President Woodrow Wilson: 1913-1921
A Jewish State in Palestine
The American understanding of the intent and purpose of the Balfour Declaration is clearly deducible from the following Outline of Tentative Report and Recommendations of the Intelligence Section of the American Delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, in accordance with instructions, for the President and the Plenipotentiaries, January 21, 1919.
PALESTINE.
It is recommended:
1) That there be established a separate state of Palestine.
2) That this state be placed under Great Britain as a mandatory of the League of Nations.
3) That the Jews be invited to return to Palestine and settle there, being assured by the Conference of all proper assistance in so doing that may be consistent with the protection of the personal (especially the religious) and the property rights of the non-Jewish population, and being further assured that it will be the policy of the League of Nations to recognize Palestine as a Jewish state as soon as it is a Jewish state in fact.
4) That the holy places and religious rights of all creeds in Palestine be placed under the protection of the League of Nations and its mandatory.
Source: January 21, 1919 (David Hunter MiLer, “My Diary at the Conference of Paris”, VoL IV, pp. 263-264)
A Jewish State in Palestine
“I am persuaded that the Allied Nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth.”
Source: Israel’s Struggle for Peace. Israel Office of Information, New York, 1960, pp. 134-135
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