Balfour Declaration

   The Balfour Declaration was an important part of WWI by entrusting the United Kingdom with the Palestine Mandate in 1922.  The goal of the declaration was to keep the Jews safe with "their own country."  The Jews were shocked in 1894 by the Dreyfus Affair in France, this showed that they would no longer be safe from arbitrary semitism in other countries.  However through Zionism, or political maneuvering, the Jewish people believed that they could in a sense create a "Homeland."  Arthur Balfour who was the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1902-1905 and secretary in 1916 worked alongside with several other Zionists to attempt to create this "homeland" in Palestine.

With the help of fellow zionists, Arthur Balfour was able to put through the
Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 after going through several drafts.  It took nearly 5 years to be accepted by the League of Nations but once accepted the United Kingdom was under temporary ownership of Palestine.  However the Jews were only safe for so long.  By 1939 The White Paper declared that Great Britain may no longer create a jewish state.  This prevented millions of Jews from being safe of European countries and isolation.  Eventually this caused millions of deaths in the Holocaust because of the lack of safety the Jewish people had.  Without any safety the Jews were stuck where they were and could only attempt to hide for so long before being found and sent away to be put to work or executed.

http://history1900s.about.com/cs/holocaust/p/balfourdeclare.htm 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Balfour