In documentation it presented to the League of Nations, as we will see in more detail shortly, the British Government highlighted its 1917 statement, the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration plays a central role in the Narrative. It was highlighted as well in 1948, in a statement issued in Tel Aviv to proclaim a Jewish state in Palestine. That statement recited that in 1897, “the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.” The statement then continued, “This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917.”

A prominent Israeli jurist described the Balfour Declaration as the starting point for analysis of legal rights in Palestine. “From an international legal perspective,” wrote Yoram Dinstein, “the first step for any meaningful discussion of the Palestine Question is the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917.” The “Palestine Question” was the title of the agenda item for Palestine in documents of the United Nations, when it began dealing with the situation in 1947. Dinstein, long-time professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, was familiar with the work of the United Nations on Palestine, having served there in Israel's delegation.

The Balfour Declaration occupies a central place in the Narrative, as a font of Jewish entitlement claims in Palestine. It would, to be sure, be important in the subsequent history of Palestine. Only one sentence in length, it reads:

This statement was made by Britain's War Cabinet, a small coterie of top officials that managed the conduct of the war against Germany and its ally Turkey. The statement came to be known by the name of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, A. J. Balfour. Whether it should be the focal point for Palestine's status, analyzing from an international legal perspective, is not obvious.