Balfour's British Critics

Documents from 1917 reveal that the Balfour Declaration did not have unanimous support within the British government. Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, opposed it, warning that it would fuel antisemitism and make British Jews strangers in their own country. Lord George Curzon, meanwhile, feared its consequences for the Arab population, Arab public opinion, and Muslims in India. The declaration was supported by Lord Milner and Mark Sykes. The word “re-establishment” was removed from its drafts, and a clause was added to protect the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities—who made up more than 90% of Palestine’s population—without naming the Arabs or recognizing their political rights. Balfour said that a “national home” did not necessarily mean the imminent establishment of an independent Jewish state, while historians differ over whether the decision was driven by wartime calculations or by the pursuit of a Jewish state over time.

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