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The Balfour Declaration and Zionist Creation of Israel Explained

 

 

In 2017 it had been 100 years since the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, a document that would later become a cornerstone for the creation of the State of Israel.  But why is Britain celebrating its colonial legacy while glossing over the hundred years of conflict that followed? 

 

Let's go back to November 2nd , 1917 when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild - a leader in the British Zionist Federation.  Balfour's letter expressed sympathy for Jewish Zionist aspirations at the heart of Zionism - a political ideology calling for Jews to return to Palestine.

 

The Balfour Declaration said the UK would use their best endeavours to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.   So on that date Zionism became an official objective of Britain's foreign policy.

 

But the British had no legal authority to establish a home or a state for anyone in  lands that they didn't own - a land where 92 percent of the local population were Muslims and Christians who were never consulted.  And even though they didn't own the land the British would soon control it.  The lines on the map were in flux.  That's because well, World War I was going on and British Allied troops were advancing on Palestine. 

 

Just a few weeks after the Balfour Declaration was issued, British general Edmund Allenby conquered Jerusalem.  The British Prime Minister at the time, David Lloyd George, called its capture a “Christmas present” for the British people . 

 

During the war the UK made a number of promises that it wouldn't keep. 

 

One was to the Sharif of Mecca Hussein Banali.  He's the great, great grandfather of Jordan's King Abdullah the second.  Britain promised their support for a single independent and unified Arab state.  And in return he agreed to be part of the revolt against the Ottoman Caliphate. 

 

A second commitment was made to France under a secret agreement between colonial powers, to divide up the Middle East between them.  Under the Sykes-Picot agreement, Palestine would be an international zone but the agreement wasn't honored later on.  Britain wanted Palestine for itself. 

 

Then came the third commitment to the British Zionist Federation.  Now this is the one that the British actually honored.  Its ambiguous language created problems, but it was a deliberate choice to use the word “home” rather than “state” in the Declaration. Each of the five official drafts of the declaration were carefully reviewed by the foreign office.  The Zionist project in Palestine was one way for the British government to resolve the problem of growing antisemitism in Europe. It would also protect Britain's interests throughout the region.

 

After the war, the five colonial powers at the time; the UK, France, Italy, the US and Japan, gave Britain a mandate for Palestine.  The British government and the Zionist movement made sure it included the wording of the Balfour Declaration.  It then became international law and the Balfour Declaration became a legal obligation for Britain. 

 

The British Mandate of Palestine would last for thirty years. A land that was called Palestine by Europeans “Palest(ee)n” by Arabs and Eretz Israel or Land of Israel in Hebrew.

 

There's a part of the Balfour Declaration that's often forgotten.  It backs the idea of a Jewish home provided that nothing would be done to harm the civil and religious rights of existing non-jewish communities in Palestine.  In fact in 1917 only 8% of the population of Palestine were Jewish. 

 

For much of the 1920s and 30s the British facilitated Jewish immigration to Palestine, automatically granting each newly arrived Jewish immigrant with a Palestinian passport.  And as the demographics changed, resentment grew between the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine and towards their occupiers, the British.  

 

When Britain decided to leave in May of 1948 the Zionist paramilitary army was ready with the plan to colonize all of historic Palestine.  We're talking about a large scale ethnic cleansing.   More than 700,000  local Palestinians were kicked out of their ancestral homes. Hundreds of Arab villages were razed to the ground and 15,000 Palestinians were killed that year in several massacres.  All this happened while tens of thousands of British soldiers were still in Palestine.

 

Zionists declared their own state on May 14, 1948 and began the process of wiping the word “Palestine” off the map and deleting it from the historic record, and that continues to this day.  Twelve million descendants of those indigenous Palestinians refer to Israel's violent birth as "Al Nakba" or "the catastrophe".  And every year when Israelis celebrate their state, Palestinians mark the systematic destruction of their society. 

 

So British celebrations of the Balfour Declaration are as problematic as the declaration itself.  The British government is proud of its colonial legacy even though it opened Pandora's box, putting in motion events that would lead to future wars between its allies. 

 

And while celebrating this British declaration, Israel cannot escape its own colonial past which continues to the present.

 

Palestinians and Arabs call the Balfour Declaration one of the most shameful documents ever created by a colonial power.  They're demanding that Britain apologize for it - not celebrate it.