Returning to excerpts from Benny Morriss RIGHTEOUS VICTIMS: WORLD WAR I, THE BALFOUR DECLARATION, AND THE BRITISH MANDATE The Balfour Declaration The sorry state of the Allies in 1917, with their armies bogged down on the Western Front, was a major factor propelling Britain to issue what was to prove the crucial international warrant for Zionism, the Balfour Declaration. Fears that Russia was about to make a separate peace and a desire to prod the United States into a fuller commitment to the Allied cause persuaded Britain to do what France had done -- with far less fanfare -- five months earlier. The declaration was partly intended to counter French claims to Palestine.... .... Britain and France came to believe that rallying American Jews to their cause would help bring the United States into the war and keep Russia involved. (pp. 73-74.) The [Balfour Declaration] was immediately understood by the Zionists to be the most important international statement of support they had ever received. The key term, national home, was clearly a euphemism for commonwealth or state. All the declarations architects believed that a state would emerge once the Jews had attained a majority in Palestine. Everyone was careful not to define the borders of the future state, but in 1918 David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi published...a book...in which they described our country as stretching from the Litani River in southern Lebanon, the Hermon Mountain foothills and Wadi Awaj (just south of Damascus) in the north, to the Gulf of Aqaba (Eilat) in the south. In the west it would reach as far as Al-Arish in Sinai, and in the east it would stretch to a rough line between Aqaba and Amman. Balfour himself told a Jewish luncheon gathering...My personal hope is that the Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish State....Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. This was to be the Palestinian Arabs tragedy. They were seen as insignificant natives and usurpers, whereas the incoming Jews were viewed both as Europeans and the rightful owners of Palestine. .... In Palestine reactions were muted. It was only a full year later, that about one hundred Arab dignitaries...addressed a petition to the British denouncing the declaration. A uniquely empathetic document in Palestinian Arab terms, it stated that they had always sympathized profoundly with the persecuted Jews and their misfortunes in other countries...[but] there is a wide difference between this sympathy and the acceptance of such a nation...ruling over us and disposing of our affairs. (Pp. 75-76.)
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 18:38:45 +0000
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