It can be seen as a starting point for the Arab-Israeli conflict. The declaration by the then foreign secretary was included in a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leading proponent of Zionism, a movement advocating self-determination for the Jewish people in their historical homeland - from the Mediterranean to the eastern flank of the River Jordan, an area which came to be known as Palestine.
It stated that the British government supported "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". At the same time, it said that nothing should "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities". Palestinians see this as a great betrayal, particularly given a separate promise made to enlist the political and military support of the Arabs - then ruled by the Ottoman Turks - in World War One.
This suggested Britain would back their struggle for independence in most of the lands of the Ottoman Empire, which consisted of much of the Middle East. The Arabs understood this to include Palestine, though it had not been specifically mentioned.
Israeli children, inevitably, tend to see British involvement more positively when they study the Balfour Declaration in a lesson towards the end of their high-school years.
In Balfouria, a village in northern Israel, nine-year-old Noga Yehezekeli is already proudly able to recite a Hebrew version of the text off by heart. Residents of Balfouria - including Neve's grandfather - were part of a growing Jewish community in Palestine when Lord Balfour visited in They gave him a hero's welcome. By that time, the area was under British administration. The Balfour Declaration had been formally enshrined in the British Mandate for Palestine, which had been endorsed by the League of Nations.
During the first half of the Mandate period, Britain allowed waves of Jewish immigration. We want to see this formally recognised. It was Great Britain that rescued us from Turkish tyranny and we do not believe that it will deliver us into the claws of the Jews. We ask for fairness and justice. We ask that it protect our rights and not decide the future of Palestine without asking our opinion. British officials ignored such appeals, though some quickly recognised what was happening.
Promotion of Jewish immigration and the revived Hebrew language were key commitments. But both the British and Zionists were acutely aware of local objections from the start. Earlier efforts to secure recognition from the Turks had failed.
Balfour mattered because the alliance with Britain allowed them to exercise that right. The League of Nations mandate, five years after Balfour, provided the first international legal framework for Zionist ambitions — ignoring Palestinian objections and setting a pattern that would be repeated in the future.
Objections by Jews to Zionism started to fade once the mandate was in place — though it took the horrors of the second world war for them to all but disappear. Arab opposition never weakened. Balfour showed no regrets. The aftermath was marked out by sombre milestones, each representing further escalation.
Arabs attacked Jews in and Arabs shunned him. The worst bloodshed, though, was in Hebron, where Arabs killed 67 defenceless Orthodox Jews who were not part of the Zionist camp — though that old distinction was rapidly disappearing.
It shows Jewish immigrants striding energetically towards Tel Aviv, passing a glum-looking Arab peasant family on a camel, evicted from their land and plodding towards the desert. The scenery is dotted with factories, mechanised agriculture and bustling public works — all Jewish achievements.
In the corner stand Arab men in European suits and tarbushes, arguing presumably ineffectively about the transformation they are witnessing. Events elsewhere, however, were soon to mean that it was too late to do very much about it.
It proposed partitioning the country into Jewish and Arab states, but retreated from the idea as a new war approached. Only in did Britain change policy, severely restricting Jewish immigration and land sales, and promising Palestinian independence. Even as the Royal Navy was turning back Jewish refugees trying desperately to reach the shores of Palestine, and Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists were targeting the British, the Jewish population had reached a third of the total.
In the US in particular, Zionists were seen as progressives, fighting both British imperialism and its reactionary Arab lackeys. It was rejected by the Palestinians, because they refused to surrender to what they saw as foreign settlers who had transformed the country while ignoring them.
It was another error — though arguably an understandable one. Arab Palestine was erased by Israel and Jordan. Balfour remains a byword for the legitimacy of Zionism, and for the calamity that it brought the Palestinians. It is hard to imagine that changing. P reparations for the centenary have posed a difficult challenge for the British government. Military victory, though, turned out to be the easy part.
The timing created a neat and thought-provoking link between two towering historical landmarks: the first political triumph of Zionism, and the beginning of an occupation that would, over the years, undermine it and threaten to isolate Israel. Resistance to occupation or terrorist acts such as the Munich Olympics massacre of made headlines.
Sympathy for them grew with the Lebanon war of Oslo was killed off — after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin — by settlement expansion, bad faith, suicide bombings and a second, armed intifada that erupted disastrously after the collapse of the Camp David summit in Little has changed since he was succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas , though the Hamas takeover of Gaza in was deeply divisive.
This unit was deployed in service tasks supplying food and ammunition under the arduous conditions of the Gallipoli Campaign. The volunteer movement encompassed thousands of young men and by the summer of , some 4, had arrived in England. They composed the 39th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, only part of which arrived in time to take part in the fighting in Palestine. The change of government in Britain and the worsening military situation induced the British authorities to respond more strongly to Zionist demands.
The Allies hoped that, through a declaration recognizing the justice of Zionist aspirations, they would influence Jewish public opinion in the United States to aid them in their efforts to persuade the United States to join the war effort.
Furthermore, it became known that the German authorities were also contemplating the possibility of publishing a declaration expressing sympathy for Zionist aspirations. For all of these reasons, contact was established at the end of January between the Zionists and the British Foreign Office in order to define political objectives after the war.
At the same time, Sokolow was contemplating negotiations with the French government, and even receiving considerable concessions. Ben-Sasson and published by Dvir Publishing House.
Israel History.
0コメント