Who agreed with Balfour?

John Peirce reflects on the Balfour Declaration

by John Peirce 26th January 2018

It began in February 1917 in the context of the first world war – a war in which two sides had reached a stalemate. New allies were being sought urgently. A conference was held between representatives of the British government and the Jewish community resident in the United Kingdom. On 2 November Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary and a member of the House of Lords, wrote a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a fellow peer who was a representative of part of that Jewish community, stating that the government would ‘favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.