Second in a series by guest author Dr. Dahlia Wasfi
In 1917, as the Allies (with the help of the Arabs) were rallying to win World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration.
This decree regarding a Jewish home in Palestine was named for Arthur James Balfour, Britain’s foreign secretary. Balfour had been strongly influenced by British Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann since their initial meeting in 1906. Though most leaders of British Jewry at the time were opposed to a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Weizmann—considered to be one of the fathers of the Zionist movement—garnered Balfour’s support for the Zionist agenda.[1]
The very brief Declaration stated:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
The British had not yet taken control of the Holy Land, but that didn’t stop them from promising its future to both the indigenous Palestinians and the global Jewish population.
In 1917, less than ten percent of the inhabitants of Palestine were Jews[2]—many of whom were recent immigrants brought by the Zionist movement between 1905 and 1914.[3] No one had asked the more than 90 percent “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” if the creation of a “national home” on their land—which excluded them—was acceptable. Israel was established as a colonial settler state.