On this day in 1917, the government of Great Britain issued its infamous “Balfour Declaration” promising to support the Zionists in their project to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. While most people have heard of this document, what is never communicated in school textbooks or mainstream media reports is the Balfour Declaration’s true significance, which is that it set Great Britain on a policy course that ultimately facilitated the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine in order to establish a demographically “Jewish state”.
In 1917, the First World War was raging, and Britain was seeking the help of both European Jews and Middle Eastern Arabs in the war effort against the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the territory of Palestine. To gain Arab support, in July 1915, the British promised to support “the independence of the Arab countries”. Understanding that this would mean freedom from oppressive foreign rule, Arab volunteers from Palestine were among the first to join a revolt against their Turkish rulers.
Great Britain, however, had no intention of honoring its pledge with respect to Palestine. Instead, as outlined in a then-secret pact between Britain and France known as the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain aimed to carve up the Middle East and force an occupation regime upon the Palestinians.
To that end, the leadership of the Zionist movement by early 1917 were engaged in negotiations with the British government over how they could form a partnership to satisfy Britain’s aim of securing Jewish support for the war effort and the Zionists’ aim of reconstituting Palestine into a “Jewish state”.
While early drafts of an agreement explicitly stated that aim, the finally agreed text omitted the verb “reconstituted” and replaced “Jewish state” with “national home for the Jewish people”, in order to avoid offending anti-Zionist Jews as well as the Arabs. The Balfour Declaration also contained the self-contradictory language that British support for the Zionist project would not prejudice “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
The agreement was relayed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent leader of Britain’s Jewish community and an ardent Zionist, by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in a letter dated November 2, 1917. As British Prime Minister Lloyd George later explained, the Balfour Declaration was issued for “propagandist reasons”. The Zionist leadership had promised Britain that if the Allies would commit to facilitating the Zionist project to reconstitute Palestine into a Jewish state, “they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause.”
Just five weeks after issuing the Balfour Declaration, on December 9, 1917, British forces conquered Jerusalem with the help of Arabs who believed Britain’s promise that the outcome would be their independence from foreign rule.
This misplaced trust in the duplicitous British government was reinforced on November 7, 1918, when Britain and France issued a joint declaration again promising “the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of National Governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiatives and free choice of the indigenous populations.”
It was yet another promise to the Arabs that British policymakers had no intention of keeping. Far from helping the people of Palestine to develop self-governing institutions in the wake of the war, Britain conspired with the Zionists and other Allied powers to deny self-determination to the Palestinians in order to fulfill the promise to facilitate the Zionist project of reconstituting Palestine into a “Jewish state”.
To this end, the Allied powers sought vainly to legitimize Britain’s belligerent occupation of Palestine through the newly established League of Nations organization.
Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant established the “Mandate” system with the express purpose of helping the people living in territories conquered by the Allies to establish self-governing institutions. The Covenant required member states to give “principle consideration” to the will of the inhabitants in selecting the “Mandatory”, which was just the League’s term for Occupying Power.
Of course, the Allied Powers had no authority to divvy up occupied territories according to their own whims and political interests. And when it came to Palestine, the Allies even violated their own Covenant by refusing to take the will of the Palestinians into consideration and establishing an occupation regime for the purpose of preventing them from exercising their right to self-determination.
The Arab leadership had rejected any kind of occupation regime altogether and insisted that Palestine’s independence be immediately recognized. Yet, recognizing that a belligerent occupation was going to be forced upon them against their will, they expressed their preference that it be administrated by the United States rather than Great Britain.
While the Arabs of Palestine were not consulted about the choice of the Mandatory Power, the European Zionists were, and so on April 25, 1920, in direct violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the Allied Powers adopted the “San Remo Resolution” appointing Britain as the Mandatory Power and stating that the extent of the territory in which Arab peoples would be permitted to exercise independence was yet to be determined. The text of the resolution incorporated the wording of the Balfour Declaration and charged Britain with “putting into effect” the promise to facilitate the Zionist project.
On August 10, 1920, the territory in which the Allied Powers intended to deny self-determination to the inhabitants became more clearly defined with the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, which stated that the independence of Syria and Iraq was to be recognized, whereas for Palestine the Occupying Power would instead be “responsible for putting into effect” the Balfour policy of facilitating the Zionist project.
