Promises of Independence: The Balfour Declaration
One of the roots of the Arab-Jewish conflict was the contradictory promises the British government made to the Jewish Zionists and the Arab populations of the Ottoman Empire. Both groups believed not only that they were the rightful owners and occupants of Palestine, but also were led to believe that Britain was sympathetic to and supportive of their respective claims. While the Arab population was able to point to the Hussein-McMahon correspondence and the Churchill White Paper to support their position, Jews similarly had the Balfour Declaration as an indication of Great Britain’s support.
The Balfour Declaration was expressed in November 1917 in a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild who was a leader in the British Jewish community. In it, Balfour explicitly stated the position of the British government that it would support the creation of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine, so long as it did not infringe on the rights of any existing populations. As in the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, the statement was ambiguously worded (for instance, using the term “national home” instead of “state”) and sowed the seeds for conflicting interpretations.
