zionists' only conduit to the Arabic-speaking world. With contacts with some of the secret, pan-Arab societies operating in the Ottoman Empire already established by the Zionist movement prior to World War I, a few months after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, Weizmann led a Zionist commission to the Middle East to explore ways and means for its implementation, including "the establishment of good relations with the Arabs and other non-Jewish communities in Palestine." In Cairo, he managed to convince a number of leading Syrian and Palestinian activists, living at the time in the Egyptian capital, that "Zionism has come to stay, that it is far more moderate in its aims than they had anticipated, and that by meeting it in a conciliatory spirit, they are likely to reap substantial benefits in the future." He also succeeded in allaying the fears of the Egyptian sultan Fuad of Zionism's alleged designs on Islam's holy places, especially its supposed intention to destroy the Dome of the Rock and to reestablish the Jewish temple on its ruins.[18]

Egypt was conspicuously indifferent to the anti-Zionist struggle in Palestine led by Hajj Amin Husseini.

It was indeed in Egypt that the Jewish national aspirations seemed to garner some genuine sympathy, albeit for the opposite reasons of those articulated by Zionist champions of the "pan-Arab connection." Given its physical detachment from the eastern part of the Arabic-speaking world on the one hand, and its illustrious imperial past dating back to pharaonic times on the other, Egypt was seen by early pan-Arabists as "not belonging to the Arab race." For their part, Egyptians looked down on the rest of the Arabs, using the term "Arab" in a derogatory fashion to denote a shiftless and uncultured nomad, someone to be viewed with contempt by a people with a millenarian tradition of settled cultivation. "If you add one zero to another, and then to another, what sum will you get?" Saad Zaghlul, the doyen of modern Egyptian nationalism, said, dismissing the pan-Arab ideal of unity.[19]
During the 1920s and the early 1930s, Egypt was conspicuously indifferent to the anti-Zionist struggle in Palestine led by Hajj Amin Husseini. So much so that a prominent Palestinian Arab journalist, living in Egypt, recalled in his memoirs how he was asked by ordinary Egyptians who "Mr. Palestine" was, while others thought that Zionism was the name of a certain woman with whom Mr. Palestine had quarreled and, therefore, hated.
Ziwar Pasha, the governor of Alexandria, was certainly better informed, though his knowledge did not prevent him from participating in the celebrations of the local Jewish community upon the issuance of the Balfour Declaration. Eight years later, as Egypt's prime minister, Ziwar sent an official representative to the inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which he applauded as a contribution to mankind. By contrast, the Egyptian government refused to send a delegation to the ceremonies celebrating the restoration of the al-Aqsa mosque, contenting itself with the attendance of its Jerusalem consul. Likewise, no Egyptian official bothered to meet Husseini during his visits to Cairo in 1926-28; on one occasion, he was directly snubbed by the Egyptian prime minister, who would not see him despite staying in the same hotel—this at a time when Weizmann had already conferred with Fuad in 1918, and other Zionist officials met Egyptian counterparts as a matter of course. As late as 1928, the king could still hold discussions on the merits of Zionism with the chief rabbi of the Egyptian Jewish community. Even the 1929 charges of Jewish designs to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque, spread by the mufti by way of stirring mass massacres of Jews throughout Palestine, left the Egyptian masses largely unmoved.[20] It was only in the mid-1930's that these sentiments began to change due to the growing pan-Arab sentiments among educated Egyptians and now-King Faruq's (1937-52) ambition to establish himself as the leader of all Arabs, if not the caliph of all Muslims.

Arab-Jewish Coexistence in Palestine

The Egyptian attitudes to the Balfour Declaration, ranging from indifference to endorsement, were largely mirrored in Palestine. Up to its conquest by the British, the country did not exist as a unified geographical or political entity but was divided between the Ottoman province of Beirut in the north and the district of Jerusalem in the south. Its local inhabitants, like the rest of the Arabic-
speaking communities throughout the empire, had not experienced the processes of secularization and modernization that preceded the development of European nationalism in the late 1700's.

It took one full year for the first manifestation of local opposition to the Balfour Declaration to emerge in the form of a petition by a group of Palestinian Arab dignitaries and nationalists.