The Arabs, naturally, were none too pleased by Britain rejecting their rights and acting to help the Zionists to “reconstitute” their homeland into a “Jewish state”, which remained the effective goal of the Balfour policy despite the change of wording of the final draft of the Declaration.
In June 1922, British Secretary of State for the Colonies (and later Prime Minister) Winston Churchill issued a policy statement affirming to the Zionists that Britain would continue to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine limited only by “the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals.”
To the upset Arabs, Churchill explained that their dashed hopes of independence were all just a big misunderstanding as the British had always intended to exclude Palestine from the areas in which the Allied Powers would permit Arab peoples to exercise self-determination.
Churchill further declared that the aim of British policy was to help establish self-governance in Palestine, but only after fulfilling the pledge made to the Zionists to facilitate their colonization project.
In other words, it was the effective policy of Great Britain to deny self-determination to the inhabitants of Palestine until the Jews had through mass immigration established a numerical majority—or at least until the Zionists had become powerful enough to carry on their project without the support of British guns.
With this policy already in place, it wasn’t until July 24, 1922, nearly five years after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, that the League of Nations formally adopted the Mandate for Palestine, which was drafted by the Zionists to serve their interests at the expense of the majority Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Like the San Remo Resolution, the Mandate incorporated the text of the Balfour Declaration and charged Britain with facilitating the Zionists’ colonization project.
The Arabs, however, were not going to take this sitting down and in 1936 held a general strike as an act of mass civil disobedience. It evolved into an Arab revolt that lasted until 1939, when it was ultimately put down brutally by British armed forces.
The British were cognizant of how their policy was causing conflict and began seeking a way out. To that end, the British government appointed Lord William Peel to chair the Palestine Royal Commission, more popularly known as the Peel Commission. In 1937, the Peel Commission report was published, acknowledging that British policymakers had erred by mistakenly assuming that the Arabs would come to realize the supposed benefits of being subjected to Britain’s supposedly enlightened rule and would therefore consent to it.
“It must have been obvious from the outset,” the Commission remarked, “that a very awkward situation would arise if that basic assumption should prove false.”
As a solution to the problem, the Commission proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. But this in turn presented a demographic problem, which was that in the area of the proposed Arab state there were relatively few Jews, while in the area of the proposed Jewish state, there was a sizable Arab population. So, to solve that problem, the Commission proposed a “compulsory transfer” of populations.
In other words, the British proposed ethnically cleansing Arabs from their homes in Palestine in order to facilitate the Zionists’ aim of establishing a “Jewish state” there.
This was an idea with which the Zionist leadership was on board. “I am for compulsory transfer”, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive in 1938. “I do not see anything immoral in it.”
After World War II, the League of Nations was dissolved and replaced with the United Nations organization, which took over responsibility for the Mandate system. Seeking to extract itself from the conflict situation it had created in Palestine, Great Britain requested the UN General Assembly to come up with a solution.
Consequently, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was established in 1947. Its report contained two recommendations. The minority recommendation, which was in accordance with the solution the Arabs had been insisting upon since the beginning, was for Palestine’s independence to be recognized and a democratic government established under a constitution that would guarantee representation and protect the rights of the Jewish minority.
The majority recommendation, however, was to reject the democratic solution and instead to partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants, who also owned most of the land.
Despite their best efforts, by the time the Mandate was terminated in May 1948, the Jewish community had managed to acquire less than 7 percent of the land in Palestine. Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district, including Jaffa, which included the main Jewish population center of Tel Aviv. Arabs owned more land than Jews and, when the Bedouin population was counted, also constituted a numerical majority even within the proposed “Jewish state”.
The Arabs naturally rejected the UN’s racist, colonialist partition plan.
The gross inequity of the partition plan is simply explained by the fact that the majority UNSCOP recommendation was premised upon the explicit rejection of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The committee’s report stated that the principle of self-determination “was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there.”
Of course, this placed UNSCOP’s majority recommendation in direct violation of the principle of the UN Charter to uphold the universal right to self-determination. Yet this did not stop the General Assembly from recommending the partition plan on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Resolution 181.
Contrary to popular myth, Resolution 181 neither created Israel nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionist leadership for their unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence on May 14, 1948. Rather, it merely referred the matter to the Security Council, where the partition plan was dead on arrival. As US representative Warren Austin observed, the only way the plan could be implemented would be through the use of force, and the UN had no authority to forcibly partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants.
