The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate

What happened

On November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to Lord Rothschild. ¹ The whole of what mattered in it was one sentence of sixty-seven words: "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." ¹ Balfour asked Rothschild to pass it to the Zionist Federation. ¹

The hedges in that sentence got argued over for the next thirty years: what a "national home" actually was went undefined, the home was to be established in Palestine rather than making Palestine itself the home, and the letter protected civil and religious rights for existing non-Jewish communities without mentioning political rights at all. ¹

The letter became binding international law five years later. The Council of the League of Nations confirmed the Mandate for Palestine, done at London on July 24, 1922. ² Its preamble folded in "the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty" in favor of a Jewish national home. ² Article 2 made Britain responsible for "placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home." ² Article 4 recognized "an appropriate Jewish agency" as a public body advising the administration, and Article 6 required Britain to "facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions" and to encourage close settlement by Jews on the land. ² Article 25 let Britain postpone or withhold those provisions in the territory between the Jordan and the eastern boundary, which is how Transjordan came out from under the national home clauses. ²

That same year, Britain started walking it back. The White Paper of June 1922 said the declaration did not contemplate "that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home," and defined the home as "the further development of the existing Jewish community" rather than any imposition of Jewish nationality on the population as a whole. ³ It tied immigration to a formula that governed the next two decades: arrivals could not "exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals." ³

Arab opposition hardened into open revolt from 1936. A royal commission under Lord Peel arrived from London during those disturbances and reported in July 1937 that the Mandate should be abolished and the country divided. ⁵ Its map gave the Jewish state roughly 17 percent, the Arab state roughly 75 percent with the option of joining Transjordan, and Britain about 8 percent around Jaffa and Jerusalem. ⁵ The British government endorsed it, the Jewish community split, and the Arab Higher Committee rejected it on October 11, 1938. ⁵

The Jewish community had already built its own answer to the security question. The Haganah was founded in June 1920 as an underground defense force for the yishuv, on the reasoning that it was impossible to depend on the British authorities. ⁶ Between 1936 and 1939 it grew from a militia into a military body, guarded more than 50 new settlements, and worked alongside Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads, without ever being officially recognized. ⁶

Then came the 1939 White Paper. Britain declared partition "impracticable" and set a different course. ⁴ Jewish immigration would run at 10,000 a year for five years plus a one-time 25,000 for refugees, about 75,000 in total, "and after that no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it." ⁴ The High Commissioner got "general powers to prohibit and regulate transfers of land." ⁴ The stated goal was "the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State" shared by both communities, and the document said plainly that "it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State." ⁴

The gates narrowed as European Jewry was trying to get out. Clandestine immigration, Aliyah Bet, ran from 1920 to 1948 and brought well over 100,000 people, including more than 70,000 Holocaust survivors. ⁷ The British navy intercepted more than 90 percent of the ships and moved the passengers to detention camps, mainly on Cyprus, where over 50,000 Jewish refugees were held by 1948. ⁷ In July 1947 the Exodus 1947 carried 4,500 refugees out of displaced persons camps in Germany, was intercepted, and after France refused them the British sailed the ship back to Hamburg and interned the passengers in Germany. ⁷

After the war the Haganah stopped cooperating and started resisting. It joined the Irgun and Lehi in a united Jewish Resistance Movement, which sabotaged British railways across the country on the Night of the Railways. ⁶

Britain gave up in 1947. Through that year a UN special committee examined the question and recommended partition, and on November 29 the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 to divide the mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948, with the religiously significant area of Jerusalem under international administration. ⁸ On May 14, 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel and President Truman recognized it the same day. ⁸ That same month the Haganah became the Israel Defense Forces. ⁶

Why it still matters

Almost every legal argument about Israel's founding runs back through those two documents. Israel's supporters point out that the Council of the League of Nations confirmed the national home in 1922 as an international instrument, with Britain's obligations written into numbered articles. ² Critics answer that Britain was disposing of a country whose inhabitants it never consulted, and that the declaration guarded civil and religious rights while saying nothing about political rights. ¹

Britain capped Jewish entry at about 75,000 over five years and made anything beyond that dependent on Arab consent, in the year Europe began closing on the Jews who needed somewhere to go. ⁴ The number of Holocaust survivors who later reached Palestine by clandestine boat, more than 70,000, is a rough measure of how many people the policy was designed to keep out. ⁷

The land east of the Jordan was inside the Mandate for Palestine and was removed from the national home provisions by British discretion. ²

The words you'll hear

The Balfour Declaration. The November 2, 1917 letter from Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild backing "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, with a clause protecting the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities. ¹

The Mandate for Palestine. The instrument confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, putting Britain in charge and obliging it to secure the Jewish national home. ²

National home. Deliberately undefined in 1917. ¹ Britain defined it down in June 1922 as the further development of the existing Jewish community, not a wholly Jewish Palestine. ³

Economic absorptive capacity. The 1922 standard for Jewish immigration, set by what the country could absorb at the time rather than by a fixed number. ³

White Paper. A British policy statement. The 1922 one narrowed the national home; the 1939 one capped Jewish immigration at roughly 75,000 over five years and ruled out a Jewish state. ³⁴

The Peel Commission. The royal commission that reported in July 1937 that the Mandate be abolished and the country partitioned. ⁵

Aliyah Bet. The clandestine immigration to Palestine between 1920 and 1948, over 100,000 people, most of whose ships the British intercepted and interned, largely on Cyprus. ⁷

The Haganah. The Jewish community's underground defense force, founded June 1920, which worked with the British in the revolt years, against them after 1945, and became the Israel Defense Forces in May 1948. ⁶