The Balfour Declaration (dated November 2, 1917) was a formal public manifestation of the British government during the First World War, to announce its support for the establishment of a "national home" for the Jewish people in the Palestine region, which in that then was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Declaration was included in a letter signed by British Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour and addressed to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader of the Jewish community in Britain, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text was published in the press on November 9, 1917.
The issuance of the declaration had many lasting consequences. Galvanized popular support for Zionism, led to the creation of the Mandate of Palestine, which later became Israel and the Palestinian territories, and was the source of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, still ongoing and considered the most intractable conflict in the world . Academic controversy remains over several areas, including whether the statement contradicts the earlier promises that the British may have made to Husayn ibn Ali al-Hashimi, the Jerife of Mecca, in the correspondence McMahon-Husayn.
The declaration had two indirect consequences: the emergence of a Jewish state and a chronic state of conflict between Arabs and Jews throughout the Middle East. With regard to the latter, the statement has been described as the "original sin" with regard to the failure of Great Britain in Palestine and for wider events in that region. Beginning in 1920, intercommunal conflict broke out in the Mandate of Palestine, which expanded into the Arab-Israeli regional conflict, often referred to as the "most intractable conflict" in the world. The Arab-Israeli conflict in a broader sense developed mainly between 1948 and 1973, but continues today, mainly in the form of the most localized Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Britain's participation in this became one of the most controversial parts of its Empire's history, and damaged its reputation in the Middle East for generations. According to Elizabeth Monroe, "measured only by British interests, [the Declaration] was one of the biggest mistakes of his imperial history ».