On the other hand, the UN did have authority, Warren argued, to intervene to prevent a breach of international peace. Instead, the UN sat by and watched as the Zionists, with an army built up under the protective cover of Britain’s occupation regime, ethnically cleansed Palestine.
The Mandate expired on May 14, 1948—the same day the Zionist leadership unilaterally and with no legal or moral authority declared the existence of the state of Israel. By that time, 300,000 Arabs had already been ethnically cleansed from their homeland in order for the “Jewish state” to be established.
By the time it was over, more than 700,000 Arabs had been ethnically cleansed, and the Zionist forces made sure they could never return to their homes by systematically wiping hundreds of Arab villages off the map.
That is the true legacy of the Balfour Declaration.
It was a propaganda document that had no legal authority or moral legitimacy, and which set the British government on a policy course that ultimately facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
It was this heinous violation of the rights of the Palestinians that is the root cause of the conflict that persists today, with the US having replaced Great Britain as chief facilitator of Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinians.
For documentation and a more in depth look at the significance of the Balfour Declaration, see my 2017 Foreign Policy Journal essay written for the document’s 100th anniversary, “What Was the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and Why Was It Significant?”
Thank you Jeremy for all that you do. You’re like a candle in the dark!
Israel MUST be dismantled and Palestine MUST be resurrected as a nation of all it’s peoples regardless of race religion ethnicity or any other superfluous difference. Britain must also apologize and pay retributions for inflecting a 70+ years of misery and brutality and ethnic displacement of Palestinians. #FreePalestine
Thanks for your encouragement!
Encouragement? I find nothing encouraging about political thought based on pure fantasy.
Fantasies mind you that are only added to the lexicon of anti-progressive hasbara. As for all the ink spent pouring over the origins of conflict and resolution 70 or a hundred and one years ago; there’s nothing wrong with providing context through education but the Balfour Declaration was effectively checked by the UN and the UN’s original role in establishing Israel has been carried on by a UNSC that is still at odds with it’s own charter and still is being resisted by the masses in the General Assembly, repeated resolutions for recognition of Palestine being one example. All that’s wrong is wrong because of the major powers, especially US, meddling with the spirit of the UN’s mission.
In this day when the UN is being so relentlessly undermined , I would hope friends of the UN, writ large, would be careful to caveat their criticisms with clear contextualization.
The purpose of your comment is not clear to me. Are you offering a criticism of something in the article? If so, please specify.
It’s understandable that it’s not clear. I had just read an article (I thought was yours) condemning the UN for facilitating the Nakba. What drew my ire was the comment to which you showed your appreciation.
“Israel MUST be dismantled”, is not a helpful phrase, in my opinion and it is my opinion also that the continuing movement away from mainstream institutions of international norms, by various left-progressive, especially diasporic Palestinian groups is not progress, just because they hold progressive ideologies.
I apologize for misdirecting my comment. Your article on the mandate period is excellent and to my limited knowledge, completely accurate. I will say though that Herbert Samuel is unfairly condemned for his part, not by you perhaps but by most. I think he meant well and was bitterly disappointed that his efforts proved so futile, even destructive of his goal.
I am all for the dismantling of all states. Someday in the future, when humankind becomes civilized, the institution of statehood will cease to exist. And surely we should advocate the abolition of fundamentally racist states.
Wouldn’t advocating for ‘reform’ be less provocative and perhaps more productive?
Don’t answer that! Let’s let it stand as rhetorical.
It is my intent is to provoke thought. I do not see how we can be productive toward the goal of civilizing humanity without thinking.
Yes, I see that. But in the near term I think it’s a better thing for humanity if it can resolve the ‘Palestinian Problem’ and that those working toward that end would better serve it by sticking with peacemaking through means available now, today and with status quo institutions and coalitions between heretofore incompatible groups finding common cause against rising nationalism.
And I think rhetoric about dismantling nation-states, that definitely don’t like the idea, in a non-starter, to say the least.
I am not proposing any unrealistic solutions.
I advocate a pragmatic path forward to a just peace.
Good, I’m glad you’re on my side and I hope that you will consider including some such declaration when responding to rhetoric that doesn’t advocate for peace, such as Jay’s above.
I can further explain my concerns about such rhetoric accompanying otherwise progressive positions but suffice it to say; I only want what’s best for us all, as you.
I do not agree with you that Jay was not advocating for peace with his comment, for the reasons I’ve already explained.
