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.
The British declaration of support for the creation a Jewish national home in Palestine would have life-changing ramifications for the Arabs living there. Within a few years of Balfour's declaration, at the end of the First World War, Britain took control of Palestine from the Ottoman Empire under the auspices of a League of Nations Mandate. While the Mandate government was supposed to prepare the local population for eventual self-rule, it is clear from Balfour's own statements that neither the British nor their allies had any such intentions:
I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs, but they will never say they want it. Whatever be the future of Palestine it is not now an ‘independent nation’, nor is it yet on the way to become one. Whatever deference should be paid to the views of those living there, the Powers in their selection of a mandatory do not propose, as I understand the matter, to consult them. In short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.
Instead, British control of Palestine encouraged the immigration of tens of thousands of Jews to the region in the ensuing decades. The systematic murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany during World War Two only increased the flow of Jewish immigrants, and tensions increased between them and the local population. Violence escalated until Britain voluntarily relinquished control of Palestine, turning the issue over to the United Nations (the successor to the defunct League of Nations).
The United Nations Partitions Palestine
The United Nation's solution to the violence in Palestine was to bisect the territory into two states: one Palestinian and the other Jewish. On 29 November, 1947, the United Nations resolution to this effect was passed; the British announced their withdrawal, to be completed the 15th of May. On the eve of 15th, the Jewish community in Palestine proclaimed their independence as the State of Israel. The following day, five Arab armies entered Palestine, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war began. In many ways, it has not yet ended.
The Balfour quotations were taken from the "Balfour Declaration of 1917" article on Wikipedia. Other sites to visit for more information include (but are not limited to):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/balfour.html
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