Have Israel and its supporters ignored the rights of the Arabs guaranteed by the Balfour Declaration?

A reader sent to a friend my 2004 article, “How Strong Is the Arab Claim to Palestine?” His friend replied to him and the reader forwarded the reply to me, asking if I thought his friend’s corrections were correct.

Here is his friend’s e-mail:

Interesting. I didn’t know about the Peel Commission plan. If what Auster says is a full and balanced representation of the facts (a big if with this topic) it does put a different complexion on things.

However I take issue with the following which causes me to doubt the writer’s impartiality: “Prior to 1947, as we’ve discussed, Palestine was administered by the British under the Palestine Mandate, the ultimate purpose of which, according to the Balfour Declaration, was the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.”

This is simply incorrect. The British mandate did not begin until 1920. The Balfour Declaration was made in 1917 (before the Ottoman Empire was defeated) and in no way makes the establishment of a Jewish national home the “ultimate purpose” of the mandate. As usual with Israeli sympathisers he ignores the whole of the Balfour declaration:

“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.”

I would bring your attention to the clause that I have italicised above.

I’ve never come across Israeli sympathisers ever referring to this part of what is a very short and easily understood declaration.

LA replies:

In the narrow sense your friend is correct. The purpose of the Palestine Mandate could not have been “according” to the Balfour Declaration, since the Mandate did not exist when the Declaration was issued. But this was a matter of poor word choice on my part. What I meant to say was, “in accordance with the Balfour Declaration,” “in line with the Balfour Declaration.”

On the substance of the issue, the fact that the Palestine Mandate came after the Balfour Declaration does not at all disprove my position that the ultimate purpose of the Palestine Mandate, in accordance with the Balfour Declaration, was the establishment of a Jewish National Home. This is because the British had no ability at all to fulfill the Balfour Declaration until they had internationally recognized political power over Palestine, and such power was formally granted to them under the Mandate.

[I added the following information when preparing my e-mail for posting. I didn’t know about this when I wrote my initial reply. What I said in my e-mail was based purely on the logic of the situation, not on any knowledge of the wording of the Palestine Mandate.]

Indeed, the Mandate itself says its purpose is the establishment of a Jewish national home. According to Wikipedia:

In June 1922 the League of Nations passed the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate was an explicit document regarding Britain’s responsibilities and powers of administration in Palestine including “secur[ing] the establishment of the Jewish national home,” and “safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine.”

The document defining Britain’s obligations as Mandate power copied the text of the Balfour Declaration concerning the establishment of a Jewish homeland….

Second, while your friend accuses the sympathizers of Israel such as myself of ignoring the part of the Declaration about not prejudicing the rights of the Arabs, he ignores that the British very quickly after assuming the Palestine mandate handed four-fifths of Palestine to the newly created kingdom of Trans-Jordan. Obviously, the British were acting in the name of “not prejudicing the rights of the Arabs”! So how could Israel’s supporters “ignore” such a huge fait accompli? Further, in 1937 the British put forward the Peel Commission partition plan under which, of the remaining Jewish fragment of Palestine, i.e, the land west of the Jordan, the Jews would only get a portion of the Galilee and a tiny sliver of land along the coast, the rest going to the Arabs. Thus, under the Peel plan (which the Arabs rejected and THE JEWS ACCEPTED) the Arabs would have gotten about 95 percent of the original Palestine Mandate. This is further indication that the British were more than fulfilling the part of the Mandate about not prejudicing the rights of the Arabs, and that the Jews, in their desire to have a national home even if it were no larger than Hyde Park, were going along with this.

So clearly the British were fulfilling the Mandate and the underlying Balfour Declaration in both senses: to advance a Jewish National Home (as inadequate as it was), AND to protect Arab interests. The latter purpose they bent over backwards to do, giving almost all the Mandate territory to the Arabs and leaving the Jews with a postage stamp of land which, nevertheless, the Jews were still willing to accept. Yet the fact that the Jews were willing to accept this radically reduced portion and the handing of almost all the Mandate territory to the Arabs, does not affect your friend at all. He still says the Jews and the Israeli sympathizers have “ignored” the part of the Mandate about protecting Arab rights, when in fact it was the Jews who went along with the radical reduction of the Jewish part of the Mandate for the sake of the Arabs and it was the Arabs who totally rejected it, as they would not accept even a single acre in that land under Jewish sovereignty.

And that is apparently where your friend’s reasoning tends. As long as there is an acre of Palestine under Jewish sovereignty, your friend, like the Arabs, would say that the Jews are “ignoring” the part of the Balfour Declaration about protecting the rights of Arabs. For your friend, as for the Arabs, ANY Jewish national home in the Mideast is ipso facto a violation of Arab rights.

He will probably deny what I just said, but it is implicit in his reasoning.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 19, 2007 12:00 PM | Send