Britain Palestine Project
Peace with justice, security and equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians
Anti-Zionism in London’s Jewish East End, 1890-1948 A summary of Chapter 6 with this title in Brian Klug’s: Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life, Vallentine Mitchell (2010) Brian Klug, being a philosopher, approaches this subject from a fascinating and very different angle to most historians. He casts a new light on the…
From Brian Klug, Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011, pp. 199-210 There appears to be a conundrum about Arthur Balfour.1 On the one hand, his name is inseparable from the Declaration he signed as Foreign Secretary on 2 November 1917, which read in part: ‘His Majesty’s Government view…
3 January, 1919 Introduction Following the First World War, Emir Feisal, son of Sherif Hussein (Husayn) of Mecca, and the leader of the Arab movement, met in Aqaba with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the head of the Zionist Commission to Palestine. Later, at the Paris Peace Conference, the two negotiated and signed the following agreement,…
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.
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…
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.
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…
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,…