During the Great War, British officials were impressed by the
contributions of leading Zionists to the Allied war effort,
contributions that included Chaim Weizmann's scientific breakthrough
in aid of British munitions production; the efforts of Joseph
Trumpledor and Vladimir Jabotinsky to organize Jewish military units;
and the Aaronsohn family's valuable espionage work in Palestine. As
intelligence developed by the Zionists was molding Allenby's strategy
for an inland thrust through Beersheba to Jerusalem, the Arabs of
Palestine were fighting for the enemy and evincing no support for
Britain's vision of an Arab nationalist revolt against the Turks. The
British War Cabinet appreciated that support for the Zionists could
serve its interests against the Ottoman Empire in the war, and
against French imperial ambitions after the war. Moreover, the
British government in 1917 believed the Allies urgently required the
political support of the reputedly influential Jewish communities in
the United States and in Russia. The Americans had entered the
conflict only in April of that year, and with considerable
misgivings. Meanwhile the Russians, stunned by the overthrow of the
Czar in the February revolution, appeared about to drop out. All of
this gave impetus to the Zionists' proposal that Britain formally
declare support for their cause, an idea rendered pressing by
Britain's fear that Germany might issue a pro-Zionist declaration
first.

Thus, what the British foreign minister described as "sympathy with
Jewish Zionist aspirations" combined with pragmatic, strategic
considerations to bring about the Balfour Declaration of November 2,
1917:

"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 non-Jewish communities in
Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country."

The vision underlying the Declaration was that Palestine would be the
land in which the Jewish people could exercise self-determination,
while the Arab people, who had at the time no independent states of
their own, would be given generous opportunities to exercise
self-determination in the vast territories that Britain and her
Allies were liberating from the Ottoman Empire in Syria, Lebanon,
Mesopotamia, and Arabia. This explains the distinction, reflected in
the Declaration, between civil and religious rights on the one hand
and political rights on the other. While protecting everyone's civil
and religious rights, the Declaration made no reference to any
collective political rights for Palestine's non-Jewish communities.

The term "national home" as opposed to "state" or "commonwealth"
appeared in the original (July 1917) Zionist Organization draft of
the Declaration. It echoed the venerated First Zionist Congress
(1897), convened by Herzl: "The aim of Zionism is to create for the
Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." Though
Herzl's intention to create a Jewish state was a matter of record, a
resolution in favor of a "home" was deemed less likely to antagonize
the Ottoman rulers of Palestine. Similarly, the Zionists during World
War I knew that a flexible neologism like "national home" would be
more palatable to the British government than a precise term like
"state."

British officials did not want to commit themselves to a state if the
Zionists proved unable to attract enough Jews to Palestine to govern
by majority rule. The promulgators of the Balfour Declaration made it
clear, however, that they intended the Zionists to establish a Jewish
state or commonwealth in Palestine if Jewish immigration there were
ample and economically successful. According to the minutes of the
War Cabinet meeting that considered the Declaration:

"As to the meaning of the words 'national home,' to which the
Zionists attach so much importance, [Balfour] understood it to mean
some form of British, American, or other protectorate, under which
full facilities would be given to the Jews to work out their own
salvation and to build up, by means of education, agriculture, and
industry, a real centre of national culture and focus of national
life. It did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an
independent Jewish State, which was a matter for gradual development
in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution [emphasis
added]."

In testimony before the 1937 Palestine Royal Commission, Lloyd George stated:

"There could be no doubt as to what the cabinet then had in their
minds. It was not their idea that a Jewish State should be set up
immediately by the peace treaty...On the other hand, it was
contemplated that, when the time arrived for according representative
institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the
opportunity afforded them...and had become a definite majority of the
inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish commonwealth.

The notion that Jewish immigration would have to be artificially
restricted in order to ensure that the Jews should be a permanent
minority never entered into the head of anyone engaged in framing the
policy. That would have been regarded as unjust and as a fraud on the
people to whom we were appealing."

When the Balfour Declaration spoke of "Palestine," to what territory
was it referring? This question has no simple answer because
Palestine had never been the name of any country. It was a region
within the Ottoman Empire, but was not an administrative unit. The
1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in its entry on
"Palestine," said that "the limit of this territory cannot be laid
down on the map as a definite line." It added: "The River Jordan, it
is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern
Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where [Eastern
Palestine] ends and the Arabian desert begins." It was standard in
the geographical literature of the period to employ the terms
"Western Palestine" and "Eastern Palestine," the latter referring to
what was later called Trans-Jordan and is now the Kingdom of Jordan.

Of what relevance is the Balfour Declaration today? It is not, after
all, a legal instrument. When issued, it was merely a statement of
British government policy. But it achieved the status of
international law through the Palestine Mandate.

The Palestine Mandate

The mandate system was a legal innovation of the Versailles Peace
Conference. Its proponents, led by President Wilson, intended to do
away with the ancient practice of victors asserting ownership over
conquered foreign lands. The victorious Allies of World War I agreed,
at Wilson's insistence, to limit their own authority with respect to
such lands. This limitation was embodied in Article 22 of the League
of Nations Covenant, which says that territorial conquests should be
administered by states acting not as owners, but as trustees under
mandates, supervised by the League, which would form "sacred trust[s]
of civilization."

On this foundation, the Allies created the Palestine Mandate.

When World War I ended, the Arab world (a term that then referred
only to lands east of Egypt) was mostly under British control. This
included Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, Mesopotamia
(that is, present-day Iraq) and much of the Arabian peninsula. France
controlled Syria and Lebanon. Sovereignty remained with the Ottoman
Empire, however, pending conclusion of a peace treaty.

The Allies met in San Remo, Italy in April 1920 to draft the peace
treaty they wished to impose on Turkey. There they agreed that France
would receive the mandate to administer Syria (including Lebanon),
while Britain would receive two mandates, one for Mesopotamia and one
for Palestine.

The preamble of the Palestine Mandate begins as follows:

"[T]he Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving
effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League
of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the
administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged
to the Turkish Empire...."

Note that the creator of the trust--the settlor or grantor, in legal
parlance--is not the League of Nations, but the Principal Allied
Powers. And it is those Powers, and not the League, which selected
Britain to serve as Mandatory (i.e., trustee).

The second clause of the preamble reads:

"[T]he Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory
should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration
originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His
Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,
it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might
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...."

Hence, the Mandate explicitly adopted the Balfour Declaration and
quoted its essence in full. In other words, what the Mandate mandated
was implementation of Britain's pro-Zionist wartime pledge. When
presenting the Mandate to the League of Nations, the British
representative, Balfour, declared:

"Remember that a mandate is a self-imposed limitation by the
conquerors on the sovereignty which they obtained over conquered
territories. It is imposed by the Allied and Associated Powers on
themselves in the interests of what they conceived to be the general
welfare of mankind....[T]he League of Nations is not the author of
the policy, but its instrument....