Balfour Declaration

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The history and purpose of the Balfour Declaration remains a controversial subject. There is no straightforward explanation as to the declaration's origins. Over the years, historians have set out a complex combination of motives that led to the final decision to issue the declaration.

The earliest narratives stressed the biblical romanticism of British officials' interest in the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine and their sympathy for the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe. The first scholarly accounts, such as the detailed description of the decision-making process provided by Leonard Stein, focused more on the political and diplomatic context in which British officials came to see Zionism as an ally. These early interpretations stressed the Balfour Declaration as a product of the activities of the Zionist Organization, or specifically of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Zionist spokesman engaged during the war in biochemical research for Britain's Ministry of Munitions. Weizmann's influential contacts and skillful persistence were credited with convincing British officials of the wartime propaganda value that a gesture of support for Zionism would carry in the United States and Russia, where Jews were believed to wield great power. It was argued, for example, that Britain's support for Zionism would mitigate domestic opposition in the United States, which protested against entry into the war on the side of the anti-Semitic regime of czarist Russia.

As government sources became more widely available, historians shifted the focus away from the role played by Zionist leaders in drawing British officials' interest to Palestine. In a reversal of emphasis, greater stress was laid on the actions of those British officials who, in fact, searched out Zionist support in pursuit of their own interests. As Mayir Vereté has famously argued, “Had there been no Zionists in those days, the British would have had to invent them” (p. 4). Vereté downplayed the role of Zionist representatives such as Weizmann and elaborated on the strategic value of the Balfour Declaration in keeping the French out of Palestine. Within a year of having negotiated the terms of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which called for the international administration of Palestine, Britain came round to fearing any foreign presence so close to the Suez Canal. Britain's policy now aimed at establishing a land bridge between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, an extension of the defense of British interests in India, and Zionism was perceived as a legitimate bargaining counter in attempts to nullify previous negotiations with France. In Vereté's account, the British wanted Palestine for themselves and sought to mobilize the Zionists to work for a legitimate, but exclusive, alternative to the internationalization arrangements of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

In more recent years, historians have again shifted their attention. From emphases on the presumed rationales that motivated the decision-making process, historians have come to analyze more fully the prejudices that belied British support for Zionism. These studies argue that in order for British officials to even consider using Zionism in any sort of strategic way, they had to draw upon a reserve of mistaken, even anti-Semitic, notions of Jewish power and money and of invented notions of an essentialized Jewish nation. Such precepts, according to Tom Segev and James Renton, for example, ignored the multitudinous strains of identity that constituted modern Jewish politics, in which Zionism at the time was only a small minority party. As early as 1905, Balfour spoke of England's Jewry as “a people apart” (qtd. in Renton, p. 18). In 1903, in what is sometimes referred to as “the first Balfour declaration,” Balfour as prime minister supported a proposal to build a Jewish national presence in Uganda. He viewed Jewry as an immutably different ethnic group and wrote about “the agelong miseries created for Western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a Body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb” (Renton, p. 18).

An equally fundamental precept underpinning the British decision to pursue a pro-Zionist policy with regard to the future disposition of Palestine was that the inhabitants themselves did not merit attention beyond an idealized consideration of the improvements that European colonization brought to supposedly backward areas. These cultural preconceptions are boldly captured in Balfour's famous justification of his declaration: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad,” he wrote in 1922, was “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the seven hundred thousand Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land” (qtd. in Segev, p. 45).

That the subject has remained so contentious is rather remarkable, given the careful thought that went into drafting and redrafting various versions of the brief text throughout the summer and fall of 1917. Yet the declaration itself was deliberately worded as tenuous, limited, and noncommittal. The ambiguities and contradictions should be understood as reflecting the negotiations between the Zionist leadership and the 1917 war cabinet, most of whom, like Amery, Milner, and Lloyd George, supported Zionism while others, like Edwin Montagu, the new secretary of state for India, and Lord George Curzon, questioned the long-term impact of the promise at home and abroad and raised various objections.

The Balfour Declaration begins with the muted promise on the part of Britain to “favour” and “use their best endeavours to facilitate” Jewish aspirations. There was never an agreed consensus on how exactly Britain would facilitate Zionism, and rather than promise “a Jewish state,” the declaration refers to “a national home.” That phrase was an invention of the Zionist leadership in London who worried about demanding too much too soon. Zionist leaders certainly envisioned a state as the ultimate objective, but they sought to disguise their true intentions in order to lessen opposition. The use of the indefinite article “a,” as is often the case in diplomatic negotiations that actually aim for ambiguous interpretations that accommodate the widest number of supporters, is also noteworthy. An early draft submitted by Jewish leaders entailed Britain's recognizing Palestine “as the National Home for the Jewish people” (qtd. in Fieldhouse, p. 149). The unease expressed by some cabinet officials resulted in the definite article later being replaced by the indefinite—“the National Home” being replaced by “a national home”—implying a much more open-ended commitment on the part of the British.

Vague as this declaration was—to somehow foster somewhere in Palestine something called a home—further questions were raised by the need to reconcile the ambiguous promise with the considerable provisos added to it. The first proviso clearly states that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Dismissive as this phrasing was to the national and political rights of the overwhelming Arab majority, which the document fails to cite by name, it constituted an attempt to meet the concerns of those British officials, particularly military soldiers in the field, who were genuinely concerned about running the risk of antagonizing the Arab populations. The second proviso adds that nothing shall be done to prejudice “the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This met the objections from leading figures in the British Jewish community, most prominent among them being the only Jew in the cabinet, Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India. In mid-1917, Montagu brought negotiations to a standstill when he made clear that he saw Zionism as a threat to his own position as a citizen of British society. In their non-Zionism, British Jewish leaders such as Montagu may in fact have been speaking for the majority when they rejected any implication that Palestine, and not Britain, was their proper nation. Montagu worried that the Balfour Declaration's emphasis on Jewish national distinctiveness would, in fact, exacerbate European anti-Semitism.