Britain Palestine Project
Peace with justice, security and equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians
November 7, 1918 The Anglo-French Declaration was signed between France and Great Britain on November 7, 1918, four days before the armistice agreement that ended World War I, and issued in Syria, Palestine and Iraq. Copies were posted on the public notice boards in all towns and villages in the Arab territories then occupied by…
LORD ISLINGTON had given Notice to move, That the Mandate for Palestine in its present form is inacceptable to this House, because it directly violates the pledges made by His Majesty’s Government to the people of Palestine in the Declaration of October, 1915, and again in the Declaration of November, 1918, and is, as at…
Lloyd George, David, (First Earl of Dwyfor) 1863-1945 Introduction Because the focus of this website is the Balfour Declaration and its consequences, this biography will be limited to Lloyd George’s career until the end of the First World War, with particular attention to formative influences on him.
Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Curzon in 1919: ‘in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country….The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present…
By Stephen Sizer Delivered at a conference arranged by the Balfour Project in association with the Church of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2nd November 2012 Introduction In this presentation we are going to trace some of the significant events and individuals that led to the Balfour Declaration. 1. Puritanism and the Conversion of the Jews The road…
Stephen Sizer The Promised Land – From the Nile to the Euphrates? I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are…
It’s 95 years since Lord Balfour informed Baron Rothschild that Britain would back a new Jewish state. The anniversary has been marked not with fireworks, but bombs. By Yasmin Alibhai Brown Monday, 19 November 2012
The Promised Land – From the Nile to the Euphrates? I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an…
The drafter of the Balfour Declaration was a secret Zionist in what historian William Rubinstein states was “probably the most remarkable example of concealment of identity in twentieth-century British political history.” “… Because of his increasingly significant political position, [Amery] was immensely influential in bringing about the success of the Zionist enterprise which eventually led…
Broken promises: Britain in Palestine A one-day conference on the British responsibility for conflict between Israelis and Palestinians took place at the Quaker Meeting House in Edinburgh on Friday 2nd November. A full house included people of Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths. It was held on the 95th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the letter…
Zionism, said Edwin Montagu, seemed to him “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizens of the United Kingdom.” These words appeared in his memorandum, as Secretary of State for India, submitted to the British War Cabinet, in August, 1917. At that time, the Foreign Secretary, Arthur J.Balfour, and Lord Rothschild, a leader of…
Anthony Ashley – Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801-1885. [1] After a lonely, loveless childhood, when, like many earlier members of the British aristocracy, the only affection the growing child received came from his nanny, Shaftesbury was elected as the Tory Member of Parliament for Woodstock in 1826 and was a strong supporter of…
Chaim Weizmann was born in Russia in 1874, in Motol, now Belarus, but then in the “Pale of Settlement”, that area of Russia to which the Jews had been confined since the time of Catherine the Great. From an early age he became interested in chemistry and managed to study in Berlin and then Freiburg…
The War Cabinet (WW1) The creation of the War Cabinet undertook the supreme direction of the war effort. It was composed of David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law, Lord Nathaniel Curzon, Alfred Milner, Arthur Henderson and Sir Maurice Hankey (its Secretary). Mark Sykes and Leopold Amery were also secretaries.
1840 Shaftesbury takes an advert in the Times RESTORATION OF THE JEWS… A memorandum has been addressed to the Protestant monarchs of Europe on the subject of the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Palestine. More 1865 In the Archbishop of York’s introduction as President of the first meeting of the Palestine…
Arthur Balfour, 1848–1930 The facts of Arthur Balfour’s political life are well-known. What is not so obvious is why he, “a scion of both Scottish mercantile wealth and English aristocracy”[1] – should be linked by history to a document with such momentous consequences for the Middle East. The first task is to set out the…
Ashley Perry, editor of the Middle East Strategic Information project makes the case that the Balfour Declaration represented the definite intention of the British Government to create a Jewish state and that in the Mandate for Palestine this intention gained international backing. On November 2, the Balfour Declaration was 91 years old. Although seemingly…
Sir:As the great-grandson of Sir Leon Simon, let me assure you that I believe that the world would be a far better place if the Balfour declaration which he helped draft (“A scrap of paper that changed history”, 26 May) had never been drafted.
by Donald Macintyre Reproduced from an article: ‘The birth of modern Israel: a scrap of paper that changed history’ in the Independent of 26 May 2005 The term “living history” is a cliché that slips as easily from the lips of museum curators as it does from the makers of documentary films. But it may…
Occasionally there are topics that have been written about at such length that it helps to clear the air, or to establish the vantage point from which I intend to consider my subject. My aim therefore is to take a fresh look at the Balfour Declaration in the light of recent scholarship. What I propose…
A frank recognition of its past in the Middle East can give Britain a unique role in the peace process The reprimand of Israel by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, resonated sharply in an already difficult week for Israel. But Britain can do more to influence the Middle East than register a complaint, expel a…
Early History Before the Common Era 2000-1500 BCE Re-establishment of strong political power in Egypt with advent of the Middle Kingdom led to revitalisation and expansion of trade routes and a period of great prosperity in the Levant. It witnessed the full flowering of Canaanite culture. The situation was further enhanced when, around 1750 BC,…