Hence, they considered themselves Ottoman subjects rather than members of a wider Arab nation, let alone a Palestinian one. Their immediate loyalties were parochial—to one's clan, tribe, village, town, or religious sect—which coexisted alongside their overarching submission to the Ottoman sultan-caliph in his capacity as the religious and temporal head of the world Muslim community. As late as June 1918, less than three months before the end of hostilities in the Middle East, Gilbert Clayton, chief political officer of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, noted the absence of "real patriotism amongst the population of Palestine." Two months later, a British report stated that "the Muslim population of Judea took little or no interest in the Arab national movement. Even now, the Effendi class, and particularly the educated Muslim-Levantine population of Jaffa, evince a feeling somewhat akin to hostility toward the Arab movement very similar to the feeling so prevalent in Cairo and Alexandria. This Muslim-Effendi class, which has no real political cohesion, and above all, no power of organization, is either pro-Turkish or pro-British.[21]

As late as August 1947, al-Wahda newspaper advocated the incorporation of Palestine into "Greater Syria."

Against this backdrop, it was hardly surprising that it took one full year for the first manifestation of local opposition to the Balfour Declaration to emerge in the form of a petition by a group of Palestinian Arab dignitaries and nationalists. Yet rather than protest the declaration's encroachment on Palestinian Arab national rights, the petition demanded the incorporation of Palestine into Syria[22]—a demand repeated by the Palestinian Arab leadership throughout the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's. As late as August 1947, three months before the passing of the U.N. resolution partitioning Mandate Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, al-Wahda newspaper, mouthpiece of the Arab Higher Committee, the mufti-dominated umbrella organization of the Palestinian Arabs, advocated the incorporation of Palestine (and Transjordan) into "Greater Syria."[23]

Palestinian Arab demonstrators, 1920. Faisal was crowned king of Syria in March 1920. The coronation was followed by riots in Palestine, which culminated in early April 1920 in a pogrom in Jerusalem in which five Jews were murdered and more than two hundred wounded.

For years after the declaration's issuance, many Palestinian Arabs remained ignorant of its actual substance, with the name Balfour instead denoting an idea—power, money to promote Jewish settlement, or, more so, an opportunity for self-enrichment. In the words of a sheikh in the vicinity of Gaza: "Tell Balfour, that we in the South are willing to sell him land at a much lower rate than he will have to pay in the North."[24]
The sheikh knew what he was talking about. An inflow of Jewish immigrants and capital after World War I had revived Palestine's hitherto moribund condition. If prior to the war some 2,500-3,000 Arabs, or one out of 200-250 inhabitants, emigrated from the country every year, this rate was slashed to about 800 per annum between 1920 and 1936.
Palestine's Arab population rose from about 600,000 to some 950,000 owing to the substantial improvement in socioeconomic conditions attending the development of the Jewish National Home.[25] Small wonder that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs sought to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities afforded by the growing Jewish presence in the country, which raised their quality of life and standard of living well above those in the neighboring Arab states.[26] In the words of a 1937 report by a British commission of enquiry headed by Lord Peel:

The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the Census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.[27]

Jewish and Arab workers wrapping oranges in Rehovot. Throughout the mandate era, periods of peaceful coexistence were far longer than those of violent eruption, and the latter were the work of a small fraction of Palestinian Arabs.

As a result of this state of affairs, throughout the mandate era (1920-48), the periods of peaceful coexistence were far longer than those of violent eruption, and the latter were the work of a small fraction of Palestinian Arabs.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Jewish representatives held hundreds of formal meetings with their Arab counterparts in Palestine and the neighboring Arab states and were frequently invited to social gatherings and official events as well as to the homes of prominent Arab families. Joint Arab-Jewish projects and enterprises sprang throughout the country—from the association for orange growers in Jaffa, to mixed committees for the building of the Haifa port; from active Jewish-Arab cooperation in anti-malarial drainage and the improvement of water supplies, to a joint organization for the benefit of the poor and the aged, to Arab-Jewish professional unions. In 1923, about a hundred Arab children attended private Jewish schools while 307 Jewish children attended private Arab schools. Three years later, the number of Jews attending Arab schools grew by some 50 percent to 445—including 315 Jewesses in Arab all-girl schools.[28]
Even Clayton, a prominent champion of the pan-Arab cause who in 1923 became Palestine's chief political secretary, acknowledged that "on non-political matters, such as taxation, agriculture, etc., the Jewish colonies and Arab villages speak the same voice and sometimes from the same hall." He once recalled how he had arrived in a Jewish village to deliver a speech on the National Home, only to find a mixed gathering of Jews and Arabs engaged in an animated discussion, which necessitated a complete change in the nature of his own remarks.[29]
In a valedictory report summing his term in office (1920-25), Sir Herbert Samuel, the first high commissioner for Palestine, painted an upbeat picture of the development of Arab-Jewish relations:

