Did the Zionists have both sides by the jaffas?
Two decades prior to the declaration, in 1898, the German Kaiser became an advocate of the same idea.
After meeting Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, he agreed to ask the Turkish Sultan to grant the Jews a chartered company in Palestine under German protection.
The Sultan declined and Herzl had to resort to other avenues. He discussed with the British government the possibility of giving Jews territory right outside of Palestine, in the Sinai desert. When that was deemed unfeasible, the British offered territory in East Africa.
Herzl then hired a local British lawyer in 1903 to draft a proposal that became known as the Uganda Scheme. That lawyer was a rising politician named David Lloyd George.
MacMillan believes that her great-grandfather’s awareness of other nations’ efforts played a role in issuing the Declaration. “The British were worried that if they did not support a Jewish homeland, the Germans would.”
[source : 100 years later, how has the Balfour Declaration shaped Israel's conflicts?, The Jerusalem Post, https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/100-years-on-Balfour-awakened-508491, 29th October 2017]
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