By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The context of the Balfour Declaration

The importance of the Balfour Declaration foremost came from the fact that it was endorsed by all major Allied powers. And whereby in 1917, there was not yet a League of Nations or a United Nations. But, in the consensus of the Allies, there was the nucleus of modern international order. The Balfour Declaration had the weight of this consensus behind it before Balfour signed it.

The Jewish ethos of exile and return was shaped in the sixth century BCE, around the time of the destruction of the First Temple and the subsequent Babylonian exile. According to Judaism scholar Jacob Neusner, this ethos has remained the “bread and butter” of Judaism ever since. Neusner argues that this is the Jewish paradigm; it is a theology that has developed over the generations, encompassing a narrative that swings between divine edicts condemning the Jews to exile and divine promises to restore them to their homeland.1

 

Others argue that the existence of “cosmopolitan” Judaism in medieval Spain proves that present-day Jews have no need for sovereign territory. They describe Jewish history as comprising multiple, positive, coexisting Diaspora experiences, with no preference for any geographic center. For example, Córdoba in Spain was good as Worms in Germany, and both were as good as New York or Jerusalem.2 However, these assertions are made with utter disregard for the fact that the Spanish Golden Age was brought to a cruelest and bitter end. 

 

Even after the 1492 Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, the Spanish aristocracy did not stop abusing the Jews who had served them so loyally. In the sixteenth century, after Spain conquered the port cities of North Africa, its soldiers pillaged and raped the local Jews and recruited them as mediators with the Muslims immediately afterward. This was how the Jewish community in the city of Oran in Algeria began. It existed for some 160 years under the protection of the Spanish crown and built up a regional trade network for it. Yet despite their loyalty to the king and their residence in Christian quarters, the Jews of Oran were completely dependent upon the goodwill of the aristocracy, even in a time of remarkable stability.

In April 1669, their world turned upside down overnight. Religious hatred against the Jews led to Queen-Regent Mariana of Spain, the widow of Felipe IV, to expel the Jews of Oran. Their desperate pleas fell on deaf ears; they were expelled within eight days, and their synagogues were converted to churches.

It is difficult, therefore, to find a place anywhere in the world where temporary prosperity for the Jews was not followed by downfall, despair, and disaster. Contemporary North America and Australia are possible exceptions as countries that embody the dual vision of a liberal nation, which allows and even encourages the presence of thriving diasporas in their midst as part of their pluralist creed.

The mandate of the League of Nations in 1922 then interpreted the declaration to mean that the country’s nationality law should be “framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.”

The text of the declaration itself is only a paragraph long, part of a letter from Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) to Lord Walter Lionel Rothschild (1868-1937). It was the product of behind-the-scenes wordsmithing and political maneuvering; finalized on 31 October 1917 and publicly issued on 2 November 1917, reading:

His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use its 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 of Jews in any other country.

The key to understanding the Balfour Declaration’s power is its creators’ word choices. The passage “a national home for the Jewish people”, coupled with the protection of “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” and “the rights and political status of Jews in any other country” rank among the most powerful and simultaneously ambiguous phrases in diplomatic history.

And while the Balfour Declaration may or may not have implied a Jewish state, by affirming the right of any Jew to call Palestine home, it changed the status of the Jewish people. There was one small spot on the globe in which Jews had a natural right to take up abode, by virtue of their “historic connection.”

Trade-offs undoubtedly affected the calculations of the principal Allied powers in 1917. Some clearly had to do with the preservation or extension of empire. Yet what is astonishing is that all of these powers somehow converged in opening the door to Zionism. This included not just such traditional rivals as Britain, France, and Italy, all of which had empires, but the United States, which championed self-determination, and even the Vatican.

Already during the initial Sykes-Picot discussions France and Russia were asked, or as British under-secretary Sir Arthur Nicolson put it:

It was clear that ‘we must […] consult our Allies – especially in view of the fact that we are discussing the future of Palestine at Petrograd’ [Sykes and Georges-Picot were in the Russian capital to negotiate the terms under which the Russian authorities were prepared to assent to the Sykes-Picot agreement]. He, therefore, proposed that ‘we might ask Paris and Petrograd whether they see any objection to the formula pointing out to both the advantages […] by securing a sympathetic attitude on the part of the Jews.'

Following the appointment of Sir Mark Sykes as one of the civil assistant secretaries for political affairs to the War Cabinet, Sykes at the end of January 1917 started to define the area in which the Jewish chartered company proposed by the Zionists could be active. The northern limit would be from Acre in a straight line to the Jordan, which meant that the Hauran and the greater part of Galilee was excluded. While the southern border ‘could be arranged with the British government’, Sir Mark also excluded the ‘islands’ of Jerusalem, Jaffa and ‘a belt from Jerusalem to the sea along the Jaffa railway […] because the Russian pilgrims came along this route’. However, the Zionists were appalled.