Okay, we’ve come full circle and I’m getting dizzy. I think – and that’s without your spurring necessarily that – “Israel MUST be dismantled” – translates into “terrorists advocating for the destruction of Israel”, in the minds of too many to ignore.
You apparently think that since the abolition of statehood, in a paradisiacal future, is your laudable goal, it shouldn’t matter what those words mean to people. My hope is that it will and that you will continue your quest for Shangri-La, with the widest possible audience.
Which would include those with a good liberal ethos but a fearful reading of what “Israel MUST be dismantled” means.
Obviously not, so long as one does not entirely ignore the actual context, as you’ve just done. Read what he said again: “Israel MUST be dismantled and Palestine MUST be resurrected as a nation of all it’s peoples regardless of race religion ethnicity or any other superfluous difference.”
Jay obviously is not calling for violence, but for peace.
I agree that reducing two states to one would be a good thing and aligns with your goal of eventual statelessness. I did read Ali Abunimah’s “One Country” and I thought it a beautiful treatise on democracy and social justice. But I also read Hussein Ibish’s dry and repetitive rejoinder and found I had to agree with him, reluctantly. I’m also in agreement with Norman Finkelstein, that the ‘one state solution’ is problematic because it’s not codified in international law and offers no common ground for our common cause.
I also see BDS as a just and democratic tactic in the cause for pressuring Israel to come to the table. BDS has however been more marginalized than it might have been had it not been able to be linked to the ‘one state’ movement, which has been marginalized because it has been able to be linked to radical calls for the destruction of Israel or it’s “dismantling”, if you will.
Something can be theoretically right but practically wrong if that thing doesn’t fit the circumstances. I would love to write my newly reelected congressman and ask him to present a bill calling for the sanctioning of Israel until it complies with international law, or at least halts all settlement, eviction and demolition activity and shows good faith in negotiations- but I won’t. I know he would if he could but he can’t because it would marginalize him.
Given a sustained effort to educate his colleagues and the public and some progress in electing better government, he might find support. I will ask that he work to find support for a mission to Israel/Palestine, in the interest of healing wounds Trump has inflicted and resuming peace talks but his world isn’t ready for more than that right now and it wouldn’t be at all obvious that Jay’s call for the “dismantling” of Israel wasn’t a call for its violent destruction, since the only way, in this world, it could be “dismantled” would be through violence, obviously.
On the contrary, Norman Finkelstein has been consistent in pointing out that the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is recognized under international law.
This is a ludicrous statement. Just read what he actually said. It is obvious he wasn’t advocating violence. The only way to sustain the assertion that he was doing so is to completely remove the part about dismantling Israel from its context, in which he explicitly advocated peace.
I often regret getting into the weeds with other peoples positions, I may have misunderstood and he’s not here to correct me. But in this case I’m glad I channeled Finkelstein, because your reading of his position goes right to my point, which you have described as “ludicrous”.
Firstly a caveat; I’ve not heard from Finkelstein lately and given that over the course of the last several years, especially after Obama’s initiative collapsed, with settlements and other forms of land misappropriation going on apace, many people have shifted their positions as a viable Palestinian state is becoming more difficult to visualize. So, please accept my understanding of his past position as the one I alluded to.
Finkelstein absolutely does (did) recognize the Palestinian right of return but he also recognizes (ed) the probable untenability of it and he urges (urged) that Palestinians might do well to consider deferring that right – not surrendering it – in the interest of finding a resolution to everything else.
And that’s what I’m urging you to do, defer your laudable goal of creating a perfect democracy in the Holy Land until those who live there understand that when you and Jay speak of dismantling their world, you’re not advocating for its destruction, whatever contextualization – that you see as clear vindication – you include.
But I understand your position, if you advocate ‘one-state’ and I both agree and disagree with it. It’s really up to the Palestinians right? If they’re prepared to fight for as long as it takes to achieve their absolutely just ‘right of return’, then so be it. And given the intractability of the major players they’re dealing with, they may as well. On the other hand, if one believes it worthwhile to reach out to Jewish liberals here and in Israel and moderates everywhere, then at least clean up the talk about dismantling, unless of course you think running way out in front and yelling your message to those slower than you is a better impetus to get them moving, regardless of the fact that they think you’re just cussing them out.
Finkelstein’s view as you’ve described it here is totally consistent with what I’ve said.
You just described is at as “laudable goal”. So why should we not express our similar view that this is a desirable outcome, as you’ve just done yourself, and as you’ve just observed that Finkelstein has done?
