The Balfour Declaration

Summary

Arthur James Balfour’s letter of 2 November 1917 to Lord Rothschild conveying, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government and with Cabinet approval, the declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations: 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 it, on the clear understanding that nothing shall be done to 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 (The Balfour Declaration, lines 27-41).

What the file is

• The declaration as reproduced by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, downloaded from https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp (access basis: public-domain). The original is the HTML page; the supplied text copy (about 186 words, lines 1-46) renders the whole letter, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers.
• The file is a single short letter. The addressee is named only as “Lord Rothschild” (line 29); no first name, address or enclosure is given.

Section by section

• Heading and date (lines 25-27): “Balfour Declaration 1917”, dated “November 2nd, 1917”.
• Covering words (lines 29-33): Balfour has “much pleasure in conveying”, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, a “declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet”.
• The declaration (lines 35-39): quoted in full under Key passages. Its two limbs are the favour and endeavours for a national home in Palestine, and the proviso protecting the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine and the rights and political status of Jews in any other country. Political rights for the non-Jewish communities are not mentioned in the proviso as printed.
• Transmission (line 41): Balfour asks Rothschild to bring the declaration “to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation”.
• Signature (lines 43-45): “Yours sincerely, Arthur James Balfour”.

Key passages

• “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, 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.” (lines 35-39)
• “I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.” (lines 31-33)
• “I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.” (line 41)

Evidence the work relies on

• The file is the letter itself as the Avalon Project reproduces it; it cites no evidence and names no source beyond the Cabinet approval it records (lines 31-33).

Analysis

• Form: a private-form letter from a government minister to an individual, carrying a Cabinet-approved declaration in a single quoted sentence. Palestine’s existing population enters the text only as “existing non-Jewish communities”, defined by religion and negation, and is promised civil and religious rights; the Jewish people is promised a “national home” in Palestine, a term the file does not define.
• Limits, on the file’s own terms: the letter does not define “national home”, does not state Palestine’s boundaries, and does not say how the two limbs are to be reconciled if they conflict; the Zionist statement of February 1919 at Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine quotes this text and builds draft mandate resolutions on it.

People, organizations, places and events

Balfour Declaration, Arthur James Balfour, Britain

Concepts

Jewish National Home

How it relates to other sources

• The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 3 January 1919 requires Palestine’s constitution and administration to afford the fullest guarantees for carrying into effect the British Government’s Declaration of the 2nd of November, 1917 (Faisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919), lines 87-89).
• The Zionist Organization’s February 1919 statement quotes the declaration in full as the British recognition of the Jewish historic title, and proposes a mandate securing the National Home on its basis (Statement of the Zionist Organization regarding Palestine, lines 147-149).
• The 1939 committee report records the Arab side’s evidence, unanswered in that file, that Lloyd George told the Royal Commission the declaration contemplated a Jewish Commonwealth once Jews became a majority, and records Faisal’s father’s immediate protest on the declaration (Report of a Committee set up to consider certain correspondence between Sir Henry McMahon and the Sharif of Mecca, lines 271-277, 661-671).
• In the McMahon–Hussein correspondence Palestine is never named; this declaration is the first ingested primary text that names Palestine and a Jewish national home together.

Open questions

• The addressee is named only as Lord Rothschild; which Lord Rothschild, and in what capacity he received the letter, is not stated in the file.
• “National home” is not defined in the file, and the file gives no boundaries for Palestine.
• The proviso protects “civil and religious rights” of existing non-Jewish communities; whether political rights were deliberately excluded cannot be settled from this file alone, and is held here as the text’s own wording.

Coverage

lines 1-46 of 46, read in full.