THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

Contained on a single page, the Balfour Declaration was sent by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in November 1917. It read, in part, “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

This brief missive was to be critical in determining the history of the Middle East, from the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 to the present day. And yet, despite its importance, the true origins of the Declaration remain obscure.

The Declaration, Sahar Huneidi observes, was a work of carefully crafted ambiguity. It was this deliberate openness that allowed the British government, years later, to reshape its meaning, and even the history of its drafting, to support specific foreign policy ends. This process, Huneidi argues, was facilitated by a subsequent document: a little-known, handwritten memo by the Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, William Ormsby-Gore, recounting from memory discussions surrounding the Declaration’s drafting.