On the 108th anniversary of Balfour, the lesson that should be heeded is the same one that anti-colonial voices have argued for decades: “Nothing about us, without us.”
Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first – and Zionist – High Commissioner in Palestine, was able to deploy the contradictions and vagaries of the Balfour Declaration to the eternal advantage of the Zionists, right from the start.
By Menachem Klein 28 Aug 2025 In summary: Unprecedented war and devastation: Since 7 Oct 2023 the Israel–Gaza war has reached catastrophic levels of destruction, displacement and casualties;. Mainstream Israeli discourse now openly embraces genocidal language and policies once confined to extremist fringes, normalising dehumanisation of Palestinians. Structural shifts before the war: Israel consolidated a…
Even before the British Mandate for Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, British intervention in the Holy Land was laying the foundations for Israel’s occupation, with consequences that reverberate today By Gabriel Polley 23 March 2023 Twenty twenty two marked the centenary of the British Mandate for Palestine, which formalised Britain’s presence in the Holy Land after the First World…
By Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Editor of Foreign Affairs Published on July 1, 1957 It would be wrong to call the United Nations experiment in administering the Gaza Strip a failure; the experiment was never made. Some preparations for it were made. Civilian experts were assembled and dispatched to Gaza on the heels of the United…
Britain, Palestine and a history of broken promises: a summary of the book’s narrative, with links to reviews and an interview with the author.
1901 Keren Kayemeth [Jewish National Fund] founded as land-acquisition organ of WZO; land acquired by JNF in Palestine to be inalienably Jewish, and exclusively Jewish labour to be employed on it. 1903 Lloyd George’s law firm acted for Herzl in negotiations on a Jewish community in Uganda. Lloyd George drafted a charter for the ‘Jewish…
Published on The Middle East Eye on 1 November 2021. This article is a condensed version of a talk that was given by Professor Eugene Rogan to the Balfour Project charity. The charity holds regular free webinars focused on Britain’s historic and continuing responsibility to secure equal rights for the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. Against the rival…
By Sahar Huneidi The twin issues of land and immigration are today, as they were in the early 1920s, the crux of the problem between Israel and the Palestinians. Herbert Samuel, first British High Commissioner in Palestine (1920-25), set the precedent of the policy of ‘facts on the ground’ by reshaping land ownership through a…
House of Lords, 21 June 1922 By William M Mathew Contents PART IPART IIPART III PART I On 21 June 1922, following his elevation to the peerage a few weeks earlier, Arthur Balfour – now the Earl of Balfour – delivered his maiden speech to the House of Lords, this in response to a…
How the Zionists hitched a ride on the Imperialist bandwagon By William M Mathew It was fundamental folly to annex Palestine out of persistent anxieties over imperial, notably Indian, security, while at the same pursuing therein a policy of Zionist settlement that, through resulting ethnic conflict, served to render the territory almost useless as an…
It is no exaggeration that the history of Israel/Palestine for the last hundred years has turned on the seminal Balfour Declaration of November 1917. Loved and loathed in equal measure, this was the letter that changed the future. The following extract of the Balfour Declaration from the ‘Companion Guide’ to the Balfour Project film, ‘Britain…
On Saturday May 18th 2013, the Balfour Project held a one day conference at The Stripe, University of Winchester exploring the different legacies of the Balfour Declaration and how a greater understanding of history can contribute to justice and peace in the Middle East today. Speakers included, Professor Mary Grey, Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Dr…
Palestine: The RealityThe inside story of the Balfour Declaration 1917–1938 by J.M.N. Jeffries Published: 1939, reissued 2017 Formats: Hardback, paperback ISBN: 9781911072126 £26.99 First published by Longman Green and Co. Reissued by Olive Branch Press and Skyscraper Publications. Paperback £26.99 By John McHugo Many people trying to get to grips with the Israel/Palestine conflict…
Washington Report, November 2005, pages 44–50 Special Report by John Cornelius IN THIS article the author relates what he believes to be the true story of how the British government came to issue what has come to be known as the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter, dated Nov. 2,…
By Avi Shlaim This is the full text of a truncated version of Avi Shlaim’s article in The Guardian. The Guardian had edited out the references to Winston Churchill and the Israeli Policy Working Group. The wave of anti-racist protest sweeping through the country has prompted a re-examination of colonial legacies and responsibilities. Britain’s theft…
One of the many merits of the book is the way Khalidi uses his family and his own life experience to tell this tragic, yet-to-be-righted, story of the Palestinians.
Bernard Regan shows us what Britain did (and what Britain thought it was doing) by issuing the Balfour Declaration, by incorporating it into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, and by governing Palestine in a way intended to implement it.