Thus the next day, the secretary-general of the World Zionist Congress Nahum Sokolow, met with the French representative François Picot. In the course of their conversation, Sokolow observed that the Zionists desired that Palestine should become a British protectorate. Reluctant to grant Palestine to the British, Picot initially refused to be drawn and only mentioned that this was a question for the Entente to decide.

On 28 February 1917, Mark Sykes wrote to Picot that the ‘question of finding a (suzerain?) power or powers in this region is especially beset with difficulties. To propose it to be either British or French is to my mind only asking for trouble,’ while the alternative of an international regime would ‘inevitably drift into a condition of chaos and dissension’.

However, Prime Minister Lloyd George, however, was emphatic ‘on the importance, if possible, of securing the addition of Palestine to the British area’.

After his arrival in Paris Mark Sykes thought it wise to try and temper expectations at home. He wrote to Sir Maurice Hankey Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence that he hoped the Prime Minister understood that ‘the French public think that Palestine is Syria, and do not realize how small a part of the coast-line it occupies’.3 The next day, Sykes also informed Balfour that ‘the French are most hostile to the idea of the USA being the patron of Palestine’, and that ‘the great mass of Frenchmen interested in Syria, mean Palestine when they say Syria’. Sykes also believed that when the French started ‘to recognize Jewish Nationalism and all that it carries with it as a Palestinian political factor [this] will tend to pave the way to Great Britain being the appointed Patron of Palestine’. 4

A first indication that the French started to change their mind was the outcome of a meeting that took place on 9 April between Sokolow, Paul Cambon, his brother Jules (secretary-general at the Quai d’Orsay), as well as Georges- Picot at the Quai d’Orsay. Sir Mark reported to Balfour the same day that ‘Zionist aspirations (had been) recognized as legitimate by the French’.5 In a separate telegram to Graham, Sykes noted that ‘at interview question of future suzerain power in Palestine was avoided’6 Naturally, the moment was ‘not ripe for such a proposal […] but provided things go well the situation should be more favorable to British suzerainty with a recognized Jewish voice in favor of it’.7  Sir Francis Bertie did not share Sykes’s optimism at all. He explained to Sir Ronald Graham that:

In dealing with the question of Syria and Palestine it must be remembered that the French uninformed general Public imagine that France has special prescriptive rights in Syria and Palestine. The influence of France is that of the Roman Catholic Church exercised through French Priests, and schools conducted by then […] Monsieur Ribot [French prime minister and minister of foreign affairs] is of the French Protestant Faith which in the eyes of the French Catholics as a body is abhorred next unto the Jewish Faith. Even if M. Ribot were convinced of the justice of our pretensions in regard to Palestine, would he be willing to face the certain combined opposition of the French Chauvinists, the French uninformed general Public and the Roman Catholic Priests and their Flocks?8

Sykes admitted the difficulty with the ‘Syrian party in Paris’ in a letter to Graham of 15 April. He observed that ‘what is important is that this gang will work without let or hindrance in Picot’s absence […] The backing behind this is Political-Financial-Religious – a most sinister combination.’9

A May 1917 letter from Jules Cambon to Nahum Sokolow, expressed the sympathetic views of the French government towards "Jewish colonisation in Palestine".

"[I]t would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago," stated the letter, which was seen as a precursor to the Balfour Declaration.

 

The Jewish project enters the Vatican

After once more visiting Paris where he met Picot in April 1917, Sykes next traveled to Rome. As soon as he had arrived in Rome, Sykes sought an interview with a Vatican official who was of the same rank and influence as himself, someone not a cardinal who had the Pope's ear. He found his man in (the future Pope) Monsignor Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican’s assistant under-secretary for foreign affairs. Sir Mark had gained the impression that ‘the idea of British patronage of the holy places was not distasteful to the Vatican policy. The French I could see did not strike them as ideal in any way.’ Sykes had also ‘prepared the way for Zionism by explaining what the purpose and ideals of the Zionists were’. Naturally, ‘one could not expect the Vatican to be enthusiastic about this movement, but he was most interested and expressed a wish to see Sokolow when he should come to Rome’. Sykes, who had to leave for Egypt, had therefore left a letter for Sokolow in preparation for his conversations with the Vatican.10 Sir Mark explained that he had been:

Careful to impress that the main object of Zionism was to evolve a self-supporting Jewish community which should raise, not only the racial self-respect of the Jewish people but should also be proof to the non-Jewish peoples of the world of the capacity of Jews to produce a virtuous and simple agrarian population, and that by achieving these two results, to strike at the roots of those material difficulties which have been productive of so much unhappiness in the past.