In the first place, the people discovered that the disasters, which they had been told were about to fall upon them, did not in fact occur. The attacks upon their villages by well-armed Jewish colonists, which some of the agitators had announced, did not take place. The day when a hundred thousand Jews were to disembark in Palestine in order to occupy their lands, came and went, and there was no such invasion. Month followed month and year followed year, and no man had his land taken from him. So far from the mosques closed and turned into synagogues, a new, purely Moslem, elected body was created to which the control of all Moslem religious buildings, and of their endowments, was transferred; it rebuilt those that were in ruins and began to restore those that needed restoration. It is difficult, under such conditions, to maintain indefinitely an attitude of alarm; people cannot be induced to remain constantly mobilized against a danger which never eventuates.[30]

Even the most protracted period of Palestinian Arab violence in 1936-39, with its paralytic atmosphere of terror and a ruthlessly enforced economic boycott, failed to dent Arab-Jewish coexistence on many practical levels, including defense cooperation. Contrary to its common depiction as a nationalist revolt against the ruling British and the growing Jewish presence in the country, this was a massive exercise in violence that saw far more Arabs than Jews murdered by Arab gangs, which repressed and abused the general Arab population.[31] And while thousands of Arabs fled the country in a foretaste of the 1947-48 exodus, others preferred to fight back against their oppressors, often in collaboration with the British authorities and the Hagana, the largest Jewish underground defense organization. Still others sought shelter in Jewish neighborhoods.

Prior to the Arab "revolt" of 1936-39, thousands of Jews were able to make the traditional pilgrimage to Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem. Coexistence between Arabs and Jews persisted into the World War II years.

This coexistence persisted into the World War II years. While Hajj Amin Husseini, who had fled Palestine in 1937, was busy making himself "the most important Arab Quisling in German hands" (to use the words of a contemporary British report)[32]—broadcasting Nazi propaganda to Arabs and Muslims worldwide, recruiting Arab prisoners of war and Balkan Muslims for the Nazi fighting and murder machine, and urging the extermination of Jews wherever they could be found—ordinary Palestinian Arabs sought to return to normalcy and reestablish coexistence with their Jewish neighbors.
Arab and Jewish citrus growers joined forces in demanding the cancellation of customs duty and the extension of government loans to cultivators for the duration of the war. Large quantities of Arab agricultural produce reappeared in Jewish markets, and this phenomenon expanded in subsequent years as both communities enjoyed the unprecedented spending and investment boom attending Palestine's incorporation into the British war effort.[33] Land sales continued as far as possible with Arabs often acting as intermediaries for Jewish purchases in the zones that had been prohibited and restricted by the British authorities in 1939. Thousands of Jews made the traditional pilgrimage to Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem, while Jewish students visited this exclusively Arab town for the Christmas celebrations. And in April 1940, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, chief rabbis Isaac Herzog and Benzion Uziel visited Hebron at the head of a large congregation and prayed at the entrance to the Tomb of the Patriarchs—the first visit of Jews to the city without an escort in four years. Jews rented accommodation in Arab villages and opened restaurants and stores with the villagers' consent; the Nablus municipality initiated talks with senior Zionist officials on linking the city to the Jewish electricity grid; and former rebel commanders and fighters made their peace with their Jewish neighbors. Even the German foreign office grudgingly conceded, at the end of 1940, that "conditions [in Palestine] are entirely peaceful. Jewish-Arab conflict is no longer apparent. The people are in need of tranquility."[34]

