8
British Empire in the era between the two world wars when not one single colonial possession,
with the partial exception of Ireland, succeeded in freeing itself from the clutches of the
European imperial powers. They faced as well an international colonizing movement with a
national mission, and with its own independent sources of finance and support, besides those
generously offered by Britain. And finally they were confronted with the international legitimacy
accorded to British rule by the League of Nations, which had sanctified the Balfour Declaration
and its colonial import for the Palestinians by endowing it with the legal imprimatur of the
preeminent international body of the day. The Balfour Declaration thus became more than a
statement by the British cabinet: it was an internationally sanctioned legal document. In
explaining the failure of the Palestinians to retain control of their ancestral homeland, alongside
understanding the shortcomings of their leaders and the hindrances resulting from fissures within
their society, it is vital to keep in mind this triple bind they were in.
Before November 2, 1917, the Zionist movement was both a national movement in
embryo, and a colonial enterprise without a fixed metropole, like an orphan searching for a foster
parent. When it found one in Great Britain, as symbolized by the Balfour Declaration, the
colonization and transformation of Arab Palestine into a Jewish state could begin in earnest. This
process was backed soon afterwards by the international legitimacy provided by the League of
Nations. It was backed as well by an indispensable “iron wall” of British bayonets, in the words
of that most forthright of Zionist leaders, Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Seen from the perspective of the Palestinian people, the careful, calibrated prose of the
Declaration amounted to a proclamation of war on them. For the next few decades, this war was
waged by the Zionist movement with money, legal means, propaganda, and mortars and car
bombs, and by the British Empire with multiple forms of repression, prison camps, exile,