Palestine · A closer look
1917
The Balfour Declaration
On 2 November 1917 the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote that his government viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", provided nothing prejudiced the civil and religious rights of the "existing non-Jewish communities". Those communities were about nine in ten of the population. Five weeks later British troops entered Jerusalem.
What the letter promised
Balfour's letter to Lord Rothschild communicated a British government policy rather than an agreement with Palestine's inhabitants. It supported a Jewish national home while adding protections for the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities and for Jews elsewhere. It did not define the boundaries or constitutional form of that home. Those omissions left fundamental questions about sovereignty and political representation unresolved.
Source: UN archive: The Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917
An unequal political vocabulary
The text described Jews as a people with a national project, while referring to the Arab majority through what it was not. It protected civil and religious rights without making an equivalent commitment to that majority's national or political rights. Reading the wording closely helps explain why Zionists welcomed the declaration and Palestinians opposed it. The disagreement concerned who would determine the country's future, not merely the administration of religious affairs.
Source: UN archive: The Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917
From wartime policy to government
Britain issued the declaration during its war against the Ottoman Empire, against a background of other commitments and diplomatic exchanges in the Arab world. Military victory then gave it control of Palestine. The subsequent Mandate turned its support for the national home into an international responsibility. A brief wartime statement thus became part of the framework through which Britain governed a country containing rival national movements.