The letter of 2 November 1917 in which Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, told Lord Rothschild that the British Government "view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", with the proviso that nothing should prejudice "the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". The letter asks that the declaration be passed to the Zionist Federation. The archive's case study on the Ottoman holy war cites the letter alongside the other wartime documents on the region, and reads them side by side; the Library holds this one's text.
The text
Download as plain text 128 words, with the provenance header above the text
November 2nd, 1917
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 been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's 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 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.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
Provenance and rights
- Edition
- Letter from Arthur James Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917, as transcribed by the Avalon Project at Yale Law School
- Text source
- The Avalon Project, Yale Law School (Lillian Goldman Law Library)
- Text basis
- Transcription by the Avalon Project; the page does not name the copy it was typed from.
- Rights
- An official letter of the British Foreign Secretary written in his official capacity and published in 1917, so in the public domain in the United States (published before 1931); UK Crown copyright in a published official work of that date has also expired. The Avalon site's design and navigation are not copied. Checked October 2, 2026.
- Changes made
- The Avalon page's navigation, header and footer removed. Wording, spelling and punctuation are the transcript's own.
- Source file checksum
dbc49e093b3ca5e1…(SHA-256 of the download this text was made from)