A diplomatic declaration in the form of a letter, dated November 29, 1917, from Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The letter expressed the British Government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”  The Declaration is at odds with British territorial commitments to the Arabs as laid out in the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, which seemed to pledge post-World War I Arab sovereignty over much of the region including Palestine, as well as with the secret and concurrent Sykes-Picot treaty with France. The Declaration became the basis for the British mandate of Palestine after World War I, justifying British support for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine and conflicting with Palestinian Arab hopes for national independence. See Ovendale, Ritchie. The Middle East Since 1914. London: Longman, 1998; Wasserstein, Bernard. The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government & the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917-1929. London: Blackwell, 1991. See the full text of the letter at “The Balfour Declaration.” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace%20Process/Guide%20to%20the%20Peace%20Process/The%20Balfour%20Declaration.  http://www.justvision.org/glossary/balfour-declaration