Why balfour declaration

Actually a set of two separate agreements signed by the government of Israel and the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO —the militant organization established in to The Ottoman Empire was one of the mightiest and longest-lasting dynasties in world history.

The chief leader, known as the Sultan, was given absolute On October 6, , hoping to win back territory lost to Israel during the third Arab-Israeli war, in , Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Taking the Israeli Defense Forces by Live TV.

This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. The pledge is generally viewed as one of the main catalysts of the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in — and the conflict that ensued with the Zionist state of Israel.

It is regarded as one of the most controversial and contested documents in the modern history of the Arab world and has puzzled historians for decades. It was made during World War I and was included in the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The so-called mandate system, set up by the Allied powers, was a thinly veiled form of colonialism and occupation. The system transferred rule from the territories that were previously controlled by the powers defeated in the war — Germany , Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria — to the victors.

The declared aim of the mandate system was to allow the winners of the war to administer the newly emerging states until they could become independent. The case of Palestine, however, was unique. Upon the start of the mandate, the British began to facilitate the immigration of European Jews to Palestine.

Between and , the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population. What the map of Palestine looked like years ago. In essence, the Balfour Declaration promised Jews a land where the natives made up more than 90 percent of the population.

The Mandatory powers were committed by this system to move the new countries that were formed this way Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Mandatory Palestine towards independence.

For Palestine, the League of Nations determined special arrangements: the principles outlined in the Balfour Declaration were included in the mandate given to Britain. The second clause in the Mandate stipulates that the British government commits to promote the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people and the fourth clause says that a Jewish Agency would be formed to represent the Zionist movement. The mandate transformed the Balfour Declaration from a British document to part of international law.

This, and not the Declaration, gave the seal of approval for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in terms of international relations and international law. It imposed on Britain the obligation to advance towards this goal, subject to reservations that also derive from the Declaration.

These related to the rights of non-Jewish communities. The Mandate system required the Mandatory power to report to a Mandate Committee at the League of Nations on the progress towards the fulfilment of this goal. In the s and s League headquarters in Geneva received periodic reports from Britain, with both sides, the Jews and the Arabs, protesting British policies.

On the eve of discussions around the Balfour Declaration in the Mandate, Weizmann, who had just been elected as the president of the World Zionist Organization, whose headquarters had just moved to London, had to confront other Zionist leaders, less familiar with or experienced than him in international affairs.

How could the League of Nations, based on the principle of the right to self-determination which was included in the definition of these mandates , embrace a policy which would grant the Jewish community, which comprised ten percent of the population at that time, dominion over the remaining 90 percent?

Obviously, the complicated wording of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate put Britain in an impossible position. It had to advance the building of a national home for Jews in Palestine without harming the rights of the Arab population, whose positions were increasingly nationalistic.

Today, the path leading from the Balfour Declaration to the UN General Assembly resolution approving the establishment of Israel in November seems like a natural progression, almost deterministic, but this was not the case.

Much could have gone wrong during the upheavals of World War II and post-war settlements. Weizmann realized that in the dynamic and fluid conditions of war one must take the initiative — even without a mandate from Zionist institutions.

He pushed for interpreting the Balfour Declaration as a licence to begin behaving as partners with the British military authorities in determining future political arrangements. He knew how to steer diplomatic moves so that the Declaration would not become a worthless piece of paper, as happened to many other documents that were signed during and immediately after the war. A blending of determination and flexibility were always a beneficial combination for the Zionist movement in its moves towards attaining sovereignty.

It was lucky it had leaders who knew how to combine these qualities in a thoughtful way, while mobilizing support at home and abroad. Shlomo Avineri Nov. On November 2, , a truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 3, people, mostly Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul.

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