The Balfour Declaration was a single paragraph in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the UK Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a prominent British Jew with Zionist sympathies.
It read -
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.
Note -
- the phrase "view with favour" hardly hardly constituted an undertaking or a promise. Britain did not possess Palestine, so had no right to dispose of it.
- "in Palestine" did not mean that the whole of Palestine should become a national home for the Jewish people.
- "a national home for the Jewish people" did not mean "the national home, much less an independent Jewish State.
- "civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities" did not necessarily include their political rights.