The Palestinian Authority has been involved since last year in a campaign to delegitimize the 1917 Balfour Declaration, demanding that Britain apologize for its decision to create “a Jewish national home in Palestine.” According to the current Palestinian narrative, the declaration and its subsequent ratification by the League of Nations betrayed the principle of self-determination it was meant to uphold (by ignoring Palestinian Arabs’ right to a state of their own), unjustly gave Arab land to Jews, and thus led to the Arab-Israeli conflict and a century of Palestinian suffering. Gershon Hacohen seeks to put this narrative, and the Balfour declaration itself, in context:

[After 1917], the Arabs claimed the Balfour Declaration contradicted the principle of self-determination—but even as that claim was made, the leaders of the Arab struggle did not demand Palestinian self-determination. What they demanded instead was the joining of the mandatory land of Israel to the short-lived Kingdom of Syria, which was established by the self-proclaimed King Faisal [and lasted from March to July of 1920]. Their recognition of Palestine as part of a “Greater Syria” remained [in place] long after Faisal was expelled from Damascus by the French. . . .

In view of the League of Nations’ design to end imperial colonialism, the recognition by the world powers—followed by the international community as a whole—of the right of the Jews to a national home in the land of Israel stands prominent. The [official acknowledgment] of the exceptional situation of the Jews, most of whom did not reside at that time within the expanse of Mandate rule, . . . emphasized the significance of the special right of the Jewish people in the land of Israel. It recognized their historical and cultural affinity to the land and affirmed the political significance of this affinity.

The importance of the declaration lies also in its timing—decades before the Holocaust. It recognized the right of the people of Israel to establish a national entity in the land of Israel due to their historical ties to the land rather than due to a disaster that befell them. Israeli Jews, [especially], should seek to return to that understanding of the grounds for Israel’s establishment, which was taken for granted at the time by the international community.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”