{Originally posted to the author’s blog)
It is a staple of Arab propaganda that the Balfour Declaration promised the Jews a “national home” in Palestine, not that all of Palestine should become a Jewish state.
They quote this portion:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,
and claim that if the Zionist version is correct, it should have read something like:
“His Majesty’s Government agree that Palestine should become the national home for the Jewish people, viewing its establishment with favour”.
But what they ignore is that at the time of its issuance, Palestine, “historic Palestine” extended into Lebanon in the north and Transjordan to the east.
In 1919, the Zionists presented a map of their territorial claims to the Versailles Peace Conference.
The British also presented a proposal that included parts of Syria and Transjordan. As I once wrote:
Zionism has been yielding territory since 1919
After removing Transjordan from Jewish settlement rights in 1922 and earlier, awarding part of northern Palestine to the French Mandate over Syria, we still have all of Western historic Palestine as the Jewish national home. By right.
