This is the time of the year when the Palestinians usually make another attempt to have the British Government rescind the Balfour Declaration. It’s just another way to try to keep world media focused on their problems. But it doesn’t hurt to examine the facts,
Lord Arthur Balfour was the British foreign secretary during World War One. The Balfour Declaration was a public document that expressed British support for the establishment of a Jewish state in a part of the world that, at the time, was not under British rule. In and of itself, the declaration is not a legally binding document. It is simply an expression of an official opinion that there should be some place in the word where the Jews could have a country of their own, and that the best place for that country would be in the Ottoman Empire’s Palestine sub-province. Not really a very big deal.
However, the big deal came up when the war was over and many repressed nationalities were given territories to call their own. The sides that won the war formed an international organization, The League of Nations, to free some of the nations that were recognized as being under the rule of others. The losers of the war had their former empires dismantled and broken into many smaller new countries. The League of Nations made decisions that were legally binding in order to do this.
Some of the newly freed areas were not really ready for self government. The League of Nations ordered Mandates for those territories and gave the mandates to established nations with instructions to prepare the areas for self-government. The French, for example, were given control of the former Ottoman Turkish areas that became Syria and Lebanon. The British got Iraq and Palestine.
The French separated Lebanon from Syria in order to make a small enclave with a Christian majority. The British put their puppets in control of the Arabian peninsula and Iraq. Palestine was a bit different. The mandate called for the entire area to become a Jewish State. That was not what the British actually did. Arab leaders who had supported the British in order to throw out the Turks were not always welcomed by the indigenous Arab population in the new countries they were expected to rule. When the Iraqis revolted against their newly imposed king the British separated the Palestine mandate into two parts and made the Eastern half into the Kingdom of Jordan so the newly exiled Iraqi leader would still have a place to rule. It was felt that it wouldn’t make any difference to the Jews because at the time there were no Jews living in the Eastern part of Palestine. This change was not submitted for approval to overseeing body of the League of Nations. There were a few other minor changes that were agreed to between the British and the French with regard to the borders between Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. The Golan heights area had originally been part of Palestine, but the British gave it to the French to be appended to Syria. This, too, was never approved by any overseeing body,
The French later granted independence to both Syria and Lebanon. The British did the same for Jordan, but not for Palestine. After failing to resolve the internal conflicts there between the Arab and Jewish populations the British simply picked up their bags and left.
The interesting thing, in hindsight, is that the Palestine Mandate from the League of Nations, which was a legally binding document, and was issued by an international body, not just by the British, is the document that orders the territory to be used to make a Jewish State. There is no mention of making an Arab state there.
There is something ironic in the position of the Palestinians in focusing opposition to the non-binding Balfour Declaration while ignoring the mandate. But the main reason for picking on the Balfour Declaration is get media attention, do they can safely ignore the actual historical facts.
Wetherhorn 