Peter Shambrook Being British, the 500-year-old British Empire story fills me with a mixture of pride – and pain and shame. Regarding the events of 1948, locating truth is extremely challenging, given the irreconcilable national narratives. So I come at this as a student of imperial history, and as a still-often puzzled, searcher for truth.…
By James Rodgers Rare photograph of the formal transfer of Jerusalem to British rule. For those of us of an age to have known only peace in Western Europe,the centenary of the end of World War I is a an opportunity to learn something of the extreme consequences of the failure to solve political differences…
Letter published in The Times newspaper, 13 September 2018 Oslo and Palestine Sir, How painful now to recall the hope we had in the Oslo Accords. 25 years on, cynicism and resignation rule. The Israeli occupation since 1967 is so entrenched, so hard to think beyond. We argue for a better way, not subordinating the…
By Ian Portman Abstract Faced with increasing antisemitism in Europe towards the end of the 19th century, many Jews chose to join the great waves of European emigration to the United States. Since the high middle ages, most of the world’s Jews had settled in eastern Europe, under welcoming Polish and later repressive Russian rule.…
A 20-page booklet is now available containing the speeches at the conference of the Balfour Project in partnership with King’s College London (see below). The booklet also includes the Balfour Centenary Declaration, which has now been signed by 141 British public figures including 83 Members of the British Parliament. Below is a 20 minute YouTube…
By Roger Spooner When talking about the Balfour Declaration with a pastor from Bethlehem, he commented, ‘the problems for the Palestinians didn’t start in 1917, they started in 1840’. Literal reading of the Bible which had developed in the 17th Century took off in the 19th and restorationism gained political power through Lord Shaftesbury. His…
Centenary Lecture to the History Group, The Norfolk Club, 14 September 2017 by William Mathew It is argued here that only a special conjuncture of chance and short-term circumstance made it possible for an effective pro-Zionist policy to be successfully pursued by the British government in 1917. Much of this was war-related, and the absence…
Catholic and Anglican bishops today, 2 November 2017, called for justice and reconciliation in the Holy Land on the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Bishop Declan Lang, Catholic bishop of Clifton and Bishop Christopher Chessun, Anglican bishop of Southwark together stated that: “On the Centenary of the Balfour Declaration, we commend the work of the…
An Interview1 in Mr. Balfour’s Apartment, 23 Rue Nitot, Paris, on June 24th, 1919, at 4:45 p.m. Present: Mr. Balfour, Mr. Justice Brandeis, Lord Eustace Percy and Mr. Frankfurter 2 Mr. Balfour expressed great satisfaction that Justice Brandeis came to Europe3He said the Jewish problem (of which the Palestinian question is only a fragment but…
Published in The Middle East Eye on 1 November 2017. It’s been nearly 100 years since the document changed the course of history, yet Britain still fails to acknowledge Israel’s denial of the Palestinian right to national self-determination – and its own complicity. The Balfour Declaration, issued on 2 November 1917, was a short document…
By His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal Member of the Jordanian royal family “A historian can record what went wrong, but – in his feckless and unhelpful way – he’s not necessarily there to tell them how they could have got it right.” (Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962). Last year…
Israel/Palestine: Equal Rights The centenary of the Balfour Declaration is the time to reconcile peace with justice for both Israelis and Palestinians, consistent with the principle Britain claims as her own: equal rights for all under the law. Through the Declaration of 2 November 1917 the British Government decided to facilitate “the establishment in Palestine…
NEW BOOKLET Britain’s broken promise: Time for a New Approach Printed version can be bought here or downloaded here A video of the whole event is now available. A public meeting of 1,200 people at Central Hall Westminster on 31 October heard politicians from all parties call on the British Government to recognise Palestine as…
Jerusalem, 26.10.2017 BRITAIN’S BROKEN PROMISE: TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH The 1917 Balfour Declaration, issued by the British Empire at the height of its power, promised to help “facilitate the achievement” of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This recognition of the Jewish people’s right to a national homeland was integrated into…
The Guardian’s Long Read of 17 October was headlined ‘Britain’s calamitous promise’. Author Ian Black writes ‘The brief document that bears Balfour’s name is seen as marking the beginning of what is today widely considered the world’s most intractable conflict.’ Its three-page article, by Ian Black, deals with the motives behind the British Government’s support…
Nicholas Frayling in the Church Times: British responsibility for the contradictions in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute gives the UK a duty to right a wrong, A policy of 1917 whose legacy needs addressing. Donald Macintyre in the Guardian Oct 13th ‘A chance to make good on Britain’s broken promise’ is the heading of Donald Macintyre’s article.…
At this 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which arrives on November 2nd many events, looking at the century of conflict the Declaration has lead to, are taking place around the country. One major one on October 31st at Methodist Central Hall Westminster will acknowledge Britain’s historic responsibilities in the Middle East. It will offer an…
“The BBC Radio Four ‘Sunday’ programme on October 1st included this very fair and balanced report on the forthcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration. Chris Rose from the Amos Trust, speaking about the unfulfilled promises to the Palestinian people, echoed the call for ‘Equal Rights for All’ which is very much at the centre of…