"The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” by Jonathan Schneer: Out of the cauldron that was World War I, the British government gave its blessing to a document that set the stage for what is arguably the most enduring and intractable geopolitical conflict of the past six decades.
The approval of the Balfour Declaration, which consisted of one 67-word sentence forwarded in 1917 by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, put Britain on record as supporting the establishment of "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, the critical precursor to the birth of the state of Israel in 1948.
In his fascinating and fair-minded study, Schneer, a professor of British history at Georgia Tech, recounts the intrigue and double-dealing that led up to the declaration in which the ongoing struggle between Arabs and Israelis is rooted.
Heading into the world war, Palestine was a sleepy, sparsely populated area with vague borders that had been governed for centuries by Ottoman sultans. But after Turkey threw in its lot with Germany, Britain sought to dangle Palestine and other parts of the moribund Ottoman Empire as bait to win help for its war effort.
Schneer recounts the promises Britain made to Arabs and Jews as well as to its French ally that left each party with a conflicting vision of Palestine’s postwar future, subjecting the fate of the Promised Land to varying interpretations.
Hussein, the grand sharif of Mecca, who launched the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1916, won promises of an Arab kingdom, but the borders of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine as well as Britain’s role in what is now Iraq remained ambiguous.
At the same time, British and French diplomats conspired in secret to divvy up the region, with Palestine’s governance to be placed in the hands of an "international condominium."
To Schneer, Britain’s Zionists were "inspired opportunists" who viewed the war with the Turks as an opportunity to win backing for their dream of a homeland in Palestine, where 85,000 resident Jews comprised one-ninth of the prewar population. Emerging as Zionist leader was Chaim Weizmann, a Russian-born chemist whose discovery of a fermentation method for a key ingredient in explosives was important to the war effort and helped win him contact with David Lloyd George before he became prime minister.
The author concludes that support for the Zionist cause owes a considerable debt to stereotypical beliefs among the British about the power and unity of world Jewry. Government officials figured that a statement of support for a Jewish homeland would generate backing for the war among American Jews and Jews in Russia.
But it was no easy matter for Weizmann and his fellow Zionists to get Britain’s Jews to embrace the cause. A vocal and powerful group of anti-Zionist Jews who favored assimilation and steadfastly denied the existence of Jewish nationality continued to press their case until Weizmann finally prevailed.
"The Balfour Declaration" covers a wide tableau, ranging from the battlefields of the Arabian desert to the offices of Whitehall. The narrative features an array of larger-than-life characters, including Lawrence of Arabia, international arms dealer Basil Zaharoff and Aubrey Herbert, a wounded war veteran who tried to negotiate a separate peace with Turkey.
Schneer’s well-researched book will appeal to history buffs with a special interest in World War I or the origins of the conflict in the Middle East. Readers with little background in those subjects should also find it valuable, but might regard some of the details as tedious, particularly as the author traces successive attempts to get the Turks to abandon the war.
Overall, it’s hard to argue about the weightiness of the subject, particularly considering the ensuing history shared by Israelis and Palestinians. Schneer sums it up well in addressing the impact of the events he recounted:
"Because it was unpredictable and characterized by contradictions, deceptions, misinterpretations, and wishful thinking, the lead-up to the Balfour Declaration sowed dragon’s teeth. It produced a murderous harvest, and we go on harvesting even today."
