On 2 November 1917 A.J. Balfour, Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs, published his declaration, in a letter to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), Vice President of the British Zionist Federation. In this letter, Great Britain will facilitate the effort of the Zionists to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.
On 8 February 1920 Winston Churchill wrote the following as part of a larger article published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald:
Of course, Palestine is far too small to accommodate more than a fraction of the Jewish race, nor do the majority of national Jews wish to go there. But if, as may well happen, there should be created in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown, which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event would have occurred in the history of the world which would, from every point of view, be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the truest interests of the British Empire.
Arthur Balfour and Winston Churchill were by far not the first to suggest a Jewish state. Some 20 years before the Balfour Declaration, in 1896, the Jewish Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl published his text of political Zionism, Der Judenstaat ("The Jews' State" or "The State of the Jews"), in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing anti-Semitism, was the establishment of a state for the Jews.
Another reason came from the various anti-Jewish Russian pogroms. A large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots swept through south-western Russian cities, mainly from 1881 to 1884. The assassination of Alexander II of Russia was one of the triggers from these pogroms, as it was believed that one if the assassins was a Jew.
The declaration was accepted by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and embodied in the mandate that gave Great Britain temporary administrative control of Palestine. It would require them to implement the Balfour Declaration, and undertake a “sacred trust of civilisation” to advance the welfare of the Palestinian people and guide them to independence.[1]