Conclusion

Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of the Jewish right to national self-determination, which was acknowledged a hundred years ago by the international community, including the world's foremost Muslim power, leaders of the pan-Arab movement, and ordinary Palestinian Arabs, affords a sad testament to the unchanging nature of the Palestinian leadership's recalcitrance.
It was Hajj Amin Husseini's predication of Palestinian national identity on hatred of the "other" rather than on a distinct shared legacy that "paved the road for the Nakba of Palestinian people and their dispossession and displacement from their land." And it was Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas's persistence in this zero-sum approach, despite their feigned moderation in the Oslo peace charade, which ensured the perpetuation of Palestinian dispersal and statelessness to date. It is only by shedding their century-long revanchist dreams and opting for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors that Palestinian leaders can end their people's suffering. And what can be a better starting point for this sea change than endorsement of the Balfour Declaration rather than its atavistic denigration?

Efraim Karsh, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, where he also directs the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

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[1] "Full text of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's speech at the UN," The Times of Israel, Sept. 22, 2016.

[2] "Draft Resolutions in Reference to Mandatories," Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Paris Peace Conference 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1942-47), vol. 3, pp. 795-6.

[3] For the text of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, see The Avalon Project, Yale Law School.

[4] For the making of the postwar agreements, see Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), chaps. 15,18.

[5] Walter Laqueur, ed., The Israel-Arab Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 55.

[6] See, for example, President Truman to King of Saudi Arabia (Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud), Oct. 25, 1946, FRUS, 1946, pp. 714-16; Truman to Ibn Saud, Jan. 27, 1947, FRUS, 1947, vol. 5, p. 1012.

[7] The British Mandate for Palestine, San Remo Conference, Apr. 24, 1920, Council of the League of Nations, July 24, 1922; Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader, p. 54.

[8] Wolfgang Schwanitz, "The Ottoman 'Balfour Declaration,'" Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2018.

[9] Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia. The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence (London: Minerva, 1990), pp. 512-13.

[10] "Dr. Weizmann's Interview with Emir Faisal at the Carlton Hotel, December 11th 1918. Colonel Lawrence Acting as Interpreter," FO 371/3420, British National Archives, London.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Jon Kimche, There Could Have Been Peace (New York: Dial Press, 1973), p. 70.

[13] Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader, pp. 37-9.

[14] Weizmann to Balfour, Apr. 9, Sept. 27, 1919, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series A, vol. 9, October 1918-July 1920 (New Brunswick and Jerusalem: Transaction Books and Israel Universities Press, 1977), pp. 129-30, 230-1.

[15] Weizmann to the Zionist Executive (London), Mar. 25, 1920, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series A, vol. 9, October 1918-July 1920, p. 329.

[16] Clayton to Foreign Office, Dec. 12, 1947, FO 371/62226/E11928.

[17] Haprotokoim shel Havaad Hapoel Hazioni 1919-1929. Vol. 3: Sep. 1921-June 1923 (Jerusalem: Zionist Library, 2003), pp. 165-9, 211-17; The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series A, vol. 10, July 1920-December 1921, p. 338.

[18] Kinahan Cornwallis, "Zionists and Syrians in Egypt," Arab Bulletin, Apr. 30, 1918, FO 882/27; Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Sokolow, Apr. 18, July 17, 1918, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series A, vol. 8, November 1917-October 1918, pp. 137, 233-4.

[19] Negib Azury, Le Réveil de la Nation Arabe dans l'Asie Turque (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1905), p. 246; Sylvia G. Haim, ed., Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 46-7.

[20] Thomas Mayer, Egypt and the Palestine Question, 1936-1945 (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz, 1983), pp. 9-40; Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 247-54.

[21] Memorandum by Brig. Gen. Gilbert Clayton, June 16, 1918, FO 371/3395/130342, p. 3 (179); "Report on the Existing Political Condition in Palestine and Contiguous Areas by the Political Officer in Charge of the Zionist Commission, Aug. 27, 1918," FO 371/3395/147225, p. 5 (231).

