The declaration, however, meant that Palestine would come under British occupation and that the Palestinian Arabs who lived there would not gain independence.įinally, the declaration introduced a notion that was reportedly unprecedented in international law – that of a “national home”. The British also promised the French, in a separate treaty known as 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, that the majority of Palestine would be under international administration, while the rest of the region would be split between the two colonial powers after the war. When it was released, Britain had already promised the Arabs independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1915 Hussein-McMahon correspondence. Secondly, the declaration was one of three conflicting wartime promises made by the British. It was made during World War I (1914-1918) and was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community.
The Balfour Declaration (“Balfour’s promise” in Arabic) was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
It is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades. The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel. The declaration turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when Britain publicly pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there. The Balfour Declaration, which resulted in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians, was issued on November 2, 1917.
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