ABSTRACT
During the period of the mandate, the Arabs blamed the Balfour Declaration as a source of all their troubles. Few pledges or statements of British Middle Eastern policy were so thoroughly examined at all administrative levels as the Balfour Declaration. It was not issued in haste or lightheartedly. It was made as a deliberate act of the British cabinet, as part of their general foreign policy and their war aims. Sir Charles Webster thought that the Balfour Declaration was "the greatest act of diplomatic statesmanship of the First World War". There was no precedence for what the Zionists were asking. Sir Ronald MacNeil, a leading member of the parliament, in his masterly memorandum, stated that it would be "a glaring anomaly" if the Allies in the postwar settlement were to deny or ignore the claims of the people who had throughout history clung to their nationality more tenaciously than any other.
