Damn! I forgot to post on the Balfour Declaration on August 2 - still, better late than never.
It's important to understand that the decision to issue the Declaration was confined to the British war cabinet, and that it was not debated in the House of Commons at the time. Only one MP, Joseph King (Liberal), raised the matter in the Commons, on November 19, 1917, 17 days after it was issued.
King asked foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour merely "whether the desire of the Government to see established a Jewish Zionist nationality in Palestine has been communicated to the Allied Powers, especially to France, Russia, Italy, and the Allied States; and whether it is one of the Allied war aims, or only a British war aim, to set up a Zionist community in the Holy Land."
And Balfour replied merely that "no official communication has been made to the Allies on the subject," and that "His Majesty's Government hope that the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people will result from the present war."
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"His Majesty's Government hope that the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people will result from the present war."
Fortuitous wasn't it! Victory was the outcome, and the legacy was WW2, which sealed the fate of the Palestinian people. Hopefully the "schmucks" will wake up and not agitate for round 3!
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