MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE WORK AND THOUGHT
OF ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
by Teodoro Tagliaferri (University of Naples Federico II)
No. 37 (November 1st, 2023)
WRITINGS ON THE EMPIRES IN WORLD HISTORY, XXVII
Arnold J. Toynbee, Great Britain’s Responsibility for the Catastrophe in Palestine, in A Study of History, vol. VIII, London, Oxford University Press, 1954, IX, B, 5. The Modern West and the Jews, pp. 306-309.
“In taking a measure [the Balfour Declaration] so well calculated to help them to win a war in which they were fighting for their lives, it is comprehensible that the Western Powers should not have looked ahead beyond the hoped-for achievement of victory. They were less blameworthy for making dubious commitments concerning Palestine to Jews and Arabs while the First World War was still being fought than they were for shirking their consequent duty, in the subsequent interval of peace, to face the equivocal situation which they had created in Palestine under the stress of a world war and to liquidate it at the earliest possible date with the least possible injury and injustice to the parties to whom their war-time commitments had been made.”
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Arnold J. Toynbee, Great Britain’s Responsibility for the Catastrophe in Palestine