ABSTRACT
The Balfour Declaration has long been seen as a watershed in the history of Zionism and Palestine. It has been assumed that the Declaration was a profession of genuine support for the aims of political Zionism. The Mandate was undoubtedly a more important achievement for the Zionists than the Balfour Declaration. The concepts that were enunciated in the Declaration the 'national home' and the protection of the civil and religious rights of the 'non-Jewish communities' lay at the very heart of the Mandate for Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was intended as a piece of wartime propaganda, the aims of which had little to do with the Holy Land and its future. For the British, the aim of the Balfour Declaration was to win the allegiance of world Jewry to the Allied cause, especially in the United States and Russia. The Mandatory had to establish a 'Jewish national home', whilst safeguarding the 'civil and religious rights' of the rest of population.
