The Origins and Evolutionof the Palestine Problem:1917-1988 PART I 1917-1947- One authority writes:*"The most significant and incontrovertible fact is, however, that by itself the Declaration was legally impotent. For Great Britain had no sovereign rights over Palestine, it had no proprietary interest, it had no authority to dispose of the land. The Declaration was merely a statement of British intentions and no more".* Other authorities in international law have also held the Declaration to be legally invalid3 but this was not an issue in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration became official British policy for the future of Palestine. The ambiguities and contradictions within the Declaration contributed heavily towards the conflict of goals and expectations that arose between the Palestinian Arabs and the non-Palestinian Jews. The Zionist Organization was to use the assurances for "a national home for the Jewish people" to press its plans for the colonization of Palestine on the basis of the Balfour Declaration and its implementation through the League of Nations Mandates System. The Palestinian people were to resist these efforts, since their fundamental political right to self-determination had been denied, and their land was to become the object of colonization from abroad during the period it was under a League of Nations Mandate.*- See more at: The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem - CEIRPP, DPR study, part I: 1917-1947 (30 June 1978)
I think Arthur Balfour's comment at the time of the Balfour decision made it pretty clear.
And this is worth repeating...
...the Zionists didn't live up to their part of the Decision.
And there's no better prima facia evidence of their failure to live up to their terms of the agreement, than the statements from a famous Zionist humanist living in Palestine at the time...
And
Sherri, his next comment, happens to be something we are experiencing on this board, a half-century later...
' [the Zionists] wax angry towards those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Yisrael that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In a future when this illusion will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great our duty to work for its solution'.
That was one honest Zionist. I wish there were more like him.
Just one more...