Ninety-two years ago today the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, sent the now famous letter, known as the Balfour Declaration, to Baron Rothschild to be transmitted to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Sir Arthur Balfour (1848-1930).
Photo: Courtesy

Looking at the State of Israel today one might say it all started with the Balfour Declaration. Some would say, it all started with Theodore Herzl and the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, 20 years earlier. And students of Zionist history would say it all started even earlier with the Lovers of Zion, the Hovevei Zion, and the first wave of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine from Eastern Europe, Ha'aliya Harishona. But as far as international recognition of Zionist aspirations, and the political movement that set in motion the Zionist enterprise that became the Jewish state in Palestine, the State of Israel, it all started with the Balfour Declaration.

In World War I efforts had been made to have Jews, as Jews, participate in the fighting against the Turks. The Zion Mule Corps, commanded by John Patterson and his deputy Yosef Trumpeldor, had participated in the fighting at Gallipoli; the NILI spy network in Palestine, led by Aharon Aaronson, had been providing intelligence information to the British; and the Jewish Legion organized by Vladimir Jabotinsky, that was to participate in the fighting in Palestine, was formed in August 1917. All that, and the political spadework done by Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow in London had laid the groundwork for the declaration. And there was the sympathy for the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland in some circles in Britain.

But in the final analysis, as was to be expected in a nation at war, it was the immediate interests of Britain, at the moment, that tipped the scales in favor of this momentous declaration of sympathy with the Zionist cause. The support of American Jewry, thought to have considerable influence, for the war effort was expected to be strengthened by the declaration. And the misperception that the many Jews in leadership positions among the communists in Russia, at the time in the throes of the communist revolution and Russia's continued role in the war uncertain, might be swayed by the declaration to keep Russia in the war, was a consideration in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration by the British government.

THE DECLARATION, a powerful statement of support for Zionist aspirations, by what was at the time one of the world's great powers intent on gaining control of much of the Middle East after the war, contained sufficient ambiguities to leave succeeding British governments plenty of room for maneuver to satisfy the exigencies on the ground as seen by British policymakers as time went on. The original draft of the declaration which contained the phrase "Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people" was amended in the final text to read "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

"In Palestine" could be interpreted as meaning that not all of Palestine should become the national home of the Jewish people. Additionally, the boundaries of Palestine not being defined at the time, left ambiguous the eventual size of the area to be allocated as a national home of the Jewish people. And not least - for Zionism's goal was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine (Herzl's manifesto was entitled Der Judenstadt) - the Balfour Declaration had substituted for Jewish state the more ill-defined "national home for the Jewish people." These ambiguities came to haunt the Zionist movement as British governments exploited them over the years.

The Arab population in Palestine did not welcome the idea of largescale Jewish immigration and the application of the Balfour Declaration to the area. They quickly learned that rioting was an effective tool in getting the government in London to accede to their demands and backtrack on the Balfour Declaration. In April 1920 riots were organized against the Jews in Jerusalem. The following year there were Arab riots against the Jews in Jaffa. The immediate British response was a temporary suspension of Jewish immigration. Proposals by Jabotinsky that Jewish battalions similar to the Jewish Legion be enlisted so as to quell the riots and establish order were rejected, while the British forces stationed in Palestine were completely ineffective in overcoming Arab rioters.

The attitude of the British military in Palestine was generally anti-Zionist and favored the Arabs. In a circular distributed to the British officers serving in Palestine, Gen. Walter Congreve, commanding Egyptian Expeditionary Forces from Cairo, wrote "[The army's] sympathies are obviously with the Arabs... who have been the victims of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British government."

The Zionist delegation to the Paris peace conference in 1919 had submitted a map of the Jewish national home which included territory east of the Jordan River, as well as the Golan Heights in the north. But no sooner had a British military administration established itself in Palestine than a process of whittling away at the territory to which the Balfour Declaration was intended to apply was begun.

Within a month of assuming the post of colonial secretary in February 1921, Winston Churchill was on his way to Cairo to chair a conference to frame British policy in the Middle East. Paying little attention to the map presented by the Zionist delegation at the Paris peace conference, and the decisions of the Allied conference in San Remo in 1920 which decided that the area west and east of the Jordan River were to be a single territory to which the Balfour Declaration would be applied by the mandatory power, the Cairo conference concluded that Abdullah, who had entered the area east of the Jordan from Arabia with some of his troops, remain there as the ruler of Transjordan within the framework of the British mandate for Palestine.