A Scottish newspaper promoted as fact the Palestinian narrative that the Balfour Declaration is one of the main causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “because it failed to protect Palestinian Arabs.” In fact, the Declaration explicitly stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” More importantly, the Balfour Declaration is not a cause of the conflict. The Declaration set in motion the international community’s recognition of the Jews’ right to self-determination in their historic homeland. Arabs’ consistent rejection of that morally intuitive idea is the cause of the conflict.
Here’s an article in the Nov. 3 print edition of the Scottish Express – ‘On This Day’:
First, contrary to the assertion that the Balfour Declaration failed to protect Palestinian Arabs, the letter in fact says that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
But, the more important distortion is the claim that the Balfour Declaration is “one of the main causes of the Israel/Palestine conflict”, absurd reasoning which conflates cause and effect. It wasn’t the Balfour Declaration, which set in motion international recognition of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their historic homeland, that caused the Israel/Palestine conflict. It was the Arabs’ and Palestinians’ consistent rejection of the morally intuitive idea endorsed in Lord Balfour’s letter – that “Jewish people constitute a nation and deserve an equal place among the family of nations in its own homeland” – that caused the conflict.