What was the significance of the Balfour Declaration to Zionists?

Answer 1

The Balfour Declaration was the first promise by the British empire to give the Jewish people a national home in Palestine. As the Zionists worked to create a Jewish state, the support of one of the world's largest powers, that was soon to take over Palestine, was crucial.

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It is to be remembered that Palestine was nothing more than desert land; the people of Palestine were poor Syrians who were few in number living in tents and mud homes scattered haphazardly throughout "Palestine". One has to remember that Jerusalem and modern day Israel was ALWAYS Israeli land; they were cast into the desert, out of Israel by the Romans, as per The Bible. For many years Israel was unsettled; Jewish settlers were often killed by nomad Arabs crossing the desert land.

Syria, once a country reliant on its production of textiles from cotton farmers, exiled a small portion of its lowest class citizens and crimminals out to settle in one small part of the desert in the modern day Gaza Strip and in the Eastern part of Jerusalem.

In fact during large surveys conducted in 1943-1947 most of the land of the then "Planned Israeli State" was uninhabited; with exception to the Eastern part of the city of Jerusalem and surrounding areas.

It was commonplace prior to 1948 to kill Jewish families and people who for many years tried to take up residence in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the uninhabited desert lands surrounding Jerusalem, peacefully, alongside the Muslims.

It was only after Britain and the U.N went public with their unanimous decision to create a "Jewish State" that thousands of Syrians and Muslims from all surrounding countries rushed onto this land claiming it as "Palestinian"; when in fact a large portion of it sat barren for more than 200 years.

The significance was that the Jewish People were promised a home in Palestine; a "State" of Israel once again to be theirs as it was originally mainly due to the fact that no country would accept Holocaust survivors who numbered only in the hundreds out of 6 million hard working people across Europe.

Throughout Europe and even the United States refused to absorb Holocaust survivors; the decision to once again establish an Independent State of Israel was largely done by the U.N. in recognizing the land belonged to the Jewish people in biblic times and creating the Independent Democratic State would give survivors a place to regroup in a peaceful State to rebuild their lives.

Unfortunately ,to give them a state would have meant sharing part of Jerusalem with the Arab People of Palestine, and giving the Jews roughly half of the land that the British monarchy colonized. Most of the land given was uninhabited, and consisted of swathes of desert land.

Still nursing their losses from backing Hitler and the German war efforts, many Arab States were openly defiant to both the U.N. and Britain in their decision to "take" land that was deemed occupied by Palestians when in fact the land sat devoid of humans and was nothing more than sand.

It was nothing more than racist mantra that Arab leaders used to their advantage to anger its people to once again take up arms against the Jews.

The Palestinans, Syria, along with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, upon Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 jointly attacked the newly established State of Israel without provocation, in defiance of the United Nations and Britain's efforts to resettle the Holocaust survivors.

From 1967 through 1973 the Syrians in particular deluged the newly established State with daily attacks via strategic mountainous area along its' border adjacent to Israel that killed many Israeli civilians. The Israeli Army pushed back the Syrians well into Syria, claiming the land for its' own; the Golan heights.

In 1973 the Golan Heights comprised of a few small farms and mainly unsettled land. Most notable of the farms was Bersheeba Farms. It is to be noted that Israel removed the many munitions and land mines that were plenty on the land, imported millions of pounds of top soil and with the help of the U.S. and Britain planted hundreds of trees, groves and fields, in where they employed many Muslim farmers in attempts to cohabitate peacefully and assist the otherwise unemployed poor people of Palestine that their motherland had left to fend for themselves.

Resentment and bitter racism mainly by Muslims but also by a minority in Israel remain an obstacle to peace. Confounding this is Hezbollah and Hamas; the "Hama" people of Syria and Iran [minorities, similar to Alawites] and Hezbollah, Lebanese and Iranian funded; are both considered terrorist groups. Both groups pledge "death to Israel and her people".

Average civilians in both the State of Palestine and Israel have conscribed to a civil relationship; younger generations have found friends on the other side. This small albeit first step towards peace continues to be hampered by terrorist groups and poor and young people alike with limited opportunity elsewhere are forced into joining them, often to be used as human bombs.