(reverberating tone)
>>In discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict,
which is at the center of US interests in the Middle East
and has been for the last century,
it's important to start with the Balfour Declaration.
One of the treaties
that was issued during World War I in order to fight the war
was the Balfour Declaration.
It's important, it lays the groundwork
for understanding how the British
dealt with the Jews in Palestine
and how the international community
has adjudicated the Arab-Israeli conflict.
It's a very simple declaration,
it was issued in November 2nd, 1917 by Sir Balfour,
who was the Foreign Minister of Great Britain
to Lord Rothschild, a leading British Jew
who was a member of the Zionist World Organization.
It reads "Dear Lord Rothschild,
"I have much pleasure in conveying to you,
"on behalf of His Majesty's government,
"the following declaration of sympathy
"with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has ben submitted to
"and approved by the cabinet".
So here is the main paragraph,
and it is one that is going to bedevil
the legal environment of Israel and Palestine.
It says "His Majesty's government view with favor
"the establishment in Palestine of a national home
"for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors
"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 existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,
"or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews
"in any other country.
"I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration
"to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation".
Signed by Lord Balfour.
Now this very simple paragraph
is jammed with ambiguity.
If you were amongst the Jewish leaders
of the Zionist Federation and you were trying to determine,
what does this mean for the Jews,
you would quickly discover that it's full of ambiguity.
For example, what is a Jewish homeland?
It's certainly not a nation state.
The Jews were not to govern the mandate of Palestine,
which was going to be governed by the British.
So what does national home mean?
Perhaps it means you could go
in as many and large numbers as you wanted
to migrate from Europe to Palestine.
Would you be able to assume authority over the country
once the British leave?
All those questions are left open.
What you would be happy about is that it
mentions the Jewish people,
and it mentions a national home.
So national and people are both used to describe Jews,
and that is going to give the Jewish people
a big leg up in the fight for legitimacy
in the international community,
because if we look at how the Palestinians are referred to,
in fact we find much greater ambiguity.
Because the key clause is the one that reads,
"It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done
"which may prejudice the civil and religious rights
"of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
So how are the Arab Palestinians referred to?
They're not referred to by name, they're referred to as
the "non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
And this means that they're neither people,
nor are they Palestinians.
They're not referred to like the Jewish people are,
as a people.
Why is this important?
We have to look at this in the context
of the League of Nations, which was established
by the help and really under the authority
of Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I
in order to set up a new system of international law,
to prevent colonies and great powers
from gobbling up the territory of the world.
Woodrow Wilson declared, as part of his 14 points
that was embodied in the League of Nations,
that "all peoples have the right to self-determination".
This was revolutionary.
It gave hope to many of the smaller peoples of the world
that they would be able to free themselves
of colonial domination.
But of course, in the language
of "all peoples have the right to self-determination",
how do you get self-determination?
How do you become a nation state?
You have to be a people first.
In the Balfour Declaration, it's written
that the Jews are a people,
and they have a right to a national home.
For the Palestinian Arabs of course,
they don't achieve this level of recognition.
They're defined as non-Jewish communities
and they have civil and religious rights.
What does that mean?
Of course, those are both very ambiguous terms.
Civil rights are unclear, religious rights means of course,
perhaps they can go to their mosques,
they can pray at their churches,
for the Christian Palestinians who made up
about 10% of the population of Palestine.
But they don't have political rights.
They certainly don't have national rights.
And this problem of a non-identity
is going to bedevil the Palestinians
right up to the modern day.
We see that it's only around the 1967 war
that the Palestinian community develops the PLO,
the Palestinian Liberation Organization,
that fights, through terrorism and other means,
to try to get the world to recognize them
as a Palestinian people.
But nowhere in international law
does the word Palestinian get written down
until 1993
during the Oslo Accords,
when the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians
sit down to talk peace.
At that point, we get the first time
that the Palestinians are recognized as a people.
Previous to that, the Palestinian Liberation Organization
was seen as a terrorist organization.
It was illegal for any American official to talk
to a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
So it takes from 1917
when the Balfour Declaration was issued,
until 1993 before the Palestinians are recognized,
in international law, as a people
who deserve the right to self-determination.
And even then, they haven't arrived
at their object of having a nation state.
The Palestinian Authority that was established
after Oslo Accords in the West Bank
has been struggling to get national identity.
The Americans and the Israelis see the Palestinian Authority
and call it the Palestinian Authority,
where the Palestinians call themselves the PNA,
the Palestinian National Authority.
They insert that word national in there
because they want to achieve national rights.
The United States and Israel
are holding off giving that name to them
until a final peace agreement is signed
between Palestinians and Israelis,
at which point they will achieve their national rights,
but until that day they remain
only a Palestinian people
with limited rights in the West Bank, and the conflict
between Palestinians and Israelis continues.
Those questions of identity
are all embedded in this one little paragraph.
For the Jews, it offered the hope of a national home
and perhaps, at the end of it, national independence.
But before the Jews would achieve that,
they would have to build up the institutions of a nation
and finally go to war in 1948
in order to win and conquer the territory of Israel.
(soft music)