DELUSIONS REVISITED

A variant is that it was given to The State of Israel, despite the fact that Israel didn’t exist so could not be given anything or be capable of receiving anything. Then the massive leap to “ Israel therefore was simply recovering what it already owned when it occupied the west bank."

I ran this story past my cat and he thinks I am nuts.

In the closing stages of the war , including the time of the Balfour declaration, the British were all over the near east like a rash. At the end of the war there were 200,000 British troops in Palestine... the fact on the ground ( and I know Israel is very fond of facts on the ground). The British knew at the time of The Balfour Declaration that they would be in charge in Palestine at the end of the war, hence they were able to make declarations such as the one associated with Balfour.

The geography of the Palestine Mandate was agreed between Britain and France and the world was told that was how it was going to be.

The League of Nations duly mandated Palestine to the British.

Let me repeat. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS DULY MANDATED PALESTINE TO BRITAIN. It did not “GIVE PALESTINE TO THE JEWS”

The Mandate included an acknowledgment that the mandatory power would be responsible for putting into effect the Balfour Declaration. “ Whereas the Principle Allied Powers have also agreed that the mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the government of His Brittanic Majesty, and adopted by the said powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”

So the British are in charge. It was their declaration, and are mandated to give effect to it.

So what was this declaration the British were mandated to implement ? The Balfour Declaration was issued in the form of a letter to Lord Rothschild, the then President of the British Zionist Federation.

“ Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by , the cabinet. His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective............”

IN Palestine OF a national home for the Jewish people.

The memorandum submitted by Weizmann and his Zionist colleagues to the cabinet proposed the establishment OF Palestine AS a national home for the Jewish people. This would clearly mean that the whole of Palestine was to be designated as a national home for the Jewish people.

This was specifically rejected by the cabinet

So the British are committed to work toward the establishment of a Jewish National Home somewhere in Palestine.
They don’t say exactly where and doubtless don’t know at this point in time.

What did the British mean by ” National home for the Jewish people “ ?

Well what they did not mean was a Jewish state in either the sense of a state carved out of Palestine with a Jewish majority. The demographics of the time would have made such an idea absurd. The events that subsequently made this possible could not possibly have been foreseen.

What they also did not mean was Jewish sovereignty and hegemony over an Arab population that was hugely in the majority.

When the question of independence for Transjordan arose they used the expressions Arab STATE and Jewish NATIONAL HOME in the same sentence.. a clear indication of them feeling that there was a difference.

When their problems in Palestine were such that the idea of partition finally occurred to them the size of Israel envisaged was about the size of my thumbnail. See the Peel Commission.

In any event they didn’t create a Jewish state, didn’t attempt to and had no intention of attempting to.

When Zionist aspirations had got so far out of sync with British intentions as to be regarded as dangerous, Herbert Samuel wrote a document that Churchill signed. This eschewed the notion of creating a predominantly Jewish state and limited Jewish immigration to “ the economic capacity of the country “ .
It read in part.........Phrases have been used such as Palestine is to become “ as Jewish as England is English”. His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impractical and have no such aim in view.

The State of Israel came about by unilateral declaration and was subsequently recognised by the UN within its then boundaries. The UN couldn’t recognise a borderless state could it ?