It is important for all of us to understand that our Jewish state is a planned result of the international agreements following World War I, not a sudden United Nations invention after World War II. Unfortunately, most of the world does not know this. I submit this column now because Nov. 2 is the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
At the end of World War I, Britain and its allies defeated the Ottoman Empire and were willing to give to the Arabs almost all of the vast territories liberated so they could set up their own states. There was an initial interim period with mandates set up, so that the new states could be nurtured to independence by Britain or France. This is the story of the creation of the states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. (As to Arabia, it was too big for a mandate. Egypt too, achieved independence without a mandate.) Of these vast liberated territories, Britain’s plan was to reserve one to two percent to create a region where the Jews could grow into a majority and set up their own state.
There were no “Palestinian” people at the time. There were Arabs in Palestine, and Jews were about one-sixth of the population. Palestine was undeveloped and underpopulated and there were millions of Jews in Eastern Europe who had no future and needed a place to live. The Arabs were going to be given vast regions where they would be the majority. They had no reasonable grounds to complain that in one tiny area, they would not be the majority. As Foreign Secretary Balfour wrote in 1919: “Zionism … is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
World Jewry needed one place where they would be a majority. The Arabs had “desires and prejudices.” They already had and would now be getting many more places of majority rule. But they desired to be a majority everywhere. By any sense of justice, “needs” trump “desires” and it was correct and just for Britain to create this affirmative action for world Jewry and carve out one small region for the Jews to become a majority—given Britain’s generosity to the Arabs in the other areas. (Of course, the Jews would still have to buy the land from Arab sellers in this permitted area. Britain did not give a gift of land to the Jews!)
As one League of Nations official put it: “Was not consent to the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine the price—and a relatively small one—which the Arabs paid for the liberation of lands extending from the Red Sea to the borders of Cilicia … for the independence they were now winning or had already won, none of which they would ever have gained by their own efforts, and for all of which they had to thank the Allied Powers and, particularly, the British forces …?”
The Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. It was a statement of future policy by the government. The Prime Minister at the time was David Lloyd George, and the Foreign Secretary was Arthur Balfour.
Here is its language: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor 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.”
That the vision of the Declaration was to create a Jewish majority is seen from the sentence: “ … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine … ” There was no reason for that sentence unless the goal was to create a Jewish majority. Moreover, Britain would have had no reason to create a conflicted state in Palestine, with Jews and Arabs vying for control.
How would that have helped Britain which needed a stable ally there? Critically, the Declaration said nothing about protecting the “political rights” of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. That was the entire point, to override the political rights of the Arabs in Palestine in one small corner of the region. Looking at the entire picture of the Mideast, this was more than fair—given that Britain and its Allies were giving the Arabs majority rule throughout 98-99% of the liberated territories, and the Arabs in Palestine did not have an identity as a separate “Palestinian” people.
If there was a plan for a Jewish state at the end of World War I, why did it not come into existence? Essentially, the period from 1917-1922 took us to point 9 on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being an actual Jewish state. After the war, in 1922, the text of the Declaration was incorporated into Britain’s legal obligation to the League of Nations. This was approved by unanimous vote of The Council of the League of Nations, representing 52 nations. The United States approved it separately.
But around this same time in 1922, Britain issued a “White Paper” and reinterpreted its obligation under the Declaration. Here, they suddenly declared that the purpose of the Declaration had never been to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. Rather, the goal had been merely to create a national home for the Jewish people within Palestine, a center that world Jewry could take pride in. They also began to severely limit Jewish immigration.
So even though the Declaration and its incorporation into Britain’s obligations to the League took us to point 9, this 1922 White Paper knocked us a few steps back. It was only with the United Nations approval of the Partition Plan in 1947 that we got to point 10 (a state that we still had to defend with a military victory).
Even with the reinterpretation in the 1922 White Paper, the ramifications of the Declaration being incorporated into Britain’s obligations to the League of Nations is that all Jewish settlement on the entire West Bank up to the Jordan River was within the area designated for the Jewish national home with the approval of the League of Nations. (Initially, Britain was even willing to include a large section east of the Jordan River. But by 1922, it was decided that the Declaration would not apply east of the Jordan River.)
All rights of states and peoples granted via the League of Nations are preserved today under Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. So today, when Jews live on the “West Bank,” this is not merely an ancient claim to Biblical lands. Rather, it is a settlement on lands that were already designated with international approval for Jewish settlement.
At the end of the 19th century—in Herzl’s ideal plan—the Zionist movement would not purchase land in the areas in their future state until after they received international approval. He did not want a state that began with purchase before international legal approval. Herzl died in 1904 before obtaining this international approval. After 1906, the movement did start purchasing land. (Before this, individual Jews had been purchasing land.) But when Weizmann was able to have the Declaration approved by the League, this was in essence the international approval that Herzl envisioned. People today (and almost all journalists) do not know this background and do not know the big picture from the end of World War I, and imagine a completely different origin story.
Daniel Pipes has written recently: “Only one country was purchased rather than conquered. Ironically, that country is also the one most accused of having “stolen” the land it now controls … The making of the Jewish state represents perhaps history’s most peaceable in-migration and state creation. Zionist efforts long ago had a near-exclusively mercantile, not military, quality … They purchased the land, acre by acre, in voluntary transactions. Only when the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush the nascent Israel, did Israelis take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest.”
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I mentioned above that historically there was no separate “Palestinian” people. In 1977, a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Zoheir Mohsen, admitted this: “The Palestinian people do not exist … Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected].