He had further ‘pointed out that Zionist aims in no way clashed with Christian desiderata in general and Catholic desiderata in particular’, and strongly advised Sokolow ‘if you see fit (to) have an audience with His Holiness’.11 Sokolow was granted an audience on 6 May, which went very satisfactorily. The Pope declared that he sympathized with ‘Jewish efforts of establishing national home in Palestine’, and that he saw ‘no obstacle whatever from the point of view of his religious interests’. He also spoke ‘most sympathetically of Great Britain’s intentions’. According to Sokolov the length of his audience and the ‘tenor of conversation’ revealed a ‘most favourable attitude’.12

A few days later, Sokolow had an interview with Italian prime minister Paolo Boselli, who indicated that Italy would not actively support a Zionist initiative in Palestine but also would not oppose it.13 At the end of the month, Sokolow returned to Paris and continued his conversations with the French authorities. He was received by Ribot and by Jules Cambon. On 4 June Cambon wrote to him that:

You consider that when circumstances permit and the independence of the holy places is secured, it would be an act of justice and reparation to assist with the renaissance, through the protection of the Allied Powers, of the Jewish nationality on that territory from which the Jewish people have been chased many centuries ago. The French government, who have entered the present war to defend a people unjustly attacked, and pursue the fight to ensure the triumph of right over might, cannot feel but sympathy for your cause the triumph of which is tied to that of the Allies.14

 

President Wilson "extremely favourable"

In a War Cabinet meeting in September 1917, British ministers decided that "the views of President Wilson should be obtained before any declaration was made". Indeed, according to the cabinet's minutes on October 4, the ministers recalled Arthur Balfour confirming that Wilson was "extremely favourable to the movement".

While Sokolow may have seemed like a diplomat, even to professional diplomats, he thought like a publicist, eager to get the story out. He took every assurance he received and made it public. Sokolow saw no point in discretion for discretion’s sake.

President Wilson explicitly asked that his prior approval of the Balfour Declaration not be made public, and it wasn’t. But the Zionists publicized every other assurance. This had the dual purpose of spurring competition among the Allies and raising the morale of rank-and-file Zionists. But above all, an open assurance, communicated to a vast public, could only be retracted at a cost.

Had Sokolow not secured the assent of other powers in 1917 for the hoped-for British declaration, it would not have come about. And had he not returned to regain their approval in 1918, it would not have become binding international law. It is always crucial to 'work' the great capital, London in 1917, Washington today. But diversified diplomacy also aggregates the power that resides in other centers around the globe. Such aggregation gave Zionism the Balfour Declaration, the UN partition plan, and Security Council resolution 242. Absent it, Israel or its actions may yet be robbed of their international legitimacy, especially if the “unshakable bond” with its great friend begins to unravel.

Indeed, had the Balfour Declaration been issued as a secret letter to Zionist leaders without having been cleared by the Allies (that is, as the British promises to Hussein), it would have never entered the preamble of the mandate, and Britain probably would have disavowed it in the 1920s. But under the circumstances, it was 'well-nigh impossible for any government to extricate itself without a substantial sacrifice of consistency and self-respect, if not of honor'.

The British would no doubt have had far fewer qualms about violating a secret pledge made only to the Jews. A public pledge that had been cleared and then seconded by the Allies was another matter.

 

 

1. Jacob Neusner, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Exile and Return in the History of Judaism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987).

2. Robert Guest, Borderless Economics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7.

3. Sykes to Hankey, 7 April 1917, Cab 21/96.

4. Tel. Sykes to Balfour, no. 1, 8 April 1917, Sykes Papers, box 1.)

5. Sykes to Balfour, no. 2, 9 April 1917, ibid.

6. Sykes to Graham, no. 3, in tel. Bertie to Balfour, no. 334, 9 April 1917, Foreign Office (henceforth FO) 371/3045/73658.

7. Sykes to Balfour, no. 2, 9 April 1917, Sykes Papers, box 1.

8. Bertie to Graham, private and confidential, 12 April 1917, FO 371/3052/82982.

9. Sykes to Graham, no. 2, 15 April 1917, ibid.

10. Sykes to Graham, no. 3, 15 April 1917, FO 371/ 3052/82749.

11. Sykes to Sokolow, 14 April 1917, encl. in Sykes to Graham, no. 3, 15 April 1917, ibid.

12. Sokolow to Weizmann, in tel. Rodd to Balfour, 7 May 1917, FO 371/3053/92646.

13. Jonathan Schneer, The Balfour Declaration, 2011, pp. 217–18.

14. Cambon to Sokolow, 4 June 1917, FO 371/3058/ 123458.

 

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