After the British captured Jerusalem from the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I, a headline in the New York Herald of December 11, 1917, declared that JERUSALEM HAS BEEN RESCUED AFTER 673 YEARS OF MOSLEM RULE. That same year, the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, in a declaration named after him, promised the Jewish people a national homeland in the biblical land of Palestine but stated that it was “clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish Communities in Palestine.”
