The Balfour Declaration (dated 2 November 1917) was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Churchill White Paper (also known as The British White Paper of 1922) of 3 June 1922 clarified how Britain viewed the Balfour Declaration, 1917. That Declaration announced the British intent to aid the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." It took its name from Winston Churchill, the then-Secretary of State for the Colonies.

The Eastern Committee of the Cabinet, previously known as the Middle Eastern Committee, had met on 5 December 1918 to discuss the government's commitments regarding Palestine. According to the minutes Lord Curzon explained the following 3 commitments; Hussein, Sykes-Picot, and Balfour.

Per Lord Curzon, The Palestine position is this. If we deal with our commitments, there is first the general pledge to Hussein in October 1915, under which Palestine was included in the areas as to which Great Britain pledged itself that they should be Arab and independent in the future . . . [Sykes-Picot is remarked upon and then the following ] . . . A new feature was brought into the case in November 1917, when Mr Balfour, with the authority of the War Cabinet, issued his declaration to the Zionists that Palestine 'should be the national home of the Jewish people' . . .Those, as far as I know, are the only actual engagements into which we entered with in regard to Palestine.

[Lord Curzon chaired the meeting. General Jan Smuts, Lord Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, General Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and representatives of the Foreign Office, the India Office, the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Treasury were present. T. E. Lawrence also attended.]

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