[22] For early protests over the Balfour Declaration see Bayan Nuwaihid al-Hut, Watha'iq al-Haraka al-Wataniyya al-Filastiniyya 1918-1939: Min Awraq Akram Zu'aytir (Beirut: Palestinian Research Center, 1984; 2nd ed.), pp. 4-34; Emile Ghouri, Filastin Abra Sittin Aman (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1972), pp. 36-40.

[23] The New York Times, Aug. 25, 1947. See also Jamal Husseini, "Report of the State of Palestine during the Four Years of Civil Administration, Submitted to the Mandate's Commission of the League of Nations through H.E. the High Commissioner for Palestine, by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Arab Congress—Extract," Oct. 6, 1924, Central Zionist Archives (CZA), S25/10690, p. 1; "Minutes of the Ninth Session, Held at Geneva from June 8th to 25th, 1926, including the Report of the Commission to the Council," 22nd meeting, Permanent Mandates Commission, League of Nations, Geneva, June 22, 1926; "The Arabs Reject Partition," quoted from Palestine and Transjordan, July 17, 1937, p. 1, CZA.

[24] J.H. Kann, Some Observations on the Policy of the Mandatory Government of Palestine with Regard to the Arab Attacks on the Jewish Population in August 1929 and the Jewish and the Arab Sections of the Population(Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1930), p. 10.

[25] Aharon Cohen, Israel and the Arab World (London: W. H. Allen, 1970), p. 225.

[26] See, for example, A Survey of Palestine. Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the information of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry (reprinted 1991 in full with permission from Her Majesty's Stationary Office by the Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, D.C.), vol. 2, pp. 708-15; Palestine Royal Commission, Report. Presented to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in Parliament by Command of his Majesty, July 1937 (London: HMSO; rep. 1946), p. 94, 157-8; Z. Abramowitz and Y. Guelfat, Hameshek Haarvi Beeretz Israel Uveartzot Hamizrah Hatichon (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1944), pp. 5-7, 48-50.

[27] Palestine Royal Commission, Report, p. 93 (vii).

[28] See, for example, Colonial Office, Palestine. Report on Palestine Administration, 1923 (London: HMSO, 1924), p. 26; Colonial Office, Palestine. Report on Palestine Administration, 1924 (London: HMSO, 1925), pp. 28, 32, 50; Colonial Office, Palestine. Report on Palestine Administration, 1926 (London: HMSO, 1927), p. 33; Chaim Weizmann, "Progress and Problems," Confidential Report to Colonial Office, Feb. 15, 1922, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series B, vol. I, August 1898-July 1931, p. 366; Cohen, Israel, pp. 249-51.

[29] Frederick H. Kisch, Palestine Diary (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), pp. 48-9, 54, 73.

[30] Colonial Office, Palestine: Report of the High Commissioner on the Administration of Palestine 1920-1925(London: HMSO, 1925), pp. 40-1.

[31] According to official British statistics, in 1936-39 1112 Arabs were murdered by their Arab brothers, compared with 151 British and 429 Jews. Some Palestinian Arab sources put the number of murdered Arabs at a staggering 3,000-4,500. A Survey of Palestine, vol. 1, pp. 38, 46, 49; Yuval Arnon-Ohana, Herev Mibait: Hamaavak Hapnimi Batnuah Haleumit Hafalestinit (Tel Aviv: Yariv-Hadar, 1981), p. 286; Kenneth Waring, "Arab against Arab: Evidence of Rebel Documents," The Times (London), Jan. 18, 1939.

[32] G.3/D. (C. & D.), "Intelligence report on the Mufti," Dec. 16, 1943, KV 2/2085, British National Archives, London.

[33] A Survey of Palestine, vol. 1, pp. 337-8; "Note on Potential Arab Political Violence in Palestine," Apr. 1946, FO 141/1090; The Palestine Post (Jerusalem) Nov. 21, 1939, Sept. 11, Nov. 14, 1940, May 7, 1941.

[34] Director of Land Registration to Statistician, Jewish Agency for Palestine, Apr. 9, 1944, Ben-Gurion Archive, Sde Boker; The Palestine Post, Apr. 12, 25, 1940; Mar. 4, Apr. 15, May 20, 1941; Memorandum by the Head of Political Division VII, Dec. 9, 1940, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945 (London: HMSO, 1949), Series D, vol. 11, p. 827.