Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and 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 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 existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour ............................
Introduction
There are different theories about why the British agreed to issue the Balfour declaration when they issued it. One possibility is that the declaration was deliberately contrived to allow the British to renege on earlier promises to France and the Arabs regarding Palestine. Lloyd George reportedly said that British control over Palestine would prevent it from falling into the hands of the agnostic atheistic French. Another hypothesis, is that the declaration was intended to curry favor with the Jews, so that the Jews in the United States and Russia would influence their governments to support the British cause in the war. However, the declaration did not fall as a bolt from the blue, but was rather the culmination of a long tradition in Britain that supported restoration of the Jews to their own land for philosophical, religious and imperialistic motives. READ MORE
