150 A Short History of the Middle East
Guardian., had in 1915 written a leading-article advocating the per-
manent British occupation of Palestine for the defence of Egypt.
This had attracted the interest of Weizmann, who had asked Sicte-
bothani to write a memorandum to the Foreign Office, proposing
a Jewish state in Palestine for the defence of Egypt and the Canal.
Sidebotham claimed that it was the needs, political and strategic,
of British policy that definitely inclined the scales in favour of
Zionism.1
Balfour had become Foreign Secretary in 1916. The influential
and enthusiastic Sir Mark Sykes,2 who had helped to make the
Sykes-Picot Treaty, had become a temporary convert to Zionism.
With the gradual exhaustion of both Russia and France as effective
military powers in 1917 it had become imperative to ensure the
early armed intervention of the U.S.A., and President Wilson had
shown himself \varmly responsive to the Zionist ideal'. In these
circumstances, after much interchange of opinion between
British and American Zionists, and while Zionists in Germany and
Turkey were conducting parallel negotiations with the enemy
governments,3 a proposal was submitted in 1917 to the British
government for the 'recognition of Palestine as the National Home
of the Jewish people' with internal autonomy, freedom of immi-
gration, and the establishment of a Jewish National Colonizing
Corporation for the resettlement of the country. This bold and
uncompromising phraseology was not however acceptable either
to the Foreign Office or to some influential British Jews who were
concerned about its possible effect on their status as British subjects.
After some months of redrafting it finally received official approval
as the famous Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917: 'H.ML
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 object, it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice
the civil and religious rights of other non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country.' There is thus a fundamental distinction between
the original Zionist proposal and the finally approved Declaration,
the one all-embracing, the other ambiguous and hedged with
1 op. cit., chs. IV-V.
2 T. E. Lawrence described him as 'the imaginative advocate of unconvincing
world-movements" (Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 58).
3 Barbour, op. cit., 54 f., 64 f.