The Balfour Declaration
...ise and perhaps misleading. What exactly does “home” mean? Does it mean that they wanted to establish a state for the Jews in Palestine ? To many people the word home does not mean a state, it should have been made clear exactly what the government meant. The second clause of the declaration states “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non- Jewish communities in Palestine..”. Balfour was clearly trying to convince the Arabs that there rights were to be protected , however we can easily see that this was contradicting the first clause, which I stated in the previous paragraph. We can hypothesize that the reverse would probably occur and the rights of the Arabs would more than likely be interfered with and great conflict would occur as a result. Also why was there no mention about the political and national rights of the Arabs? Were these to be protected as well? The third clause of the declaration includes the rights and political status of Jews in other countries, that nothing would be done to prejudice their religious or civil rights. Was this possible? Or would the Jews in Palestine enjoy more civil and religious freedom than Jews in other countries, and what problems and conflict would this create among Jews around the world if their rights were prejudiced?? It seems that maybe the Balfour Declaration would do more harm then it would good. It is also important to note the format of the document and this document was a little informal for a reason. It was simply a letter, with no organized listings as in the Basel Declaration, it was also very pleasant and friendly. The main reason I can think of for this is that it is from one British to another, Balfour is the British Foreign secretary and former Prime Minister and Lord Rothschild is a prominent British Jew. It is also important t...