British policy for decades has taken the Israelis for granted while currying favor with the oil-rich Arab world. This is a long way from former Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour's famous message of "sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations."
That Nov. 2, 1917 Balfour letter, communicated to the head of the Zionist Federation in Great Britain, Lord Rothschild, stated: "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 ...." Britain thus became the first major world power to back a Jewish homeland.
The declaration posthumously fulfilled the vision of Theodor Herzl, who was perhaps the first to recognize that there would be no Jewish state without British support. In a message to a Jewish conference in London, the Zionist leader wrote "the first moment I entered the Movement my eyes were directed towards England because I saw that by reason of the general situation of things there was the Archimedean point where the lever could be applied."
Britain's support for a Jewish state unleashed a chain reaction. The first me-too vote came from Russia's minister of the interior, who communicated the Czar's pledge of "moral and material assistance with respect to the measures taken by the [Zionist] movement which would lead to a diminution of the Jewish population in Russia." The French issued a short statement in February 1918, followed a few months later by Italian support. The Balfour Declaration was ultimately incorporated into the League of Nations British Mandate for Palestine, which eventually led to the state of Israel.
Historians argue over the motives behind the declaration, which went through numerous drafts and was the result of many consultations. Some have emphasized that a Jewish homeland, loyal to Britain, could help Britain restore a channel through the Middle East to India and East Africa that had been closed off by the Ottoman Turks. Others stress the Christian, pro-Zionist sympathies of Balfour, Lloyd George and other key players at the time. And yet it seems likely that the Declaration was intended to cement American backing for the war effort -- as part of what historian Paul Johnson called "one of the post-dated cheques Britain signed to win the Great War."
The lesson of Balfour was that the marrying of a principled cause with pragmatic considerations can produce historic change. And yet the Balfour precedent has been much trampled on since -- most notably in 1939, when the British government published the pro-Arab White Paper on Palestine. The White Paper effectively reversed the Balfour Declaration in that it placed a cap on future immigration of Jews into Palestine and limited the purchase of land by Jews. The logic then was perfectly clear. Jewish support for the Allies was assured, while the Arab countries were still to play for.
Balfour has never seemed to sit comfortably with British diplomats. "Despite the Balfour Declaration, the prevailing ideology of the Foreign Office has been anti-Zionist, if not indeed anti-Semitic," British Journalist Daniel Johnson wrote on this page in October 2000. Though individual ministers, such as Margaret Thatcher, have not fitted the mold, their numbers have not been sufficient to alter the thrust of British foreign policy.
UPDATE: Reader Scott Thompson points out a glaring inconsistency in this article. If the Balfour Declaration was made in November 1917, how could the Czar have made any judgement of it? He was overthrown in March of that year.
Perhaps the Czar's statement preceeded the Balfour Declaration... ?
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