With the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Palestine became the victim of European colonialism, as Britain promised to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine where the indigenous Palestinians amounted to over ninety percent of the total population.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the motivations and dynamics that culminated in the creation of the Balfour Declaration.

The research is based primarily on archival documents from the National Archives in Kew Gardens, London. The reports begins with illustrating the objections to the Zionist project to settle in Palestine, strongly advocated by anti-Zionist British Jews.

Contrary to the mainstream view that Britain had benevolent motivations in drafting the Declaration evidence in the archives proves that British government ministers used political Zionism to advance their own Imperial ambitions.

The report also explores the accusation that the British ruling elite were anti-Semitic and thus driven by an age-long ambition to expel their Jewish communities.

Lastly, this study argues that both the British government and the Zionist movement used Orientalist ideology to justify the dispossession of Palestinians from their lands.

Editor: Daud Abdullah

Participants

Abd Al-Wahab M El-Messiri, Mustafa Abu Sway, Magdy Hammad, Asad Abdel Rahman, Salman Abu Sitta, Michael Prior, Naseer Aruri, Ja‘afar Hadi Hasan, Rassem Khamaisi, Mohammad Abu-Elheja, Shafik Masri, Munir Shafiq, Hussain Shaban, Souheil El-Natour and George Jabbour.