105 years ago/November 2, 1917

The Balfour Declaration

The one of the most important documents of the Zionism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the history of the State of Israel was dated to November 2, 1917. It was written as a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, the unofficial leader of the British Jewish community, who became the supporter of the Zionism through Chaim Weizmann. The document was part of the British diplomatic efforts to find allies against the Central Powers, and weaken them from the East, but the Foreign Office had other allies in the region, and it also wasn’t sure yet that the Ottoman Empire wouldn’t survive the WWI. On the other hand, even if it was a very important step for Zionism, there was an opposition even in the Jewish community, and a debate about the meaning of the term “national home”. And it didn’t seem unbelievable that time, that the Jewish and the Arab community would be able to live peacefully next to each other’s.

For more about the declaration, and for the text of it click here.