Palestine Papers, 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict

History caught in the making. No rhetoric, no apology, no bombast, just the original documents culled from the secret minutes of Cabinet meetings, the memos of Foreign Ministers and Directors of Secret Intelligence Services. An extraordinary work of dispassionate scholarship, which gives the vivid inside story of how the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was transformed by 1922 into the British Mandate of Palestine with its impossible dual objective of fostering Zionism and protecting the rights of the Palestinians.

It also brings to life the last period of British Imperial history, revealing the background and thinking behind such passionate Zionists as Winston Churchill and Arthur Balfour, as well as the prophecies of doom from experienced Arabists like T. E. Lawrence and Lord Curzon and the men in the hot seat – King Feisal, Herbert Samuel and Dr Weizmann. Proponents of both the ‘cock-up’ and ‘conspiracy’ schools of history will be delighted by this rich mine of evidence.