I present now another: Lord Arthur Balfour's Speech on July 12, 1920, as excerpted from the Palestine Royal Commission [Peel] Report (Cmd. 5479) published in July 1937, in which he addresses:
...the inevitable difficulty of dealing with the Arab question as it presents itself within the limits of Palestine.
And the Lord Balfour explains that Great Britain did much for the Arabs but also intended to do something for the Jews which they must accept:
It will require tact, it will require judgment, it will require above all sympathetic goodwill on the part both of Jew and Arab. So far as the Arabs are concerned - a great, an interesting and an attractive race - I hope they will remember that...the Great Powers, and among the Great Powers most especially Great Britain, has freed them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal conqueror, who had kept them under his heel for these many centuries.
I hope they will remember it is we who have established the independent Arab sovereignty of the Hedjaz. I hope they will remember that it is we who desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the way for the future of a self-governing, autonomous Arab State; and I hope that, remembering all that, they will not begrudge that small notch—for it is no more geographically, whatever it may be historically—that small notch in what are now Arab territories, being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it, but surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers, which ought to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab people as it, I am convinced, appeals to the sympathy of the Arab people as it, I am convinced, appeals to the great mass of my own Christian fellow-countrymen.
And since we are dealing with British intentions, let's recall that on January 20, 1921, five years following the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, Winston Churchill stated that in a conversation with the Emir Faisal that day, the Emir had claimed that he was,
“prepared to accept the statement that it had been the intention of His Majesty’s government to exclude Palestine.”
Exclude Palestine from the area to become the Great Arab State that the Arabs expected from their joining with England to fight against the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
(The source for that is Great Britain, Parliamentary Debates, Commons, July 11, 1922, cols. 1032-1034, as cited in Albright, et al, Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, Vol. I, 1947, Yale University Press, p. 187)
But I went to Hansard and found this, too:
When I assumed responsibility for Middle Eastern affairs, I went carefully into the correspondence referred to, and my reading of it is the same as that of the Foreign Office, as was recently stated in the declaration of British policy in Palestine which has been published and laid before the House. I am quite satisfied that it was as fully the intention of His Majesty's Government to exclude Palestine from the area of Arab independence as it was to exclude the more northern coastal tracts of Syria.
and this exchange:
Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKS
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, confident as he is of the view of His Majesty's Government, he is at all certain that the other party to the negotiations and correspondence really thought the same thing, and whether it has not been a bond fide statement on the part of King Hussein and his advisers?
§ Mr. CHURCHILL
I do not think that is so. At any rate, Sir Henry McMahon was perfectly clear in his indication of what was intended at the time. I am perfectly ready to place his opinion on public record.
§ Mr. ORMSBY-GORE
Does not the right hon. Gentleman now say that this correspondence was inconclusive, and that King Hussein came in as one of the Allies before the correspondence was 1035 completed, or any real definite undertaking was actually signed as between the Treaty-making parties?
§ Mr. CHURCHILL
That is so.
And as to the that conversation with Feisal:-
Mr. CHURCHILL
No pledges were made to the Palestine Arabs in 1915. An undertaking was given to the Sheriff of Mecca that His Majesty's Government would recognise and support the independence of the Arabs within certain territorial limits, which specifically excluded the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and the portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Horns, Hama and Aleppo. It was also stipulated that the undertaking applied only to those portions of the territories concerned in which Great Britain was free to act without detriment to the interests of her Allies. His Majesty's Government have always regarded and continue to regard Palestine as excluded by these provisos from the scope of their undertaking. This is clear from the fact, to which the hon. Member refers, that in the following year they concluded an agreement with the French and Russian Governments under which Palestine was to receive special treatment.
So far as I am aware, the first suggestion that Palestine was included in the area within which His Majesty's Government promised to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs was made by the Emir Feisal, now King of Iraq, at a conversation held in the Foreign Office on the 20th January, 1921, more than five years after the conclusion of the correspondence on which the claim was based. On that occasion the point of view of His Majesty's Government was explained to the Emir, who expressed himself as prepared to accept the statement that it had been the intention of His Majesty's Government to exclude Palestine.
So, not only did the Arabs campaign for the inclusion of Palestine with Syria and that there was no true Palestinian nationalism at that time, but they also knew that Palestine was always intended to be the Jewish national home.
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