2017 — ISRAEL ’ S TRIPLE ANNIVERSARY YEAR 5
The Balfour Declaration of November 2 , 1917 , was actually a letter from the foreign secretary to the eminent British Jew , and Zionist , Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild . Balfour informed Rothschild that the following “ declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations ” had been approved by the cabinet :
His Majesty ’ s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people , and will use their best endeavors 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 existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine , or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country . 3
The letter ’ s repercussions went far beyond Britain . Endorsed by the United States ( which had entered the war against Germany in April ), France , and Italy , Balfour ’ s declaration made the Zionist project a war aim of the ultimate winners . In December , when General Edmund Allenby and his British troops entered Jerusalem and ousted the Ottomans , astonished Jews around the world , bereft of their homeland for over 1800 years , could be forgiven for thinking in messianic terms . The war ended in 1918 with the defeat of Germany and its allies . The San Remo Conference of 1920 , convened by the victors to decide the fate of the territories of the defunct Ottoman Empire , adopted the terms of the Balfour Declaration , and three years later the new League of Nations , created to resolve international disputes peacefully , designated Palestine a mandate of Great Britain , which restated its aim to work toward the establishment of a Jewish national home there , although it specifically excluded the area east of the Jordan River from Jewish settlement . Britain indeed made a separate agreement with the Hashemite royal family to create a new entity there , the emirate of Transjordan , in 1921 , which emerged as an independent state in 1946 and was subsequently renamed Jordan .
3
David Fromkin , A Peace to End All Peace : The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East ( New York , 1989 ), p . 297 .