Times of London, recommending a plan "to plant the Jewish people in the land of their fathers." This plan was advanced by Lord Ashley (later Lord Shaftesbury). The rights and privileges of the settlement were to be "secured to them under the protection of a European power." The power hinted at was, of course, Britain.
Herzl died without realizing his aim in Palestine-or Sinai or Uganda. For a few years no new opportunities presented themselves. The Zionist ship stood becalmed until the great storm broke. World War I launched Zionism as a force in world politics.
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On November 2, 1917, the Zionists achieved the aim they had been working toward since the first day of the movement. They got their charter.
Many books have been written about the Balfour Declaration, in which His Majesty's Government promised to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Many reasons have been given: the deep attachment of the British to the Holy Book; the need to win over American Jewry to help get the United States into the war on the side of the Allies; the effort to prevent Russian Jews from turning Bolshevik and quitting the war, even the wish to reward Dr. Chaim Weizmann for services rendered.
There may be some truth in all of these reasons, but essentially the Declaration was simply a pact between Great Britain and Zionism for the future of Palestine. In return for British assistance in Zionism's great colonization adventure, it undertook to provide Great Britain with a valid moral reason for keeping Palestine for itself, in spite of commitments the British had made to the French and the Arabs. (By the agreement reached by M. F. Georges-Picot, for France, and Sir Mark Sykes, for Great Britain, and officially recognized by notes exchanged in April-May 1916 between France, Great Britain and Russia, Syria was allotted to France; Iraq and Transjordan,