I advocate the two-state solution in the immediate term.
“I advocate the two-state solution in the immediate term.”
Thank you very much for taking the time to explain your position to me Mr. Hammond. I share it but often have doubts and your concurrence instills confidence in me. I never really thought you were calling for the dismantling of Israel, I was just worried others might and I wouldn’t want to see prejudice prevent enlightenment.
Thanks again!
I am very much in favor of dismantling the Israeli occupation regime.
I think we can all agree on that but what happens next?
Anyways and more to your subject above, do you think Herbert Samuel has been judged fairly by the left?
What happens next is we effect the paradigm shift necessary for a just peace to be realized by educating the public about the true nature of the conflict, as opposed to the misinformation they are fed by the government and media. I wrote the above article to that end.
I don’t know in what context you are asking about Herbert Samuel. How has he been judged by the left, in your perception?
I meant what happens next in the conflict, should Israel find a way to disengage. How will the conflict change, in Israel & Palestine or Israel/Palestine, as the case may be? Never mind what brings about something so hard to imagine after a lifetime of subjugation.
Anyways, what brought Samuel to mind was the controversy around Macron’s decision to honor Marshal Petain.
I think both men were loyal to something that was being whored but there was nothing they could do but continue to love her. For Petain it was his France.
Petain had a belly full of WWI and knew what war can do to everything one’s relied on like a mother and taken for granted in the same way. The British weren’t coming, he had no reason to trust that they eventually would and he believed (perhaps wrongly) that the Nazis would do to France what the Kaiser did to his army. He chose retreat and the Vichy solution.
Bearing little circumstantial resemblance but suffering a similar substantial ignominy was Samuel. A liberal and an imperialist at once, he did what he did not as a political ideologue but as a political idealist, a true believer. He’s grouped with hard men like Balfour and Churchill unfairly; I think and was, rather than an architect of anything nefarious, an innocent. I think that, although his thinking was submerged in an imperialist mindset (and who in that age, in that position wouldn’t be) he really thought he and his empire could (and would) make it all right.
I think he was used throughout and then given the dirty job of overseeing (unwillingly) the roundup and execution of Irish rebels after they’d been routed.
To me both cases are lessons in perspective and empathy. The far left and the far right both tend to yell “off with their heads” before really using theirs and it leads invariably to a repetition of apparent “paradigm shifts”, that are actually just changes in backdrops behind repeating images.
The left, our left, talks about systemic dysfunction till its blue it the face and then attacks the next unwitting little Eichmann as if just getting him will set us on the right road. Our left is continually tearing up its own analysis or ‘shooting itself (us) in the foot’.
That’s why I tend to value some mainstream liberals even though they’re targeted as ‘neo-imperialists by the left. I think Clinton politics is dead sure but I’m wary of so-called, self-titled ‘Progressives’. Not dismissive – but wary.
Yes, of course Israel should disengage, by ending its occupation regime and respecting Palestinians’ rights.
He may not have been an architect of Britain’s criminal policy, but as someone who helped implement it, he is certainly no innocent.
Jeremy – ” ‘should’ Israel find a way to disengage.” This not being a question renders ‘should’ synonymous with ‘if’ or ‘were’ and as you say, that they ‘should’ disengage is obvious. My point to a more careful reader would have been; whether they will or not isn’t at all obvious.
As a writer Jeremy, I’m sure you work hard to be properly understood. Work harder and begin by giving others the benefit of the doubt. You’ll find understanding them better a rewarding task.
Forgive me for misunderstanding, but it isn’t at all clear to me what it means to you for Israel “to disengage”, and given what it means for me, it renders the question moot since that is the very thing required for peace.
So if you’d like to be better understood, please define your terms so they’re meaningful.
“Disengage”, yeah sorry Jeremy. That’s a smart sounding word for obeying the law and getting the hell out of somebody else’s home!
Thanks for clarifying.
A ‘One State’ solution should be possible but no doubt there will be those who would want to fight over the name. Perhaps a federal state like Switzerland could be a stop gap to aim for but with a complete stoppage of settlements being constructed for one group only. Obviously the Nation State Laws which underpin an Apartheid situation would have to pass into history.
Well said JJJ and WISE MEN
Could great Portia’s speech in response to Shylock’s demand for usery in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in 1600 be EVER more significant than in a resurrected ALL INCLUSIVE HOLY LAND today?